michaelwyres.com.au | musings of a geek

When The Same Thing Has Two Meanings

In reading about today’s sentencing of the complete dimwit who accepted the keys to a Ferrari F430 Spider – (that was not his) – from a valet parking attendant from Melbourne’s Crown Casino in May this year, I found an interesting comparison between the two major newspaper outlets in Melbourne.

From this article from The Age, the culprit was found guilty, and “jailed”.

From this Herald Sun article, the same culprit was found guilty, but “not jailed”.

So which is it, was he jailed, or was he not jailed? Technically, he was. He was jailed for four months, to be served concurrently with an existing 35-month sentence for an unrelated matter – so he’ll serve no additional time. Interesting that the same result can be interpreted in two completely different ways!

No Place for Short Sightedness Over NBN

There has been much press over the weekend over former federal opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull’s opposition to the forthcoming National Broadband Network (NBN), a network which has already commenced rollout in Tasmania (via a pilot site), and is preparing for the rollout of pilot sites in a number of mainland locations.

Turnbull has labelled the network as “dangerous and a “potential white elephant”.

While there are many potential pitfalls, I feel that what Turnbull does not understand – (or at least show that he understands for the purposes of political point scoring) – is that the NBN will not operate under a “normal” business model.

People who are in any way thinking the network needs to recoup its oft-proported pricetag of $43B back quickly, is kidding themselves. The life of the NBN will be measured in decades, and the fibre being laid has already been show in the laboratory to be capable of delivering much higher speeds than the proposed 100Mbit barrier of the NBN. The NBN in its initial form, would therefore be barely pushing what it could be ultimately capable of.

Once operational, absolutely the NBN needs to be profitable – but we need to ignore the setup costs – (whatever they turn out to be) – for a moment, so we can look at the picture in a bit more of a wide-ranging way. The NBN is not just about internet. People need to start separating the concept of “broadband” and “internet” – they are not the same, and should not be considered the same. Many more kinds of services will be available over the NBN, many of which haven’t even been dreamed up yet.

We build multi-million and billion dollar freeway infrastructure in this country, without any case for the “money” to be returned. The “return” is the increased economic activity that will be supported by the existence of those freeways over the life of that infrastructure. This can also be equally said of rail infrastructure. You build a $300M ring road around a city to bring more than $300M of increased economic activity to the region that ring road supports over it’s lifetime. Obviously there are maintenance factors, but that’s all factored into the equation too.

The NBN is a freeway, and nobody disputes that $43B is a very large amount of money. The question is, over its lifetime, will the NBN provide more than $43B of benefit to the Australian economy? In my opinion, absolutely.

The cost advantages for S2S (site-to-site) and B2B (business-to-business) connectivity using the NBN in lieu of existing options will take care of a lot of that value all by itself. Inter-capital bandwidth in Australia is ridiculously expensive by world standards. The mere SAVING of money that business would be otherwise spending on overpriced and outdated inter-capital connectivity, can be directly injected into other areas of the economy, such as research and development – and this is only one example. There are also many potential flow on benefits.

For example, large numbers of people for whom telecommuting would not have been a consideration in the past will suddenly be presented this as a potential and viable option. Many more people working from home, for even a few days each week, leads to there being less people driving on the road. This leads to obvious environmental benefits, lower road maintenance costs, and the takng off of pressure from already crowded and failing public transport systems.

If people are not on the roads as much, there are less accidents, and therefore less road trauma, and in turn this reduces costs for the struggling health system in this country. Less accidents mean less pressure on both automotive and health insurance premiums. I’m sure there are many other ways you could extrapolate the very existence of the NBN to effects on other parts of the economy.

With the NBN you absolutely have to look outside the normal “box” of thinking. In the old Australian economy, the NBN is ridiculous, but in the new Australian economy the NBN would allow to be created, it will be crucial. If we do not transform our economy away from one that relies on the “sheep’s back” as it is often described, we will slip so far behind when every other country does this, that we’ll be absolutely nowhere.

At Least He Didn’t Fall Into a Colon!

With absolutely no desire to be flippant in regards to the death of this chap, one must point out the rather unfortunate typo from this Geelong Advertiser article:

At least it was a comma, and not a colon or a full stop!

ACL Certainly Loves Censorship

With an apparent but cautious victory for common sense in the mandatory internet filtering debate, which will likely see the death of this ludicrous proposal, it is interesting that both the Australian Labor Party themselves, and the Australian Christian Lobby – the main proponents of this legislation outside of the government – still believe that they can achieve the introduction of the policy. This despite the apparent impossible numbers the legislation seems very likely to face in the Senate.

