The Descent of A Man

Pulling the Facebook on Us

2012-01-28T14:40:00.002+11:00

In case you haven't heard about it yet, Google is going to change its privacy policy on us as of 1 March. The change would have them run the same privacy policy across all their services, which would allow them to keep track of anything you're doing while logged in to Google and thus better target ads at you. Because, in case you didn't realize it, Google makes its money from targeted ads, and the more it knows about you the better product - you - it has to sell to its advertisers.
Assuming you are a user of Google's services (and let's face it, if you use the Internet then you almost certainly are), I warmly recommend you do your research to determine what effect this change of policy will have on you. I can point you at a very factual FAQ that the Washington Post wrote on the matter (here), but there are plenty of other guides on the web of one quality or another (like this one from Gizmodo).
Personally, I am taking this policy change very seriously. The way I see it, we are in the midst of a fight for Internet dominance between Google and Facebook, with Google currently running in panic mode (anyone mention Google+?). I consider the implications harsh, because I do not want huge conglomerates to maintain a database of everything I do on the web: such a database would be a pretty good mirror of everything I do in life, and I value my privacy. My privacy is mine to give away at will, not Google's to take away.
You may argue, not without merit, that we should have seen this coming. Why else would Google let us enjoy services like Gmail (and lest we forget how groundbreaking Gmail was upon its release)? To that I will answer that while I may have been naive, I did listen to Google's "do no harm" mantra at the same time and I did think they might be different to the rest. Well, now it has become clear they aren't.
Obviously, as this blog that you're reading is a Google run one, I am a heavy user of Google's services. Only recently did my confidence with Google receive a boost when I started using their two way account verification, which meant my Google cloud data became significantly more secure. Now, however, I am forced to start thinking of leaving Google behind.
How does one leave Google behind? Not that easy, I agree. Gizmodo published a guide here, which I consider not too bad. I will add to Gizmodo and say that WordPress is more than a better alternative to Google's Blogger/Blogspot (the platform on which this blog is currently running). I will also add that as far as free web email services are concerned, I would recommend GMX as the best alternative to Gmail by virtue of the fact its privacy policies explicitly state they do not read your messages. Sure, the GMX web page is full of ads, but if you're using an email client like Thunderbird on a PC or your smartphone's email client then that won't affect you in the least.
Oh, and as for the matter of me and a future Android phone? It seems as if Apple's chances of me sticking with its iPhone are going to rise significantly. Just think of the wealth of information you are providing Google just by having a smartphone of theirs on you, a phone that has to be logged in to your Google account in order to work. For a start, they know your whereabouts.
So yes, I do intend to start ridding myself of Google, but being the lazy person that I am I do not see this happening all that quickly. Google, it is obvious to say, has trapped me in its comforting lair of web services. I therefore intend to start with the utilization of a simple solution to the problem: use two separate browsers. Luckily for me, I like two browsers almost as much, Chrome and Firefox. I will therefore use one of them for my Google account and the other for everything else (with Google logged out). Google will still be able to collect a lot of my information but not as much; over time, I will strive to unshackle myself further from this giant, and now loomingly evil, octopus.

Image by Smeerch, Creative Commons license

Happy Australia Day

2012-01-26T08:30:00.001+11:00

And here's a suitable (and surprisingly accurate) song for the occasion that is probably unsuitable for kids:

Goodbye, Noisy Friend

2012-01-25T23:34:00.001+11:00

A couple of weeks ago I said goodbye toan old friend and took its heart out. No, this is not a post dealingwith euthanasia (at least not yet), but rather my farewell to thedesktop that served me for more than seven years as I decommissionedit and took its hard drive for safe storage.

It felt strange: I’m not used tosaying an organized goodbye to my computers/gadgets. They’re eitherneglected, eclipsed by the latest and greatest, or they break downunexpectedly. They don’t get an orderly funeral the way this noisyfriend of mine did while I carefully searched through its guts tomake sure all important things are backed up (and no, even though Iconsider myself rather prudent, there were numerous bits ofmemorabilia I failed to back up).

I would like to use this opportunityfor a proper eulogy, if you don’t mind.

My good old desktop ran the course ofits life with a single Windows XP installation. Originally it was aService Pack 1 installation, and originally that desktop was breakingreboot speed records. Now, seven years onwards, that sameinstallation took two to three minutes to boot, and many more minutesto become properly usable. In general, the use of Windows over thepast few years had turned into an agonizing affair.

That is exactly why, through the courseof this desktop’s life, it has changed course from being a WindowsPC into being a dual boot machine that runs Ubuntu most of the time.As with Windows, the desktop had seen one Ubuntu installation but hasalso seen numerous upgrades in its lifetime. What started with UbuntuFeisty went through all ten releases till the current Ubuntu Oneiric.The last two Ubuntu releases had the desktop showing its age, butnothing even remotely close to the tediousness of Windows when it came to deteriorating performance.

In its seven years my desktop did notsee any upgrades, but it did have its breakdowns. The CD drive itinherited from my previous desktop stopped working within its firstyear; the motherboard died just a few weeks after its two yearwarranty elapsed, to be replaced by a similar (yet slightly inferior)Gigabyte board; and the power supply started smelling dodgy and thusfound itself replaced after three years. Indeed, I would blame moat of myissues there on mediocre power supplies: at the time I assembled the partsfor this PC I was working under the impression the box and the powersupply don’t matter. Well, they do, and we suffered with both: thebox in particular left a lasting impression through an incrediblynoisy fan experience, especially in summer. My next desktop willsee a hefty investment in a properly ventilated box as well asreliable and strong power supply.

It looks funny today, but this desktopof mine was fitted with a dialup modem and a floppy hard drive. Thesewere eclipsed from the word go, but the rest of my PC was still potentlycapable all the way through. It is changes to our lifestyle that sawits days gradually coming to an end till the point it no longerserved a worthwhile purpose for the amount of space it took. However,I’m quite sure the MacBook Air that gave this desktop its knockoutblow of redundancy will not last me half as long as my noisy friend.

Shalom, Haver.

Many Ways to Skin a Bath

2012-01-24T22:34:00.003+11:00

At our house we wash ourselves in allsorts of ways, ways which we present before our four year old everyevening. These include:

Bath: him having a bath.
Shower: him having a shower.
Bower: him having a bath while his mother or his father have a shower (seeing others partake in the activity is a major morale booster).

Then there’s the ultimatecombination: child having a bath, mother having a shower, and father having a shave. We call that a Shawarma.

Image by toyohara, Creative Commons license

The Renters' Rant

2012-01-23T22:46:00.004+11:00

After close to a decade of living at our own house we are now in the process of seeking a place to rent while our “real” house is being extended. As I haven’t been to this rental game for a while, I find the immediacy with which the process of searching for a place to live has slapped me in the face quite striking. Although I’m only at the beginning of my quest for a place to live, it seems to me as if the state of affairs in the Aussie rental market is all about power: that is, the abuse of the power held by the suppliers and their supply chain over the end consumer.

Remember, that consumer is seeking to satisfy their most basic of physical needs – the need to for shelter, and is thus at a pretty weak bargaining position. Theoretically, the market should have arranged for competition to help the side of the consumer, but in practice it’s anything but. This post is here to review a few of the property rental scene’s areas of pain.

Problem #1: The Landlord

As we’ve been reviewing places to rent, it seems a lot has changed in the quality of what’s on offer. I cannot say this with authority given my limited number of observations, but it seems to me as if what has passed as a quality apartment a decade ago is significantly better than the current standard. For example, rooms tend to be smaller, living rooms in particular; common stairways and corridors are narrower and steeper, leaving me to wonder how anything can be taken in and out; and lifts are much smaller (again, affecting removals) if they exist in the first place.

The way I interpret it, newer properties are built to tick boxes, not to be good places to live in. The crowd wants bedrooms? Give them away, but make them smaller so we can build more! And make the corridors smaller, so we can build more apartments! In one word, greed.

In parallel to quality seeming to deteriorate there have been significant price rises. Generally speaking, the cost of renting has almost doubled over the last decade. In order to cover this up, what used to be fortnightly rental fees are now quoted as weekly fees; I could not avoid nothing the figures are the same…

It seems landlords deliver those price increases by limiting rental contacts to a year. If you want to stay at your rental place for more than a year, fine; you just need to sign this new contract. And pay more. This has been sending several people I know to find a new place to rent each year whether they want it or not (see here for an example).

In general, over my decade of life at Australia I have been witnessing the build-up of a uniquely Aussie class struggle: you’re either a property owner or a renter. If you’re in the former, “we” (including we, the tax payer) will help you get stronger and secure your power; if you’re with the latter, just shut up and pay, you failure you!

Problem #2: The Real Estate Agent

My property buying experience has led me to theorize the real estate agents serve neither seller nor buyer but rather themselves. Not surprisingly, that same insight seems to apply to the rental market.

First, it does not seem as if the agents care much for the landlord’s interests. Between being late at inspection times, not knowing the very basics of the places they’re demonstrating (e.g., “where is the heating?”), and even disappearing while the property is open for inspection, I sincerely think investment property owners are being short changed. What they’re getting for their money are glorified door openers, and unreliable ones at that.

Things are even worse from the renters’ point of view. The process of applying to rent a property is incredibly tedious and tilted heavily in favor of the agent/owner. It starts with application forms where you need to disclose so much information about yourself, including previous addresses, the details of previous landlords, previous jobs and much much more that it all feels like a bad joke. A very long bad joke.

Technology has stepped up to the challenge, and now you can apply online using the services of a company called 1form. The process is just as tedious, though, with some nasty surprises along the way. For example, the “your previous job’s manager” information fields, like their number and email address, are mandatory fields; yet in my case that company doesn’t exist anymore, and besides – keeping the contact details of a boss that hasn’t been mine for years is quite unreasonable. The same goes for the history of previous landlords. And what is one expected to do when one does not have a previous job?

1form’s true candy comes at the very end of the application process, when you’re informed that if you don’t want to refill all the forms from the start the next time you apply online (a process that took us more than two hours) you need to open your wallet and pay between $30 to $50. That’s right, you’re paying them to store your details, something they’d be doing anyway because they need to do it for the application you’ve just finished. Now, I wouldn’t mind them charging money for their services; I do, however, mind them not telling me they’d be charging money up until the point where I finished my application. I also mind facing a monopoly that can charge me as much as it wants.

Monopolly is the key word here, because its effect continues throughout the process and is not limited to the application forms. Applicants are asked to provide the whole histories of their lives, but they are left in the dark when it comes to the totally non-transparent process of assessing their application. Renters are often left in the dark after their application has been accepted, with landlords waiting to see if they could get better applications coming in before the rental agreement comes into effect. At a time when good properties are are battled for, one cannot look elsewhere for easier solutions.
The potential for adding uncertainty to one's life through property rental is certainly immense.

Problem #3: Privacy

I already pointed to the tediousness of the application process, but there is another aspect that's worth pointing at on its own because of its potential for creating some personal tragedies. That's the aspect of privacy.

When applying to rent a property one needs to provide an exhaustive amount of personal information, some of it of dubious value to the application itself: why, for example, do I need to provide the license plate number of my car on a property rental application form?

Then there is the need to supply 100 points of ID together with the application form. That also applies when the application is filed through the web and no one can verify the photo on your driver's license, which raises the question of what the point of collecting this information at such an early stage is. Why not save the hassle and verify the ID at the end instead, thus saving both supplier and collector the trouble?

If you read the small letters on your application form (I read them on the online application form), you will find a privacy statement allowing your information to be forwarded to some 17 (!) entities, starting with the real estate agent and the landlord but moving forward to far more obscure ones. Oh, and your information may be shared with up to five other institutions that may use it to investigate you, as well as your state's real estate collective agency where it may be used for various statistical purposes. Note all of the above have access to your personal info, including your 100 points of ID. All of them would create various copies of your information on the way, and who knows what might take place from thereon?

Which brings me to the risk of all your private information getting lost (or rather, stolen). It can happen with real estate agents losing paperwork, and it can happen through the interception of 1form's online transmissions. True, 1form 's databases are encrypted (so they say), but your personal info is still exposed to 1form's employees. Then there's the fact 1form forwards the online application forms to email addresses, and email is famous for being an insecure form of communication. Then there's the fact copies of the application information are stored on the PCs of the real estate agents assessing your application, and who knows what security they have there?
In short, any would be hacker can have a hell of a time raiding online application forms using tools that are commonly available over the web. In short, once you apply online to rent a property, you may as well consider your identity compromised. The trouble is, you don't have much of a choice.

There seems to be zero awareness on behalf of all sides to the privacy issues present in the application process, yet the danger is clearly there. If companies like Sony can be hacked to death with personal information stolen, so can your local real estate office. Why it is, then, that they so cheerfully ask for and collect information that is mostly redundant?

To sum up:

Almost all of us will rent a property at one point or another, and almost all of us will manage the process. Yet the question remains: why do we have to go through a process that could have been so much easier on everyone involved if it wasn't for vast amounts of self interest skewing it throughout its way?

Note I was trying to get my wife to write a guest post on rental anguish. Thus far she has refused the honor; instead, you got another typical post from yours truly.
Image by esimpraim, Creative Commons license

Rebranding

2012-01-22T17:27:00.003+11:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the only thing separating this blog and worldwide success is branding. The thought of how to position myself to attract more attention thus keeps bugging me.
OK, it doesn't bug me. And my blog's main problem (if popularity is deemed an issue) is to do with its limited appeal. Still, upon discovering that GoDaddy will give me my coveted reuvenim.com domain for a mere $10 (first year special), I decided the time has come to reposition my blog: instead of the lowly reuvenim.blogspot.com domain, it shall now have the mighty and coveted reuvenim.com domain (or rather, www.reuvenim.com).
I did not want to go with the SOPA sympathising elephant shooting GoDaddy, though. The question was which domain name registration service I should be using instead. Given my total ignorance on the matter I decided to follow recommendations, in particular Delimiter's one for ireckon domains and Cory Doctorow's much praised Hover. I ended with the latter, for the simple reason they offered a step by step guide on redirecting my blog from Google's Blogger premises to my own new domain. At $15 a year Hover is 50% more expensive than GoDaddy, but that's the price of ethical shopping for you: that's the cost of protesting against SOPA (as Hover clearly does on its home page).
As for the implications of this domain transfer. As far as I can tell it is fully transparent. I still manage my blog through the same facilities at Google, and my blog is accessible regardless of whether you access it via http://reuvenim.blogspot.com or www.reuvenim.com (which makes me suspect RSS readers will need no updating).
The irony of it all is that for now my reviews blog, which earns an order of magnitude more hits than this one (by now it's a pretty respectable blog, hit wise) is still at its old Blogger/blogspot domain. The point, however, is that my personal web brand is now established. I'm an internationalist; I'm a dot com.

Image: Hover

Dylan in the Press

2012-01-21T14:18:00.001+11:00

Melbourne Leader
16 Jan 2012

Dying for Science

2012-01-20T21:28:00.000+11:00

Close to a year ago I reported hereabout the writing of my first will (see here and here) while delving more than a bit on some of the choices I have made there.

One will related question that hasbugged me then and still bugs me today is the matter of disposingwith my dead body, an area where I am beset by conflicting thoughts:on one hand, I want to contribute to the world to the best of myabilities, even with just a dead body to do so; on the other hand, Ihave this unexplained phobia of not wanting others to toy with my body even when I’m done with it. Perhaps the latter comes from friends’rather mischievous stories of their cadavers adventures at medicalschool, or perhaps these are just the normal social inhibitions weall have when considering others pointing at our bodily deficiencies.Regardless of the exact detail, I ended up specifying the followingin my will:

Moshe's body is not to be taken back toIsrael for burial (unless Moshe happens to die in Israel).
Ideally, Moshe's body is to be disposedof in the most environmentally friendly method available. If that istoo complicated, then cremation is a viable alternative.

I cannot say I am happy with the above.It always felt like an unnecessary compromise, but I just glidedalong with it. Glided, that is, until Christopher Hitchens died anduntil his brother Peter posted information such as this about hisfuneral arrangements:

Some people have asked me when andwhere my brother’s funeral took place. In fact, as Christopherdonated his body to medical science, there has not been and will notbe any funeral. He took this decision partly because of his religious(or rather non-religious) opinions, and partly because, muchinfluenced by his friend Jessica Mitford and her book ‘The AmericanWay of Death’, he disliked what he regarded as the excesses of theAmerican funeral industry.

And that was it. Hitchens sealed it for me.I may have some relatively unreasonable phobias on the matter, but itis clearly the right thing to do: I should donate my body for medicalscience!

The advantages are clear. First, I maybe able to assist in promoting others’ health even after my death,which is a mighty achievement by anyone’s account. Second, I willhelp my family by reliving them of the whole charade that is thematter of funeral arrangements. And third, I will prevent my grave(or otherwise the location of my remains) from turning into some sortof a shrine, the way I am very sad to see my Israeli family turningthe graves of some favorite family members into some sort ofpilgrimage sites.

Christopher Hitchens has helped me openmy eyes on many things, and he is still doing so now (I’m greatlyenjoying his Hitch 22 memoir at the moment). In this particular casehe proved inspirational even in death, which says a lot about theman. As for me, I know posting my body dispensation preferences on myblog does not count as a legal document, but you’ll have to excuseme: I simply cannot be bothered to go [and pay] the lawyer to have mywill changed; that official change request would have to wait.However, since my will is to be executed by friends and relatives,let me make it clear it is my wish to have my dead body donated tomedical science, and it is also my wish for them to respect this wishof mine.

Image by jeanpierrelavoie, Creative Commons license

Mea Culpa

2012-01-17T21:41:00.000+11:00

This is another post that was meant tobe published around the new year. Heat prevented that from happening,and further contemplation held it back further. As before, betterlate than never, even if as I'm typing the temperature at our house is 28 degrees again...

Like everyone else, I have made manymistakes in the course of my life. In the context of blogging,however, there is not much that I feel bad about. That, however, does notmean there is nothing to be sorry for.

As the writer of many a review, thereis always that nagging feeling: what grants me the right to criticizeothers who took the bother of creating something when it is clear Iam not even half able to achieve what they had done? My answer there isthat I need to try and focus on reviewing the product rather than theperson, but in many cases that is easier said than done. How, forexample, can one rate a director’s film without referring to pastwork and thus touching on the personal?

That is why I was impressed with authorSeanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant) and the way she treated my critical(to say the least) review of her book, Deadline. At her blog (here)she tackled my arguments and never once aimed a shot at themessenger, instead doing what I consider the right thing and tacklingmy arguments. I was even further impressed to see her reply to thecomment I had left on her post (check these out at the very bottom of this page): now, here is an author who totally won me over and whosebooks I will always keep an eye on!

Still, I do feel bad for the grief Imust have caused McGuire. And for that, as well as the grief I mighthave caused others through my reviews, I wish to apologize. Pleaseaccept that I am not trying to criticize the person, and if it lookslike I do then consider it an indication of my inferior reviewing and writing skillsrather than my true intention.

There is another blogging issue thathas been bugging me since I first posted about it. I havecontemplated it a lot, but it took a recent post from John Scalzidealing with the matter of ebook pricing to convince me that I waswrong and that I have wronged.

The issue at hand is the way I havemade Leslie Cannold’s The Book of Rachael an example for what I sawas improper ebook pricing. I did not do it in a post that dealt withebook pricing, and I did not cite The Book of Rachael amongst themany other examples of ebooks whose price I consider inflated; I did itall in a post that was meant primarily at glorifying Leslie Cannold and her work. I had my reasons fordoing what I did, but still: Scalzi’s argument, with which I agree,is that it is silly to attack or be perceived to attach a particularauthor for the price of their ebook when pricing is generally out of their hands. Not only that, their book is theirbaby, the culmination of years of work, learning and effort; it takesa particularly cold hearted person to come and casually dismiss itall for the sake of a few dollars less.

Don’t get me wrong: I think there isplenty of room to discuss and argue over ebook pricing. I am veryopinionated on matters such as this, being the advocate and mini activist that I am fora culture of information sharing. But again – I should have done itin a manner that does not make an example of a specific book/author. The irony of it is in me “picking” on Rachael/Cannold because Iwanted to read the book so much and because I hold Cannold in veryhigh regard; now I see the matter as a case of “you hurt the ones you love the most”.

I hope Cannold will accept myapologies.

Image by UnNickrMe, Creative Commons license

The Million Dollar Question

2012-01-16T23:13:00.003+11:00

One of the main challenges on ourcurrent agenda is the subject of moving. Theoretically, we can stayat our house while it’s being extended, but it is clear that inorder to do so we would have to stow away the bulk of our possessionsand live a dirty [cold] life for a few months. Me, I wasn't born tosuffer; I prefer to use this thing called money to acquireindulgences, such as the ability to sleep in peace. And watch TV. Andgo to the toilet.

So moving it is, then, which implies usrenting a place to stay at while our true house is extended. The rubis in that last part of that last sentence, “while our true houseis extended”: thus far it seems the only short term rental placesin our area are dumps, old houses waiting to be knocked down andfeeling the part. We’re talking about carpets that smell likethey’ve been alive for decades, kitchens and toilets that wereprobably out of fashion by the time I was born, and heatingfacilities that make it pretty clear winter is going to be a nastyaffair.

The alternative is renting “normal”places, with a minimum of a year’s worth of rental. The price perweek is roughly the same as that for the short term rentals, andthere is good stuff to be had, but there is also the potential cost:were we to break to contract after around six months to go back toour now extended place, we would have to pay around $500 worth ofcompensations. Oh, and we would have to pay rent until the place islet again. If the rent is $500 per week (damn, Australia isexpensive), and if it takes two months for the new renter to come in,we will be talking about some $5000 going down the drain! If we do gowith this option we better find a place that would be sought afterenough to reduce the risk of prolonged damage to our wallets.

At this stage we are still doing ourhomework; we have a few weeks before we need to move out. However, Iwould warmly welcome your inputs on this matter: short term lease vs. contract breaking.

Image by Cail Young, Creative Commons license

Spotify Adventures in the Land of Ubuntu

2012-01-15T23:41:00.001+11:00

Warning: the following post gets pretty technical.

I have been known to rave on how good Spotify is; by the same token, I have been known to rave on how good Linux is, and in particular its incarnation that I tend to use the most - Ubuntu. This post is written to share some insights on using a free Spotify account in Ubuntu land, and it's written because:

Generally speaking, Spotify does not support Linux.
While Spotify does offer an experimental Linux version, that version is only accessible to paying Spotify users because thus far Spotify has been unable to integrate ads into the software.

Given the above, I have been running it on my Ubuntu machines using Wine (a Linux emulator for Windows). Spotify itself has a pretty good page on running its software in Ubuntu using Wine (see here); follow that and you'd be home free.
That is... until you install the latest version of Spotify's Windows client, or - as has happened to me - until Spotify upgrades itself automatically to the latest version (currently version 8) without asking for your approval. Once that has happened, Spotify kept on crashing on all my Ubuntu machines. Given how important Spotify is to me I had to fix the problem, and indeed I did so after some Googling and playing around. The rest of this post is here to tell you what I did to get Spotify up and running again in Ubuntu land.

First, a summary for those who know their way around Linux:

I removed my existing installation of Wine and all the Windows software installed under it.
I installed the latest version of Wine (not through Ubuntu's repositories).
I installed winhttp using Winetricks.

And now for the more elaborate description of the steps I took (note you may start from step 5 if you already have the latest version of Wine installed):

Uninstall all of Wine's Windows applications (I have found that using Wine's own uninstaller to remove Spotify alone did not really remove it):
cd $HOME
rm -rf .wine
Uninstall Wine through the Ubuntu Software Center.
To remove the last traces of Wine that may still be there, do the following (note the following will still leave menu items and other stuff behind; those do not matter much as far as making Spotify work is concerned):
sudo apt-get remove wine
Install the latest version of Wine, 1.3.3:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.3
Start Winetricks, a Linux application which has been installed as part of the new Wine installation.
Make the following selections in Winetricks' menus:
a. Select the default wine prefix
b. Install a Windows DLL or component
c. Choose to install winhttp (out of the long list of options available).
Download the latest version of Spotify for Windows (here).
Install Spotify into Wine by right-clicking the Spotify installation file you've just downloaded and choosing to open it using Wine.
You may need to set wine up for Spotify again in order to have proper sound (as described here under Wine configuration).

That's it. Now all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the music!

Image: Spotify

The Curse of the Eternally Dull Office

2012-01-13T23:57:00.000+11:00

We are at a hopeless situation. No, I’mnot talking about global warming here, but rather your averagecorporate environment computer scene.

Windows XP is still the dominant systemwhen it comes to running most corporations’ computers. Being thatXP is old in the tooth and soon to be left unsupported, a lot ofcompanies are currently in the process of upgrading to Windows 7 (seethe case with Telstra here and the ATO here). While at it, they areprobably upgrading to Office 2010 too, not to mention looking at moremodern Internet browsers (although I suspect most of them will not beable to unstick themselves from IE8).

Right there is the catch: whatever upgradesall these companies do, they will never be able to satisfy theiremployees. Virtually all of us in the corporate/government world arenow in possession of either a smartphone or a tablet, and both areincredible sexy devices operated by finger swipes and producing flashy graphics in response. How can that flashy way of life ever be compared with the dullness ofa Windows 7 desktop running boring old Microsoft Office? It cannot.

