Look at this ... new 24 sooner than expected

After having decided to skip the whole season of 24 this year due to the writer's strike (effectively moving the season they've quarter-filmed to next January), Fox have revised plans and announced a prequel movie for the season, to air probably around September. Smart move I'd say, given it will be nearly two years between seasons otherwise.

So Jack is off to Washington, and the President is a woman, and there's more evildoers undoubtedly ... can just imagine what hijinks will occur.

Glad finally they're changing the setting ... those LA hills were looking awfully familiar.

And please, will people stop blaming 24 for the mindset of the current US government? 24 is the most fanciful and fictional of espionage fiction out there, so it's not their fault if dummies think it can be applied to real life!

It would have been like modelling US Cold War policy after the moves in classic James Bond movies ...

A day of frustration, with fun links ...

A day that started off OK, then ended up feeling really frustrating, at least in a professional sense. Some amusement in the morning that at least gave me the illusion of being involved, but then an afternoon that dragged on and on with no end in sight. It usually ends eventually of course, but then usually much later than everyone else there.

However, Happy Birthday Mum! Won't say how old she is here, but it's a major, even age.

Some amusing and interesting links this afternoon though:

Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?
Is this brilliance or idiocy? Hard to say really, but it is in the tech section, so I can't really complain about their political seriousness. Kind of a funny idea though, but it does have a fairly thorough examination of their websites. Someone should forward this to John Hodgman and see what he thinks :)

Time Space Map
Now if this is handled well, this could really be a great site. A Google Maps mashup that is a bit like Wikimapia, but takes the 4th dimension, allowing you to plot history on the site. Will develop as people add to it, but could be a great resource.

Angry Journalist
Now I can see myself adding to this one ... on some days anyway. Basically an anonymous complaints box where you can write and read angry comments on the profession. Sometimes inspiringly true, sometimes sad, sometimes pathetic.

Let's make tomorrow better ...

It's a political stunt, but a damn clever one

Nice move from the Labor government today -- a stunt, but a damn good one -- that shows both their humility and desire to change, while highlighting the power-mad idiocy of the previous government:

I have too much power: Immigration Minister

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has ordered a review of his role, saying he feels the position has too much power.

Senator Evans has told a Parliamentary Committee there was a substantial increase in ministerial powers under the previous federal government and has commissioned a report into how that could be changed.

It's a nice reversal of how you'd usually term this sort of thing, and it works perfectly, It will get the headlines, show your qualities, and show the previous government's negatives (on the day of Mister 9% Nelson!)

The comments under this ABC story are funny too -- most people get it, even begrudgingly, but there's still a few Liberal Party stooges that think they should be believed on everything and are still arguing like it's 2004. I really want to slip them some very unkind words, but I think the deafening silence to their rubbish does the job for me.

Well played Labor, well played ...

I'm sorry too

Just in case it looks like I'm only thinking of today as the premiere of Underbelly, I really need to mention the National Apology speech by PM Rudd this morning.

I didn't catch all of it at the time (it was on as I was still commuting to work), but I saw the crowds in my building's lobby gathered around a TV, and when I got up to the office, most colleagues were standing around the TV there. This was a serious event -- one that much of the country clearly wanted to watch as it happened. And you could almost hear the applause echo through the city when it was all over.

Can't really summarise the details, except to say that it was pretty good. Moving when it counted, substantial when it needed to be, looking to the future as it should be.

SMH.com.au has a good round-up of reports and reactions to the morning's events.

I think that this is to a degree largely symbolic, but it's extremely important symbolism -- something at least a decade overdue -- and symbolism that does have the ability to move the nation forward. The conservative naysayers completely miss the point when they rabbit on about it being meaningless; they just don't get the sort of thing required to bring the issue really into focus for the whole nation.

And I think they're really also pissed off now that they also missed the "gimme" moment to be associated with such a nation-defining event. Rudd, now that he's PM, got that from the beginning, and while this apology helps the nation and helps aboriginal people, it helps him politically as well, which is fair enough, because it was his act to follow through on.

And yes, now the nation has to make sure the right actions happen from now, but at least with this apology we've made a good start.

