I was checking out a blog the other day (I forget which one), and I saw a short movie that was kind of gross. But it reminded me of some little cartoons which I first saw several years ago, but which I haven’t seen for a long time: Happy Tree Friends.
These cartoons are hilarious and gross, all at the same time. Definitely not suitable for children!
Here is a sample:
If you like this video, just search for “happy tree friends” on YouTube – there are heaps. The creators also have a YouTube channel. My favourite character is Flippy the crazy Vietnam vet who keeps having horrible flash-backs!
GetUp has been doing a great job of getting people to take notice of the mandatory Internet filtering issue. Now they have a neat little widget where you can register your opposition to the mandatory Internet filter. You will find it in my sidebar (on the right, below my photo).
iiNet – a major ISP in Australia – is being sued by a group of film and television companies for “authorising” film piracy (see this article for details). Seems to me that if the film companies win the case, banks should start suing state transport departments for “authorising” bank robberies – they provided the roads that the bank robbers used to get to the bank (and presumably get away as well). Or perhaps shop owners could sue Subaru for making the car that is most often used in “ram raids” (the WRX).
For years now the music, film and TV industries have been gunning for people who copy and/or share content over the Internet. If you believe the industry representatives, “piracy” costs the industry millions, if not billions of dollars every year. Frankly, I find it hard to believe these claims.
The problem is that new technologies (ie: personal DVD burners, digital data formats and the Internet) have rendered traditional business models and regulations obsolete. So how do you prevent illegal copying and file sharing? The answer is you don’t. You find a way to make money in the new environment. It is unfortunate that record labels and movie studios have invested gazillions of dollars in legal action and futile DRM technology. Had they invested that money and effort in exploring ways of using the new technologies to their advantage, things would be very different today. Take a look at this article on alternative business models for the entertainment industry. It’s a few years old now, but the idea is very enticing. If you could pay a flat fee of say $10 a month to your ISP, and for that price you could download ALL the music, films and TV shows you wanted, would you pay it? I sure as hell would.
Just been doing some more reading on the mandatory Internet filtering being proposed by the Federal government. Seems like the only people in favour are the government and right-wing Christian groups.
One argument being employed by supporters of the scheme is that the government already filters (ie: censors) other media – magazines, music, video games, films, etc; therefore, why should the same censorship not apply to the Internet?
The issue is that the Internet is a fundamentally different medium – it is profoundly different to magazines, movies, etc. Systems that work for “old” media don’t work with a new medium like the Internet.
An analogy if I may:
The main form of transport for most people now-a-days is the car. Actually, I should probably qualify that – for most people “in the Western world”. And there are rules which govern driving – speed limits, traffic lights, etc. These rules are enforced by means of speed cameras, red light cameras, police patrol cars, etc. Now, jump forward 10 years from now and pretend the main form of transport is personal flying devices (AirScooter and SkyCar are just two examples). This would represent a fundamentally different transport “medium” from those which are in use today (cars, motor bikes, trains, buses, walking, etc). Yes, I know that there are already airplanes, but this is completely different. At the moment there are only a few airplanes (relative to the number of people); airplanes only land and take off from airports, and generally only travel through narrow flight corridors (when they are over populated areas). Yet even with the relatively small number of planes in the air, air traffic control is vital to safe air travel. Imagine if there were as many SkyCars as there are regular cars. It would be like a scene from the Jetsons or The Fifth Element. Sky cars whizzing all over the place – in three dimensions. It would require a whole new system of rules to ensure that we didn’t all kill ourselves. And the current methods of enforcing “road” rules would be completely inadequate – the cop who currently hides behind a tree with a speed radar gun has nowhere to hide 10000 feet off the ground.
Each year in Australia, how many movies are released at the cinema? Or how many albums? How many magazines are on sale in a news agent? A few hundred? Even a few thousand? Monitoring and enforcing censorship laws for these media is relatively straight forward. Actual real live people watch new movies and play new video games and listen to new music etc to decide what rating to apply or to determine whether it violates any laws.
How many websites are there? Hundreds of millions. We are talking a difference of several orders of magnitude.
