Rubenerd Blog

Category archive for miscellaneous

Because archives are so much easier than having just hundreds of posts on the home page. I learned that the hard way.

Our Prime Minister is now on Twitter!

2008.11.14 – 12.20

It’s official ladies and gentleman, Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now a Twitterling! You can follow him at: http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM.

I sent him a message yesterday:

@KevinRuddPM G’day sir, great to see you here! Looking forward to your messages.

Now we just need at least some sort of signal that Barack Obama is still tweeting and I’ll be happy. Oh and if you could fire Senator Conroy Mr Prime Minister, I’d be even more happy.

Suffice to say, I’m not holding my breath for Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to start using Twitter. There’s still time for you though sir… look, even Wikimedia Commons has a profile picture for you, ready to go!

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in australia, internet, politics | Comments (0)

Australian internet censorship pilot to commence

2008.11.11 – 15.00

Senator Conroy’s saga continues today with reports that he is ready to initiate a so called "pilot" run of the Great Australian Firewall. I wish I was making this nonsense up. According to the NoCleanFeed.com blog, the trial will begin soon:

The Government has announced its ["clean feed"] filtering pilot is going ahead, and has called for ISPs to participate. The Expression of Interest document requires ISPs to filter the ACMA blacklist, with optional extensions such as dynamic filtering.

What I suspect will happen is that the trial will be a dismal failure; it will slow down internet connections substantially and the blocks put in place will easily be circumvented. I’m looking forward to seeing all the screenshots of sites detailing bomb making on computers involved in the trial, and subsequent screenshots showing blocked pages for breast cancer awareness.

The problem is, such an abysmal result will not deter Senator Conroy or his vocal minority (minority… minority… minority…) of supporters because their belief that such a system is useful and practical isn’t rooted in facts, figures or even common sense, but rather in an unfounded idea that what they’re doing is right and that everyone else is wrong, regardless. As with other adherents to similar ideologies that utilise such reasoning, they’re incredibly hard to talk rationally to because they already have their conclusion before they have their facts.

In the meantime we don’t even have telecommunications infrastructure that works half the time. How much money is Senator Conroy spending rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

Senator Conroy, the person who wants to censor Australian internet

Now for the obligatory further reading links in case you haven’t read about the issue here before: for more information about the federal government’s plan to filter and censor the internet, check out NoCleanFeed.com where you can also pick up badges to put on your websites; at least before the government decides to block you for such illicit behaviour. You can also find out more at the Electronic Frontiers Australia website. You can email Senator Conroy at his website. Don’t forget to also write to your local federal parliament member in your electorate.

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in australia, internet, politics | Comments (0)

Conroy, fix the Internet before you censor it

2008.11.10 – 15.31

Another very eventful day with technology. Today for no reason our home ADSL connection refuses to connect at all. It reaffirms my position on two key things: Australian internet sucks, and ADSL sucks. I’ve never had positive experiences with either!

This is why dear Senator Conroy, I ask for you to stop your fruitless crusade to filter and censor the internet which will only end in embarrassing failure for you, and instead work on improving Australia’s aging telecommunications infrastructure like you’re supposed to. Thank you.

Sent from my iPhone.

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in australia, internet, politics | Comments (0)

Reduced profits of auto companies a good thing?

2008.11.10 – 10.56

Next train arriving in 4 minutes? THAT’S what I miss about Singapore!
Photo from my Flickr Singapore MRT gallery

A few people who’s shared items I follow have made comments on this exact issue, but I felt I was going to be posting a lot more than a comment field would allow, so it’s going here.

Having used Google Reader again for a few days now, it’s made me aware once again of news stories that only make it big in Australia, and those that are repeated by news sources around the world. Along with my tech and personal blog subscriptions, I’ve also subscribed to ABC News (Australia), AdelaideNow, BBC World, CBC News (Canada), CNN International and Channel News Asia (Singapore). One of the news stories that keeps appearing in all of them is the sorry state of the auto industry.

Now first of all I’d like to make it clear that I think when redundancies occur there are decent, hard working and loyal people who get laid off, and this is a real tragedy. Often we forget that underneath the hugely overpaid CEOs, middle management and other senior positions of transnational corporations, there are hundreds or thousands of other people who perhaps make enough to feed their families. It’s a travesty that when companies go under that for the most part senior executives keep all their luxuries when the backbone of their companies — their workers — get left with virtually nothing. This has to change.