Which is why I think the situation ishopeless. Given the corporate agenda which has the efficient use ofcompany resources in mind, there is nothing that a CIO can do thatstands a chance of ever getting employees excited about their work environment. And there’s the rub: all of us office workers aretherefore doomed to spend the bulk of our conscious time upon thisearth in dull and rather dreary environments.

Pity Steve Jobs didn’t give the average office more attention.

Image by joshfassbind.com, Creative Commons license

Smelly Facts About Australia

2012-01-12T20:54:00.003+11:00

Fact #1: The Coalition's citizenshipspokeswoman, Teresa Gambaro, told the media that migrants should betaught how to use deodorants and how to stand politely in queues. Note shewas not necessarily talking about refugees; professional migrantswith university degrees (e.g., yours truly) are referred to as well.

Fact #2: 45% the voting population ofAustralia votes for the Coalition. Actually, the latest pollsshow an easy win for them with 55% voting for the Coalition on atwo party vote. That is, the majority of Australia’s population.

Now, tell me how the combination of theabove two facts cannot lead to the inevitable conclusion thatxenophobia and its close relative, racism, are rife in Australia?

Image by estherase, Creative Commons license

Life Signed Away

2012-01-11T22:51:00.002+11:00

It took us a great many years, but today we made the first step on our home extension project that truly hurts the wallet: we signed a contract with our builder of choice.

This means that we are now officially on the lookout for a place to rent while our house gains a second floor. This also means that we'll be the bank's best friends again, borrowing money that we might be able to pay back by our seventh reincarnation.

The implications on you, my dear readers, are dire. Brace yourselves for the severe ranting that's bound to result out of the unavoidable encounters with my dear old friends, the real estate agents (whom I just love so much). Alas, posting frequency is expecting severe reductions as our focus shifts to this most useless of exercises, moving, a huge effort that upon unpacking finds one at the exact same point one was at before packing.

Image by IsraelMFA, Creative Commons license

Inferiority Complex

2012-01-10T17:22:00.000+11:00

Each time I find myself standing next to Robert Doyle, Ifind myself surprised at how short the guy is. The last time that had happenedwas last week as I was walking through the city with the following Renai LeMay tweet still in my mind:

I look forward to the day when "liberal" is not asimile for "right-wing nutbag"

This combination of the clash and the tweet made me think: couldit be that the guy’s a right-wing nutbag as a direct result of some sort of aheight related inferiority complex?

An interesting theory. Alas, it is refuted by the tallishPeter Costello next to whom I also had the dubious pleasure of standing on acouple of occasions.

To those that don’t know what this post is all about: RobertDoyle is the Liberal mayor of Melbourne.He recently won his claim to "right-wing nutbag" fame when he usedpolice force to evict Occupy protestors and have them harassed all over Melbourne in a manner that seems rather illegal to me and to The Age (seehere). After all, agree with the Occupy movement or not, I was under theimpression we have the freedom to protest in Australia. Not by Doyle we do.

Image by avlxyz, Creative Commons license

I Care a Lot

2012-01-09T23:31:00.001+11:00

This post was meant to be published around the new year; the heat prevented that from happening. Now it's a case of better late than never.

Back in high school there was a Phil Collins song I quite liked, "I Don't Care Anymore". I liked it for two fairly obvious reasons: the drums' track was impressive (I always liked Collins for his drumming much more than his singing), and the lyrics. I mean, hardly anything can capture the heart of a teenager better than "I don't care anymore". The funny thing about this song, though, was that I was only able to listen to it a couple of times or so; back then, it was very hard/expensive to listen to specific music at will.
Today things are different. Today the Internet allows me to listen to music almost at will, and the embedded YouTube clip of that very song is proof. However, 2011 proved a breakthrough even there: through Spotify, I am now able to expand my musical horizons in unprecedented manner and in significantly better quality than what YouTube is allowed to offer.
As a result, Spotify has been providing the soundtrack for my life since April 2011 (plus/minus), when I first opened an account with them. I disconnected the MP3 player from my hi-fi and replaced it with an old netbook that's running Spotify and nothing else, and that netbook has been working a lot: even my four year old knows that the first thing a decent human being does upon arriving home is turning the music on. Indeed, Spotify has been with us wherever we had an Internet connection: you can say it's been an integral part of our wifi hotspot experience, illuminating us with its music while tripping around the world as well as while vacationing in Australia. Other than during car drives, virtually all our music was supplied by Spotify. For the first time in more than a decade, the decline of music in my life has been reversed. Due to Spotify's fault, music is back to playing a key role in my and my household's life.
When looking at the impact technology has had on my life, I had dubbed 2010 as the year in which the ebook came into my life. In similar fashion, I dub 2011 as the year in which music reentered my life, and most of the credit there has to go to Spotify.
There is more to the connection between the ebook and the music revolutions than personal revolutions. In both cases, we are talking about revolutions I was not meant to have. If it wasn't for me using VPN to pretend I am an American, I wouldn't have been able to access the majority of science fiction and other books I bought for my Kindle; similarly, if it wasn't for me using VPN, I wouldn't have been able to access Spotify, whose services are currently limited to several European countries and the USA. At business school you learn the customer is always right and you need to give them the product they are asking for, but that rule does not apply for the contents industries: as far as they are concerned, we (and Aussies in particular) should live by the old rule for as long as possible. Who cares if people don't get the books they want to read or the music they want to listen to when the powers that be can stick to their old business models and pretend the year is still 1970?
This semi cheating of mine worries me, because whatever Spotify gaveth it can also taketh away. As I don't hold an American credit card with which I can get a paid Spotify account (called "Premium"), I am relying on Spotify's free services. Those free services are supposed to be limited to strict quotas as of the second month, including up to two hours of music listening per month and not listening to the same album more than twice. To date, Spotify is yet to impose those limits on me despite my extensive use of their services. I like to flatter myself and think they know exactly who I am and they allow me to continue using their unlimited product because of the good publicity I give them on my blog, but then again who am I kidding?
When, eventually, my account is limited I will immediately start a new one. I do, however, hope Spotify will finally start operating locally and allow me to use its services above the water. When that happens, the whole of Australia can enjoy what I have been enjoying for the better part of a year. Music can reenter the lives of many others who found themselves homeless since the demise of the CD format.

Change Management Communication, Tip #74

2012-01-07T20:13:00.000+11:00

Managers be advised:
When you tell an employee they made the grade to have a break on some project work, that may raise a perception with the employee that everything they've done so far is seen as shit.

War on the Internet

2012-01-06T23:27:00.003+11:00

Where would you be on Saturday 21January between 15:00 and 17:00? Personally, I hope to be at Melbourne’sTrades Hall for this session entitled War on the Internet.

The event appears sponsored by TheGreens and EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia, of which I am amember). The most interesting aspect of it, as far as I am concerned,are the speakers. These include:

Jacob Appelbaum, i.e., @ioerror, ahacker and an activist who has already been glorified by this blog(here).
Scott Ludlam, The Greens Senator fromWA who is probably one of a mere few Aussie politicians that areactually inspirational. He is probably also the last thread in thedefence of sanity when it comes to matters of technology andAustralian politics in elected Canberra. You can read more about him here, here and here(all curtesy of Delimiter).

Between these two and more, this eventappears to be a must.

Image credit: unclear

Which VPN?

2012-01-05T21:10:00.000+11:00

It seems clear to me there is demand out there for VPN services. The reasons (previously discussed in detail here) are mostly to do with:

Internet security (e.g., privacy over unsecured networks), as well as
The ability to acquire otherwise blocked contents over the Internet. With us Australians having limited legal venues for contents at our disposal, we might seek to impersonate being an American in order to get that ebook that Amazon will only sell Yanks or in order to listen to Spotify’s music through a British account. Then there is the
Need to camouflage peer to peer activities from prying eyes.

As much as the need is obviously out there, confusion is also abundant as to which of the hundreds of VPN providers out there one should be using. Whenever the question of “which” is raised at any of the blogs or forums I read, there is an immediate flood of responses that make picking genuine winners almost impossible. Then there are reviews do not help users much in choosing one VPN provider over another (like this one).

I therefore thought I would try and remedy the situation, if only by a bit, by sharing my own experience of using VPN services with you. I am no expert, but I have been using numerous VPN providers over significant periods; more importantly, I have the cunning ability to compare VPN providers systematically, a factor that seems missing from other comparisons.

I will start be presenting you with some of the things you need to look for when shopping for VPN providers. By determining what your own needs are, and by comparing those to what the providers are offering, you should be able to find your ideal match:

Cost: Cost can vary between $30 a year to $30 a month. Oh, and there are numerous free VPN providers out there, too.
Platform support: Does the VPN support Windows (XP? 7?), Mac, Linux, Android and/or iOS?
Anonymity: Does the VPN service keep records of you activities with them? If they do, and most of them do, then you are not truly anonymous when you’re using VPN. The trouble there is that it is often hard to find what a VPN provider’s true anonymity policy is; the only reliable input on this matter I can refer you to is this post from TorrentFreak.
Server locations: One of the most common uses of VPN is to do with pretending to belong to another country. Say, being an American to watch Hulu videos, or being a Brit to watch BBC videos. In order to use VPN for that, your VPN provider will have to have servers in the country you want to belong to.
Ease of switching servers: Some VPN providers restrict the amount of times and the ease with which you can move from one server to another (i.e., the ease with which you can pretend to be of different countries).
Protocol: Different VPN providers offer different VPN protocols for their products. In my experience, protocols such as PPTP VPN are problematic because when they [occasionally] fail the connection is resumed without VPN (through "normal" Internet instead). This means anonymity is lost! On the other hand, an Open VPN protocol connection tries to re-establish connection over the protected VPN before resuming.
Capacity: The cheaper the VPN provider, the more likely it is to impose limits on how much data you can download through.
Bandwidth: How quick will your connection be, and what will its latency be like, when you’re connected to the VPN provider? The answer has a lot to do with where you are and where the VPN server is, as well as your own Internet connection. However, some homework might give you insight as to the performance of the VPN provider you might be eyeing.

Needless to say, there are other criteria for selecting a VPN provider. I chose to focus on those I deem relevant to the majority of users. However: One criteria that’s obviously missing from the above is to do with special VPN requirements for people living in repressing countries, where the use of better VPN services can mean whether they can access the Internet in the first place and whether they will live to tell the experience the day after. I simply have no experience in that regard.

With the above criteria established, here are my own personal recommendations. I suspect they would be fine for 90% of Aussies and Western country users with a need for VPN:

Free VPN services cannot be relied upon for anything more than, say, the occasional purchase of a Kindle title through Amazon. They are slow, filled with ads to the point of being useless, and are often unreliable.
For all VPN uses that do not require the utmost level of anonymity, I recommend Witopia’s VPN services. For $40 a year, Witopia offers decent speeds, multiple platform support, and easy to switch between servers spread all over the world.
For VPN uses where anonymity is mandatory (e.g., bit-torrent), BTGuard is widely regarded as the top option. Note there are only a few VPN services out there that guarantee anonymity.
For mixed use, that is – both being able to pretend to belong to different countries as well as remaining anonymous – I recommend signing up with both Witopia and BTGuard. Do note you won't be able to use the two simultaneously.

I hope you have found the above useful.

Image: BTGuard

14 + 9 = Jupiter

2012-01-03T21:42:00.000+11:00

On New Year's Eve, just before Melbourne's weather turned too hot for me to consider switching a computer on in anger (with the occasional exception of the more expandable netbooks), we decided the time has come for me to unleash our telescope from its hiding place and have a look at Jupiter and its moons.
You see, Jupiter is quite prominent in Melbourne's early evening northern sky at the moment. When I look at it through my binoculars, as I occasionally do, I can't avoid marvelling at how Jupiter looks like a ball whereas stars look like classic star shapes. That is, they look like shiny spots with star shape like edges, due to the fuzziness introduced by earth's atmosphere. Obviously, the time was ripe for me to go one step further and see Jupiter in its full glory.
Now, I discussed the hardships of home astronomy in here already: how hard it is to aim, focus, and maintain focus on an earth that rotates on its axis surprisingly fast when magnified. I didn't discuss other, much more earthly issues.

Coming home from the 21:00 fireworks (which were actually at 21:30 and were also quite disappointing; let's face it, Sydney harbour cannot be matched), I quickly erected the telescope and took it out. It didn't take long for me to spot Jupiter and aim the telescope at it (in between our tree's branches).
The sight was magnificent: using the normal magnifying lens (the middle on of three I got with my telescope), Jupiter's stripes were clearly visible but, more interestingly, so were three of its moons that were surrounding the gas giant like flies hovering over a piece of... meat.
Let's delve a bit into the importance of this sighting: back when Galileo first erected his telescope and sighted the same Jupiter, the fact it had stuff orbiting it and not the earth was the first obvious evidence that not everything in the universe revolves around the earth. Today we take it for granted; back then, religion's grip on reality was much firmer.
Back to us. I called the entire family to come and have a look, and indeed they have. They were all impressed. I, however, started feeling a new sensation; five minutes later we were all back inside, telescope dismantled.
The next day I counted 14 mosquito bites on my left foot and 9 mosquito bites on my right foot. Astronomy sure is hard: as Galileo discovered several centuries ago, it's a bloody affair.

Image by Keithius, Creative Commons license

Resourcefulness

2012-01-03T17:16:00.003+11:00

View Larger Map

Some six months ago I took a day off to spend with my son when childcare closed for an alleged "training day" (more like pain in the butt for working parents day, if you ask me). I took my son to the Scienceworks museum, and then we closed things off with Nandos and an ice cream at nearby Williamstown.
Back then, my son had to go to the toilet in the middle of our Nandos lunch. We did our thing, and when we came back to our table we were both surprised and annoyed to see it has been cleared. Despite us being still in the thick of things!

I spent today in the company of my son again. His childcare is closed for the holiday season, I took a day off work to be with him, and we spent the day at Scienceworks - followed by Nandos and an ice cream.
This time around, as we stepped into Nandos, my son immediately suggested going to the toilet before ordering. Just in case, you see: "We don't want them to take our lunch", he said.
The right incentive can make four year olds surprisingly wise.

Best Bloggers

2012-01-01T18:04:00.002+11:00

It's that time of the year. We've been past the Christmas shopping frenzy, now time to have a bit of a look at the year that past. I'll start with blogging.
To commemorate my appreciation to myfellow bloggers that have made my life that much more interestingover the last year, here is a list of my favorite ones and theirrespective blogs. The blogs list is sorted in the usual order I tend tostart reading them in the morning, which – for the record - doesnot have much to say about my relative appreciation levels; order tendsto be a matter of convenience:

Yossi Gurvitz: A left wing Israeliblogger that turned lately into being my main supplier of impressionsfrom Israel through his blog. That said, I actually got to knowGurvitz through his daily technology news column here. Note bothsources “speak” Hebrew.
Ronen Dorfan: Another Israeli blogger,but this time a sports blogger (here). The point is that having beenraised in Israel, my sport preferences tend to be much more similarto Dorfan’s than they are to, say, the average Aussie. That aside,Dorfan specializes in shedding original light on sporting events, tothe point I enjoy reading him even when he writes about sports I’mnot particularly interested in. I guess that means he passes the ultimate writer's test.
Renai LeMay: LeMay is running the bestIT news website in Australia, Delimiter. More than being a supplierof news, I like LeMay’s personal opinion and analysis of events –especially when he’s politically incorrect. It’s great to seesomeone dare speak his mind up; the fact I’m almost always inagreement helps. It’s interesting to note that while I would havecalled LeMay a journalist, he claims to prefers the title of blogger (which, coincidently, makes us brothers in arms).
While on the subject of Delimiter, I would like tomention Jenneth Orantia who writes regular reviews for the site. Morethan any other technology reviewer I could find, her reviews seem tohit the point best in precision and relevance. I stronglysuspect we have a lot in common, Orantia and I.
John Scalzi: Enough has been said about Mr Scalzi and his blog on these pages; suffice to say he seems to be my favorite fiction writer at the moment. That aside, he's also one of my favorite bloggers - I would say his blog is not that different to mine, actually; only his is much better (and received more hits per hour than mine receives in a whole year). As I have found while reading his latest book, Fuzzy Nation, reading Scalzi's blog during the time he wrote the book (and, for that matter, following him on Twitter) has significantly augmented my reading experience. I could clearly see the blog behind his book.
TorrentFreak: While the blog carries the name of the most popular file sharing mechanism out there, this blog is a pirate's most effective way of keeping up with the world. It doesn't [only] deal with how to best pirate stuff; it quizzes the whole system behind intellectual property from the pirates' point of view. Not shying from investigative journalism (as per its recent findings of rife piracy within the ranks of top copyright stakeholders), TorrentFreak has been known to supply headlines for mainstream media.
Richard Dawkins Foundation: While the man himself rarely blogs, his namesake foundation is quite prolific and offers a blog full of science and atheism news. From the latest at CERN to the latest bus ad campaign, the Richard Dawkins Foundation has it all.
dpreview: Undeniably the best authority on digital photography, I subscribe to the site to get the latest dose of photography news and updates. Most of the stuff there is irrelevant, but a quick browse keeps me up to date and the occasional gem of an article leaves me a better person.
Terry Lane: Posting and writing for The Age as dpexpert, Lane keeps me informed on matters of photography that are particularly relevant to Australia. It also helps that his reviews are published long before dpreview's (although the latter's reviews are a marvel of thoroughness). I don't always agree with Lane, as in the case of his recommendation to buy European TVs over the Far Eastern ones due to the former's supposedly superior picture; I'd rather put my money on the best TV I can afford and then spend $100-$200 more on calibrating it. Still, there is much to learn there.
PZ Myers: Myers' is one of the first blogs I got to follow, and indeed the man has been one of my favorite bloggers for several years now. Look no further for the latest politically incorrect analysis of all matters atheism, including ventures into Australian territories (supported by a long list of loyal local followers). There is some good humor around the octopus fetished Myers; his review of the latest in the Game of Thrones' book series, entitled Game of Drones, pretty much settled the matter of whether the books are worth my time or not.
Cory Doctorow: Doctorow position in my life couldn't be any firmer, with him serving as a role model on many a front - from piracy (or rather, the open source culture) to science fiction. The trouble with following Doctorow through Boing Boing and his more personal blog is that they publish around 50 posts a day, only a fifth of which is Doctorow's; even then, a lot of the stuff Doctorow blogs about is to do with things that are of lesser interest to me, such as matters of the steam punk culture.
Phil Plait: Not only the main culprit in making my four year old interested in science (through his awesome Bad Universe TV series), Plait is also a fine skeptic and blogger. His blog focuses on recounting the latest science news, in particular astronomy related science news, by explaining pictures and videos to the laymen. Needless to say, the occasional post on matters of skepticism (e.g., the anti vaccination movement) adds spice to an already interesting and educational blog.

As a closing comment, I would like to make clear that the above list includes bloggers that post on a regular and frequent basis only. I follow many other less frequently published blogs, but the above are my staple intellectual nourishment.

Image by Lady Madonna, Creative Commons license

Addicted

2011-12-30T22:58:00.001+11:00

It's hard to ignore the phenomenon commonly referred to as "coffee" when one is living in Melbourne, but I think our household managed to hold itself back way longer than average. However, even we had to succumb in the face of Christmas shopping season discounts. Most notably, Aldi offering a home coffee machine for a mere $80!
We had a look at the Aldi machine and decided it's not for us. Then we stumbled upon a Nesspresso machine (the one with Clooney in its ads), and between us being overenthusiastic and the the saleslady trying for commission we were under the impression you can get their entirely automated (just press a button!) coffee and frothing machine for $200. Alas, that was not the case; the asking price was $500.
So we had second thoughts, and realized there is not much of a difference between the Aldi coffee machine for $80 and the Nesspresso one for $500, especially when you throw in an extra $20 to get the Aldi frother. Most notably, both machines use very similarly styled coffee capsules as their ammo, and both require similar style maintenance (that is, almost nothing other than pressing the "clean" button from time to time).
So we went and bought the Aldi machine. That is, we went several times, because it took a while till the shops had them in stock. Since then we never looked back: our otherwise coffee immune household became caffeine addicted, even if we are not talking about common Melbourne grade addictions: ours is just a few coffees per week. However, an addiction it still is: when we went for our Christmas holidays this year, we took our coffee machine (and frother) with us. After all, we still had the original packaging, so it was dead easy!
Addicted, as per the above holiday photo - QED.

Now that addiction has been established, allow me a few words concerning the quality of the coffee produced by the Aldi machine.
No, it is not of the same quality you would get at a proper coffee place. It is definitely inferior to that, probably the result of the capsules' coffee coupled with the machine's inability to deliver the pressures and temperatures of a pro machine. However, if you ask me, the Aldi machine still beats most of the inferior coffee places and is at least on par with the majority of consumer home coffee machines. It is excellent value for money, to put things explicitly, regardless of whether you're talking running costs or just the initial cost.
Currently, Aldi sells some eight varieties of coffee capsules. However, if you look overseas (say, here) you will see additional milk and drinking chocolate capsules on offer; I assume these would land at the Lucky Country shortly. What I was unable to find thus far are decaf capsules for the Aldi machine (capsules of which are available for Clooney's Nesspresso): having those on board would mean I'd be able to enjoy the taste of coffee without the side effects that come along with such an addiction. Yes, I know decaf is blasphemy, but let me make it clear - I drink coffee because of the taste and the ritual, not because of some quest to attain legal drugs.

When they kick out your front door, how you gonna come?

2011-12-28T23:14:00.002+11:00

The EFF asks people joining it (or, in my case, people renewing their membership) why they choose to do so. At the time of my renewal I didn't have a catchy answer to that question, but exactly because of that lack of an answer I kept thinking about the matter. Eventually, things settled in my mind upon the words of The Clash:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?

Coming Out of the Closet

2011-12-22T22:47:00.002+11:00

The Azrieli shopping mall photo affair continues to roll on, with me receiving emails and phone calls from my family calling on me to change. Notable arguments include:

As the Jewish son of Jewish parents, how can I say such things about the State of Israel?
As an Israeli, how can I say such things about the State of Israel?
I am only a tourist in Australia; my true country, my home, is Israel.
By expressing myself the way I do I am humiliating the State of Israel as well as humiliating my family.
Certain family members (some cousins were specified) already stopped talking to me as a result of my expressed opinions. This causes family disconnections.

I think all of the above arguments have been discussed in this blog before, but for what it’s worth I’ll have another [shorter] go:

Religion: I am the son of Jewish parents. I was brought up on the modern Israeli secular variant of the Jewish culture. I like many Israeli foods and consider them my favourites (humus!). I listen to Israeli music (matter of fact, lately I've probably been listening to more Israeli music than I ever did).
However: none of the above requires me to consider myself a Jew; I’m an atheist, a vocal one at that, and like Christopher Hitchens before me I tend to see the institute of religion as one of this world’s greater evils. Now, if, in your opinion, religion is in one’s genes then fine – by your way, I am Jewish. If, however, you are of the opinion that everyone is allowed to make their own minds as to what they are, then face the fact that I do not consider myself a Jew.
Nationalism: To quote Carl Sagan, when you look at the earth from outer space you do not see international borderlines. Me, I accept the concept of nationalities as one of this world’s evils that I am unable to correct; I certainly hold no particular favors for any country. The way I see it, a country is there to serve its citizens; some countries do a much better job at this than others (Australia vs. North Korea), and the better ones are the countries I would prefer to live in. To put it in other words, I am a patriot of the countries that put human rights, as per the spirit of humanism, as their core value.
My true country: Let us not forget that Israel is a country where my wife would not be able to reside due to the religion she happened to be born into. My son, too, will have problems living there. For that reason and for many more, Israel cannot be my “true country”. In contrast, Australia’s culture is foreign to me in many ways, but Australia is a country that is totally unbothered by me living in it and allows me to lead a normal life involving work and family. I have many reservations about Australia, most if not all of them have been expressed in this forum; overall, though, I am happy here.
Expressing my opinions: Of all the basic human rights out there, I consider the freedom of expression to probably be the most important one. If someone has a problem with my opinions they are more than welcomed to argue these problems out (one of my friends did so at my previous post, raising some very valid arguments); I am very often wrong and appreciate the effort it takes to correct me. However, shutting up for the sake of others who do not like to hear what I have to say is not a behavior I see myself adopting any time soon. If anything, I take pride in speaking my mind up, the transparency it brings, and the openness it nourishes. Last, but not least, if you have a problem listening to criticism and seek to shut me up through posed humiliation, I would say you have a huge problem on your hands.

Overall, it does seem to me as if my true alleged crime is daring to ask questions that others prefer not to ask. At stake is the matter of my identity.

In summary, it appears as if it has suddenly dawned on my family that their son is a lefty atheist. For years they tried to ignore the evidence before them, but now – for one reason or another (I would put my money on my parents’ introduction to the iPad coupled with my brother currently visiting them) – it just popped up in their face. That’s perfectly fine: it’s about time they meet their son.

I do have to say this whole experience feels a lot like coming out of the closet in front of the cliche family. Just like a gay person, this is what I am, for better and for worse; my friends who read this blog seem to have learned to live with that and still be my friends (and I totally adore them for that). Not to mention my wife! However, my family has a problem there. Their attempt to force me to change my opinions the way Alan Turing was forced to take drugs to counter his homosexuality will only make things worse. Just like a gay person, this person expressing himself in this blog is the person that I am, for better and worse.