Given the mind boggling number of websites, current censorship (ie: filtering) processes are completely inadequate for the Internet. The only feasible way to filter websites is to use some form of technology that automates the process – there are just too many websites to have humans test every one. On top of which, each website has any number of pages. The number of web “pages” on the world wide web is in the billions. And these are constantly changing. If a new movie is released and reviewed by the censorship board, it only needs to do this once – the movie doesn’t change over time. But websites and web pages change constantly. And herein lies the flaw in the argument – any non-human mechanism is going to fail in (at least) two ways: firstly, it will incorrectly block websites which shouldn’t be blocked; and secondly, it will allow websites which should be blocked.
Suppose a website is blocked today because the filter decides it contains “prohibited content”. Suppose the administrator of that website removes the content. Does the filter now allow people to browse that website? Conversely, suppose a previously OK website is updated with some content that is deemed “prohibited”. (Something similar happened recently in the UK). The implication of this is that EVERY web page needs to be re-scanned EVERY day. And this is clearly not feasible.
So, what’s the answer?
There isn’t a single answer. It’s a multi-faceted answer, but even then it isn’t a complete answer. The fact is that we will never eliminate unwanted websites – there will always be people with extreme views or interests, and this will inevitably translate into extreme websites. It’s part of the human condition. There have always been murderers and rapists, and there probably always will be. But we don’t force everyone to wear GPS locator bracelets to prevent rape and murder. We accept that with freedom comes risk.
Things we can and should do:
I’m sure I will have more to say about the proposed mandatory Internet filter in future posts, but that will do for now.
Ahh well, I guess it had to happen. The blissful honeymoon period is over. Alas, Gmail is not perfect. Or to be more specific, Gmail Contacts is not perfect. Actually, I would go as far as saying it is pretty crappy. If there is one thing I miss in Outlook it is the excellent contact management features.
Today I discovered how inadequate Gmail Contacts is. I created a Group of 16 people – the people who I have asked to help with beta testing our new web application (stay tuned – more on that in a later post). Most of the people in the Group only have a single email address (that I know of). But a few have two or three addresses.
When I added one of the people with more then one email address, I couldn’t choose which email address would actually be associated with the Group. It turns out that Gmail just grabs the first email address (the “primary” address). The solution was clear – I just needed to edit those rapscallions who dared to have more then one email address such that the desired address was in first position. Surely that would solve the problem.
Alas, no.
I wanted to test my new Group to make sure the correct email addresses were being used, so I composed a new message. I typed the first few letters of the Group in the To box, and when the Group name appeared I pressed Enter – all the members of the Group were nicely plonked into the To box. However, as I checked each name/address, I noticed that Gmail had grabbed the wrong address for those the people who had multiple addresses. Despite my efforts at resolving the problem by re-ordering the email addresses. Grrrr. In the end I had to remove the “wrong” addresses completely, remove the people from the Group, re-add them, and then compose a new message.
You can’t sort or group or otherwise view the contacts as anything but a long list. This is not so much a bug as it is a pitiful design flaw. Surely Google could invest a bit of energy into allowing us to sort our contacts. Is that too much to ask?
I recently found a nice blog post where a fellow Gmailer had a bunch of very good suggestions for how Google might improve contact management.
C’mon Google – fix the damn thing!
In my previous post I sang the praises of Gmail, but it isn’t perfect.
Now that I have my signatures configured, Gmail / Google Apps is proving to be fantastic.
Well, I have finally done it – I have abandoned Outlook. I have been a loyal Outlook user for over 10 years, and have used every version since it was first released in 1997. I have always found Outlook to be a pretty reliable email client and PIM, and it is especially powerful when teamed with Exchange. But lately I have been getting itchy feet, wondering if there might be greener grass on the other side of the cyber fence. Could I get the same level of user friendliness and rich functionality from another application? Enter Google Apps.
For the past year I have been paying about AUD$200 per month for a hosted Exchange service. I can’t complain about Exchange – it is a great system, but it ain’t cheap. I decided a few days ago to investigate alternatives which would save me money, without sacrificing functionality. Some business partners had recently told me that they used Google Apps for everything – email, documents, collaboration, etc, so I decided to check it out. And it rocks. I have switched to Google Apps Premier Edition and I am loving it. I can still do everything I used to do except Tasks. My email, contacts and calendar items all sync with my mobile phone (with the help of GooSync); I still have nice HTML signatures in my emails; I can set up multiple domains and email aliases; all I need is a browser; and I save hundreds of dollars.