It seems that no matter what, they insist that they are right, and that the anti-filter movement is wrong. In fact, they believe in censorship so much, that they are clearly being extremely heavy handed with the moderation of comments on the above article.

I posted a comment at 11:08am – more than an hour before the currently first visible comment – that appears to have annoyed them enough not to approve. Here is what I commented:

“Actually, ACL, do you know what is incomprehensible? It is your complete inability to understand that people in the electorate DO NOT WANT this filter. This is not about your beliefs, it is not about those of Labor, or Senator Conroy. It is about what people want. Unlike yourselves and the ALP, the Greens, the Coalition and Nick Xenophon have ACTUALLY listened to the people. Sorry, but that’s democracy.”

For the ACL to attack the Coalition for taking a position on the policy as “incomprehensible”, it is certainly a bit sour for them to censor out my comment for labelling their position as “incomprehensible”. Clearly, they do not like a little hard and fast truth over there at the ACL.

It is certainly time to stop censoring political speech – something both the ACL and Labor are at pains to suggest should be protected. I don’t care that they choose to censor my comment, because I have my own outlet – right here.

I’m sorry ACL, but you have tried to silence the masses, but the masses have spoken. The Greens, the Coalition, and independent Senator Nick Xenophon have listened.

Maybe it is time for you to listen as well, and read the writing on the wall. The legislation is still-born. It’s time to let it go. I am a parent, and I will decide what my child can and cannot see online. Not you. Or anyone else.

More V/Line Pointlessness

Doing a quick scan of my Twitter feed last night before snuggling down into bed, I read the following tweet from the “often absent” V/Line “information” account, “@vlineinform”.

I mean, what is the bloody point? At 21:29 you “anticipate” that the 21:05 will be 15 minutes late? I mean seriously, what?

It either left nine minutes ago, or it will be more than 15 minutes late!

V/Line Band Aids

Last Tuesday evening, V/Line’s newest, shiniest V/Locity DMU was stopped for almost 30 minutes at Spotswood station, operating service number 8229, otherwise known as the 16:40 Southern Cross to Marshall. Passengers were told that the new unit – (running at the front of the three unit consist) – had become “uncoupled” from the two rearward units. Passengers near the driver’s cabin – (like myself) – could actually hear the radio chatter between driver, conductor, V/Line, and the Metrol control room. This revealed that the pneumatic line interconnecting between each unit to operate the brakes was the offending item that had become uncoupled.

Excellent – basically, a braking failure. On a brand new train.

Last night, the same brand new unit, scheduled to operate the exact same 8229 service, was declared defective, and pulled away from the other units at the platform, while another unit was sourced. The train therefore firstly became a late departure, and then an outright cancellation when a signal failure prevented all rail access to and from platforms 4 through 7. It was replaced with buses, with many passengers leaving Southern Cross around 50 minutes late.

The brand new unit in question is VL42, which entered service on the 23rd of July – less than two weeks ago. A two week old train, breaking down two nights in a row.

Victorian taxpayers spent almost one billion dollars and endured months of disruptions while these trains and the Regional Fast Rail project were delivered. That’s a lot of money for brand new trains that are breaking down left, right, and centre.

This morning, I travelled on service 8214 – (07:17 South Geelong to Southern Cross) – made up of a consist that contained VL33 as the front-most unit. VL33 is four years old, but returned to the factory in February this year to have its middle carriage added. One presumes it was inspected and serviced at that time.

I guess I was a little disturbed when I saw this at the rear of carriage 1133:

Sticky tape? Holding a wall panel on? I can appreciate that someone has tried to keep the train in service by doing a quick repair, but sticky tape?

Why are simple structural items like wall panels – on relatively new trains – even falling off at all? I for one, want to know where the one billion dollars went! Constantly failing trains. Constantly failing infrastructure.

Filtering Not Mandatory – Sometimes

As we all know, Senator Stephen Conroy, through the auspices of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) wishes to mandatorily filter the internet for “bad stuff”, removing a person’s right to choose whether they can access certain “bad stuff” or not.

It certainly removes the responsibility for the protection of children from such material from parents – which is where the responsibility should lie, and applies a definition of “bad stuff” that many in the community are divided upon.

Conroy has categorically stated that there will be no “opt-in/opt-out” provisions in the legislation that will eventually be presented to parliament – particularly with his remarkable “I’m not opting in on child porn” comment. As far as he is concerned, the filter will be mandatory, and there will be no democratic right for people to either opt-in or opt-out of the infrastructure.

No room to move. Whatsoever. Or is there? I read the following article with interest:

Interestingly, ACMA themselves are stating that these parental locks in new television equipment will be “mandatory”, giving parents the “option” of restricting viewing choices for children – certainly a strange choice of language in itself. While these “parental locks” are not necessarily a bad thing – (they should be called “child locks” though) – one quote in particular disturbs me:

“Viewers who don’t wish to utilise it will not be affected.”