I can only sympathize with gay lefty atheists coming out of their closet: their experience has to be the worst!

Image by StephenMcleod, Creative Commons license

State of Security

2011-12-20T23:10:00.000+11:00

What is wrong with the above picture?

At first sight I would say it’s a plain boring photo. However, there is a good reason for me taking it during my September visit to Israel. The photo was taken at Tel Aviv’s Azrieli shopping mall, where we intended to go up to the 49^th story observatory to review Tel Aviv from up above, entertain our four year old, and enjoy some cool air-conditioned air.

Upon entering the shopping mall’s parking lot we were stopped by a security person. It’s standard practice in Israel: she had my father open the trunk, looked around it, scanned the car’s occupants, and then – in atypical fashion even for

Israel

– started asking us questions. Questions about the purpose of our visit and our intentions.

We were puzzled at first, but soon enough the focus of the security guard’s attention became clear: the digital SLR camera I was carrying with me. At first I assumed the problem is to do with the neighboring army base, the Kirya, home of the Israeli army’s headquarters; you're not supposed to take photos of army bases. It turned out to be a different problem: we were told we are not allowed to take photos inside the shopping mall. Eventually, the guard let us in after we clarified we only intend to take photos at the observatory, while promising not to take photos at the shopping mall below.

At this point you’ll have to excuse me. What the fuck!? Why are we going through the third degree in order to enter a fucking shopping mall, and all just for the sin of carrying a camera with us, when virtually everyone entering the shopping mall does so armed with a camera on their mobile phone? Where is the sense in that?

In rebellion, I did take a photo inside the shopping center. It’s the above photo, which I dedicated to the State of Israel and the security centered people dominating that country.

A few days ago I received feedback on the photo, asking me why I don’t pick on Melbourne’s drunkenness instead. I’m almost ashamed to pay attention to an argument of such sophistication, but I will do so because the whole incident still infuriates me. So here goes: first, as readers of this blog can attest, I have been known the criticize the fallacies of Australian culture, including the over reliance on alcohol to lubricate virtually all social engines. Second, two wrongs do not make a right. Third, and most importantly, the whole world from Namibia to Iceland is suffering from an endless number of problems; if we don’t deal with any of them just because other problems exist we’ll never get anywhere.

There is more to this post than dealing with my personal arguments with members of my family as they post feedback on my Flickr photos for the very first time. I wanted to use this opportunity to discuss exactly why I consider this particular problem I had at Israel to be much worse than the problem of drunken behavior at Melbourne.

The first aspect is the ability of an individual to avoid the problem. I can lead a healthy and active life in Melbourne without bumping into drunk people if I want to. Matter of fact, I hardly bump into drunk people even though I don’t actively avoid them, simply by virtue of the fact I don’t have much interest in the places such people tend to occupy. It is not the same in Israel: you encounter security people wherever you go, with your privacy infringed each time you enter larger institutions. Your street corner’s grocery won’t check you up, but your bank and post office would. Not to mention shopping malls.

The second matter is to do with the authority at the hands of the culprit. That security guard in Israel could have put a stain on our holiday plans by preventing us from entering the observatory. However, let us not forget that she could have done much worse: theoretically, she could have arrested us. She could have even shot us: her and the numerous other guards around her were all armed with automatic weapons. As an Israeli, one gets accustomed to the constant presence of guns & ammo all over the place, but this Australian cannot avoid thinking what these tools were designed to do. Somehow, I find them much more intimidating than a drunk person.

The third problem is a direct result of the undisputed authority granted to these security people. When you interact with them, your fate is entirely in their hands; if they decide to treat you in a certain way, you don’t have many options to fight back with and argue back other than appealing to their humanity (a quality that is often lacking with those employed in security services). For example, was that security guard to decide our camera prevents us from entering the shopping mall, there was nothing we could have done about it. If she decided to be even more of a pain, we wouldn’t have had much we could have done about it either. Just ask the Palestinians who routinely have to cross army security checks for their insight into such experiences.

Which brings me to my main point: as far as I am concerned, my incident with the security guard at a shopping mall located in the center of Tel Aviv indicates just how far the damage of Israel's occupation culture has proliferated into the very veins of the Israeli experience. After all, the same people that hold the potential evil Arab terrorists at bay in various checkpoints end up running the security of Jewish folks' shopping centers, don’t they? You can’t expect them to switch to a different brain when they move some ten to twenty kilometers nearer to the coast, can you? You can’t have it both ways. You cannot have one without the other.

Needless to say, Israel does not hold a monopoly over the security culture. If anything, Israel can boast some decent arguments in favor of this culture (not that these won me over; it is this culture that was the number one reason I aspired to leave Israel for a better place).

For the rest of us, encounters with the security culture at its brightest tend to be limited to airport visits. There we are expected to shut up and accept being undressed by radiating porn scanners, viewed in the nude by operators we wouldn’t let near our homes under normal circumstances, get poked all over our bodies by people we don’t know, and in general be treated like sheep. Dumb sheep: we are not allowed to take photos, not allowed to use our phones (a felony upon landing at Melbourne), and are even expected to adopt a special language. As in, let’s see what happens to you the next time you utter words such as “bomb” or “terrorist” near an airport. And with all of the above, you are not allowed to dispute or argue; you either cooperate and get to fly, or you get yourself arrested. Do not pack reason with you on your flight.

All of this, for what? The number of terrorists apprehended under all of the above mentioned airport security schemes is incredibly round, while terrorists’ bombs find their way to planes under the guise of inkjet printer refills. With all their porn scanning, TSA's own testers still manage to smuggle shotguns on board airplanes on the majority of their attempts. In other words, we chose to adopt a culture of security not in order to bring true security, but rather to create the illusion of security.

Let’s quit our security binge drinking and return to sober policy making. Let’s reinstate the culture of respecting one another and appreciating each others’ basic human rights instead. There are some things we should not copy from Israel and/or America; the security state of mind is one of them.

Confirmed: The Best Computer Ever

2011-12-18T00:17:00.000+11:00

I have been known to claim over thesepages that I want to buy a MacBook Air because I am of the opinion itis the best computer ever. Now that I have bought and used one overseveral weeks, I am here to confirm my initial speculation: theMacBook Air is, by far, the best computer I have had the pleasure ofworking/playing on.

When I say “the best”, what I meanis that it is the device most suitable for my needs. Others’ needsmay vary, obviously; what I will do next is explain why the MacBookAir is such a hit so you can make your own mind up as to whetherthese attributes are relevant to you, too. So here goes – these arethe reasons I consider the MacBook Air the best:

Incredible ergonomics and finishing:The combination of being ultra light and portable, together with thevery decent keyboard and mouse pad, is sealed off with a decentscreen or a respectable and quite usable size (13”, in my case).
Decent grunt: Between its I5 CPU and4GB of RAM, this is a pretty powerful computer. Not the most powerfulever, nothing that can play the latest Modern Warfare, but more than enough for what I need and foresee needing in aportable platform.
Solid state drive: The MacBook Airrepresents my second proper computer experience with solid statedrives replacing conventional hard drives. However, unlike my firstgeneration Asus Eee PC, the difference is huge! The speed advantageof solid state is not marginal but rather that of an order ofmagnitude, and it expresses itself in everything I do with the Mac –from booting to processing photos. So much so that going back to thehard drives of my other computers feels like being thrown back to the darkages.
The screen: The MacBook Air’s screenis worth mentioning on its own. It’s not only of particularly highresolution, it is very clearly superior to all other portablecomputer screens I have seen before. Placing it next to my otherlaptop makes the difference dead clear. It comes down to Applechoosing superior hardware: there are three different types of LCDscreen technologies; most laptops choose the cheapest, Apple chose thebest.

If I were to sum it all up it wouldcome down to this: the greatness of the MacBook Air comes from itbeing an exceptionally well designed piece of hardware.

Notably missing from my descriptions ofthe MacBook Air’s greatness are references to the Mac OS Xoperating system, now in its Lion incarnation. Is it because I don’tthink much of it?

Well, no. I think it’s very good, andI can clearly see why no one exposed to the Mac world would ever wantto go back to Windows. The majority of issues that the less techsavvy amongst us encounter with their PCs are never a problem on aMac. Inside Apples's kingdom, things really come down to switching the computer on andusing it through intuitive controls with hardly a need to perform anymaintenance.

My problem with OS X, if you want tocall it a problem, is not Windows; my problem is Linux. It’s justthat I think Linux, at least in its Ubuntu incarnation, provides allthe benefits that Apple does with its OS X, but does it better andfor free. It’s just a pity there is no industry wide support forLinux: if Linux got as much attention as OS X or Windows are getting,the latter two wouldn’t exist.

There is another problem with OS X:it’s closed nature. Why is it, for example, that my Mac won't write toan external hard drive that has been formatted the Windows way? Forthat matter, why can’t Windows deal with Mac formats? And why can Linux be happy to deal with either, while offering additional formatsthat are superior to what both Apple and Microsoft offer?

There are other minor pains, such as Apple's over exuberant attempt to reduce keyboard buttons manifestingitself in me having to google for the right key combination wheneverI want to grab a screen shot. Not to mention having to google the first time I wanted to do a right click. These are minor gripes,though.

On the positive side, Apple does knowhow to appeal to the consumer. This comes in simple things, like thePhotobooth application that uses the webcam to take your photos andprocess them creatively: it turns you into an alien, places dizzybirds circling over your head, or puts you on a rollercoaster ride. There’sample potential there for entertaining a family with a four year old,especially when you compare what’s bundled with a Mac to thebloatware contaminating most Windows hardware.

The Shit Gadget Syndrome

2011-12-16T00:04:00.002+11:00

It happens way too often: a relative/friend acquires agadget, seeks my approval, and then gets upset upon hearing what my opinion oftheir latest purchase is. As somewhat of an authority on gadgets and matters oftechnology in general I am confronted by this too often, so I thought I’d postabout it. Not that I think this post would make much of a difference, but perhaps itwould help ease some Christmas shopping frenzy anxieties.

First, let us discuss the phenomenon in detail. Events tendto follow the same script again and again:

A friend/relative notices some sort of a gadget, eitherthrough advertising or by seeing peers using it. For example, a parent sees allhis young son’s friends are using an iPod Touch.
Status anxiety kicks in and the friend/relative decides tobuy the gadget. Note the decision is not made on the basis of needs analysis.
Usually, we have ourselves a period where thefriend/relative is using their new gadget.
Doubts start to creep in: the friend/relative realizes thereis something wrong. Their new gem of a gadget does not fulfill their wettestdreams as per pre-purchasing expectations.
The friend/relative turns to me for advice. Or so they say; whatthey are really seeking is my endorsement on their purchasing decision, a voice ofauthority to tell them they did not make a mistake forking hundreds of dollarson the wrong gadget or a gadget they did not need in the first place.
Being the honest person that I like to think I am, I tell myfriend/relative exactly what I think of their purchase. More often than not I end up telling them they bought a piece of shit (often using thesevery words when the case calls for it, and it does way too often). What I actually mean when I use the phrase is that the gizmo is not meant to address its owner's particular needs and/or circumstances. In my defense, I alwaysexplain my opinion and discuss alternatives.
The friend/relative looks me in disgust. How can I do thisto them? How dare I tell them the truth, or at least my views on what the truth is?
The friend/relative resorts to blaming others for theirmistake.

I call the above The Shit Gadget Syndrome.

Before moving on to discuss how the Shit Gadget Syndrome can be avoided,and easily so, let’s have ourselves a bit of an adequate disclosure break:yours truly has been known to buy shit gadgets, too. My blogs speak forthemselves: I bought a shit [expensive] MP3 player, I bought a shit tablet, andI bought a shit electric shaver. I do not, however, blame others for thesepurchases. Some times I knowingly buy crap, as with the tablet; other times, as with the case ofthe shaver, my purchase represents a conscious attempt to reduce my ignorance by dipping my feet in a new field. In all the cases, the follow up purchase was a stellar performer.

Clearly, the problem at hand is one of ignorance. Friends,relatives and yours truly live in a world where we are constantly tempted bygadgets but where we do not know enough about the gadgets, ourselves or our needs to purchase the right tool. With the problem clearly stated in these terms, how should we go aboutavoiding The Shit Gadget Syndrome without making all the effort required to become a subject matter expert?

There is nothing wrong with consulting experts in areas we are ignorant about. Just this morning I referred toweather specialists in order to acquire their assessment of today’s weather at Melbourne so I can dressappropriately for work. Referring to relevant authorities does not mean I needto take their word as the word of god; it just means doing a bit ofconsultation. What’s better: going to the experts, or rather relying on advertisingand the word of mouth of friends that don’t really know much and areprobably suffer from The Shit Gadget Syndrome themselves?

So yeah, go to the experts, and go to them before you open your wallet wide(instead of going to them later to seek approval when things go wrong). If youconsider me an adequate expert, feel free to knock on my door for an opinion; Ihave my strong opinions on matters of gadgetry, but I am also fully capable ofrecommending different things to different people.

For example, although my next smartphone will probably be anAndroid (mostly for price related reasons), I do not hesitate recommending iPhones to people who are less likely to tweak their gadget. Although I do not considerbuying myself an iPad at this stage, I did not hesitate recommending one as thebest computing platform for my old and technologically challenged parents. And although I shy away from themdue to their prices and poor post sale support, I do recommend Telstra’s mobileservices as the best value for money to people that actually make phone callson their mobile and/or need reliable data access on their smartphone. A goodexpert will know how to analyze your needs and adopt their recommendationsaccordingly.

So, in conclusion: Want to avoid the Shit Gadget Syndrome?Do your homework in advance and don’t let social anxieties drive you to makethe wrong decision at the counter. By all means, consult with the experts.

I’ll leave you off with a tip for this holiday season. Byfar the most popular Christmas gift this season seems to be an iPad. That’sfine; it does what it’s meant to do well and it’s by far the best tablet around(and probably the only tablet worth spending money on). However, do bear in mind the iPad 3 looks very likely to be launched some time between February and April. Oh, and the current iPod Touch model? Bound to be replaced soon, too.

Image by @heyamberrae, Creative Commons license

What Soap?

2011-12-14T23:38:00.001+11:00

A few years ago I read on this Israeliblog I follow (Tsifer; warning, Hebrew) about its blogger's adventures with Druze hosts he visited. Amongst other things, hedescribed the olive oil soaps they manufactured to be resold by Oxfam: he claimed they were the best soaps he ever used. I was impressed enough to remember his descriptions.

A while later I stumbled upon Lebanesemanufactured olive oil soaps at the closing sale of what had been, atthe time, my favorite Lebanese store. Unlike their Oxfam equivalentsthey were dead cheap; I bought them, and eventually decided I shouldactually give them a break. Since then I never looked back; when Ishower at home I am using olive oil soaps exclusively.

It really is simple: olive oil soapsleave a natural feeling on the skin (as opposed to the dryness mostsoaps create), they do their cleaning job well, and if you know whatyou’re doing you can get very good value for money out of them. Asin, much better value than what you normally get out of supermarketsoaps, and definitely better value than what you get buying highcaliber brand names soaps (that is, stuff that comes from companies withvast advertising budgets). But again, it is not the value for moneythat matters; olive oil soaps do feel better than anything else I’vetried. It’s a win-win situation.

Of course, not all olive oil soaps arethe same. I suspect they all contain some conventional soap matter inaddition to the oils, and I know many of them (like the Duru brand pictured here) contain much more palmoil than olive oil (raising further ethical questions). However, these problems can be mitigated through informed shopping.
I find you canget olive oil soaps at speciality shops, where they’re usuallyprohibitively expensive; online, where the quality is a bit of a hitand miss affair; and at Lebanese shops (or other Middle Easternshops), where the ingredients are usually not quoted but where pricesare cheap and quality tends to be very good. I hope (and I hope I’mnot being too naïve hoping) that the Middle Eastern sources of thesesoaps use Middle Eastern derived palm oil rather than orangutanunfriendly stuff from Indonesia.

Interestingly, the blogosphere has beenrife with people reporting they stopped using soap altogether and feeling betterfor it (see an example here from Boing Boing, a very popular blog). Ido wonder whether these bloggers checked out more naturalalternatives for soap, like the olive oil based ones.

Image: Duru olive oil soap

What Electric Toothbrush?

2011-12-13T21:06:00.000+11:00

As someone with more than a decade of electric toothbrushing under his cavities, I thought now’s the time to offer my answers totwo related questions:

1. Are electric toothbrushes any good?
2. If they are, which electric toothbrush should one get?

My answers are based on my personal experience with threedifferent Braun Oral-B electric toothbrushes. These include the $30 Vitalitymodel (pictured), as well as a $100 model and a $200 one.

The most obvious difference between electric and manualbrushing is the feeling: generally speaking, my mouth tends to feel muchfresher after a session of electric brushing than after a manual operation. Isuspect it is to do with the relentless nature of the electric toothbrush,coupled [slightly!] by the fact they’re much easier to use given that one’sduties are downgraded to simply guiding the brush along one’s teeth.

My speculations are further enforced by the repeatedlyobserved fact that my teeth feel more polished the more expensive the brush is.After a week of repeatedly brushing using the $200 brush my mouth feels like ithas been polished, waxed and fitted with brand new teeth. So, is that it? Should weall buy the most expensive electric toothbrush we can afford?

Hold your horses. At least to this mouth there are moreimportant issues than the refinement level of my teeth’s polish. The older Iget, normal cavities and such are turning to become the lesser problem; themain event taking place at my mouth is my receding gums. The amount of problemsintroduced by this recession far eclipses those generated by a bit more or abit less cleaning.

My dentist recommended I relent, if only slightly, with mytooth brushing in order to support my gums (as opposed to pushing themfurther). She recommended I use a manual brush in the morning and an electricone at night, a move which quickly relieved various issues with my mouth. Shealso recommended using the softest brushes available and applying minimalpressure on the teeth while brushing.

Back to the question of which electric toothbrush is better,my personal answer reflects the status of my gums. After a straight week of$200 brushing my teeth may feel new, but I also get all sorts of weird painscoming up from the direction of my gums. Eventually, I settled on the $30 OralB Vitality toothbrush as the best of both worlds, a brush giving me a decentclean mouth feeling that does not offend my gums much while producing thisfeeling. In the morning I brush manually using a soft brush. In between and nowand again I even floss!

So there you go: the $30 brush that does a better job thanthe $200 one is further proof that splashing more money does not necessarilybuy happiness; one needs to spend it wisely.

P.S. If you, too, are an Oral-B toothbrush user, do yourselfa favor and get thy brushes from eBay. Compared to the shops, even the cheaperones, they’re a fraction of the cost online.

Oral-B Vitality image: Oral-B

What Electric Shaver?

2011-12-12T23:04:00.002+11:00

Efficiently dealing with my facial hair has been anobsession of mine lately. Desperate to free up some lost moments of my lifefrom the chores of shaving, I even tried a beard for a while till I realizedmaintaining it is just as painful as shaving. The gadget lover in me turned itsfocus to a new area, that of electric shavers.

Although I have been shaving with a razor for decades now Ido have some electric shaving experience under my belt. Back in boot camp, Iused a tiny AA operated Braun shaver my father bought overseas. It saved myass, literally: instead of having to gallop to the toilets and back in thefreezing (-3 degrees) dark, like the rest of the squad, I leisurely waved thisdevice at my face for a couple of minutes. Alas, once out to normal armyservice I started getting picked on for the quality of my shave, and soon hadto migrate to the razors I have been using since. Yet the lesson was obvious:electric shavers have the potential to reduce agony, but it’s also much harderfor them to give you that clean look one is often after when shaving.

Times have changed, though, and I am no longer in the army.Hooray for that! More to the point, I don’t really care much for the quality ofmy shaved look anymore; it doesn’t have to be baby smooth for me to beaccepted at the office. The time has come for me to look at electric shaversagain, in a bid to save time for more worthwhile activities. The question was,which shaver should I try?

That question proved very hard to answer. There are plentyof electric shavers out there for a man to choose from, but feature wise theyare almost all the same; they all claim to be able to shave you. So how do youchoose one? Or, more specifically, how can one tell whether to buy a $30 shaveror a $300 shaver when they’re both by the same manufacturer and they both claimto achieve the same goal?

I tried to ask around with friends and work colleagues.Turned out many of them use electric shavers, but it also turned out none ofthem could tell me what the differences between them were. At least not in aproper, measurable way; they could just be labelled as fans of theirmanufacturers’ shavers, unable to say what it is about that manufacturer thatcaptures their facial hair.

So I went and bought myself an electric shaver from the samecompany as the shaver I’ve used at the army and utilizing a similar design: aBraun Series 1 190, which cost me $60 at Singapore. That particular modelwas selected because of its particularly severe discounting. As with all electricshavers, the manufacturer claims some three weeks are required before your facegets used to the shaver. Alas, even after more than three weeks it appearedthis new electric shaver of mine was up to no good: it couldn't cope at all with longer facial hair (e.g., after a weekend of no shaving). After two or more days of consecutive use without a manual razorthere would be too many hairs it wouldn’t cut, enough to make its lookunpresentable. By far the worst, though, was the way it made my face feel, withingrowth and other not so nice phenomena.

Another post purchase realization was that electric shavingis not particularly cheap. It’s not just the shaver that you pay for: My newBraun requires monthly oiling (oil purchased separately) as well as yearlyreplacement of certain parts. Buying replacement blades and foam for my manualshaving costs much less!

I didn’t give up on my quest, though. I often note how Itend to fail the first time I buy something, but learn from the mistake to do better next time around. Equipped with first hand experience, I was able toinvestigate the electric shaver market yet again. I did my research, spendinghours reading reviews and watching video clips on the web, as well asinterrogating salespeople at shaver shops. This time around, though, I was ableto relate to what I was reading: I could tell when a review was applicable tome or when a salesperson did not have a clue. Eventually, the choice came downto three contenders: the top of the line Phillips, Braun Series 7, andPanasonic 8249 (the Panasonic marketing team must have spent months coming up with thatmodel number).

The Phillips was the first to go. Phillips’ trademarkcircular blades were at fault here, as too many apparently reliable reviewsclaimed the Phillipses are too rough on the face and more suitable for wet electricshaving (not my cup of tea). The Braun and the Panasonic appear very similar,but I ended up voting for the latter: its faster motor in particular appearsmore suitable to my particular needs, thick facial hair on sensitive skin.

Now the question was where I should buy the shaver from. UsAussies are privileged: while Amazon sells the Panasonic 8249 electric shaverfor $112 to American customers, we are required to pay $400 at our local shops(yes, you read it right). One of the privileges $400 gets you is the ability tochange your mind and receive a full refund if you’re unhappy with your shaver amonth after buying it (note that privilege is available to Americans just thesame; it’s just that you can’t buy the shaver in the USA and get the cash backin Australia). I decided to bite the bullet and had my shaver delivered fromthe USAfor less than $160.

More than a month later, I can report I am happy with mydecision. The Panasonic is a good shaver that consistently produces very good results and overall treats my face well. There are some sour points onmy face, but then again it’s not like the razor is foolproof; there aresome harder to shave places, like immediately under my chin, but eventually Ilearned which way to hold the shaver (unlike a razor, shaving against thegrowth is critical; the surprise comes from learning how chaotic the directionof my facial hair’s growth is – it’s all over the place!).

With the better shaver come better comforts. The Panasoniccomes with a box you can stick it in and have the shaver cleaned anddisinfected automatically! That comes at a cost, though: the cleaning liquidcartridge, which looks and feels like an ink cartridge from a printer, lastonly a month (or two, if you clean the shaver manually every second day). Ibought 12 spare cartridges off eBay for $60, delivery included; local shopswould have you paying $30 for three. That's not the end of the ongoing expenses: as with my now defunct Braun, which I soldon eBay for $25, there is a need for yearly part replacements.

The point is: comfortable electric shaving is available outthere, despite all the misinformation or deliberate fuzziness spread bymanufacturers. However, this comfort comes at a cost. To me, that extra costenables me to avoid the razor shave’s restriction of having to shave shortlyafter a shower, something I tend to do just before I go to bed (hence manual shaving tends to happen quite late). Even if the time it takes me to shave electrically or manuallyis roughly the same, that extra flexibility makes electric shaving worthwhile.At least for now.

Panasonic 8249 image: Panasonic

See you at the party, Richter!

2011-12-10T23:18:00.001+11:00

We had several friends over to our place today, running that social event that's normally referred to as a "party". I find the composition of the invitees interesting:

We've invited friends we know from my wife's previous place of work.
We've invited friends we know from my wife's current place of work.
We've invited friends we know from my previous place of work.

I really like each of those friends that was invited, which only brings the absence of the following category further into the light: we did not invite anyone from my current place of work. After all, I've only been working there for the past six years.
I believe that says something.