So, if you run a small business and you want feature-rich messaging and collaboration at a very good price, take a look at Google Apps.
The Rudd government announced recently that it was aiming for a whopping 5% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, and 15% if other nations agree. My first reaction is “what the hell is that about”? Who cares whether other nations agree? Then I started to ponder the actual target. Which is what this post is about.
Most of the response to the announcement seems to have been very critical. Pretty much everyone with an opinion is saying the government has not gone far enough and that the target needs to be at least 20%, even as high as 40%. Anything less won’t be enough to reverse the effects of global warming, and as a consequence the Great Barrier Reef will continue to die, along with all kinds of other terrible stuff. Regardless of whether these dire predictions are accurate (and there is definitely room for doubt), it seems to me that Mr Rudd has reneged on his election promises. Which is disappointing at best, and possibly catastrophic at worst.
Or not.
The whole global warming issue/debate centres around two hypotheses:
For a long time I have believed the scientific consensus that the world is getting warmer, and that the cause of that warming is anthropogenic (caused or produced by humans). Consequently, I have long been a strong advocate of decisive action on climate change. That belief is one of the reasons I voted for the Rudd government at the last Federal election – Kevin Rudd promised strong action on climate change: ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions trading scheme, significant targets for reductions in carbon emissions, rebates for investing in energy saving technology (eg: solar water heating, hybrid cars), etc.
Let’s assume that the first hypothesis is true – global warming is real. The important question is what is the cause? If it is anthropogenic, it is probably fair to say that a 5% reduction in emissions is a waste of everyone’s time and effort (and money). But what if global warming is not being caused by human activity? What if something else is causing it? That would suggest that reducing carbon emissions will not have any effect, regardless of how big the target is. We could stop all carbon emissions right now, and still not make any difference to global warming.
Which presents us with a big dilemma. Reducing carbon emissions by a significant amount is expensive. So if you didn’t have to do it, why would you? There is an argument that humans are stewards of the earth, and that we have an obligation to pass it on to our children in a decent state – at least as good as it was when it was entrusted to us by our parents (which wasn’t actually that great). Personally I subscribe to that view. I want my children to be able to enjoy real rain forests and coral reefs and rivers and beaches; I want them to be able to experience the amazing array of life that our planet supports, and not just in zoos or documentaries; I don’t want to see our rivers and oceans ruined by dumping toxic waste; I don’t want the great forests of the world to be levelled just so we can run a few more cattle. So for that reason I believe we should be careful about how we live our lives. But that has nothing to do with global warming.
I mentioned above the scientific consensus regarding global warming and its causes. But just exactly how reliable is “scientific consensus”? I recently read the transcripts of a couple of speeches by Michael Crichton (the well known author) where he is VERY critical about the global warming “movement”. He is especially critical of this notion of “scientific consensus”. His speeches are here:
Aliens Cause Global Warming Our Environmental Future
Part of me says – “Mr Rudd, grow some balls and set some proper targets”. But part of me is wondering “what if Michael Crichton is right”? What if the world is not on the brink of disaster? Or what if it is on the brink of disaster, but we can’t avert it by reducing carbon emissions? There probably isn’t any reliable way to know for sure if global warming is real or not. Or if it is real, whether it is caused by human activity. So, in the absence of real knowing, what should we do?
I use Wikipedia a lot. I think it is an awesome site, so I donated some money today. I especially love the fact that it is self-correcting. If you use Wikipedia as well and you find it a valuable site, then please consider supporting them with a donation.
I have a keen interest in the current brouhaha that has followed the government’s decision to implement mandatory filtering of the Internet at the ISP level.
The only conclusion I can draw is that Stephen Conroy is a fool. For several reasons:
I am amazed that his advisors haven’t told him to pull the pin on the idea. My guess is he somehow thinks that “working Australians” will be persuaded that this is the government being pro-active in the fight against child pornography. And that the filter is somehow going to “protect” us.
Seriously Senator Conroy – pull your head out of your arse. Firstly, I don’t need your protection. Secondly, I decide what is appropriate material for my children, not you or the ACMA. Thirdly, do you actually think this ridiculous plan will do anything to either identify paedophiles or reduce the traffic in child pornography? And fourth, just because I am opposed to your filtering plan, does not mean I support child pornography. You ignorant moron.