Underbelly: Bad luck if you're in Victoria ... or ...

News in today that a Supreme Court judge has banned Underbelly from being shown on Victoria television. Sucks if you're in Victoria, so being in Sydney, this isn't a problem for me. But it's an exact replica of the Blue Murder situation from 1995, where ongoing trials stopped the show from being aired in NSW for five years.

But one we have now (and didn't have then) is the Internet. In the short term, it appears this Victorian decision has also seriously damaged Nine's online promotion ambitions. All videos from their offical site have been removed -- even the brief promos. I expect if this is really being enforced, then other clips from other sites will be removed as well.

Of course, this should also mean that Underbelly will be one of the most BitTorrented Australian shows ever. If you've ever looked for Australian show torrents, they're usually light on the ground. But this one will definitely rocket up there -- simple supply and demand. The people who can't watch it (Victorians) will find a way, and that way will be BitTorrent (as many of them are used to for US shows now).

Ironically, this won't be Nine's fault, but they will still lose out on the audience. I can almost see the judge's point, but I think it's about time they gave up trying to enforce these draconiam bans -- they just don't work anymore in the Internet age.

(And yes, I really must get my Underbelly feature up tomorrow morning -- damn image uploading!)

Geeky political graffiti for the day

Try to work this one out -- helps if you're a coder and looking forward to next January:

Turns out Facebook is just full of liers instead

I only even mention this because it comes from something I blogged last week, but it turns out that my previous post about Benazir Bhutto's son announcing his future intentions on Facebook, wiht a link to an ABC news story, was actually a hoax.

It wasn't something I took terribly seriously, and it was a decent news outlet reporting it (and we all loved the idea that a future world leader was a Buffy fan), but I was more interested in the Facebook angle than anything else. So naturally the Facebook angle was the worst part.

News just in: Facebook full of crap, most profiles unverifiable anyway, watch what you do with social networking :)

Update: This guy claims to be the hoaxer, and apparently that's true. If you read some or all of the lengthy message board thread link, you'll see he's just some obnoxious little gamer jerk who was just looking to be a tool, but he did have the (probably unintended) outcome of showing how easy Facebook is to game, and how many journalists will be taken in by a hoax.

There's even the implication that the Buffy and West Wing stuff was meant as some kind of insult. I mean, if they're really wanted to insult the guy, they would have made him out to be a Britney Spears loving, Big Brother watching pop fan. Now that's an insult :)

Is America about to really honest to goodness change?

Been reading a lot about the Iowa Presidential Primary from the US in the last few days. It was not a massive surprise that Barack Obama won the Democratic side of things, and by rights will be the overall favourite to take it all at the end of the year? I'm wondering if this will really change America in a significant way, and hoping the answer is yes.

If a young black American, who's often comes off as a cross between John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King (god, I hope that doesn't give anybody all the wrong ideas), who had a Muslim African father (but is not Muslim himself, something I suspect has to be pointed out in every possible place to stop the bullshit -- because Americans are definitely ready for a black president, but not a Muslim one), were to become President, I think it would incalculably change America's perception in the world, and you would have to think, their actions.

We all know he's not perfect, because no one is, and some (such as Paul Krugman) have expressed doubts about some of his policies, but he does seem to have enough skills, as well as new ideas, while also having a refreshing lack of old ideas and Washington crap. I think by default, he would deal differently with the Middle East, and they'd deal differently with him. Same goes for Africa -- and if Kenya ends up being the next hellhole, he's uniquely capable of trying to help that situation (Obama's father was Kenyan).

Of course, maybe I'm just being horribly naive (or terminally hopeful), and maybe one guy no matter how new or well-intentioned, can possibly change the US machine much, but we can all hope. And of course, not being American, I don't even get a say in this, except to be a sideline spectator like millions in the world.

We have to hope that Americans make the right choice in November, and there's really no point now in thinking anything other than a Democrat is the way to go. After the last seven years, the whole world really deserves a different perspective -- and so does America.