Yet people who do not wish to have their internet connections filtered – and remember that the internet filter proposed will be blocking completely legal material in many instances – will have no choice but to accept the will of ACMA and Labor’s mandatory internet filtering plan, applying an already flawed classification system upon a dynamic and constantly changing medium such as the internet.

Granted that the kind material that can be found on the internet is far more wide-ranging, and difficult to classify than content approved or disapproved to be shown on television, but the simple point remains here. Mandatory television locks, optional to use. Mandatory internet locks, mandatory to use.

Two completely separate policies, both designed to protect children from “bad stuff”, but with completely different implications.

Should we now relax the broadcasting regulations and allow R-rated and X-rated content to be shown on television? With the parental locks on televisions, children should be protected from it, right? Adults wishing to view it can choose to do so. Of course, that won’t happen – the man still wishes to protect us from ourselves.

Reeking much of a double standard?

UPDATE: This article has been republished with permission over at Delimiter.com.au.

Workplace Toilet Humour

I was taking “advantage of the conveniences” at work this morning, and took great humour at the attempt by building management to reinforce a “don’t come to work if you are sick” message. Admirable.

I love the suggestion that I should not come to work if I am feeling “tiredness”. I’d never be at my desk, and would have an excuse. Love it!

Social Engineering in Politics

Social engineering has been used since long before the internet, to garner interest in various topics. Come the connected age of the internet, and the speed at which information can be disseminated, we’ve seen social engineering take on a life of its own – whether used for good or for bad.

A good example is the Anna Kournikova Virus, a computer virus which was spread via email in 2000, by inferring that an attachment was in fact a picture of Russian tennis star of the time, Anna Kournikova. Given the attention that men in particular gave to Kournikova, clicking what might be a hot picture of her was an enticing proposition.

That’s how it works. That’s social engineering. Exploiting a common mindset to get people to take notice of what you are doing or trying to say.

It was with interest that I read this tweet this morning, purporting – (or at least suggesting) – that the Australian Greens had made what would be a massive policy backflip, and reversed their opposition to the proposed mandatory internet filter.

The article it refers to – (linked below) – was from technology blog Gizmodo, and was written by Australian Sex Party candidate, Fiona Patten.

The interesting paragraph in this article is as follows:

“It was this sudden faltering of the Greens on the issue that caused me to run against them in that election. In the Higgins by election, the Labor, Coalition and Greens candidates all backed an internet filtering scheme and only the Sex Party stood against it. To understand the real intent and nature of the internet filtering scheme requires an understanding of how the Christian right has infiltrated politics in Australia and how they deal with Labor, the Coalition and the Greens.”

While the article does make inferences as to the Greens true feelings towards this policy point, I don’t think it any way tries to suggest that the Greens have reversed their position. Fiona Patten is merely putting forward her view on this policy, and presenting what is presumably the position of the Australian Sex Party. In a democratic society going through the process of a federal election, it is great to see a candidate/party engaging with the public in appropriate forums – as Gizmodo is for a technology-based policy.

What really irked me was that the original tweet – obviously designed to get an emotional response from the anti-filter community – was retweeted by any number of people. In this day and age of social networking, a retweet is a “vote” for the content of the original tweet, however it seems that many of the retweeters did not actually read the article – and therefore did not confirm to themselves – that the Greens had made a policy backflip.

Which of course they hadn’t. I quickly questioned both Senator Scott Ludlam and candidate for the seat of Melbourne Adam Bandt if they could publicly reiterate their position. Bandt categorically responded that no change in policy had occurred. Ludlam responded with a query as to where the thought had come from.

The original tweeter used the very emotive issue of the internet filter to try and scare people into thinking there had been a significant change in policy. The vote of the Greens in the senate will have a very real effect on the success or failure of the filter legislation.

Merely by making the suggestion through a “trusted” information source as the #nocleanfeed / #openinternet campaign, that a change had occurred, a social engineering effort made any number of people take it at face value that the policy had changed, and retweeted it.

Just as many people were caught out looking at the Anna Kournikova virus at face value, and were very seriously caught out. The Greens do not support mandatory internet filtering, and nothing has changed.

AFL Gains 19th Team!

In breaking news, it appears that a 19th team will join the AFL, after the Gold Coast Suns join in 2011, and Greater Western Sydney join in 2012.

As reported in today’s Herald Sun, it appears that the new team will be called “Essdeon”, which defeated St Kilda last night – (must have been a practice match).

I wonder if Essendon will have a problem with the name of the new side?