With that said, and with all the bleak reports streaming in from the US, Europe and Japan, I’m finding it difficult to feel sad over the declining profits and output of the auto companies. I don’t feel sad because such results mean there are less cars being produced, and less therefore being used. In tough economic times people’s demands are changing; consumers want smaller cars that use less fuel, that use fuel more efficiently or that use a hybrid system. The real losers in such an economic climate are the environmentally irresponsible cars such as so called "light trucks", 4WDs, SUVs and other TLAs.

I’m 22 years old and I don’t have a [car] drivers license. I don’t feel ashamed to admit this; in Singapore you definitely don’t need a car with the public transport system they have in place, in Adelaide it’s a bit more of a struggle but I’m able to commute from our home to the university and to offices in the city using trains and buses. If not, I have the option of using a bicycle, or if worst comes to worst, a scooter. If the distance is less than a few kilometres (or sometimes if it’s longer) I’ll walk.

Street traffic in the Place de l’Étoile as seen from the top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, by BrokenSphere

I think the car symbolises the ultimate human expression of excess. There are many legitimate uses for, and users of, private vehicles, but for every legitimate use I’d say there are dozens of people who have just become lazy and dependent on their cars to take them along distances they could easily walk.

Economists sometimes label downturns in stock prices "corrections". I think in the case of the auto industry, their ridiculous profits and unsustainable (for our planet) production of vehicles definitely warranted a correction.

Let’s hope the shortfall will be made up for by increased government investment in public transport options. They’re being used more now across the world, let’s divert finance from ultra expensive road tunnels and expressways and turn it into more accessible, efficient, reliable and more comfortable public transport. Hope I’ve done you proud Todd

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in transport | Comments (2)

Roast beef sandwiches for underage cats

2008.11.07 – 22.15

An underage cat having trouble eating roast beef. Photo by Daniel Mayer

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. In light of the fact I have been going through the source code of a 10,000+ line C application on and off for the last four hours, I decided to take a much needed break and proceeded to appeal to my loyal Twitter followers for a topic I could briefly discuss. Neil O’Carroll responded to my call with the following tweet:

Want to do a cat song for 121, but wifey still sleeping upstairs, don’t think she’d appreciate guitar/harmonica sounds from below.

That’s clearly the wrong tweet. Neil O’Carroll responded to my call with the following tweet:

@rubenerd Topic suggestion: Blog about roast beef sandwiches for underage cats.

First of all, I would like to send Neil O’Carroll a sincere mail bomb… I’m so sorry, a sincere thank you, for giving me the opportunity to discuss this incredibly important topic that I’m sure concerns a great deal of us.

Let me be blunt. Please. I ran over my pencil sharpener with my motor scooter. We are living in uncertain times economically, militarily and economically, all three of which are contributing to a severe downturn in the abilities of pet owners and feline fanciers to indulge their cat’s desires for cooked meats. The situation has become so critical that beef consumers in particular have become the latest victim acute shortages; and none have been so negatively affected as those who prefer to roast their beef for their cats, felines and other feline related cats. Economically, militarily and economically.

One positive side effect of this whole debacle however has been the that the issue of underage cats has once again been given the opportunity to be scritinised. Unfortunately our discourse in the past has been limited to roasted meats being fed to adult and adolescent cats, leaving out completely the issue of feeding beef of the roasted meat variety to underage cats which lack the necessary dental and digestive capability to chew and eat such meat with such parts of their bodies respectively.

ASIDE: My computer is telling me that I’ve misspelled "scrutinised". It claims it should be spelled "scrutinized". I would be willing to to spell it with a z, but that’s not how you spell "scrutinised". You can see the dillema I’m facing. Great, now its saying I’ve misspelled dilemma.

Asahina Mikuru with a very cute… damn it, you were supposed to be holding a moose!

I put it to you ladies and genteman that the time has come to genetically engineer cats that are able to eat roasted meats of a beefy nature much earlier in the life cycles. If we refuse to acknowledge this dire need soon, I fear we may be letting down entire future generations of cats. No other source of food is as high in vitamin C, iron, folate, mercury, arsenic, vitamin a+, vitamin w- as roasted chicken, and I’m sure a similar statement can be made for other roasted meats, in particular the one which I’ve already forgotten I started talking about but which I hope dear reader you have not.

You see, at this point as a reader of this post you have a distinct advantage over I, the writer, for nine distinct reasons, eight of which are meaningless and stupid. The remaining advantage is this: as a reader you have the ability to either read this post in its entirety, or merely skim it and claim at a later date that you have read it when the topic of Ruben Schade and his very informative fridge magnets and blog come up at housewarming parties which may or may not be unfounded given that you may have been living at your current address for a number of years. As a writer I do not have this luxury, I must sit through the entirety of the pointless rambling nonsense because I am the one creating it. I cannot skim through creating something: George W. Bush tried to do that with a new, un regulated subprime mortgage buying-and-selling banking business and suffice to say it didn’t work.