(Title link is to a nice piece on Obama from Rolling Stone last month. I love its final paragraph, which sums up a lot of what I'm think about Obama as well:)

So maybe it's OK to let the grandiose things that an Obama presidency could represent overwhelm the less-stirring reality — i.e., Obama as more or less a typical middle-of-the-road Democrat with a lot of money and a well-run campaign. Maybe it's OK because it's not always about the candidates; sometimes it's about us, what we want and what we want to believe. And if Barack Obama can carry that burden for us, why not let him? Seriously, why not? The happy ending doesn't always have to ring false.

The Facebook generation is taking over already

There's already been many jokes about the Facebook generation having their own openness coming back to haunt them in 20 years time, when they're running industry and running for various political office. But that time is already here.

In the tragic situation of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, and the surprising rise to power of her 19-year-old son Bilawal, he is using Facebook already to communicate to the world. ABC New has more on the story at the link, but it's at once both bizarre and fascinating to see how such a "trivial" tool can appear in such a serious and world-changing situation.

His note included the following:

"I am not a born leader. I am not a politician or a great thinker," he wrote in the message, which is his first public statement since a few brief words when he was appointed party leader.

"I'm merely a student. I do the things that students do like make mistakes, eat junk food, watch Buffy but most importantly of all... learn," he said.

"My time to lead will come but for now I'm the one asking questions, not the one answering them."

Well, I guess the other thing it tells us is that even future world leaders are Buffy fans as well ...

Politicians started using Facebook in the last year or so (we can see it both in the US and Australia at least), but this has to be the first time a politician (well, future one, in a sense), has used his own profile and posted his own personal messages.

Probably the first really stupid thing Labor has announced

While I'm linking to the TechCrunch article, which is probably the most stupidly alarming one I've found, there is definitely real reason for concern here.

Labor is following through with their plans to implement some kind of offical censoring/filtering of all Australian Internet content. Apart from the fact that this is pretty condescending and offensive to adults (who apparently can opt out of it, but who will do that -- imagine the sort of scorn you'll receive -- "you want to access child porn?"), it's also likely to be fairly pointless for the target market (tech-savvy kids can get around anything).

Most importantly of course, there's still so little information about how they actually intend to do this. While I don't doubt their sincerity in wanting to keep kids away from the bad things online, why do it like this? And how do they think they will even be able to do it? Some kind of blacklist of just bad sites we could live with, as it would be largely transparent to normal people (that is assuming the blacklisting service doesn't slow down speeds for all). \

But what if they suddenly go for a commercial filtering service? Those things are a joke, as likely to block pages on sex education or breat cancer as they are to block porn -- not to mention blocking a whole range of things that are OK, for consenting adults. And then there's the damage they do to a site like Boing Boing, so eclectic that it could get banned for one blue post among thousands.

This is all speculation though. We'll need to watch what happens here, because the future of online media in Australia could seriously change depending on what decisions they make. The options range from irrelevant to dire, which is hardly a good range to be looking at.

A more straight news story can be found here. Still alarmist language from Labor, but again, this could be nothing. Or not.

The year that was ...

So how was 2007? Well, apparently I made only one post here in the whole year, which you'd think might say something, but really doesn't. True, I did concentrate on the likes of Facebook and TV.com last year, and work and family always involves a lot of my time, but I don't really feel like I got much done last year, certainly not in a professional or creative sense.

And that has got to change this year.

Professionally, there's probably a limit to what I can do, but hopefully there are some options. And there's always the endgame option, but I think I really have to stick around for a while longer, really make it work somehow, rather than trying again somewhere else ... again.

Creatively, see next post I think :)

As for the rest of the world? Plenty of thoughts there. The world is a mess for the most part, but Australia ended up taking a turn for the better (well, mostly better anyway, let's not kid ourselves too much). We all should have been more shocked that Labor won the election, but somehow, after months of speculation and polls, it seemed inevitable.

It was mostly the fear from those of us that have hated Howard and co for so long, that somehow, he'd get back in again, that kept it seeming from anything other than obvious how the election was going to turn out. Which is mostly a good thing, though I think some of that left-wing paranoia is what was keeping us out of power sadly.

But a new government is a good thing, and probably the best thing that happened on the wider stage last year. Now we just have to keep an eye on them ... closely ...