Image by Eira M., Creative Commons license

Touched by Authors

2011-12-07T23:00:00.001+11:00

Three events took place during the last week or so, events that shook my confidence with the ebook revolution. Yes, yours truly, known for his blatant disregard of dead pieces of wood for over a year now, is starting to have doubts. What could have caused that? Funny you should ask:

1. Charlie Stross, the Hugo winning science fiction author, blogged about the need to rid ebooks of DRM. Nothing new under the sun there; the catch was his reason for advocating so this time around. It wasn’t because DRM is the pure evil that it is (i.e., the argument I have been maintaining for numerous years by now), but rather that DRM only serves to enshrine Amazon as the dominant monopoly in the ebook market with the ability to bend publishers at will.
2. Peter Watts, another Hugo winning science fiction author, wrote a personal email to a friend of mine. That friend paid Watts for a book he legally downloaded for free; in return, he got Watts to email him and tell him that

It still kind of blows me away that people fork out hard-earned cash for something they can get for free. It almost restores my faith in humanity.

3. Leslie Cannold, aka The Best Person onTwitter and an Australian author, tweeted me out of the blue to tell me that

@reuvenim just to let u know my book part of Amazon post xmas ebook sale. My royalty .34/copy

I suspect I was honoured with this tweet as a result of me criticizing ebook pricing policies and using Cannold’s specific book as an example (here and here). Readers of my complaints could easily think I have something against Cannold, but that is definitely not the case: the only reason I used her book, The Book of Rachael, as an example was the fact I wanted to read it quite badly. Yet the privilege of doing so in my preferred way was both denied of me (the book was unavailable for the Kindle at the time, at least until I played my tricks), and its electronic version was priced at more than twice the cost of all the other ebooks I had ever bought.
Back to Cannold's tweet: The Book of Rachael is currently available for the Kindle and sells at Amazon for around $18. Assuming the book won’t be discounted too much for the post Christmas ebook sale, this would put Cannold’s royalty of $0.34 a copy at about 2%. Or, to put it more bluntly, if Cannold is to be able to make a decent living out of the book she worked so hard on, she will need it to sell as much as the next Harry Potter (that is, sell the book in quantities that normally make one a millionaire).

What conclusions can I draw from the above three interactions?

The most immediate one is to do with how mere mortals such as my friend and I become emotionally involved when an author we like and look up to takes the bother to contact us directly. It is incredibly exciting, and flattering too, to be contacted by the people I regard as my intellectual idols.

The second and probably main conclusion I’m drawing here is just how ignorant I am about this whole book/ebook publishing affair. I tend to draw my information from the writers I follow who openly expose their information, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. Both of whom share fairly similar opinions to mine when it comes matters of copyright and both of them sound like they’re doing fairly well for themselves. Yet here come three more authors at the top of their game and expose a world in which things are not as nice as I would like to think they are. With three fell swoops they shattered my confidence in the ebook revolution.

Where do I stand on these matters?

I am an above average consumer of books, and the ebook revolution only pushed me further down the line. Between my wife and I, we bought about thirty ebooks this past year; but even if I don’t like reading paper books anymore, I still buy them in large quantities for my son and as gifts to others. Indeed, books are by far my most popular form of a gift: when I read a book I like a lot I don’t pay its author directly (as my friend did with Peter Watts), but rather buy copies of the book as gifts to others.

There are limits there, though. First, many of the books I love would be unsuitable as gifts: I cannot expect most people to appreciate me buying them a copy of books such as The God Delusion (they don’t know what they’re missing, but never mind that for now). Indeed, too often my book gift giving is distorted by social convention as well as by my appraisal for what I expect the subject of the gift to like.

Another form of limitation comes from the books themselves. DRM stands tall there, because it makes buying an ebook for a gift a major pain in the you-know-what. You have to take into account the particular platform the reader would use, for a start, and then there’s the fact you’re usually prevented – yes, prevented – from bestowing an ebook as a gift in the first place.

Given the above, I consider Renai Lemay’s eloquent description of the state of Internet piracy in Australia to describe very well where my standings on matters of book consumerism are. In the context of ebooks in particular, my demands/opinions are:

I know that books require more than just an author to get published, but I don’t care much for that food chain story; I care for the author alone, and rely on the rest of them to just do their part.
I want to be able to buy any book I feel like buying.
I want a book product I’d be able to use in any way I see fit, and to be able to do so easily.
I do not distribute my books around. Sure, I will lend them to friends, the way people have always done, but I will not post them on the Internet for people to copy. Publishers, trust me on that.
I want my ebooks to be treated just like my books are. Ebooks should be resalable, to name but one example.
I want a product that will be mine forever once I hand my money over.
I want a reasonably priced product. With ebooks, that should mean paying significantly less than what we’re used to pay for books: there aren’t any printing costs, and the costs of storage and distribution are negligible.
I want to be able to easily find and buy my books; I don’t want to start looking all over the world for a particular book just because a particular publisher doesn’t want to work with a particular shop. That is, I want something like the iTunes shop for books. [Yes, I know I can buy books at iTunes; I also know I think it sucks.]
I want my book shop to be easily accessible from any platform I choose to use. One of my gripes with the iTunes shop is that it requires iTunes; a browser based shop would be a million times better.
Once bought, I want to be able to have my books find their way to my reading device of choice instantly and easily. No wires, no messing around.

Looking at this list of my demands, it becomes evident Amazon caters for most of them – all but the DRM side of things. Sure, Amazon's DRM can be dismantled, but why should I be forced to make the effort in the first place?
My second gripe lies with the fact that it is only Amazon that comes close to fulfilling my demands, and then again only when I perform minor level cheats and use VPN to access Amazon's American catalog rather than its Australian one. Clearly, that should not be the case; as I stated above, I (and most people I know) consider it the most reasonable of demands to be able to buy the books I want to buy. However, we are denied this “right” so very often.

Still, I like Amazon; with the exception of Cannold's book, I bought all my ebooks exclusively from them. However, until we get what I’ve asked for, I see no reason for people to stop resorting to book piracy. It’s natural: when one has a need, one looks for ways to fulfil the need. These ways are there: there are plenty of ebooks to be found at bit-torrent, probably the most extensive source of ebooks out there other than Amazon. They’re all free, and non come with DRM – so you can do whatever you want with them! Yet, as good as the pirated product is, I am of the opinion that Amazon is usually better: for a reasonable price, it gives unprecedented ease of use; it’s quick; and it pays the author for their work. If only they got rid of DRM…

Which brings me to my last question for the day: how is my standing affected given the three author inputs I started this post with? This is where my ignorance in the working of the publishing world becomes obvious, forcing me to make non evidence based assumption.
As Stross points out, there is clear danger with letting Amazon become the monopoly it already is; yet just as the music industry did before it, publishers are heading like sheep to the slaughter. Apple showed us with its iTunes shop that once it becomes a monopoly it will abuse its power; there is no reason to think Amazon will be any different. The solution is clear: publishers should sell their ebooks elsewhere (everywhere!) and without DRM. Once that option is popular, we may have to start our book purchasing through a Google search instead of an Amazon search, but the result should be the same.

Cannold’s poor cut out of every Kindle sale of her book only pushes that point forward. It does, however, point at another deficiency of the current book market scene: her ebook still sells for $18, much more than the average ebook (probably twice the average). When Cannold gets only $0.34 for every sale that implies someone else gets more of the rest. Apple is notorious for grabbing 30% out of everything it sells in its iTunes shop; given Amazon does not have the same reputation I am assuming its cut is not larger. Therefore, this implies that the publisher is taking most of the rest of the money and leaves hardly anything to the author. Coming from the consumer perspective of seeking contact with the author but not caring much for the rest of the publishing chain, I can only see this as another major wrong by the publishers. They know the authors need to be in Amazon to gain international exposure, and they make the most of the opportunity. In other words: greed.

In conclusion: the book publishing scene is on the verge of going electronic, but that transition is not going too well, at least as per three authors I look up to. However, given these authors’ inputs and given my own standings and assumptions, I can only conclude the fault lies squarely with publishers stuck in old world business models. It’s time for these publishers to wake up before they take my favorite authors down with them!

Image by Here's Kate, Creative Commons license

Takes more than combat gear to make a man, takes more than a license for a gun

2011-12-05T21:44:00.001+11:00

The one image that keeps crossing mymind over the last couple of weeks is the one of police officer Pike,put in charge to withhold peace, spraying peaceful protestors withpepper spray in their face. And oh, did he do it ever so nonchalantly!

Now let’s think back a minute. Wekeep on being told that police needs weapons along the lines oftasers in order to have a non-lethal option, so as to avoid having toshoot people down when they don’t really need to. Sometimes werelent and we let them have their way; then we look up and see whatthe likes of Pike here think about it all.

Remember Pike and his colleagues at theforce the next time you hear the police, the army or any other sourceof authority complain they need more peaceful weapons to do their jobwith. When you give someone a weapon, of any sort, they willeventually use it; the chances of it being used the intended way aremore or less random.

It’s my personal voice of experiencethat’s speaking here, too. When I was in the Israeli army I used tocarry all sorts of Call of Duty grade assault rifles. Most of thetime I had an M-16, but I also had an AK-47 and a Galil. Not settlingwith that, I had the ultimate status symbol: my very own pistol.

Let me put it to you this way: I havefound there are plenty of things one can do with a rifle or a pistol,and only a minor portion of those has anything to do with defendingthe good cause. Let me just say that my own personal experienceclearly indicates the chances of very bad things being done by one’sfirearms are vastly higher than the chances of them being used toserve and protect. It took me too many years to realize that and toeventually get rid of my pistol in disgust, but in between I tendedto derive an ego boost from this lethal piece of metal I wascarrying. No doubt Pike feels the same.

I therefore extend my conclusion. It’snot only police forces and their likes that have no business messingaround with weapons; the same message applies to normal people justthe same. As far as I am concerned, you have to be a loony to want tomess with them. Listen to the voice of experience.

There's Stealing and Then There's Downloading

2011-12-04T23:49:00.001+11:00

Question: What would happen to me if Iwas to get caught stealing an iPhone? Given my record and everything,I expect to have ended up with some community service time forstealing, or trying to steal, a device worth close to $1000.

Another question: What would happen tome I was to get caught pirating the music an average iPhone holds? In the USA, a woman who downloaded 24 songs (a fraction of the music onyour typical iPhone) was sentenced to pay two million dollars for heralleged crime.

Note the disparity between the twocases. That imaginary iPhone that I stole contained tons of music yetI got slapped on the wrist; those two albums worth of songs pretty much ruined the life of the woman downloading them.

I don’t know about you, but myconclusion out of the above example is that piracy is NOT theft. Ifit was theft then the punishment incurred should have been in linewith the market value of the stolen goods: the $30 worth of piracy inthe above case would have ended up with nothing more than a warning.

Think about it the next time you hearthe contents industry propaganda that piracy is theft. Think about itthe next time you play a DVD you bought with your hard earned money and you're forced to watch a message telling you that downloading is stealing.

So let us be clear: piracy, or – tobe more accurate – illegal downloading, is not theft. It is acopyright violation, nothing more and nothing less.

*The above post was conceived whilereading how the music for an anti-piracy campaign was its own case ofcopyright violation.

Image by TorrentFreak, Creative Commons license

I don't belong here

2011-12-03T23:56:00.001+11:00

I don’t have much in common with the average Aussie. I needonly look around to realize that: Other than the occasional film, I can’t standcommercial TV here; nor can I get excited about anything to do with alcohol. Slurpees excite me much more.

By the same token, I don't have much in common with the average Israeli. Ineed only look around at the people surrounding me at this virtually Israeli/Jewishexclusive party I was invited to a couple of weeks ago to realize that.

However, not having much in common with both the Australianand the Israeli mainstream cultures does not mean I feel lonely. Idefinitely used to feel lonely in the past; today I have my own family. Today I can connectwith likeminded people as much as I want, regardless of physical distance,through the Internet. The latter is not the same as proper friendship, but itstill goes a long way. It even has its advantages: let’s face it, people likeRichard Dawkins have little reason to interact with me on a personal basis buthave no problems exposing me to their world via the Internet.

A few weeks ago I posted about my reasons for writing my blogs.Add the following to the list of reasons there: Taking an active part in theInternet is my ticket to likeminded people.

Image by Artiee, Creative Commons license

The State of Piracy

2011-12-02T21:18:00.000+11:00

Delimiter’s Renai LeMay has beenmentioned in this blog before. This second time he's invoked in these premises is due to him actually writing for thisblog, so to speak.

Earlier this week LeMay published anopinion article on the state of the Australian debate on matters ofInternet piracy. To show he’s serious, LeMay put a Creative Commonslicense on the article, urging people to share it.

I have found this article toprobably be the best article on the piracy state of play I ever hadthe pleasure of reading. The inevitable conclusion, therefore, was that I should share the article here in itsentirety. There is more to it, though: although most of the article’sideas have been expressed in this blog before, I was never able to construct such a holistic vision as LeMay presents. I’ll put it this way: when Igrow up I want to be able to write articles like the one below.

Self-interest is ruling Australia’s piracy debate

Over the past few months, I have alternately been appalled, disgusted, saddened and ultimately bored at the degree to which naked self-interest is ruling the ongoing debate about how Australia will deal with the issue of online copyright infringement (Internet piracy).
Now, there is no doubt that the debate has been a vibrant one. There have been strong opinions from multiple sides. There have been complicated legal, commercial and ethical arguments presented ad nauseum. There have been many speeches made, public discussion papers issued, off the cuff comments thrown into the ether and the overall entertainment factor has been extremely high; worthy, almost, of its own reality show on prime-time TV.
However, what has been lacking from the debate at its core has been any real consideration for the underlying factors underpinning the growth of Internet piracy and how they might be addressed. Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, the major players in the debate — the ISP and content industries and the Government — appear to be almost purely engaging in this dialogue out of their own self-interests; nothing more, and nothing less.

Let’s take last week’s release of a discussion paper by a number of Australia’s major ISPs and representative group, the Communications Alliance, on the issue.
On the face of it, as many commenters agreed over the weekend, the paper sounds pretty good. It avoids unsavoury approaches to dealing with Internet piracy such as disconnecting users’ broadband connections, includes significant avenues for appeal and independent oversight and works within the boundaries of Australia’s existing law on a predominantly education-based approach to dealing with the issue. However, when you dig a bit deeper into the rationale underpinning the paper, it becomes clear it has broader aims.
Ask yourself: What does Australia’s ISP industry really think about the issue of Internet piracy? Well, the answer to this question is clear: It wants the issue to go away. Australia’s ISPs want their users to continue to funnel money into their revenue trough for broadband connections with big quotas, and they don’t want to be on the receiving end of lawsuits such as AFACT’s action against iiNet while they’re doing it. Australia’s ISPs primarily see the issue of online copyright infringement as being one between content producers and content consumers; they want no part of the whole shebang.
The discussion paper released last week reflects this belief. It positions ISPs as outside the cycle of online copyright infringement by having them passively pass on educational and warning notices to users whose activities will in turn be tracked by the content industry; then, when users don’t listen, the ISPs again step out of the way and pass their details back the other way. There’s also a limiting factor on how many notices they’ll pass on. It’s all quite neat and clean — and predictable.
The response from the content industry (film, TV, video game and music studios and distributors) has also been predictable.
Ask yourself: What does the content industry think about the issue of Internet piracy? Well, the answer to this question is also clear: It wants to hold onto existing business models. The content industry wants its consumers to continue to funnel money into its revenue trough, forking out for pay television, DVDs, sitting through ever-increasing amounts of advertisements on free to air TV, buying video games at full prices, buying whole albums of music and more. The content industry has a whole superstructure set up which has been custom-designed to part you from your money, and it doesn’t want to migrate to a new system.
Hence, the content industry primarily sees the issue of online copyright infringement as being one between users and ISPs. They can’t control what users download, but ISPs can, so they want ISPs to take responsibility for undercutting their existing business models. The content industry’s response to the ISPs’ discussion paper released last week reflects this belief. When the Australian Content Industry Group’s Vanessa Hutley says the proposal “falls short”, she means that there’s no responsibility in the ISPs’ model which would require them to take any enforcement action against their users.
Then there’s the Government.
Governments are a complex beast. Beset by a thousand different competing political and bureaucratic demands, Ministers such as Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland are positioned at the heart of a huge spider web with a thousand different cords pulling on them simultaneously.
Consequently, they don’t pay attention to industry lobby groups such as the Internet Industry Association, Communications Alliance, Australian Information Industry Association, Australian Content Industry Group, Interactive Games & Entertainment Association and so on unless there is clearly an issue which the industry can’t resolve itself.
When this happens — as it clearly has in the case of online copyright infringement — the Government will normally order a public enquiry to get all sides of the story, and try to get the warring sides to sit down around a table to negotiate under its steely gaze. This is precisely what has occurred in this case as well. Closed door discussions about Internet piracy are being held by the Attorney-General’s Department, and a number of public consultations are under way about the issue of the Internet in general.
The Government primarily sees the issue of online copyright infringement as being one between ISPs and content owners. They want these two industries to sit down and work out the issue themselves. If this ultimately fails, the Government will be forced to devote resources to legislating on the matter — something which it wants to avoid.
Now, have you noticed something about all of these approaches? In all three cases, the prime actors (the ISPs, the content industry and the government) have avoided taking any personal responsibility for the issue. None of the major three sides of Australia’s Internet piracy debate fundamentally believe that the issue is theirs to resolve. They want someone else to do it for them.
What this has meant for the debate is that it has constantly gone around in circles, with each side of this odious tri-pointed star constantly evading responsibility and passing the buck. In addition, they have each avoided discussing the real issues underlying Internet piracy.

Now, there are two further parties in the debate which have remained largely silent on the issue of Internet piracy so far: Those who actually create the content — rather than distribute it — and those who consume it. I’m speaking, of course, about artists and the general public.
I was struck recently by a comment which Greens Senator and Communications Spokesperson Scott Ludlam made on this issue in a post on Delimiter. Ludlam wrote:
“This is a complex and opaque clash of commercial self-interest, with old media conglomerates seeking to retain their incumbency in a world which doesn’t need them as much as it used to. Amazing how little we hear from the artists and creative people themselves about how they’d like to be paid for their work.”
That’s right — real artists! What a shocking concept!
As Ludlam rightly points out, it is not film and TV directors, producers or actors, musicians, video game development houses or any other form of artist calling for the issue of Internet piracy to be resolved. These people — artists — do not really care about the issue. Their main concern is that they are allowed to produce their art without gross commercial interference, and that art gets distributed to consumers in a way which allows consumers to get access to it and at a reasonable enough rate of return to allow them to continue making it and even profit a little.
Art has other aims than just profit, although profit is usually mixed in there somewhere. Strange to hear this said out loud, isn’t it?
It is a similar situation with the general public. All Joe Citizen wants is to be able to get whatever content they want, at the same time as everyone else, on whatever device they want to be able to view it on, and at a reasonable price that they can afford to pay. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? The average Australian couldn’t give two hoots about content industry groups, record labels, film and TV distribution networks, television stations (pay TV or otherwise) or video game retailers. What they want is the content, plain and simple.
I was struck by a comment by ABC managing director Mark Scott, who said (as reported by Mumbrella) in a recent speech that the ABC’s iView platform had demonstrated that there is a strong and growing online audience for “great content, well-curated and delivered in an accessible format”. “Our research suggests that when audiences discover iView, they love it — they use it, they keep coming back to it,” Scott added.
Precisely. When the barriers to consuming content are taken away (as they have been on the ABC’s stellar iView app), content consumption explodes. I personally use iView almost every day — on my PC, on my media centre, on my laptop, on my iPad, on my iPhone — anywhere. Sometimes the content isn’t great, but it’s so readily available that I consume it anyway.
Australia’s love affair with piracy is not an effort to gyp content creators of their rightful remuneration for that content — it’s a simple attempt to get at content which is too hard to consume otherwise. Once again, audiences want to be able to get whatever content they want, at the same time as everyone else, on whatever device they want to be able to view it on, and at a reasonable price.
Now the thing to understand about both artists and consumers is that they are absolutely the key stakeholders in this debate — everyone else are just middlemen. In addition, they don’t have many linkages with the other three groups who are driving the debate.
Content consumers primarily see their main relationship as being with artists directly — the film buff who follows a director’s career, the music fan who buys all of a band’s albums, the Gears of War fan who follows every comment Cliffy B makes in public. And on the flipside, the artists see their main relationship as being with their fans — talking to them, producing content for them, performing for them. Neither places ISPs, content industry groups or the Government as stakeholders of high importance in the way they consume content.
And yet it is these middlemen who are driving the debate about online copyright infringement in Australia, who are negotiating behind closed doors on the issue, suing each other in court, and threatening to legislate about it. For self-interested reasons.
When artists and consumers themselves get involved in the debate, a remarkable thing tends to happen: Self-interest largely disappears from the picture. Great art is never created from self-interest. It can only be created when an artist is driven by their creative impulse, and applies discipline to develop their talents. Great art is never consumed from a sense of self-advancement. It is consumed with wonder, for entertainment, to take oneself away from our normal lives. The commercial agenda is present but rarely the most important factor — it is usually the middlemen who tend to bring it into the picture — not the artists, nor the consumers of that art.
Other things happen as well, when artists and consumers take the online piracy debate back into their own hands. Video game developers create their own publishing platforms which users prefer to piracy. Artists call for their fans to pirate their albums rather than buy them from greedy music labels — and then start publishing them online themselves, without the assistance of intermediaries. Internet video platforms arise to stream content when, where and how consumers want. And more. A direct connection is made between artists and consumers without middlemen.
Now, I’m not saying every middleman in Australia’s online piracy debate is purely motivated by self-interest. Some ISP leaders, like iiNet’s Michael Malone and Internode’s Simon Hackett, also have altruistic motives and do care about their customers. And the same can be said of some figures within the Government and content industries.
But what I am saying is that we are letting middlemen rule a debate which should be rightly ruled by Australian consumers and artists themselves. Let’s set self-interest aside from the issue of online copyright infringement and ask consumers and artists what they want. Now that would be the real definition of an “industry solution”.

Image by ToobyDoo, Creative Commons license

The Curse of the Misleading Telco

2011-12-01T22:46:00.001+11:00

My iPhone 3GS is celebrating its twoyear birthday this week. I have been known to criticize Apple’sclosed architecture very often, but if I look on the bright side then I have to admit my iPhone is, by far, the best gadget I ever had. By now it’s oldin the tooth and the battery is showing its age, but the good old 3GSstill does everything I want my smartphone to do. Given that myKindle is in charge of major entertainment on the road (nowsupplemented by a MacBook Air for when I’m truly on the road), mysmartphone is there mostly to provide quick Internet access: youknow, email, Twitter and stuff. The 3GS is perfectly fine in thatdomain, and the recent iOS5 upgrade made it even better.

To celebrate the conclusion of my twoyear contract with Virgin Mobile I changed my carrier to Amaysimwhere I expect my mobile phone bills to shrink from $35 to less than$15 a month. Both Virgin and Amaysim use Optus as their bandwidthprovider, which means the quality of service is vastly inferior toTelstra’s. For example, watching a one minute YouTube video cantake more than ten at the rate Optus will deliver, whereas Telstrawill happily let you watch the video "live". However, given my use ofmobile Internet is pretty much a leisure only affair I cannotjustify the cost of a Telstra SIM; Optus it is.

Let me say that the transition fromVirgin to Amaysim was rather “interesting”. I bought my AmaysimSIM card at a 7-11 shop for $2, then registered it on Amaysim’swebsite on Sunday morning. I knew fully well that phone numbers areonly transferred during the working week, but I also knew there is noreason for the transition itself to take more than ten minutes.Instead, nothing happened on the Monday; on Tuesday, at about midday,I noticed that 3G was gone. A minute or two later all I had was “SOSonly” reception. Then I switched SIM cards to discover I have no serviceat all; my phone was down for five hours before service resumed underthe Amaysim regime. All and all, it took two days of waiting and fivehours of denied service to switch from Optus to Optus!

The reason why I’m expecting to payless than $15 a month with Amaysim is to do with my profile of mobileservices use. I hardly make any calls, and the data side of things should be handled by Amaysim’s $10 for 1GB a month package. Or is it?

At this point I will break to mentionthat another mobile phone services provider, TPG, has been recentlytold off by the courts for its misleading advertising (see here).TPG’s crime was it hiding the nasty details of their Internetsurfing packages in small letters. I will argue that Amaysim is justas misleading with its descriptions of its data packages; it actually does worse than TPG, because itabuses the fact most people are quite ignorant of how the nittygritty of Internet surfing on their smartphone works.

My complaint is this: Amaysimadvertises a relatively generous 1GB pack for $10, but obscures the fact it counts your Internet surfing in 1MB chunks. This hiddenfact implies that what you’re actually getting is much less than1GB of data: what you will be getting is more like 1,000opportunities to access the web during a month. The two are not thesame!

Allow me to explain. Every time youcheck your emails, whether you get new emails or not, Amaysim ticks 1MB down your bill. It gets "better" if yourphone is set to check your emails every hour or so, because there goes three quarter of your supposedlygenerous download allowance! You can understand why my phone has been set to only check forupdates when manually asked to. But it gets worse: a short YouTubevideo I’ve downloaded appears to have “cost” me much more than it should by virtue of thefact its download was repeatedly broken up by Optus’ lacklustrebandwidth and my phone having to repeatedly ask for more of the videoin separate goes. That is, it seems to me as if I was charged for more bandwidth than I actually wanted to consume through the fault of thecarrier itself!