So to all of those reading this post I ask you this question: why has your refrigerator but two doors when clearly the amount of material you have forced into it warrants the need for several more? I also ask you to consider the plight of underage cats and their inability to eat roast beef, or indeed any other roasted meat while we’re on the subject. Because after all, isn’t there a little underage cat in all of us?

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in funny, photos | Comments (1)

Important philosophical post on Barack Obama

2008.11.06 – 12.14

This really made my morning!

Provided by Terri Noble on today’s Whole Wheat Radio collaboration page. Well actually it was yesterday’s collaboration page for us here, but let’s not make this time-zone whatnot any more confusing than it already is. I only just got used to using daylight savings again.

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in funny, politics | Comments (1)

Someone thinks internet filtering is a good idea?

2008.11.06 – 09.01

With the glee over the good political news coming out of the US subsiding now, we return to Australia and Senator Conroy’s plan to censor the internet. If you only read the comments people were writing in the newspapers here, or on blogs, or on web forums, or on news websites, or in person with other people, or on television, or on public transport… you may get the impression that nobody wants this.

Fortunately the ABC has been able to actually find someone who does support the plan, and for their benefit they’ve published their defence of it:

Family concerns: Internet filtering has the potential to be a great tool to help parents in their difficult vigil.

There has been much backlash against the Government (and Stephen Conroy, the Communications Minister) for their attempt at making the internet safer for Australians. There has been much necessary talk of technological difficulties and also a large amount of discussion regarding censorship.

The article was written by Anh Nguyen, a "researcher" with the Australian Family Association, a Catholic organisation that opposes gay rights and claims that "safe sex" is a "lie" amongst other golden tidbits. Still, everyone deserves their right to free speech and opinion… wait, he is arguing we don’t, never mind. The crux of his argument is that a national internet filtering system is desirable even though it won’t entirely be effective.

I could argue at great length here over the ethical issues that would arise as as result of mandatory internet filtering. I could argue that if they can’t guarantee that legitimate content won’t be blocked then it’s dangerous. I could discuss the dubious criteria for being blocked, and the slippery slope over what is legal and what isn’t. I could argue that the opt-out system Senator Conroy proposes and Mr Nguyen endorses goes against consumer rights and is completely the opposite to how anything else operates. I could argue that the only other countries that have implemented such systems are ridiculed and condemned for doing so. I could argue that such actions are illegal and unconstitutional, and fly in the face of "innocent until proven guilty" Honestly I could even go as far as to quote each of his paragraphs and write at length the problems with his reasoning, and point out the flaws with his figures.

Senator Conroy, the person who wants to censor Australian internet

The simple fact of the matter is though, they are all moot points.

Even if such a system were desirable, it would not work. It would not work for the same reason that DRM (digital restrictions management) doesn’t work. People who want access to the blocked "illegal" material will be able to get it. Anyone with five minutes and Google will easily be able to bypass any restrictions. The only people this will affect, just like DRM, are legitimate users. In this case, law abiding people will have slower internet access and legitimate pages that are blocked by accident, while people who want to access illegal material will continue to do so. That’s all there is to it. Put the book down, grab a coffee.

As my ever wise grandfather on my mothers side has always said: "don’t let the facts get in the way of your argument [Mr Nguyen]". For what it’s worth, there are 101 comments on the article, and all but half a dozen people were appalled. Unfortunately "democracy" entitles us to vote for our government, not on their decisions. They know this of course: there’s no way this idea would pass if put to the people in a referendum. This is what needs to be done though, so we can bury this silly idea once and for all!

For more information about the federal government’s plan to filter and censor the internet, check out NoCleanFeed.com where you can also pick up badges to put on your websites; at least before the government decides to block you for such illicit behaviour. You can also find out more at the Electronic Frontiers Australia website. You email Senator Conroy at his website. Don’t forget to also write to your local federal parliament member in your electorate.

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in australia, internet, politics | Comments (1)

The world needed Barack Obama

2008.11.05 – 18.01

Screenshot of BarackObama.com taken this afternoon

Everything was happening so quickly in the US elections around lunchtime today (last night their time) that I posted a flurry of short entries as soon as the news broke. It really was an exciting time to be watching the news and an even more exciting time to be reading peoples comments on Twitter in near real time.