On the positive side, prolonged andstable Internet usage works well. One of my vices is listening toIsraeli radio (Galgalatz) during the day: Israeli night timetransmissions offer uninterrupted mixes of nice music. However, that1MB truncation is a killer, and overall I am getting the same or evenless out of my 1MB Amaysim data allowance than I did with the 300MB amonth that Virgin used to give me. I’m still better offfinancially, but the point is simple: Amaysim’s advertised 1GB doesnot count as 1GB in my book, nor should it count by anyone’s account. At best, Iwould call it misleading advertising.

It’s a bit of a shame, becauseotherwise Amaysim seems incredibly transparent about its ways: itsbilling is incredibly clear, roaming settings are easily managedthrough the web, and premium SMS services are under customers’ fullcontrol. It’s a pity, then, that they feel the need to misleadcustomers in the data department.

Image by skippyjon, Creative Commons license

Weightless

2011-11-30T23:57:00.001+11:00

Breakthrough was finally achieved and Imanaged to lose a noticeable amount of kilos of my weight. I don’tdoubt for a second that fluctuations would occur on my quest to weigh as much as I shouldweigh in some sort of an ideal but imaginary world. I would gain weight back before I lose more; after all, I live in thereal world, surrounded by real food, and I have been known to have aphysical activity phobia.

That said, I consider it important toreport how my successful weight reduction took place. You see, I’veuse this revolutionary technique that no one ever thought of before:

I exercise, and
I eat less.

More constructively, I would like tomention that me and exercising only manage to go along together dueto the EA Sports Active 2 game on the Wii. The game has its annoyingpoints, but between allowing me to exercise in my own living room,without weights and other special gizmos I generally dislike, and inthe company of my four year old instead of the Schwarzeneggerlook-alikes that plague the common gym, it simply works for me. Moreoften than not I actually enjoy the exercising – especially whenmy son joins in the action.

I would also like to mention thateating less proved sort of manageable not by eating fewer types offood or skipping meals, but simply by eating a bit less each timeI do eat. It seems to work through a cunning trick: once I get usedto eating a bit less every time I eat, my stomach starts consideringthat lesser amount as normal; it does not feel like I’m eating lessanymore, but rather as if I’m eating just fine. Which goes to showyou can use tricks of the mind to fool your own mind.

Next week I will probably be here againto tell you how I put this allegedly lost weight back.

Image by SiroGraphy, Creative Commons license

Blinded with Science

2011-11-29T22:54:00.001+11:00

If you were to ask my four year oldwhat he would like to do when he’s an adult, the answer you’reprobably going to get is “a scientist”. Of course, given that youare dealing with a small child you can get virtually any answer you wantout of him, but generally speaking scientist is his answer.

Since I can claim at least partialresponsibility there, I am rather proud. I already used the “I wantto be a scientist” weapon to convince my otherwisetake-after-his-father lazy son of the need to know how to count; itworked rather well.

I severely doubt my son will ever become ascientist. First, I have no idea whether he has the qualities tobecome one or whether the will he's displaying now will sustain. Second, it takes a lot of hard work. Third, and mostcritically, our society does not encourage people to becomescientists. Footballers, yes, but scientists – no.

I can only bask in my momentarysuccess, which shows quite clearly how parents can exert influenceover their children through the subtlest of things. I never preachedscience to my son; I just let him watch Bad Universe. Perhaps themost notable way for me to demonstrate this effect that parents canhave is to point out that when I was my son’s age, I wanted tobecome a garbage truck driver.

Image by dzingeek, Creative Commons license

That's Sweden

2011-11-28T23:07:00.001+11:00

My son and I were watching the adventures of the Swedish Chef on YouTube when he asked what "Swedish" means.
"Sweden", I explained, "is where The Pirate Bay is from."

Hot Summer Games

2011-11-27T22:10:00.001+11:00

If you are thinking of creative ways to spend the upcoming summer holidays, allow me to narrow the choice for you by identifying the video games I am going to be looking out for. The three I covet the most are:

Elders Scrolls V - Skyrim: Because it seems that finally my yearning for a proper D&D like experience with my gaming console can finally be fulfilled.
Call of Duty - Modren Warfare 3: Because it's a Call of Duty game. And because it's a Modern Warfare game. And because nothing can pump me with adrenaline within the confines of my living room like Call of Duty Modern Warfare game.
The Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword: Probably the last great game to be released for the Wii.

In general my policy is to wait for prices to relax and come down before I open my wallet for a video game, which for the above three will tend to happen by mid February. After all, these big name games are released ahead of the Christmas season for a reason, a reason I don't really care much for.
However... I am going to make an exception with Zelda (I already did; Ozgameshop already has my order): It seems pretty clear this one is a special game, a game that revolutionizes the world of video gaming as we know it. It also seems a pretty good game for me to play along in the company of my four year old. Yes, he's probably too young for the whole experience, but I think we'll manage to have great fun. We were both fascinated watching the game previews alone!
In case you have your doubts concerning the qualities of Zelda, allow me to refer you to IGN's review:

As for the future behind those three titles? I predict that next year I will be doing a lot of business in downtown LA...

Weekend Agenda

2011-11-26T10:34:00.001+11:00

This weekend's calendar looks like this:

Saturday morning - swimming lessons.
Saturday afternoon - kinder orientation session.
Sunday afternoon - birthday party for a kinder friend.

As I said in this forum before, my advice to would be parents is simple: Take your time!

Bang: Science Books for the Preschooler

2011-11-25T22:26:00.001+11:00

Getting to the point where I could nolonger bear reading Monkey Truck to my son again I embarked onbuying him some new books. I think we did well, especially in theoriginality department: The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man is agreat superhero book for kids (I thoroughly enjoyed it myself!); and the Mad Magazine based Spy vs. Spy allows my four year old to read a book by himself for thefirst time ever. At least on paper, because it is surprising how much oneneeds to bring with them into the comics reading experience in order to be able to understand it, even if that particular comics does nothave any text to read.

Of the books I bought my son, the ones that interested me the mostare the science books. Yes, one can put one’s hand on science booksthat would make a four year old happy! The first example isAnkylosaur Attack by Daniel Loxton, a dinosaur book that aims todescribe dino action in a manner as close to what science predicts as possible. At first our four year old was intimidated by thet-rex coming in to eat the goodies, but once he realized there’s ahappy ending he was alright (note I am working under the assumption it’s OK for me toprovide bloopers on children’s books in this forum).

The second example is a proper non-fiction popularscience book for kids: Bang! How We Came to Be by Michael Rubinoattempts to pull the same trick that Richard Dawkins pulled in hisaward winning Ancestor’s Tale. It does it in reverse order toDawkins’, and it does it with children in mind: it starts with theBig Bang and progresses through the evolution of the universe to theevolution of life on earth, up to the point it gets to us humans. Itis quite detailed; I would put my money on 98% of the world's population notknowing half the things the book says, so you can argue this one is akids’ science book that parents can learn from just the same. Itfeatures too many words I had a problem with myself, most notably the names of various species; the language, too, is probably too articulatefor the book’s target audience (unlike Dawkins, who pulled thingsoff extremely well on his The Magic of Reality). Complaints aside, Bang! is a great book and at least our four year enjoys itthoroughly.

The idea of putting the information inBang! in the hands and brains of my four year old is interesting. Idoubt he is able to digest the full meaning of the evolutionary story(can I?), but he does seem to be able grasp the idea that all lifeupon this earth is related even if his focus is mostly on the moreexotic life forms described by the book. Most interesting is the factit does not seem to bother him at all that us humans have evolvedfrom ancestors that were apes, and before that ancestors that lookedlike various shrews, fish, amoebas etc. Unburdened by the need tofeel special regard for humans, it doesn’t take any effort at all to makehim happily accept evolution as fact.

This unquestionable acceptance begs thequestion of whether me supplying my child with popular science books onevolution is any different to another parent supplying their childwith books about, say, the Noah’s Ark myth and passing them on asthe truth. Aren’t both acts different manifestations of the sameact of indoctrination?

The short answer is: no.

The longer answer is that there is thisthing called “the truth”. Bang! tells the truth the way evidencetells it; Noah’s Ark is a fable that sees no evidence supportingit, and actually has tons and tons of evidence contradicting it. These start from the fact the story was copied by the Israelites fromearlier origins to its numerous factual contradictions with the worldwe see before our eyes today (e.g., how did koalas make it all theway to Australia, and why didn’t they leave some evidence of theirtrek behind). There simply is no way a honest person can accept the Noah’sArk story as the literal truth.

On the other hand, who am I to know whether evolution istrue? I’m a nobody; but I am smart enough to realize I need to callon the help of experts in this matter, and the experts are unanimousto a degree that makes me more than comfortable to accept the theoryof evolution for what it is: an elegant and incredibly sensibleexplanation for why we’re here, that just happens to imply ourancestors looked a lot like the apes we see today in the zoos. If I wasn't to accept the experts advice on evolution then by the same token I should not be accepting mobile phone technology or intercontinental flight; after all, they were all the results of the same scientific method. Personally, I find the theory of evolution much more attractive than the onethat has humans as the pinnacle of creation.

Books: An Alternative Reality

2011-11-24T23:51:00.001+11:00

Back when our son was born, friends of ours lent us a book called Sleep Right Sleep Tight. The book informs readers on the science of sleep and suggests ways to instil a sleep regime with your baby in a manner that would enable parents to lead a normal life. In retrospect, we found the book to probably be the most helpful single parent support resource in our career as parents.

We liked the book so much that we bought several copies to friends having their first babies, in the hope they’d get as much of it as we did. The result is that the title, for which we never paid when used by us, ended up making numerous sales by virtue of us knowing of its existence. By borrowing a book for free, we created more sales for the book than it would have otherwise had.

Imagine, if you will, what would have happened instead at this alternative universe where ebooks, as we know them today, are the only form of books available. Remember my friends that lent us their copy of the book? They wouldn’t be able to do so; it would be illegal for a start and DRM will probably prevent them from doing so even if they didn’t mind bending the law. In turn, we would not know of the book and our parenting (and sleep) would be hurt. Most notably, the publishers themselves would be hurt because they wouldn’t be making all those extra sales based on our word of mouth, my public book review, and us buying copies for our friends. Everyone’s a loser in this scenario!

Yet this scenario is exactly the one our real world publishers are driving at. Unless you put on your pirate hat and remove the DRM off your Kindle books, you cannot lend your ebooks to your friends. Actually, much worse things can happen: publishers like Penguin can insist on preventing you from using your ebooks the way you wanted to, even ordering Amazon to pull the previously purchased ebooks off people’s readers (see here). Talk about ways to make the public embrace ebook technology!

As my not so hypothetical alternate world example demonstrates, book publishers are clearly out of touch with the needs of their readers (read: the people on whose money they depend). What happened to “the customer is always right”? Not only that, book publishers are oblivious to the damage they are inflicting on themselves: they may lose money when I borrow a book rather than buy it, but they lose even more when I don’t hear about the book in the first place and don’t buy copies for my friends.

It’s time publishers wake up to the fact that book borrowing is not theft. It is a habit ingrained to the very fabric of our culture as cooperative human beings. Instead of fighting it, publishers should embrace it! Publishers lose much more money through people not knowing of their products in the first place than they do at the hands of pirates; if anything, pirates boost the word of mouth effect and boost sales.

Instead of punishing us with DRM that can be overridden anyway, one way or another, they should work to give us a product we’d be happy to pay for. It is not that hard; they’ve done it for decades if not centuries with that thing called “books”.

Image: Sleep Right Sleep Tight

The Truth, The Whole Truth

2011-11-23T23:34:00.001+11:00

Last night’s 7:30 Report on ABC had a story that was bad enough to trigger rants on Twitter (sorry, at the time of writing they did not put the story on their website). I feel obliged to join and explain how, in my opinion, the reason for this story’s failure is the view rampant in today’s society that claims truth is a relativistic term. Allow me to explain.

The story was about communities’ fight against telcos as the latter tried to erect cell towers in their area, in particular around the vicinity of a Hobart school. They had worried mothers interviewed, they had a guy waving some sort of a meter to show how radiation rises threefold when in the vicinity of a cell tower, and they had a scientist say that thus far there is no proof for cell phones or cell towers having negative effects on people’s health. The story’s problem was it giving the same weight to the guy waving the meter and showing three times more radiation as it gave the well researched scientist. Three times nothing is still nothing, but by ABC’s account it could well be something.

Indeed, we’ve seen this film (or news report) before. Every time there is some sort of a discussion on matters of global warming, our public broadcaster insists on bringing some loudmouthed twat with totally unrelated credentials at best and give their say just as much weight as it gives the calm, and too often not that well spoken, scientist. It’s all in the name of showing the two sides of the story and providing an appearance of objectivity; but is that truly the case? Are both sides truly equal?

In matters of global warming the evidence is pretty clear; I won’t even try to pretend the deniers have any argument worth countering up their belt. The story is not too dissimilar with mobile phones, though: despite their wide use for much more than a decade now there has been no measurable rise in cancer rates. The energy transmitted by the phones is far less than the energy hitting brain cells stricken by visible light (yes, you read that right). The cacogenic effects of cell phones have been classified at the same level as coffee drinking. And the effect of the heat coming off mobile phones is meaningless when discussing the potential dangers of cell towers. (I've discussed all these arguments already, here). I’m not saying there are no potential risks from mobile phone technology; I’m saying that we do not know of such yet and I’m saying we should research the matter.

We cannot behave as if a danger already exists when we have no idea what it truly is. No one, not even the reports’ worried mothers, is saying we should rid ourselves of mobile phones. Therefore, by relocating cell towers away but still using mobile phones we are forcing the devices to emit more energy in order to maintain communication with the faraway towers. Isn’t that a more significant threat?

The point I am trying to make is not about the virtues of global warming or the safety of mobile phone usage, but rather about the idea of truth as a subjective matter. Well, it isn’t: the objective truth does exist, and if we pretend there is no such thing we are putting ourselves in great danger. For example, if you were to choose not to believe in evolution, for example, you’re putting yourself on the delusional side of things by virtue of the ample evidence supporting evolution. The same goes for the moon landing, global warming or cell phone usage: evidence matters!

Ignore the evidence and you will find yourself in a backwards world where medicine suffers (due to lack of understanding on matters of evolution), communication suffers (no cell phones), and civilization as a whole is at the brink of collapse (global warming). However, the best method for demonstrating the haziness of the subjective truth’s point of view is taking things to the other extreme: if anything and everything can be true, then why not doubt the existence of, say, Napoleon (to quote Richard Dawkins' favorite example)? After all, no one alive can claim to have seen him; he could be a fabrication.

There is a very slippery slope here. Thus far, the scientific method has proven itself to be the only mechanism we can conjure to help us separate truth from crap. We need to embrace and support it; giving equal say (or more) to every opinion out there regardless of evidence is not the right way about it. We need to discriminate, and we need to do so based on evidence. Of all the media in Australia, the 7:30 Report, prestige and all, should have known better.

To finish on a high note, here is Tim Minchin’s view on the matter.

Being God

2011-11-22T23:16:00.001+11:00

Because I don’t spend enough quality time with computers I’ve decided to climb a new [computing] tree. Actually, it’s an old tree I haven’t climbed upon for years.

Back when personal computers entered my life, shortly after the Atari 2600 did, computer programming was one of the main feats one was expected to perform on their computer. In fact, my choice of first proper personal computer was made by virtue of it having a decent version of the Basic programming language: it was Microsoft Basic for the Dragon 32 computer (a British computer that was otherwise the same as the TRS-80), and it beat the hell out of the primitive Basic available on the otherwise superior Commodore 64.

I did a lot of programming on my Dragon. I did some fooling around with graphics, creating all sorts of patterns; I manually typed in programs from books, mainly games; I programmed games of my own. I even wrote some machine code / Assembly for the Dragon’s Motorola 6809 processor!

However, as computers became more sophisticated the need to write one’s own programs waned. Eventually it got to the stage where I did not even have the tools to write my own programs anymore. With some exceptions at the office and at uni, I stopped writing my own programs on a regular basis as of high school graduation.

I miss it, though. I miss things like being able to solve math riddles, the type that occasionally appear on the weekend papers, using my computer’s brute force and a short ad hoc piece of code. I miss that ability to relate to what I normally see on my computer screen by virtue of understanding how it all works behind the scenes. I miss that feeling of having an intelligent being, a computer, execute my commands to the letter – for better or worse (usually the latter). I miss being god.

So I thought I’d remedy the situation and have a bit of a play in the process. Following Cory Doctorow’s recommendation in Little Brother, I had my eye on Python as a modern day coding language I can easily have a play with. Then Twitter friend @piecritic (aka Brendan Molloy) referred me to Learn Python the Hard Way and Software Carpentry to act as my teachers.

I had a look and quite liked the style of The Hard Way. Its obvious bias towards Linux/Mac did help: I liked the way it spends a lot of space explaining how to set Python up on Mac and Windows, but then settles Linux in only five lines while mentioning that if you’re using Linux you know what you’re doing anyway… It may be a geek’s joke, but it’s pretty accurate: Ubuntu comes ready for Python action right out of the box, and all you need to learn is how to start your terminal. Which you should know already...

Thus I found myself last night doing that famous Hello World variation program. Actually, it a much less politically correct variation to the one I first did several decades ago as a little child. Back then, my uncle drove to a special university facility with mainframe terminals that had us waiting 15 minutes to see the result printed on a piece of paper.
It was cool then and it’s cool now. I’m looking forward to introducing my four year old to the virtues of being a god!

Image: Learn Python the Hard Way

Sum of All Fears

2011-11-21T23:05:00.001+11:00

Our attitude to death is one of theindicators for the various flaws of our Western culture. We arebrought up to mostly ignore the existence of one of this world’sbiggest certainties, to simply pretend it does not exist. Then, whenthe inevitable happens and it hits us, we don’t know what to do. Ineed only look at myself and my immediate family to see that.

Death hit me properly for the firsttime 15 years ago through my uncle. He was no ordinary uncle: in manyways he overshadowed my parents throughout my childhood. My parentswere the ones that got me dressed up and ready for school, but he wasthe one who bought me my first proper books and who took me to thecinemas. Amongst other achievements, my uncle bought me my first everscience fiction book (Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey), took me to seemy first ever proper cinema experience (The Empire Strikes Back), andgot me the book that probably carries the burden of blame for myworld views (Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan). More importantly, it wasmy uncle who was the family’s skeptic; without him I would haveprobably been an entirely different person. So yeah, my uncle wasimportant to me.

For as long as I remember my uncle hadan ongoing dispute with cancer. Fifteen years ago he got to the pointwhere his doctors told us that he has up to two months left to live,more likely two weeks. What I remember from that experience was theway we dismissed the information: it couldn’t happen; after all, myuncle didn’t seem that bad, did he? But he was, and two weeks laterhe was dead.
The thing that still annoys me about it is that as adirect result of living in a society that pretends death does notexist I did not get to have a proper farewell with this uncle thatgave me so much. My dismissal of the doctor’s news, boosted by theway the whole family dismissed it, was coupled to my sheer ignoranceof not realizing the meaning of death. It was not the ignorance thatcomes when you simply don’t know something, the way I am ignorantabout, say, baseball; it was the ignorance that comes from notwanting to know in the first place.

Fast forward to modern times, and itseems that history might repeat itself soon. Now it’s my father whois on the line.

Don’t get me wrong: he is not dead ordying yet. However, over the last year there was a pattern of healthfailures, and at his advanced age it is clear there is nogoing back. It may take a good few years before the inevitablehappens, and I hope death takes its time, but it is clear that thedistance between where my father is and death has severely shrunk.Shrunk enough to bring back all those fears I have developed 15 yearsago: I might have learnt my lesson, but would I be able to have itany different now that I live some 24 hours away by jet?

It is not easy to just drop everythingin Australia and quickly board a plane to Israel, where my parentslive. It costs a lot of money, it requires coordination with work, itmeans leaving my wife and child behind, and there is always theuncertainty of not knowing how long this all affair would take.Death, it seems clear, is nasty business.

One annoying thing I find is that whileI have grown to be able to stare death in the face, name it for whatit is and even pass jokes on its behalf, the openness I am displaying does notapply to the rest of my family. With the way they are behaving it feelsas if they’re all planning on immortality. As in, I have no ideahow my mother expects to be able to manage her finances without myfather. That is something I find even scarier than death itself: thelatter is inevitable and certain, but the former is basically ashroud of uncertainty that has been proven to ruin the lives of theliving. You know, the people’s whose lives still matter after the dust settles.

I have to add that I have another fearto add to this equation, one that I am not too proud of: the fear ofIsrael. I don’t like Israel and I don’t make much of an effort tohide the fact; why else would I leave it? However, a death in thefamily means that I will have to go back to Israel, and for anuncertain while I will have to do some organizing and arranging. Inother words, I will have to be an Israeli again, if only for alimited period. And I hate that and I would do a lot to avoid doingit.

My Israeli friends have already pickedup on this fear of mine; they enjoy making jokes on my behalf. The funny thing about my fear of Israel isthat it only seems to apply before I go there. Once at Israel I’mfine, but on the way there I keep wondering what wars and calamitieswill befall the country just as I drop for a visit. A death in thefamily is obviously much worse than just coming over for a familyvisit, though, so there is more chance for this phobia to rear itshead.

For now, all I can do is to try and getboth myself and the rest of the family ready to deal with whatever islikely to happen. Alas, I’m quite sure all the various inhibitions wegrew up on will prevent the us from achieving much.

Two Way Verification

2011-11-20T23:46:00.001+11:00

This week’s Livewire in The Age is devoted to matters ofInternet security, so I thought I’d drop in a tip of my own and recommend youstart using Google’s 2 step verification. That is, assuming you hold an accountwith Google; is there anyone out there that doesn't?

First things first: what is Google’s 2 step verification?

Normally, we log in to websites’ private facilities using apassword. Philosophically speaking, a password represents something you knowbut no one else does.

What Google’s 2 step verification adds to this process isthe enhanced security of not only using something that only you are supposed toknow, but also something that only you are supposed to physically have. In Google’s casethey use your mobile phone, an item the majority of us carries on our selvesall the time.

When logging in to a Google account where 2 step verification hasbeen enabled, you start by entering your account name and password as usual;however, instead of that being it, you are then called upon to enter a secretcode. That code is SMSed to your phone, for free, by Google. You can onlyaccess your Google account if you enter both your password and the code youpicked off your phone.

The process is made slightly smarter for owners ofsmartphones. Google supplies a free app that does not require Internetconnectivity and which churns out secret codes by the minute (valid for only a minute each), codes that youcan use to access your Google account instead of the SMS. Google also providesa list of ten backup codes you can print in order to access your account when/ifyour phone is dead/lost.

Put together, this means your Google account is notcompromised even if someone picks on your Google password. I call that a greatsecurity measure, and I commend Google for coming up with this scheme and forsupporting its implementation at no cost to us users. It reminds me of theGoogle I used to look up to some ten years ago, before its “do no evil” sloganbecame a joke.

Note there are some complexities to the process. Forexample, using the above process to authenticate the Gmail app on yoursmartphone is not the most practical affair ever. To support these cases, aswell as other examples like accessing your Gmail via Outlook, the Google 2 stepverification process would help you generate application specific passwords you enteronce per each such unique instant. I can see this being more than a bit of apain to IT averse people like my parents, but I still recommend going throughthe motions. The added security is well worth the price, particularly whenyou’re relatively IT illiterate and not fully aware of the traps that are outthere for your virtual identity.
You can also hear it straight from the horse's mouth:

Google 2 step verification can be enabled by logging intoyour Google account, clicking your name at the top right, and then selectingthe Account settings option. The 2 step verification option would appear underthe security menu; clicking that would allow you to initiate the process aswell as provide you with links to various help screens.

Overall, I highly recommend using 2 step verification. Theextra awareness gained by the process alone is well worth the admission price.

Kicking the Dead Blog

2011-11-18T23:41:00.001+11:00

It is often said that a person returning from travel is not the same as the person who first embarked on the travel. One basic example is me.

A few months ago I announced my intentions to start a new blog before my friends, a blog dealing with the realistic side of parenthood. That is, a blog where you won’t be able to read that the birth of my child was the happiest moment of my life (conception was much more fun; during the birth itself I was tired after two sleepless nights in a row, and seriously worried for my wife); nor would you have been able to read that parenthood is as rewarding as an unexplored gold mine.

I had plans for this blog. For a start, I built it in WordPress, with the intention of learning a new (for me) blogging system that also happens to be a much more powerful web publishing tool than Google’s Blogger is. The blog was meant for me to hone my skills at writing I can try and sell later. Adopting a serious approach, I drafted some posts with ideas and highlights.

Then I went on a month long overseas trip, and four countries later I came back home feeling as if writing about parenthood, or at least seriously writing about parenthood, is the last thing on my mind. I suspect this was the result of two factors:

Drowning in the very pleasurable task of processing the 27GB of photos and videos I took during on the trip. I’m enjoying it, but it takes ages and consumes too much of my post blogging spare time.
The realization that, generally speaking, there are topics I am much more interested in discussing than parenthood. Things like gadgets, the Internet, or civil liberties in the context of the virtual world are all things I tend to get much more excited about.

The question would eventually go back to where and how I see myself starting to write stuff I can offer for publication. Perhaps I will find, eventually, that writing about parenthood is the way for me to put a foot in the door. In the mean time, though, I declare my previously declared parenthood blog dead.

I'm the Tux Man

2011-11-17T09:32:00.001+11:00

With not even a single day of Mac ownership under my belt, I was already asked whether I am now going to turn into an Apple snob (aka fanboy) and boast/gloat my Mac ownership around. I’m insulted.
Yes, I will continue saying what I have said here before: In my humble opinion, the MacBook Air is the best piece of computer hardware ever. That is because it is the ultimate netbook: it’s small, light, incredibly usable, incredibly portable, but it still performs like a proper contemporary PC. Plus it’s got a keyboard that lights in the dark, I mean – what else can you ask for, a computer that wipes your butt?
But with all due respect to Apple, the late Jobs, Mac fans everywhere, and my new NetBook Air: I am, as I have been for several years now, a loving advocate of the open source way. Me, an Apple fanboy? You’ve got to be joking. I am Linux through and through!

P.S. I’m hereby declaring the trademarking of the term NetBook Air.

Image by rbieber, Creative Commons license

Give These People Air

2011-11-16T20:47:00.001+11:00

We're interrupting our regular programs to announce to the world of us (as in, me) finally getting my MacBook Air. In fact, this very post is typed on this very new MacBook Air.
And what a wonderful device it is. To say it is a marvel of engineering would be an understatement; even its packaging is oozing with style, and the computer itself - thin, light and simply sexy - is pure pleasure to look at.
Yours truly is now in the process of grasping the workings of Lion. Having mastered Linux to a comfortable degree, and with all my experience elsewhere, I don't think this would be my biggest challenge ever. Indeed, thus far my Mac experience has been pretty similar to my Ubuntu one. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is great.
Now you'll have to excuse me. This child is about to embark on some play time with his new toy.

Internet, Endangered

2011-11-15T23:01:00.001+11:00

Perhaps we should have expected it given their whole Wikileaks fiasco, but the USA’s campaign to take away our Internet freedoms is continuing in earnest. As you are reading this, the Internet as we know it is in severe danger.

Take the court ruling announced last Friday, where a judge decreed the American Government has the right to access Twitter users’ private data without telling anyone about it. Note we only know of this in the first place because Twitter made a bit of a fuss; Google and Yahoo gave in to their government’s demands lying down.

Consider the implications of this court ruling. Any information you have on an American server is, in effect, at the hands of the American Government. Got web mail accounts, like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo? Got photos on the web with, say, Flickr or Picasa? Got private video clips of your baby having a bath on YouTube for the benefit of faraway relatives? Got general information on the cloud with the likes of Amazon? Are you using Apple’s new iCloud services with your iOS5 upgraded iPhone? Are you using Facebook?

The bottom line is that if you’re using the Internet you’re under the watchful eye of the American Government. I don’t have anything against the USA, but I don’t exactly welcome them to my house so they can take a look at my private stuff; them giving themselves the authority to browse my private stuff on our Internet puts them in very poor light.

The Patriot Act: ten years and counting.

An even bigger threat to the open nature of the Internet is coming from the direction of new legislation dubbed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which looks destined to get rushed through the motions and become effective before Christmas.

First and foremost, the issue with SOPA is the censoring of allegedly infringing websites (allegedly being the key word). I don't think more words need to be wasted here on why such censorship is dangerous; we know that already through our experience with Conroy & Co.
One of the more interesting highlight of this proposed legislation is the financial boycotting of potentially copyright infringing businesses based on allegations alone. It would work this way: A company that doesn’t like what another company is putting on the web will be able to contact financial providers (the likes of Visa, MasterCard and PayPal) and ask them to withhold finances from the allegedly infringing company. The financial provider might ask questions, but the whole point of the law is that it doesn’t have to; in effect, these institutions would likely bend down to the powers of the greater companies out there, with whom they don’t want to mess about and risk liability. Visa is not out there to protect our rights; its aim is to create value for its shareholders! The company being blamed will therefore lose its finances, most notably without anyone actually proving it was at fault in the first place.

Think for a moment just how easily such legislation can be abused by the greater powers to suppress competition as well as dissent. This is the entire point of this legislation in the first place; after all, there are ample measures to be taken today in order to address potential copyright infringements on the web, it's just that these are too hard for Hollywood and its likes.

You may think these rules won’t affect you personally. I suspect they would, if only indirectly. Yet I suspect it would affect many of us directly in ways we can't even think about yet. Take this as an example: many of us post videos to YouTube and various services, yet a subsection of the proposed SOPA legislation puts hefty penalties on streaming copyrighted materials. Think it through: you may be put to prison in the USA for posting a video of your child’s school play, a play where they happened to have copyrighted music in the background. What a great piece of legislation this is when it makes so many of us criminals!

It's hard for me to say it, but the USA’s attitude towards privacy and civil rights stinks all the way across the Pacific. What a shame the country that brought gems such as the Declaration of Independence to this world is falling apart in such a pathetic manner.

Image by Truthout.org, Creative Commons license

Added on 16/11/11: You can read more about SOPA and the dangers it poses to the Internet at Boing Boing here and the EFF here.

Free Thoughts

2011-11-13T11:00:00.001+11:00

A few mischievous thoughts have been onmy mind lately, and what better place do I have than this to sharethem around?

Why is it that we take it for granted a system that has us getting paid in return for work? Why shouldn't we be allocating resources between people based on other parameters instead? Why is it that the matter isn't even open for debate?
Why is it that we live under a hierarchical social order where we elect people to rule us? Why do we need someone to rule us in the first place? Isn’t such a system just an unimaginative replacement for monarchy? Can’t we do better?
Why is it that I have to get up every morning and dress up in office uniform, mingling with other similarly clad people, the majority of whom I have little in common with?

In my opinion all of the above questions are closely related subject that are effectively considered taboo. When I combine these thoughts, it seemsto me as if society is purposefully rearing us to lead unhappy lives.

Image by PropagandaTimes, Creative Commons license

Needs and Wants

2011-11-12T22:18:00.001+11:00

One of the main things on my mind lately is the MacBook Air (as discussed here).
Thinking about it made me realize the following: I cannot say I need to have a MacBook Air. I can, however, argue with much confidence that the MacBook Air would be the best computer I can hope to have at this time. When I say "best", I am saying it is the best of the computers that suit my needs, and by a fairly wide (and, I will admit it, sexy) margin.
Thus I am facing the following dilemma: Is having the best things out there worth spending $1400 on, even if I do not truly need it?

Image: Apple

Pale Blue Dot

2011-11-10T18:38:00.000+11:00

Yesterday was Carl Sagan's 77th birthday. Phil Plait suggested this, Pale Blue Dot, as a worthy tribute, claiming it is one of the greatest passages ever written in English. I will argue it's one of the greatest passages ever, period.

On Writing

2011-11-09T23:48:00.001+11:00

Yesterday I hit upon this tweet thatasked some interesting questions: “Can I ask all the writers outthere: Why do you write? Are you driven to do it? Are you paid to doit? Can you take it or leave it? Why?”

I’m no professional. I haven’tearned anything for any of my non technical writing, but I do havequite a throughput when it comes to writing for leisure. So I thoughtI’d use the opportunity to discuss my creative process, maybe evenproviding some answers to the twitted question.

It did not occur to me till late but Ialways enjoyed writing. Even in school, where we were often forced towrite essays, I recall enjoying the process. I don’t think I wasever incredibly good at it, but I enjoyed infusing the otherwiseboring topics forced on us by our teachers with some stuff that trulyexcited me. For example, even in the final school exams (what youwould call VCE in Victoria and what was called Bagrut back then in Israel) Iplugged revolutionary ideas from Larry Niven’s Gil Hamilton stories.

Years later, post university graduationand after starting proper full time work, I would often write ratherlengthy emails about all sorts of things and send them to my friends.Blogs didn’t exist back then so it was so it was all rather chaoticand maintained as a private Outlook folder, but those were the veryfirst movie reviews I ever wrote. Just like today’s writing, theyhave been written for the pleasure of writing and for the benefit ofconsolidating my thoughts.

Eventually I joined the blog bandwagonand the records speak for themselves: I never looked back. Most of myposts receive two digit readership numbers, a minority (say, 10%) gointo the hundreds, while a bare few get into the thousands. I hardly ever promote my work; obscurity, it seems, does not prevent me from marching on with mywriting.

Given that hardly anyone reads mystuff, and given I don’t see a cent out of it, where does themotivation to write come from? I don’t have a proper answer foryou; as I said here recently, it feels like a calling. What is clearis that I love writing: as far as personal leisure activities areconcerned, writing comes over everything else, reading and playingvideo games included. My wife will tell you it comes over socialstuff, too, although I would not totally agree there.

So why is it that I find writing soattractive? Again, I don’t have a definitive answer. It’sprobably something to do with narcism, because receiving feedback andhits is always very exciting. Having an author critically address mydamning review? I was so excited I couldn’t go to sleep. Simplyhaving a friend relate to me when I’m in distress (see here for themost classic example) was the best comfort I could get. For thisperson, most of whose friends and cultural heritage areoverseas, the contact that’s facilitated through my blogs – asflimsy and one sided as that contact is – is of great importance.

Note that when I talk about contact tomy cultural heritage I don’t mean Israeli culture in particular. Iam mostly referring to science fiction culture, atheist/humanistculture, the open source culture, science, technology and much muchmore. When I write, I’m assuming the role of a miniAsimov/Dawkins/Doctorow/YouNameIt. My writing connects me to all ofthose, making me feel like I am a contributing part. In other words,writing turns me from an onlooker to an activist.

There is a good reason why I maintaintwo separate blogs, this one for personal musings and another forreviews. In the former I can write whatever I feel like writing inwhatever form I choose, whereas in the latter I have to write aroundthe specific item I review. That is a significant difference there,which is why I enjoy the challenge of reviewing. Regardless, thewriting process is pretty similar.

Most of my posts are the result of thesame process. I have some question that bothers me and burns off inthe side of my head. These questions can range from “why is it thatthis particular thing bugs me” or “what was it about this filmthat made me enjoy it so much”. Then, at some elusive moment whenI’m doing something completely different – having a shower,waking up, falling asleep, daydreaming on the train, or ponderingabout a book I am reading – lightening strikes. In a few briefseconds I get this anchorman in my head dictating ideas to me. Some times he goes as far as dictating the whole post to me again andagain. I tell you, that anchorman is crazy!

Usually hours pass between the time theanchorman talks and the post gets typed. That’s life for you: Ican’t afford to write whenever I feel like. Some times I do, aswith this post, and it shows in the rather under-cooked nature of thefinal result. But rare steaks are often tastier.

Usually the actual writing has tobe postponed by hours if not days. Often I have so many ideas I justhave to record their highlights somewhere on the cloud (love thecloud!) so I can return to them later; I would estimate less thanhalf of those actually get returned to later. Most ideas end up returned tolater that day or during the next day or two.

By the time I get to write MrAnchorman’s ideas down I usually find that the tune that sounded sogreat in my head is much less so in writing. Some times I get posts that were meant portray a certain idea ending up saying something quite different,like this one that was originally supposed to be a tribute to my bestfriends. Other times the post comes out disjointed and lackingcoherency, like this one where you might as well ask “what the hellwas he trying to say in there”. Rarely do I have the time to sortthings out; as most of my posting is done late at night I often prefer to simply go ahead withthe show. In other words, editing is something best done beforemidnight.

On a positive note I will add thatthrough the years I have been trying to add method to the art of blogging. Writing reviews does help there because it forces me to come up with worthy structures and to try and present a united front acrossreviews. In my opinion, my approach works: when I really make aneffort, as with this review, I get my blogs' best hit post ever. Should havedone better with the photo, though!

Lately I have been toying with the ideaof having my writings professionally published. If anything, I thinkI should quit my laziness and put some big time effort into devising aproper strategy to get me out there. Not in order to make money, but ratherin order to provide a foundation to my writing passion.

Make no mistake about it: writing is apassion. I devote so much thought to my writing, as poor as it is,and that energy has to come off other areas. Yes, writing comes at a cost: my devotion definitely cost me a promotionor two at work. It costs me sleep, it costs me Call of Dutyrankings, and it has costs in the quality of my relationships withother people. For now, at least, I have no regrets on the matter,though, because I consider writing/blogging to be a major part of theperson that I am.

If writing is what I am passionateabout the most, the logical path would be to receive externalrecognition for that. Such recognition would signal that all the lostmoney and lost promotions have been rightly sacrificed.

Image by kneetobefree, Creative Commons license

Christmas Envy

2011-11-08T23:22:00.000+11:00

There’s a while left till Christmasand the holiday is already getting on my nerves.

I may have not been raised under theChristmas culture but I actually like the holiday. I like the facteveryone takes some time off, I like the way it brings families together with some quality time, and I like the fact everything is winding down around that time of the year. The fact this time of the year happens to have the bestweather of the year is a bonus (lucky for us Southern Hemisphereans),which means that my family and I can celebrate our own version ofChristmas and have fun together.

My quarrel is with a specific group ofpeople that can be characterized by the following indicators:

They are Christians believers.
They truly believe the holiday has somedivine meaning to it, ignoring the obvious evidence that the holidayis a mishmash of traditions adopted by Christianity over the years.
As a direct result of the above two,they truly believe that their way is the only way to celebrateChristmas.
As a result of this belief, they try and impose their Christmas on others. Others that may not be particularly interested.

Members of this group can be easilyidentified through their frequent complaining on how they are beingrobbed of Christmas. They say they’re not allowed to celebrateChristmas anymore, and the example they usually cite is them notbeing allowed to say things like “merry Christmas” in publicduty. These people are living the paranoid dream of having theirculture robbed away from underneath their feet.

I agree with them that not beingallowed to mention Christmas as Christmas is silly. It’s a holiday,it’s there on the calendar, and they celebrate it – so why notsay it out loud?

The problem is that with most of thesepeople, things don’t go round the other way. They seem unable torealize what things look like from the others’ point of view. Inparticular, they seem unable to realize what it is to live as aminority; they complain of being robbed, but the reality is the clearmajority of Australians want to celebrate Christmas.

Want the clearest evidence for these people's inability to relate to others? Just congratulate one of these people witha “happy Ramadan”. Then quickly seek your nearest thermonuclear shelter.

Image by aussiegall, Creative Commons license

Arrgh Maties

2011-11-07T21:21:00.000+11:00

My wise friend Uri tends to joke on my behalf, saying thatwhenever I blog about not doing something he knows that this is the last stepbefore I do it. Often enough, Uri isright, and not just because he’s wise (I consider him much wiser than I am),but mostly because the issues I blog about are also the issues I think about,and when I think of something I often realize I was wrong and change my mind. Idon’t have any problems with changing my mind; it usually is quite an amusing exercise.

This post is here to tell you of one such change ofheart/mind. Less than a week after I’ve explained here why despite all I havein common with them I am not about to join the Pirate Party; however, a few days later I went ahead andjoined the Pirate Party. You can quote me on having changed my mind for thefollowing reasons:

The abduction of civil liberties has never been more popularthan it currently is. You read about it in the news every day; check out thislatest example of a Christian bleeding heart trying to defend us from thedanger that is Grand Theft Auto. Extra points go to the media (Channel 7 inthis particular case) for their partial and evidence lacking coverage.
I am currently reading Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, abook that is about the way civil liberties are being robbed of this currentgeneration in the name of some elusive idols. That book made me think, as it shouldeveryone who reads it (reading is such a perilous activity!).
While being a party with a narrow core has itsdisadvantages, it also has its advantages. It is a party where, if I everdecide I want to make a difference, I actually stand a chance of making adifference.
The party’s key people seem to be genuinely nice people.

So at least for now, I am a pirate. Officially.

P.S. A question for you: How does the Caribbeanbranch of the party refer to itself?

Image by Cayusa, Creative Commons license

Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3

2011-11-05T17:42:00.000+11:00

This mind has been quite busy lately trying to identify reasons with which to justify the purchase of a brand new 13" Apple MacBook Air. It's a work in progress effort, but thus far I could come up with the following:

Have you seen the latest MacBook Air? There's nothing out there like it.
Have you held the latest MacBook Air?
My netbook, on which this post is typed, is three year old now. It's fine and all and its performance is more than acceptable when running Ubuntu, but it's showing its age. It's got slight keyboard and mouse pad issues, and some times its hard drive refuses to start.
In my opinion, the MacBook Air is the world's best netbook ever: it's roughly the same size (slightly bigger screen but in a slimmer package), it weighs less, and it performs a hell of a lot better.
Imitation ultrabooks running Windows have started coming out, but have you seen how much they're selling for? Dick Smith has an Acer ultrabook of inferior specs that costs about the same, as well as others costing more and offer less. I suspect it's the first time ever that Apple's product is actually cheaper than the opposition.
It got a very favorable review at Delimiter (yes, it's me in the comments section down there).
John Scalzi has one and he often repeats his claim it's the best computer he's ever had (see here for an example). Generally speaking, Scalzi's opinion has a lot of clout with me; in this particular case I strongly suspect we're both looking for exactly the same thing in our PCs, hence I have reasons to suspect I would agree with Scalzi.
For someone aspiring to be an authority on matters of personal computers and gadgetry, my lack of firsthand Mac experience is a gaping black hole. I'm familiar with various versions of Windows, Linux, Android and iOS; but not with the Macs. I should do something to remedy the situation!
As I said here before, tablets are nice but they're not really the right thing for me. As PCs go, a MacBook Air is the closest PC to a tablet that would satisfy me.

That's all nice and dandy, but where am I really going ahead with buying a MacBook Air? The damn thing's expensive!
I'll put it this way: I can't say I truly need the MacBook Air. However, the minute my wife gives me the green light to go and spend the $1400 it takes to get one is the minute you will see smoke coming off my afterburner. And if you happen to hear of some Christmas sale or something at Apple, let me know!

Image: Apple

Simply the Best

2011-11-04T23:41:00.003+11:00

One of the declared purposes of our recent visit to Israel was to reacquaint myself with local food, in particular the stuff you can’t get at Australia or the stuff where Australia’s offerings pale in comparison.
My Israeli friends cooperated with this theme all the way. They decided to take us on a “best of humus” tour. As the two leading humus experts of the group couldn't decide between them which of their preferred humus restaurants is the best, they took us to both of them. The first best one they took us to, located at an Arab town in northern Israel, was closed.
The other's best one, located in the old market of Acre (also known as Akka/Akko), was so crowded with people and had such large queues that we decided we will happily live without tasting Israel’s best ever humus; we moved on to eat at another, neighboring but otherwise unfamiliar, humus place. The humus was fine by me (even if two old ladies sitting at the back were smoking and even when the toilets looked like they weren't cleaned since Napoleon dropped into town for a visit).

The next day we returned to that Arab town to recheck its best ever humus. The local professionals, my friends the tour hosts, expressed their disappointment; the humus wasn’t as best as they remembered. I was quite fine: I ate two serves.

Prior to ending the tour we stopped at an Arab bakery rumoured to offer the best of Arab delights. This means the place specializes in the likes of baklava, kanafeh and kadaif. That stuff was good! We got a decent supply to take back to my parents, which didn’t last more than two hours. My mother, however, did twist her nose: the kadaif was not the best. By her reckoning we should have bought these sweets from the famous bakery at Nazareth – everyone knows it has the best ever baklava!

Personally, I don’t get this typically Israeli obsession with only having to go for “the best” or bust. In the company of my best friends any food is the best ever. Besides, who has the authority or the ability to determine what’s best in the first place? The whole affair is rumor based anyway, a matter of latest fashions. As long as I’m enjoying myself I’m perfectly happy with the stuff that’s not on everyone’s radar at the moment.

To prove my point, I went to eat at Oved’s sabich four times while we were in Israel, including a straight three days in a row hat-trick. You have to be insane not to know Oved’s is the best serving in the universe!

Image by Moshe Reuveni, the best photographer ever

Special Discount Books

2011-11-02T23:17:00.004+11:00

You know how you can buy cheap books atBookDepository and have them delivered to your doorstep for free, doyou?

Well, you know wrong. BookDepositorydoes not do free delivery; what it does instead is inflate the bookprices it quotes you depending on the country you’re from. Giventhey’re a British company, you can expect the prices on offer toBritish users will be somewhat lower than those on offer to Aussies(the titles I checked were by around $3 cheaper).

The funny thing about it is that thediscount has nothing to do with the country the books will be shippedto and everything to do with the country you’re using theBookDepository website from. For example, were my English mother inlaw to buy me a book and have it sent over to me at Melbourne,she will be paying less than it would cost me to order the same bookand have it delivered to the same Melbourne address. It goes theother way around: if I was to buy my mother in law a book fromAustralia, it would cost more than it would cost her to order herselfthe same book.

Only that two can play in that game. Ifyou can make yourself appear British before BookDepository’s eyes,you would also be able to enjoy the same rates offered to Britishusers. There are ways of giving BookDepository the illusion you areBritish, one of which is using the services of a British VPN serverto acquire a British IP address before the eyes of external lookers.It is important to note there is nothing illegal about doing so; youwill only be using/abusing BookDepository’s rather eccentricmechanism for determining delivery fees. No one is preventing BookDepository from charging delivery fees that depend on shipments' destinations (the way its new owner, Amazon, does); they're doing what they're doing out of the assumption their claim of offering "free shipping" would attract extra clientele.

The VPN services through which you can acquire these postage discounts will usually cost youmoney, but if you order enough books you can get your money back andmore. Asfar as I am concerned, this VPN trick is a fine example for the way opening one's business to online scrutiny exposes all sorts of issues in business models that were designed by some ingenious marketing team.

Image by spike55151, Creative Commons license

Party Time

2011-10-31T23:41:00.002+11:00

Over this past weekend, Pirate Party Australia conducted its yearly (?) get-together. It was held atSydney, but I followed it up when I could through a live videofeed. There were also a live audio feed, live discussions overIRC, and the constantly updating online minutes. Youcan’t argue this relatively small group of so called pirates don’tknow their technology and how to use it in order to organizethemselves.

At the basic of levels, I enjoyed the“show” for the example it provided in how the democratic processshould and could take place. People were respecting one another,people were asking one another questions and looking for opinions,and in general the atmosphere was one of great cooperation. Forexample, the current party president stepped aside out of worryinghim staying too long at his post will keep the party stagnated. Then there was the motion to stop for lunch. You won’tfind any of that at your average Liberals/Labor conference (can anyone tell thedifference between the two anymore?).

Entertainment aside, I had a lot ofpersonal interest in the conference. A lot of the party’s keypeople are people I follow on Twitter. That is, they may be half myage, but in many respects we are like minded. I totally agree withthe party’s agenda, and I consider it important for society atlarge to implement its policies.
Before you dismiss them pirates as a partybased on silly notions, check out your newspaper. This day alone hadtwo articles published in Delimiter concerning how Aussies’ onlinefreedom of speech and other basic human rights may be put underthreat in the immediate future (see here and here). If you expand thediscussion to closely related social movements, you can easily see(the way this opinion article does) how pirates stand at theforefront of rolling social changes.

Due to the party’s relevance, thethought prevailing in my mind as I watched the conference was whetherI should join the party or not. If I agree with everything they standfor, and if I want to be active in the areas they stand for anyway,then surely joining to become an official Aussie pirate is the way togo? Hold your registration forms, I am not rushing in there yet. Myproblem is simple: the pirates’ agenda great and all, but whatabout other issues affecting our society? How would an elected memberof the Pirate Party deal with, say, global warming, education orhealth? The way things are, the Pirate Party deliberately avoids discussion on non core issues out of the fear of creating internal rifts, but let’s be honest: the party cannot expect to be anythingmore than an obscurity without better policy coverage.

Looking at the matter from my own personal point of view, no Australian political party, pirates included, will accept me if I am a member of another party. If that is the case then how do Ichoose which party to join given there’s at least one other partywith whose agenda I generally agree (the Secular Party), not to mention the Greens who are the party closest to my views with actual power?

Then there is the fact that most of thePirate Party agenda items are already covered by the EFA (ElectronicFrontiers Australia). The EFA has the advantage of not beingassociated with any political party. It also has the advantage ofhaving world class experts on its side, the likes of privacy expert Roger Clarke(but many others more). As I am already an EFA member, I currentlychoose to keep an open and very favourable eye on the Pirate Party but nothing more; at the moment I do not feel the party is ripe enough for meto join it. Unless, that is, I decide to make myself active enough soas to try and change the party from within, but that’s atotally different ball game.

Image by Didier Misson, Creative Commons license

Police State

2011-10-30T16:29:00.000+11:00

Friday's The Age featured two front page stories dealing with police affairs. The first told us how the position of the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police was undermined by the office of the very minister in charge of police. As we know, that commissioner ended up out off office rather quickly. The second story deals with the Occupy Melbourne protest that was evicted using force by Victoria Police a week earlier (I was there to see some of it), and how the police provided one legal justification for the use of force while the mayor put another; thing is, both arguments were exposed by the newspaper as legally inadequate.
My take on these matters is that the State of Victoria is not run by law but rather by the whim of the powers that be. In the particular cases we have here, it is controlled by a few power hungry Liberal party members who regard the state as their private playground.
My second take is more straight forward. Given the ease with which these news items came about and the speed at which they were forgotten, I can only conclude that the general Australian public is very much indifferent to this whole charade. As in, "as long as it doesn't bother me and I can do what I want, they can do whatever they want". Only that history repeatedly teaches us that people who work under this assumption tend to find it is rather too late to get up in arms when shit hits their fan.