In case you’ve had your head in the sand, Barack Obama is now the presumptive nominee for President of the United States, as I wrote gleefully here. To watch him give his victory speech on on my computer screen through my TV tuner live was nothing short of awe inspiring, and his manhug with Joe and then waving to people with his family was probably one of the biggest moments I’ve ever seen on TV. As Jim Kloss said on the Whole Wheat Radio collaboration page for today:

We’ve just witnessed history …. “Where were you when Obama gave his speech…….”

History in the making

I didn’t exist when the moon landing happened, or when the Governor General sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in Australia; and I was far too young to remember when the Berlin wall fell… I could go on. For my own selfish needs, it’s good to be able to say I watched a historic moment that I can talk to people about when I’m old and senile

For someone who’s 22, George W. Bush has been president for much of my living memory. I’ve been so used to talking about "that moron in the White House", talking about the latest Bushisms, the humanitarian disasters in central Africa and how he ignored them, Afghanistan, Iraq, the so called War on Terror. I had only just started high school when September 11 happened. This would all be the same for the young voters in the US too. It is just such a great feeling to finally have someone in charge of the Western world who is intelligent and who I can talk about in positive tones for the first time. That is really a great thing!

I’m not sure if I should feel ashamed for thinking this, but while I am pleased President Obama (that sounds good doesn’t it?) got the position, I am infinitely more pleased that McCain didn’t get the position. With a competent, level headed vice president he could have certainly been better than Bush and Cheney (insert joke about low barriers to entry here) but his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate scared me. I’m dead serious: she really, really scared me. It bothered me how much anti-intellectualism had clearly gone into the decision; rather than picking a competent and capable person the McCain camp clearly chose someone that they thought they could package and sell to the so called "Joe the Plumbers" of the country. I don’t know enough about her policies in Alaska, but seeing her interviewed without a teleprompter and asked questions, it showed that she would be a dangerous person to have command of such a powerful country.

Screenshot of JohnMcCain.com taken this afternoon. For what it’s worth, I think McCain was extremely gracious in his final speech, even if some of his supporters in the audience booed like spoilt children each time he mentioned Obama’s name.

Being realistic for a second

One thing to be cautious of though is being too optimistic at such an early stage. As I blogged about in September 2007 (No More John Howard!), we recently came out of elections around this time last year which saw our own long serving conservative and Iraq-war supporting Prime Minister John Howard and his coalition government replaced with Kevin Rudd and the centre-left Labor Party which is ideologically similar to the American Democrats. In other words, a similar situation to to what has happened in the United States today.

Now, while this was also fantastic news and set Australia on the right path again on so many issues such as climate change, they also managed to draw from their ranks the boneheaded Senator Conroy who wants to censor the internet for all Australians (NoCleanFeed, no censorship on Australian internet) regardless of the technical infeasibility, the inevitable problems with returning false positives and negative implications for free speech and social justice. It will be interesting to see if Barack Obama and Joe Biden are able to maintain control of their now sweeping majorities and keep the party working together and cohesive.

It does dismay me a tad that Obama has rightly benefited from a society where someone can be elected regardless of their skin colour and background, when he doesn’t translate this idea into equal rights for homosexuals. I think we can be fairly confident though that he won’t interfere federally with more progressive states decisions, such as the same sex laws in Massachusetts. And for what it’s worth, it would have probably been even worse with McCain.

He has also been fairly silent about specifics with regards to the economy, in particular what forms of fiscal and monetary policy he would introduce… and no taxes aren’t the big thing! I’m looking forward to seeing who he appoints in his cabinet to advice him on this.

Conclusions

There are huge challenges facing the world right now, and believing Obama is a silver bullet would be naive. What’s important to realise though is how critical it is for the United States right now to have the support of the rest of the world as military and economic problems persist. With Barack Obama, so many people from all corners of the globe seemed to have changed their position on, and opinion of, America… instantly! If this global support translates into improved diplomatic relations and more cooperation, I think we’re well on our way to solving so many of our problems. We are so much stronger if we work together.

We’ve got a long way to go, but America made the right choice and we’re in a better position with Barack Obama in charge. It’s time to welcome America back into the global community :).

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in politics | Comments (0)

Category archive for miscellaneous

Our Prime Minister is now on Twitter!

Australian internet censorship pilot to commence

Conroy, fix the Internet before you censor it

Reduced profits of auto companies a good thing?

Roast beef sandwiches for underage cats

Important philosophical post on Barack Obama

Someone thinks internet filtering is a good idea?