Image by freefotouk, Creative Commons license

Dealing with Commercial TV's Abuse

2011-10-29T16:33:00.004+11:00

This week's letter to The Age's Green Guide:

Last week I tried to record an old Clint Eastwood film off Channel 9's GEM. I programmed my PVR using GEM's own EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and added a ten minute safety margin. However, I was later disappointed to find the recording missed both the beginning and the end of the film.
My question is this: does my Channel 9 experience give me the legal right to download the film off the Internet?

Image by DocklandsTony, Creative Commons license

Childcare Closure

2011-10-29T00:20:00.000+11:00

Exactly a week ago we were informed by our local council that it intends to close down its childcare service centers. The announcement took us and other parents by surprise; there were no hints of this being on the agenda. Even though the closure is gradual and our son will not be directly affected, we were quite angry at the local council's move and the way it made its decision. Pushed by the powers that be, I felt it's time to use my familiarity with the virtual world to support real world activism.
After receiving the council's notice I immediately scanned and forwarded the notice letter sent to us by the local council to the local newspaper. To do that I used an iPhone app to quickly scan the letter and generate a PDF document, which I then edited using an open source Linux PDF editor to remove personal information from the letter. James Bond would have been proud. It turns out the local council anticipated parents' resentment, so it arranged a special meeting with the paper to present their position at; the meeting was arranged for Tuesday, a day ahead of the weekly paper's cut off date. However, the paper already had the material I provided them with by the preceding Saturday...
On Wednesday night we had a a parents' meeting. Objection to the council's decision was unanimous and various action items were identified. However, parental coordination is planned to take place through a dedicated Gmail address, which feels a bit too 20th century to me. The thought of proposing to manage the cause's Facebook page did occur to me, but with my contempt to Facebook only growing worse with time I held myself back. No, it would take more this that to get me to rejoin this site that continues to track me after I logoff.
Sadly, there aren't any other social media means suitable to this occasion: while a Twitter hashtag could have easily been arranged, Twitter's popularity with the parents is wanting. On the other hand, at this stage Google+ will only support individuals. There are some promising social networks developing out there, like Unthink, but these are nothing more than desert islands. Gmail it is, then.
The local newspaper's editor informed me they will publish the letter I sent them as part of their news coverage. As I was warned the letter will be edited due to length, I will conclude this post by quoting it in its entirety.

As the parent of a four year old childusing my local council's childcare centre facilities, I was surprised to seethe note posted on the centre’s door on Friday 21/10/11 informingparents the local council has decided to gradually close the centresdown over the next two years. It was obvious the centre’s staffwere just as surprised, and it was obvious neither parents nor staffwere consulted or even informed the centres' closure waseven on the agenda.

The council’s main justification forclosing the centres down is their perceived lack of so called “viability”. However, the council does not explain how this viability is measured, whichis not surprising given that none of the services provided by local councils are financially viable: the entire point ofgovernment is to supply the population with otherwise unviableservices and to do so in a way that promotes a healthy society.However, it does not seem as if my local council is interested in creatinga healthy city: by closing its own childcare centres it isactively harming its most vulnerable, parents of childrenwith special needs or parents in tough circumstances who wouldotherwise have trouble finding suitable privately owned facilities tolook after their children.

The council’s childcare centres arecurrently serving hundreds of local families, served thousands in thepast, and could serve thousands more in the future. The centres’current two year long waiting list speaks volumes of the appreciation local residents hold for them. My son’s own experience ofattending several private childcare centres prior to the council ones confirmed why: none of the private ones even came closewhen it came to quality care. Clearly, council run centres act asthe industry’s benchmark. If council members voting the centres’closure had bothered looking these matters up, they would have foundplenty viability to justify the running of the centres!

The reason quoted by the council for the timing of its centres’ closure is upcoming federalregulations that, under current layouts, would see the councilcentres serving fewer families. The council has to be “commended”for using regulations intended to improve the quality of care as anexcuse for making them worse. It also emphasises the council’sdisconnection from the public, in the sense that these federalregulations will affect private childcare centres just the same andwill make it much harder for parents to find a spot for theirchildren – even before the closure of the council’s own centres.

As an existing user of my local council's childcare centres I am left under extreme uncertainty.With parents bound to take their kids away as they place them inalternative childcare facilities, the viability of the council’sdoomed services will actually – and for the first time – trulydiminish. Parents will be facing that as well as the inevitabledecrease in staff morale, staff leaving, and the council’s ownpromise to review the centres’ situation on a quarterly basis.

It is interesting to note the local council’s intention to close its childcare centres and focus on itskindergarten services instead. One has to wonder what the council isthinking and what its priorities are, given that kinder services areunable to provide the full time care required for full time workingfamilies and given the rarity of private full time kinder ageservices. Is the council running an agenda of stay at home mothers?

Then again, reading between the lines,with my local council already closing down homes for the old andthe disabled and now moving on to closing childcare facilities, itwouldn’t surprise me if the council real agenda is in making aquick buck through selling its real estate. Indeed, the only evidenceto contradict the “council going for the money” theory is thecouncil sending us parents the childcare centres’ closure noticevia Express Post. No financially conscious council would have acted this way.

Image by johnwilliamsphd, Creative Commons license

The Book Shop, RIP

2011-10-27T23:56:00.000+11:00

I finally paid a visit to Embiggen Books, a new book shop to open in Melbourne with the aim of cateringfor the science oriented reader and the skeptic in particular. Oddly enough, Stephen Fry paid the shop a visit that same day; it must have been in the air. I don't know about Fry, but I fellin love: the shop is small in comparison to those Borders aircraft hangars of yesteryear, but it was as if someone designed a book shop with me inmind: one wall features works of fiction with science fiction havinga significant presence, another wall features philosophy (but notpseudoscience junk), another is comprised of popular science, etc.There is even ample room dedicated for children books made of books I would love my son to get into.

I do not recall being at a book shopwhere that “wow, I should definitely read this book” notionsprang up at such a frequency and with such variety of genres.

That’s all great, but did I buyanything? No, I didn’t. I simply do not see the point in buyingpaper books anymore, now that I have been so thoroughly exposed tothe charms of the ebook. It’s similar to asking me to take a rideon a steam train: it might appeal to me once as an attraction, butthe reality is that it can’t keep up with modern trains and it’sstinky as hell. There are exceptions to the rule, like books heavy onthe graphics or children books, but reality knocks on the door yetagain: price wise, a small book shop cannot compete with what theInternet has to offer (as summarized so exquisitely by websites likebooko). Even if/when Embiggen offers ebooks, and they told me they would do so in six months, there is no way they'd be able to match Amazon's might.

The way I see it, the book shop has acouple of potential aces up its sleeve. There is that nice feeling of brushingwith the books that one cannot get on the web, although previewservices like the one offered by Amazon come pretty close. Then thereis the book shop acting as a gathering point for people of mutualinterests, a line Embiggen is definitely active at through the organization of various gatherings and "meet the author" events. Can Embiggengenerate income out of such gatherings in the face of declining booksales, currently its main income stream? I doubt it.

And if a book shop as good as Embiggenis living on borrowed time, then it is clear the entire book shopinstitution is an endangered species.

Image by podblackcat (whose blog and other web presences I follow), Creative Commons license

Swimming Lessons

2011-10-27T00:03:00.000+11:00

My four year old son’s swimminglessons made me think about the optimal approach to educatingchildren. At his second ever swimming lesson the instructor wastrying to get him to put his head in/under the water. Alas, my son has toomany of my genes (50% is a lot). Too afraid to do as he’s asked, hereverted to shouting – meaningless shouting – at theinstructor. He wouldn't do anything else but shout; in effect, that was theend of his swimming lesson.

The question that popped to my headthere and then was this: what is the optimal level of strictness for educating a child? If you’re too soft, as with this particular case, he’llhappily abuse you and learn nothing in the process other thanreaffirm his understanding that ignoring requests with abuse is theway to go. If you’re too hard on him and just push him in the wateryou take a risk: he may find out there’s nothing wrong with puttingone’s head under the water and that it’s actually fun, but he maybe so badly traumatized he won’t want to come near a swimming poolagain.

The following day we had a similarstandoff. We met with friends on the beach and the kids were allplaying together. At one point, my son picked up a glass bottle hefound in the sand. I immediately barked the order for him to put itdown; he looked it me, fully understanding what I asked him to do,but continued to hold the bottle. I barked again, to no avail. Ibarked for the third time, and when nothing happened still I wentover and quite forcefully dragged my son away by the arm.

That same question popped up again,only in reverse: was I too harsh? Should I tried to appeal to hisrational instead? In effect, I was pondering that good old question on whether childrenshould be taught using positive incentives or whether they should bepunished into obedience (or some mix of the two), but with a slighttwist. In the above two cases, punishing our child was never on our agenda:we were either trying to educate our son or block him from danger.

I won’t pretend to have the magicanswer. The current family status quo has my wife preferring the soft approach while I’m drifting towards pushing my son into the deep water. Bothof us are aspiring towards the same goal, it’s the path to thatgoal that is different.

If allowed to expand the philosophyof my approach then I will point at the good old forgiving tit for tat algorithm. That is, start things gently and rationally, but whenabused show the child – in a harsh manner if time and circumstancesprevent the nicer, rational approach – what is expected of him.Once the child resumes behaving properly or when a good opportunity presents itself, go back to being nice tohim.

The downfall of this approach is thatit assumes the parent knows better than the child, which is notalways the case: some times he does know better than I do and I just abuse my authority. However, given that we are dealing here in scenarioswhere no real harm should come to the child, neither physical normental, I can see some advantages there, too. As long I don’t turn outto be truly dumb, my son may learn that life is not always fair, that there are unavoidable punishments on the way, and that not everything in life is great. It could be aharsh lesson to learn, but I consider it vital none the less. It’sthe truth we are all very familiar with: it's called "shit happens".

Image by Cowgirl111, Creative Commons license

Claiming Prima Nocta

2011-10-25T23:43:00.004+11:00

Last week Delimiter told us Spotify hasofficially started recruiting in Australia. It (Delimeter) even wentfurther to predict Spotify will make its music services available toAustralians within 18 months.

My take on this bit of news: I demandSpotify grants me the right to be their first ever Australian Premiumsubscriber. I think I have the right to be the first to pay them forthat service given the transformation their free service is making to my life. Aservice that, let me remind you, is only available to Australians ifthey’re tech savvy enough to use services such as VPN to acquire aEuropean or American IP address.

Before going on to discuss thattransformation yet again, I would like to note what the Premiumservice is. Essentially, it gives you the right to listen touninterrupted music: no ads, no limitations on the amount of musicyou can listen to. You can even download playlists to your smartphoneand listen to them without an Internet connection (hey, who needsiTunes?). Most importantly, at least for me: music is downloaded at a rate of320kbps, which makes a whole lotta difference when connected tothe hi-fi.

Spotify Premium currently costsAmericans $10 USD a month and Brits 10 GBP a month. This substantialcost difference across nationalities leads me to fear someone high up in the recordedmusic industry’s food chain will decide Aussies would be willing tofork out $25 for the same pleasure. If you read this, Spotify, thenplease make sure you don’t make the mistake of alienating your customers beforeyou even start! A lot of us, myself included, are not buying musicfrom iTunes because of such regional price differences, differences where theAussie is always on the losing side. Or is it due to the cost offreighting all that digital contents all the way Down Under?

On to the promised discussion onSpotify’s transformation qualities. I’ve discussed these at thepast but I will do so again using last night’s experiences.

Those started with me listening to thesoundtrack from Wim Wenders’ early nineties film, Until the End ofthe World. I hold this soundtrack in high regard as one of the best to ever decorate a movie, even if the movie was not my cup of water. It features some great atrists: Nick Cave, R.E.M. and Danial Lanois to name a few. It even features a U2 from those forgotten days where they actuallyhad something to say, as opposed to the great money launderingmachine they turned into. I used to have this soundtrack on cassette, but givenwhat I did to my cassette collection I didn’t listen to it forprobably a decade or so. Last night I did, though, positioning myselfbetween my hifi speakers while assembling the latest robot toy we got ourson (don’t ask). I’ve enjoyed both the joint assembly work withthe four year old and the music in that certain way that only soulpenetrating music can achieve. Thanks for a great experience,Spotify!

Shlomo Artzi is an Israeli singer Ialways tended to despise. At our recent trip to Israel we took a boatride that had a song of his playing as background music. Amongst songsby the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and R.E. M. (them again!), Artzi’s song stood out when my wife pointed out everyone around us was humming along.

With that experience in mind I decidedto give Artzi’s “best of” a try over Spotify. I can’t sayhe’ll be in my top ten, but listening to him certainly brought backmemories. I’ll even admit he does have several good songs.

The point of the above musical tales isthat through Spotify I was able to connect with the past in a mannerthat was otherwise impractical. Sure, I can buy these songs fromiTunes, but do I want to commit some $40 odd dollars to a nostalgicaffair? No, all I wanted was a brief reminder.

What I am trying to say is that musicis of great importance to the shaping of our personalities. Through extrapolation I will argue that music is of great importance tothe shaping of our culture. Currently, the preferred method for acquiring music is online; that is an undeniable fact. However, with themusic industry actively blocking the Australian consumer from accessto half decent online music services, what they are doing in effectis blocking cultural evolution.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say itagain: Current copyright legislation is heavily bent against theinterests of the vast majority of the public. We are the 99% plus suffering because of a tiny minority that decided to put us on a leash.

Image credits:
Until the End of the World soundtrack - Warner Bros. copyrights
Shlomo Artzi - TheCuriousGnome, Creative Commons license

The Newsletter

2011-10-23T22:45:00.002+11:00

I recently volunteered to work on the company newsletter at work. Everyone needs to start somewhere; today I'll write for the company newsletter, tomorrow I'll edit The Guardian kind of thing.
In the rush to publish our first edition I ended up writing a travel column about my own travels. I found the exercise quite interesting because I was essentially writing the same travel account as the one I wrote for this blog, only that I had to adapt my writing to my target audience. Instead of a no holds barred approach I had to write a politically correct piece (I'm sure some people will never believe I'm capable of that); instead of having as much space as I wanted I was limited to just a few paragraphs to make my statement on; and instead of my preferred mode of American English typing I had to use Australian/English English (e.g., catalogue instead of catalog).
You can find the results below. Before leaving you off, let me note I consider it interesting that despite all of the above "obstacles", the general message manages to stay the same. Our travels were a bitter sweet symphony:

My wife is English and I am from Israel, so we went for theobligatory family visits. That is, we showed the rest of our family the wondersof our four year old son. In between we stopped at Amsterdamand Singaporeso that we could actually have some fun. As can be expected when planning somuch and with so many people involved, we had our ups and downs.

At the UKwe enjoyed ourselves visiting the Lake District and then Wales, in particular South Wales. Both are spectacular, but as far as I could tell the latterlooks nothing like the New one. On the other hand, driving in the UK is lessthan spectacular: we found ourselves perpetually staring at the rear end ofevery slow moving tractor in the kingdom.

It’s been almost a decade since I visited mainland Europe,and the sights of Amsterdam’s classicattractions reminded me of stuff I miss living in Australia. Our son did have hismoment under the limelight, shouting “this is boring!” at the top of his voicewhile we were admiring Vermeer’s TheMilkmaid in the middle of the quiet but otherwise crowded Rijksmuseum. This was my first time at Amsterdam without payinga visit to the Red Light District – blame him!

Israel

it was good to see the family, my childhood friends, and all the food I grew upon (losing those extra kilos will take a while). It was also hot, to a levelthat severely subdued our enthusiasm to go outdoors. Hard to believe I used to regardthe heat as normal for the majority of my life.

Singapore

we were used to the heat but also tired and sick (my son’s asthma doesn’t likebeing on an airplane for too long). We stayed at a plush hotel, but it wasstill good to be back home and to return to work, where everything is quiet andpredictable. That is, more quiet and more predictable than a jet lagged fouryear old.

Image by FontShop, Creative Commons license

The Measuring of Success

2011-10-21T19:35:00.000+11:00

Office chitchat recently steered to one of its favoritetopics, the financial success of select society members. “Look at how muchmoney this guy is making” and all that jazz. I did my regular party poopermanoeuvre, broke the festive spirit, and pointed out relatively quickly that by my reckoningfinancial achievements are far from being a true measure of a person’s success.

What is the true measure of success, then?

The answer is complicated and I do not pretend to have it. Iconsider the answer derived out of the answer to questions regarding the meaning of life: themeaning of life is the meaning we give it. Extrapolating from that, my personalanswer to the success measure is that a person is successful if the personachieves an acceptable portion of the targets they pose themselves.

Take me, for example. I dedicate the majority of my wakefultime to work, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been passionate about my work.I feel a bit sad admitting it, but blogging made me realize my true passion iswriting; in particular I am passionate about writing about the subjects dearest tome, from books and films through social matters such as civil liberties in the virtual world. Note Ido not pretend to be a particularly good writer; I just love doing it. It feelslike some sort of a calling.

Writing my blogs, I am already satisfying my passion towriting. Some of my posts even earn hits by the thousands, which leads me tosuspect I can try to achieve more in the writing arena. The fact these posts tend todeal with matters of technology, and the fact I am an undeniable gadget freak,renders the picture clear: my true personal success measure, at least when itcomes to my professional life, would be to write periodically to a respectableIT/gadget forum. I don’t care about seeing much money out of this escapade; itis all from the heart.

[Warning: the following passage contains severe ass kissing]

At this point I will turn your attention to a person I knowvery little about, but a person with whom I suspect I share similar passions and aspirations.

There are plenty of Australian IT forums (for lack of abetter word), and I follow most of them on Twitter. However, there is only onethat I follow in my RSS feed, where I make sure not to miss a single feed. That select publication is Delimiter. The reason is simple: Delimiter has a no bullshitattitude. It won’t rush to publish the latest press release from a brandstarving for attention, and when it does publish something it doesn’t onlyrecite what the corporate PR departments pushed forward but adds itseditorial analysis. The fact is, I usually – if not always – agree with thatanalysis. The fact is also that I tend to arrive to the same conclusion as theeditor even before I read his words, which – given the above stated passions ofmine – did lead me to think that perhaps my future lies in working for apublication of a similar nature to Delimiter.

Delimiter is published by Renai LeMay, who – as far as I cantell but I could be totally wrong – established the website and is at the very center of its running. That makes LeMay a person I amquite jealous of: here is someone with similar professional aspirations tomine that was actually able to go out and fulfil his dream, big time. I fullyadmit: I lack the skills and the balls it takes to make one an entrepreneur alaLeMay.

I do, however, consider myself quite good at doing the hardwork once that initial spark has been lit. With that in mind I contacted LeMayvia Twitter; this led to that, and LeMay saidhe will be following my blog. As in, this blog.

Now I don’t know if he does, I don’t know if he’ll read thispost, and I don’t know whether he will think of this post as anything but acheap attempt by me to attract more of his attention. It doesn’t matter [who amI kidding? It matters a lot]; the point of this exercise was to point at aperson I consider successful. Not because he made a lot of money (I sort ofdoubt he’s drowning in it), but rather because he and I share the same dreambut he was able to take it much further than I have and much further than Iever will.

This brings me back to my definition of a successful personI opened this post with. I wrote that a person is “successful if the personachieves an acceptable portion of the targets they pose themselves”, and Iwould like to emphasize the use of the word acceptable.

As stated, for very down to earth reasons I will never beable to go as far as LeMay in my professionaldream fulfilment. It’s not only that I’m no entrepreneur, it also has a lot todo with me lacking the networking one acquires through living their entirelives in

Australia

and attending local high schools and universities. For that reason, what passesas acceptable for me is probably quite unacceptable for others.

Further reduction of my acceptable standards comes by virtueof the fact I am now a parent. My priorities are different: I don’t care forbeing a jet setting man of importance anymore; I want to spend time with myfamily. If you were to ask me what my chief priority in life is, the answer Iwould give you is the ability to spend more time with my family. That would be enough success by me!

I don’t want to see my son only when we get him ready forkinder, pick him up from kinder, have dinner together and put him to bed. I want toexperience life with him, otherwise what was the point of bringing a child tothe world with all the effort that endeavor takes in the first place?

The way I see it, the dream of having more quality time tospend with the family is entirely achievable. It’s achievable in two ways: Ican work part time or work for less hours each day, and I can reduce the timeit takes me to get to and back from work. Achievable on paper as my dream maybe, it hits some very solid walls: employers are quite reluctant to give up ontheir resources (i.e., employees), especially in the IT industry that is sofamous for longer than average working hours. Second, a reduction of mycommuting time to and from work looks highly unlikely given the abysmaltreatment Melbourne’spublic transport system has been receiving at the hands of consecutive stategovernments. There is the idea of working from home, but it does not seem as if my employer is in love with the idea of making that a normal practice.

Still, this is my personal path to success, and it will beeven more so when my son goes to school. I will not go down without a fight!

Image by HowardLake, Creative Commons license

Defending the Faith

2011-10-20T23:23:00.001+11:00

The subject of Christmas popped up at a recent officemeeting. Specifically, the politically correct question of whether we areallowed to refer to that particular day on our calendars as “Christmas” orwhether we should use some euphemism tailored so as not to offend the nonChristians. [Adequate disclosure: this non Christian could not give a fuck.] Oneparticipant opined that “of course we can [use the word Christmas], because Australia is aChristian country”.

Normally, such a statement would blow my fuses and boil myblood. This time, though, it couldn’t: the reality is that, officially at least, Australia stillis a Christian country. It’s a country where Christian prayers are said at thebeginning of each parliament session, a country where elected politicians gather ata church to celebrate the post elections dawn of a new parliament, and acountry where the head of state – in our case, the Queen of England – is alsolegally trusted with acting as its Defender of Faith. That is, she’s the headof the Church of England.

All of the above indicates there is plenty of room for Australia toimprove, but through the realization I am not living in the plural society Iwas hoping to live in came another thought.

I was generally under the assumption that those who want tokeep Australiain the clutches of British monarchy do so for primarily racial/xenophobicreasons. As in, “let us keep Anglo Saxonia Minor [i.e.,

Australia

] at our hands instead ofthose of that riffraff over there”. That is, people who are acting to preservetheir culture under the assumption that theirs is a superior one.

However, now it occurred to me there may be more to this.Religion is probably a big part of the equation: those looking to keep themonarchy are probably motivated by their perceived need to keep Christianity asthe dominant religion in Australiaat all cost. Even if that cost means pretending a daft* old Pom is our head ofstate.

*You may not consider Elizabethdaft, but you have to admit Charles has repeatedly and quite conclusivelyproven himself to be one.

Image by yewenyi, Creative Commons license

Bitter Sweet Symphony

2011-10-19T00:04:00.001+11:00

As far as I am concerned, our overseas trip is still ongoing even though it has been more than a month now since we returnedhome. I can confidently make this statement because I am still to process and post evenhalf the photos and videos we took on our way. On my way through the these I am finding ample room for contemplation, resulting in this post that offers a summary of my trip's highs and lows. To be more poetic, it summarizes the bitter sweet symphony that our trip was.

Let’s start with the highs. In chronological order,these were our trip experiences I’ve enjoyed the most:

Our visit to Walesstood out amongst our UKadventures. In particular, I was taken aback by the hospitality of my newlydiscovered Welsh family. We were pampered with good food, we were taken toguided tours, and most importantly – we were in the company of likely mindedpeople. One glimpse at their CD collection, so similar to ours, told the entirestory. Our four year old had a great time as well, enjoying being spoiled bymore family members than he ever thought he had; in particular, he enjoyedplaying with the local three year old, probably the best cooperative play he’shad during our trip.

Next in the highlights is Amsterdam,representing my first proper tour of mainland Europefor close to a decade. Despite the first few hours of disorientation I enjoyedthe Dutch experience a lot: the classic nature of everything, the excellentpublic transport, the canals, the food, the good natured locals – many of themthings missing from Australia.

Special mention should go to Amsterdam’s bicycle riders. Melbourneclaims to be a bike city, but I say that total bullshit and Amsterdam explains exactly why. Everyone,from children to pensioners, rides bicycles in Amsterdam. They ride them in rain or shine,they ride them in dedicated lanes separated from car traffic, they ride themwhile eating/drinking/smoking/talking over the phone/SMSing, they mostly ride cheap but comfortable uprightbikes, and they respect the rest of the public while the rest of the publicrespects them. Now compare that to Melbourne,where riding a bicycle means a death wish, where you have to wear Lycra uniformand ride the latest carbon fiber frame to be counted. Which of the two cities' bicycle cultures can claim to be truly ingrained?

Back when I toured Amsterdamas an Israeli I remember thinking how this could be a place I would be happy tolive at. The thought occurred to me as we were walking around, yet now itseemed Australiais a clear winner – if only because of the ferociousness of European winter.Mind you, now that we’re back home I might change my mind…

My last highlight was

Israel

. No, it cannot be said thatI like Israelmuch, but it has to be said my Israeli friends made substantial efforts to makeus enjoy our time there. They succeeded: I thoroughly enjoyed my time withthem. Our mutual exploitations are planned to feature on a future post, but Ihave to talk about my personal highlight of highlights: my three school friendsand I cramming together into one car for a short drive to the supermarket toget some Coke. For a short while I thought I was in a time machine taking metwenty years back. I truly miss their company, and I value it much more than going to see the latest attraction.

Our four year old’s highlight came that same day, too. Theproperty our friends rented us for the night had him in a room with his own TV opposite his bed – out of which he didn’t want to come out! Then there was thehuge Jacuzzi bath all three of us shared with the TV right in front. Thefour year old was in heaven - a TV bath!

One cannot expect to have a month long period withoutdisappointments, and indeed we had our share. As far as I am concerned, theEnglish part of our holiday was disappointing for reasons thoroughly discussedhere, here and here; it’s not often that events scar me as much as thisone did. There were multiple other lows to our English visit, albeit of significantly lessintensity; I do not see the point in me getting a divorce from my [English]wife over me reciting those in this forum.

At the personal level, Israel was my biggestdisappointment of this trip. My stated purpose with visiting Israel was to spend quality time in

Israel

,given my parents’ old age and the inconvenient truth of me not knowing how manymore time I will get to see them. Yet my parents could not avoid giving theimpression they weren’t as interested in mutual quality time as I am,preferring the usual company of their TV sets to spend an evening with.

In general, most of our suggestions for shared activitieswere answered negatively. An incident that proves the point took place oneafternoon, when my hungry self suggested we go for a classic Israeli lunch at arestaurant called Skewers of Hope; it's nothing special, but you know what you’regetting. My father countered, insisting that Meeting of the Steak is a betterlunch destination despite my clear (albeit decade old) memories telling me theopposite. Eventually I surrendered and agreed to go to this Meeting of theSteak, at which point my parents said they don’t want to go anywhere becausethey’re not hungry. They sure can argue, though.

In general, my parents were blaming me for not teaching myson Hebrew, thus depriving them of their ability to communicate with theirgrandson. The fact my friends’ children could easily and very successfully playwith my son despite their lack of English and his lack of Hebrew proved theproblem was entirely in my parents’ head. When they did try to approach my fouryear old they often treated him like a baby, something he disliked for obviousreasons. On the positive side, things have greatly improved since our visitwith my parents’ iPad assuming a pivotal role in getting my son acquainted withhis Israeli grandparents, as I have discussed here. That said, I could notavoid leaving

Israel

with a bitter taste in my mouth.

The third and last of our lowlights is to do with ourwellbeing. As with previous expedition to Israel, the heat got to us and oneof our stomachs suffered. That’s a major issue given the importance gastronomicpleasures have when one’s travelling is limited by children. Then, as with ourprevious expedition to Singapore,our boy’s asthma started playing up and our activities were severely limited.

One can tend to forgive the lowlights if one’s homecoming isnice and the ending has a sweet taste. Alas, it didn't.

Landing at Melbourne,we were greeted by huge queues at passport control. God have mercy on the soulsof those with no Aussie passports, for their queues were forbiddingly long. Allthe while you’re surrounded by signs telling you that because of some law from1920 or so you’re not allowed to use your phone while waiting. What’s goingon, are we home or at a concentration camp? I tweeted like there's no tomorrow.

The fun continued through the queue for quarantine, whichwas so long it snaked around the luggage pickup stations. Finally, upon ourrelease from the clutches of the terminal, we were gritted by our trip’s finalbill: $100 taxi fare to take us home, courtesy of consecutive Victoriangovernments making sure Melbourneis the only developed city in the world with no rail service to its airport.

Welcome home!

Couch Potatoes Are Thinner

2011-10-16T22:14:00.000+11:00

I seem to be losing the weight lossbattle.

I put on some 3 kilos on during my recentround the world travelling expedition. That was to be expected: I was forced to survive English food by stuffing myself with chocolates,ice cream and pistachios instead, while in Israel I made sure I ate as muchas I can and as often as I can from all the local foods I miss so much at Australia.

Upon returning home to Australia Iimmediately started taking steps towards getting rid of those extra pounds offlesh. Through circumstances I shall discuss in another post I tookon exercising; the trick is, since I’ve started exercising Iactually put 2 extra kilos on.

How can that be?

That’s simple. After exercising I amso hungry I feel I can eat an entire cow. Sadly, I don’t have cowsgrazing my backyard; what I do have are cupboards full of food(and a fridge!), which I raid like there's no tomorrow. As the scales clearlyindicate, I eat much more than I burn off!

It sounds illogical, but my problem isnot as unique as it may sound. You can read what The Guardian andresearch had to say about it here, but if you’re interested in thebottom line then you should be aware the indication is thatexercising hardly ever reduces weight. Usually it actually achieves the opposite. I can therefore use the opportunity to rave about the benefits of a life devoid of physical effort, given my expertise in this subject matter, but for sincerity's sake I will conclude by saying it seems the best way to reduce weight is to simply eat less.

That, however, proves a bit too hardfor me. Much harder than exercising.

Image by kevin dooley, Creative Commons license

Take Your Time

2011-10-15T22:04:00.000+11:00

This Friday our four year old jeweldecided to get out of his bed and enter our bed at the lovely time offive (AM!), bringing a collection of his favorite toy airplanes withhim.

Despite severe urging and us graduallyconfiscating said airplanes, our pride and joy would not let uscontinue our sleep. That is, until the time for us to get up for workhas arrived: when that happened, he quickly pulled the blanket overhim and went to sleep. As usual, pulling him out of bed and gettinghim ready for childcare was one of those stressful experiences allparents, but only parents, are so experienced with.

The lesson to the rest of you innocenthumans out there, potentially considering bringing children to thisworld: take your time. Take. Your. Time.

Image by sean dreilinger, Creative Commons license

Musical Chairs

2011-10-14T23:16:00.002+11:00

A couple of weeks ago I read CoryDoctorow’s review of Ry Cooder’s latest album. That night Ilistened to the entire album through Spotify.
Last week we read a review in The Ageof a new Jim Henson (of Muppets’ fame) tribute album, The GreenAlbum. I can’t find a link to the review but you can read moreabout the album and its contents here. What I can say is that welistened to the album in its entirety on the same day we read thereview, and we did it through Spotify.
Yesterday I read on Twitter aboutWilliam Shatner’s newly released album, Seeking Major Tom.Yesterday evening we listened to the album in its entirety throughSpotify.

Do you detect a theme here? Yes, I dotoo. The theme is that us Aussies are getting SO S-C-R-E-W-E-D by themusic labels it’s not funny.

While the American and British consumercan listen to any music they feel like through services such asSpotify, the musical powers that be are preventing us from achieving the samefeat. I don’t know what exactly it is the labels are expecting usto do (buy plastic CDs?), but they’re definitely putting themselvesin a position where they cry wolf over piracy yet refuse to sell usthe product we really want.

As for me: Yes, I do get to use Spotifydespite its lack of availability for our Lucky Country users. I do so byusing VPN. However, instead of being able to pay Spotify for itsPremium service I am so longing for, my money is going to the coffersof the VPN providers that let me listen to Spotify’s limited but freeservice. Where is the sense with that? I don’t know, but do feelfree to refer the question to those controlling Australia’s musicindustry.

Copyrighted image: William Shatner's new album, Seeking Major Tom

School Uniformed

2011-10-12T23:11:00.000+11:00

There can be no doubt that school uniform can save a parent’s sanity. Yet as much as I value my sanity, I am about to dedicate this post to the conclusion that school uniforms are, overall, bad for us all in the sense they damage society as a whole.

The benefits of school uniform are obvious: there is no need to wonder what the child should wear in the morning, just as there is no need to buy the child the latest trending and expensive fashion-ware just so he/she can feel they are truly their peers’ peer. Potentially, a lot of money can be saved there while us parents can feel good about the equalizing / class leveling effect the uniform has on our kids' class.

However, I am of the opinion that money is not the most important thing in life (assuming one has enough to live comfortably by). Just as I think money is generally overrated, I think that the potential cost savings derived from school uniforms are a fine example for the way it is overrated. That is because having an open minded, free to think society, is a very worthwhile alternative to having a bit more money in the pocket. As for class leveling? There will always be the kids with the latest iPhone and the kids stuck with Nokia bricks.

One of the things that shocked me upon migrating from Israel to Australia was the matter of school uniforms. I’m still amazed at the sight of kids wearing suits and ties to school, or of girls wearing a hat that was the height of fashion back in the 18^th century, together with a skirt no sane person would ever dream of wearing, all on a very cold day. Private schools seem like the main status symbol differentiating parents in Australia, yet the more prestigious the school the more restrictive and old fashioned its uniforms are. Odd.

Odd, because growing up in Israel I had very mild school uniforms: they came in the shape of a t-shirt with the school logo which I only had to wear for PE classes. Still, by now I got used to the state of things in Australia, and seeing a child wearing a suit to school doesn’t phase me much anymore.

At least until The Guardian started making me aware of them again.

My journey towards utter contempt for school uniforms started recently. I was visiting the UK and I got to read this Guardian article on school uniforms, published ahead of the beginning of the British school year. It reminded me of those old uncomfortable feelings I had with the strict school uniform codes imposed in Australia, and it also reminded me that in a bit more than a year my own son would have to start wearing those damn things.

A day or two later, The Guardian had readers’ letters published in relation to their article. One letter in particular grabbed my attention. Written by Peter James, who describes himself as a former head of a primary school, the letter states the following: “Uniforms induce uniform behaviour and are a control system”.

That was the hammer that hit the nail for me. After all, why did I have to suffer through four years of strict uniform code in the army if it wasn’t for the army’s obvious intention to keep me subdued and to keep me following orders? What else could be the purpose of school uniform, especially in their British like strict fashion, other than subduing children’s free spirits? After all, it is no coincidence that we had to wait for a British band to state aloud that “we don’t need no education”.

Shortly after the UK we visited Israel, where my nephew reminded me of the lightness of Israeli school uniform: his uniform set was in the shape of a collection of differently colored t-shirts, one of which had to be worn to school on designated days. Still a control system tool, but nothing as subduing as the British/Aussie model.

Today I got to read an article discussing Dutch [footballer] striker Dennis Bergkamp, probably my dearest sports person ever, and his current post retirement adventures. In the article Bergkamp gets to discuss his and his family's move back to their Netherlands origins after more than a decade as Londoners. One of the things he mentions was his inability to accept the lightness of Dutch school uniform codes following him getting used to the strict English system. Bergkamp's experience made me ask myself whether the Dutch raise dumb children? As far as I could tell, on the basis of me recently visiting the Netherlands in between the UK and Israel, the Dutch seem to be fairly nice people. It definitely did not feel as if they were in any way less intellectually capable than their British counterparts across the channel; if anything, they were all multilingual, unlike the typical Brit.

The question therefore remains. Why are we doing this? Why are we pushing our own children through the meat grinder of a strict school uniform system, knowing fully well that as we’re doing it we’re taking something away from them? Every parent will tell you their kids are the most important thing to them in the world, yet something very precious, the children's ability to establish a bit of an independent identity through their clothing, is robbed away from them in broad daylight.

There are lots of things Australia inherited from its British parent nation. School uniforms should not be in that list.

Image by PinkBallerina2008, Creative Commons license

Internet Anonymity

2011-10-10T20:37:00.000+11:00

True to their name, TorrentFreak haspublished an article worth the weight of the servers hosting it ingold: an article explaining to everyone out there, especially the nongeeks, where to go to if they would like to keep themselves anonymouswhile using the Internet. To be more specific, the article comparesdifferent providers of VPN services and discusses their approach to maintaining their users' anonymity.

You can read the article here. The restof my post represents my attempt to explain the importance ofTorrentFreak’s article.

First, what is a VPN, or Virtual Private Network?

You can look at a VPN as a securetunnel connecting your computer (or smartphone, or tablet) to the servers of the company providing your VPN services. Whatever passes through that tunnel isencrypted in a manner that makes it impractical for anyone to knowwhat passes through the tunnel. No one, not even your ISP, knows whatgoes on in there; all they can see is encrypted traffic travellingbetween you and the VPN provider.

Traffic going out of the VPN providerand towards its final destination, say – the Amazon USA website you want to buy a book from –will appear to Amazon as if it originated from the VPN server and notfrom where you, the end user, are physically located.

Combine the two together, the encryptedtunnel and your new virtual ID, and you can derive what VPN servicesare good for. For commercial use they represent a good way to keepemployees talking to company servers in a secure manner withoutletting others eavesdrop; but for personal users they allow thefollowing:

Inability for others to eavesdrop onyou Internet activities: Let’s say you’re travelling and you’reusing an open wifi network this coffee shop you’re currentlyeating at provides. Using a good VPN service would ensure none of your diningneighbors are able to snoop your Internet banking password as you surf.
Ability to change nationalities: To therest of the world, a VPN user appears to come from the country wherethe VPN server resides. Let us say you’re an Australian and you’reusing the services of an American VPN: through those services youwould be able to enjoy Internet services that are otherwise open toAmericans only. Say, being able to buy Amazon Kindle books from thehuge catalog available to Americans, compared to the measly one onoffer for Aussies; being able to watch the latest TV shows on Hulu;or enjoying Spotify’s vast music library. Use a British VPN serverinstead and you’d open the BBC’s vaults instead. Alternatively, Aussie expats can acquire the services of an Australian VPN server, which would allow them to watch their favorite ABC programs on iView.
In short, withVPN you can unlock many virtual options currently blocked through forno other reason than nationality. And you thought we live in aglobalized world!
Ability to bypass filters: Using VPN services from other countries lets you easily bypass any filters imposed by your ISP or by your government on your Internet surfing. Remember Stephen Conroy great big filter? Well, with VPN at hand you can forget all about it.
Ability to maintain anonymity:Whatever you do over the Internet while connected to a VPN serviceappears to that rest of the world as if it is coming from the VPNservice. No one, other than the VPN provider, knows anything aboutyou, the person on the other side of the VPN tunnel. In effect, you are anonymous. That’s great if you live in acountry that subdues free speech; it is also great if you’re intothings like bit-torrent.

That's all great, but is there a catch? Of course there is. Just ask the LulzSec guy who isalleged to have broken into the Sony network and stole my personaldetails as well as those of seventy million others (see here).

The guy, Cody Kretsinger, is said tohave used the aptly named VPN service HideMyAss to perform histrickery. Only that when the FBI identified the hacking came fromHideMyAss they subpoenaed the VPN service for the hacker’s info.They got it, and now Kretsinger is under arrest. What has happenedthere? Where was Kretsinger’s promised anonymity, given his use ofVPN?

It turns out Kretsinger wasn’t trulyanonymous. To the rest of the world, he was; but not to HideMyAss,who kept logs of all his Internet activities. And when pressedagainst the wall, HideMyAss had no option but to forward thatinformation to the authorities.

This is where TorrentFreak enters thepicture. They called on all VPN providers and asked themto disclose what their privacy policies are. In particular, do theykeep logs of their users’ activities? If they don’t then theydon’t have anything to hand over to the FBI when they knock on thedoor asking for usage records, meaning the VPN provider's end users are anonymous.

The results of TorrentFreak's survey arepublished in the article I would link to yet again – here. Read itto see how you can be anonymous, too. After all, given that thethreat of litigation against Australians bit-torrent downloaders isin the air (see here), web anonymity is well worth keeping to many ofus.

I do feel the need to add that not allVPN providers are alike. As in, there are many things to considerwhen choosing your VPN provider other than whether they would turnyou to the FBI or not. After all, throughout recorded history there was only one case where a user has been turned in by their provider; never was there anyone turned over by aVPN provider for, say, downloading a newly released movie viabit-torrent.

Take two VPN providers as an example, both of which allow bit-torrent traffic to pass through their servers:BTGuard, which promises never to collect its users’ logs, andStrongVPN, which promises to always log them and advocates the use of its services for legal services alone. First, allow me to point a finger at StrongVPN,a company that supplies a service knowing it would be used tocircumvent various laws (including those that prevent Aussies fromusing Hulu, for example), and then pretending to be law abiding when it comes to copyright laws. We can argue whether StongVPN is two faced or not some other time.

Second, I would like to point atthe fact that StrongVPN offers much higher bandwidths and an overallbetter quality connection than BTGuard. StrongVPN also offers cheaper VPNoptions, and StrongVPN lets you choose the countries whereyour VPN server is located (say, the UK today, so you can watch the latestDr Who episode off the BBC website, or the USA tomorrow, so you can watch stuff on Hulu). In contrast, BTGuard does not let youchoose your country, and its servers are located in less attractive countries (atleast to this user).

The point this post is trying to make is that:

There is a lot of benefit to be had out of using VPN services.
Not all VPN services are created the same.
Most importantly, choose your VPNprovider wisely. TorrentFreak’s great service was in allowing uslaymen to be able to choose the best VPN service for our needsdespite all the unintelligible small letters in the user agreements and privacy statements. For that I thank them a whole lot.

Image by loppsilol, Creative Commons license

On Father Figures

2011-10-06T22:17:00.000+11:00

There was a point in time, several decades ago, when itbecame clear our Atari 2600 has been fully digested and the time has come forme to have that latest gizmo out there, the personal computer.

What followed next probably qualifies as some of the best qualitytime I ever had with my father, along with him teaching me how to ride a bikeand him taking me to Tel Aviv’s Book Week (and buying me some of the latestsci-fi releases): My father and I paid many computer shops a visit, trying todetermine where his money should go and which computer would serve me best.

We looked at many. We looked at the Texas Instruments, TandyTRS-80, BBC, Sinclair, Commodore, Ataris – you name it. At several points wewere close to buying any of the above. However, the computer shop visit I bestremember was the Apple one, then located at Tel Aviv’s then prestigious Dizingof Center. The Apple II we saw there was byfar the best and most capable computer out there: it even came with a floppydisk drive by default at a time where everything else used cassette tapes. Italso had a very good version of the Basic programming language, allowing me toplay with it more than, say, the Commodore 64 that relied way too heavily onPoke and Peek commands.

But the Apple II was also the dearest of the lot, and by awide margin. So we didn’t buy it; eventually, we compromised on the Dragon 32.Not half as capable, cassette reliant, but equipped with very good Basic – thelatest (second) version of Microsoft Basic, come to think of it.

On a day in which everyone is discussing Steve Jobs and hiseffect on their lives, my contribution is as follows. Jobs, and his fellowApple cofounders, did have an effect on my life: their effect was achieved by them regularly releasing the most usable pieces of computer hardware out there, whilealways making sure their asking price was much more than I could afford. I alwayscoveted their hardware, but I always had to settle for the imitations – mostnotably the ones from Microsoft – instead. Apple still had a measurable effecton me: by forcing Microsoft to lift its game Apple allowed me to enjoy bettercomputers overall.

The phenomenon continues to this day. Apple effectivelyinvented the tablet and is pulling the whole market behind. I got myself acheap el-crapo tablet which would have never existed if it wasn’t for the iPad.Before that I had myself a crap Toshiba MP3 player which would have neverexisted if it wasn’t for the iPod. Today I have my eye open for the soon toarrive ultra notebooks, which are – in effect – the commoners’ version of theMacBook Air.
The only time I let Jobs truly enter my life was when I got so sick and tired of Gates’ mobile offerings that I was willing to open my wallet wide (very wide) to get myself an iPhone. That had allowed me to experience Jobs’ ability to revolutionize life as we know it firsthand: I bitch and moan about the limitations Jobs still imposes over his/my phone, but I cannot deny the significant effect that having a portable version of the Internet on me 24/7 has had.

Together with Bill Gates, Jobs is probably the only personwhose identity is totally synonymous with the company he led. Both are/were relics of a dinosaur era.
Death is always sad. As much as I disliked the Jobs/Applecult, it is even sadder to lose a person that managed to revolutionize theworld of personal technology for the whole of humanity on multiple occasionsduring the last three or so decades. How many potential revolutions are therest of us going to miss now that Steve Jobs has gone the way of the dinosaurs?

Image by tsevis, Creative Commons license

Historic Day

2011-10-04T23:42:00.000+11:00

Let history remember that today was the day my four year old son received his first ever explanation on evolution's course, and that the explanation came in the shape of the following clip from Carl Sagan's Cosmos:

Let the record also show Spotify is to blame for us getting to matters of evolution. We were listening to my favorite Vangelis tune, Alpha, when my son commented how boring it is; in retaliation I had to show him exactly why that music carries so much weight with me. Hence Cosmos.
By the way, over the last couple of days we have been discussing what metals are and where they come from (supernovas), compared to what plastics are and where these come from. I got to the point where explaining about the nature of the atom and how one element differs from the other seems the natural way to progress the discussion. Not that my four year old understands too much; I consider the general exposure the most important thing. Plus it's fun: it's fun to hear the questions and it's even more fun to think the answers up and try to present them in a comprehensible manner.

Australia Joining the Club

2011-10-03T20:29:00.003+11:00

File this under breaking news, literally: According toDelimiter,

Australia

is about to join the prestigious club of countries where copyright holders arefiling mass pretend law suits against collections of IP addresses from whichthey allege their contents was downloaded via bit-torrent.

The massive lawsuit phenomenon has been going on for years now in countrieslike the UK but especiallyin the USA.It works this way:

The copyright holder, usually a porn company or a frustrated movie studio, decides they need the extra cash. They contact an external company specializing in bit-torrent lawsuits.
That company, usually a small time company that calls itself a law firm, uses the services of another technology company to collect the IP addresses from where their contents is being downloaded via bit-torrent. That information is rather easy to collect: all they need to do is take part in the peer to peer action themselves (that is, join the downloading).
With the IP addresses at hand, they can now contact the ISPs in charge of these addresses and ask for the personal details of the real people or companies behind them.
Currently, there is nothing that forces the ISPs to comply with providing the details. It actually takes a lot of effort for the ISPs to comply. It therefore looks like the copyright holders are planning to provide the ISPs with some incentive to forward user details.
The company running the show can now use another law firm to send threatening letters to the alleged downloaders, asking them to pay a settlement fee (the USA average is $3000) or go to court.
At this point the alleged downloader is expected to pay, giving the copyright holder their extra cash.

For the moment I will ignore the issue of whetherallegations based on an IP address are meaningful (e.g., lots of different people can usea single wifi network, especially at an office or a library and especially as it isperfectly legal to run an open, non encrypted, wifi network); that is a matterfor the courts to decide. Another matter that should be in the courts' court is the ongoing lawsuit filed by American copyright stakeholders against iiNet and its effect on ISPs' behavior. What I do want to point out is that this whole mass lawsuit affairis not designed to ensure justice is done, but rather as an additional revenuestream.

The companies behind the threat letters do not want to go tocourt. All they want is to threaten people enough to scare them into paying thesettlement fee, a fee that is significantly lower than the cost of defendingoneself at court and winning. Cases that do get to court tend to stagnate therefor years, and as far as I know other than lawyers hardly anyone gets to see actual money out ofthem (if at all). In other words, these companies abuse a shortcoming of ourjustice system – that is, the extreme cost of defending oneself at court, includingjustifiably defending oneself at court – in order to make money. In other words,we are dealing here with leeches.

If you are after further evidence for the leech factor lookno further than the guise of secrecy behind the process. The companies dealingwith the lawsuits like to keep themselves in secrecy and maintain the processes throughwhich they acquire IP addresses and personal details from ISPs quietly behind closed doors.However, they have no secretive inhibitions when it comes to holding theprivate information of the real people behind the IP addresses.

While none of the discussion thus far is unique to Australia, there is something in Australia thatmakes these mass threat letters campaigns worse than in other countries. Australiaseverely lacks legal alternatives to bit-torrent piracy: movie releases areseverely staggered here, both at the cinemas and upon DVD or Blu-ray release;and facilities for legal downloads are incredibly rare and usually nonexistent. There is no Netflix equivalent service for videos here, nor is therea Spotify or a Rhapsody for music.

What can one do about this threat of receiving potentially legal extortion letters?

It is extremely hard to avoid all forms of copyrightinfringements. As discussed here in the past, each time you forward an email without asking for the explicitright to do so you are breaching copyrights; the fact of the matter is,copyright legislation is so twisted and convoluted, especially in the directionof the powerful copyright lobbies, that you can only try to reduce the risk ofbeing picked upon.

The easiest answer to the above question of threat mitigation is to stoppirating. Now, before you go on saying “well that’s bloody obvious”, pleaseconsider the repeated surveys that indicate around a third of Australia’s adultpopulation openly admits to having illegally downloaded material off the Internet. Lookaround you: many if not most of the people you see have committed Internetpiracy. The majority of the rest of them probably settle for buying illegitimate DVDs during their lastholiday to Bali.

The more complicated answer is to stop downloading newlyreleased films and porn, the two areas where the majority of the threat lettercampaigns come from. There are also the various options of keeping oneselfdownloading under relative anonymity (e.g., the use of various proxy servers orVPN services).

Then again, quitting your Internet piracy now or hiding yourpersonal trail would still be exposed for downloads you’ve made in the past.

If you do get a threat letter, I would advise contacting EFA(Electronic Frontiers Australia) and EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). EFF has a reputation of helping people out in such circumstances, andalthough American based they may like to prevent nasty precedents in

Australia; EFA has local know-how.

What should you do even if you do not receive a threat letter?Well, you could consider joining EFA and/or EFF and support the causes theystand for. To quote from EFF, you should "champion the public interest in every criticalbattle affecting digital rights".

Image by orangeek, Creative Commons license