Frustrated

Frustrated because my blog isn't publishing but I won't stop writing on it anyway.

Frustrated because I really don't know why it isn't working.

Frustrated because I've setup a new site but I can't use it yet.

Frustrated because the import function in Wordpress scan't find my posts in Blogger.

Frustrated because that just slows everything down.

Frustrated by the seeming lack of time in every night.

Frustrated by CNET -- it should have been bettter but it isn't, and I'm still there.

Frustrated because I stil don't know where the money is coming from.

Frustrated by the huge delay when typing in Blogger!

Not frustrated by the last episode of Burn Notice tonight -- damn good. NCIS is back next week.

Not frustrated by my new job, but a litte frustrated by the fact I haven't started yet!

Not frustrated, because it is time for sleep ...

Nothing technical is working ... everything else is good

Lunch at the parent's today, with Will positively gidy dwith joy at having the backyard to walk through, to sit by the barbecue fire with his Granddad, and run himself ragged up and down stairs to the sundeck. Alex just enjoyed the walking practice and the exploration. A fun afternoon.

But back here, this blog isn't really even working right now -- I suspect crap Optus web space is to blame -- so no one is even reading this! At the end of the week when I get paid, I am signing up for some real web space, converting all of this to Wordpress and diverting the domain for real. That will make it all legit, properly set-up and actually let me do things properly, like upload images. Then this site will really get the detail it deserves, and that will only cost about $50 a year!

And the media centre is mental, with the D drive crazy on that PC only. Something has got to change there ... depends on the layout and the money.

And for the first time in years, we might just have the money for that ...

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 ...

Thinking ...

I'm wondering if I need a career change. Or a career readjustment, or something.

Or just more focus on what I should really be doing ...

Damn the weather has been awful today.

The things you think about in that situation ...

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 ...

What I said about dumb Americans ...

... can of course easily be applied to, well, everyone basically.

I found this Gallup poll (via Scalzi) that shows various response numbers to several different scientific and general knowledge questions.

The fact that one subheading says "Four out of Five Americans Know Earth Revolves Around Sun" is actually a funny way of glossing over the fact that 20% don't know that fact! There's also the usual remarkable lack of knowledge that some Americans have of their own history (only 76% of the Americans surveyed could name that their country obtained independence from Britain!)

But it goes all ways -- for that question about the earth revolving around the sun, Brits and Germans were even worse ... only 74% of Germans and 67% of Brits surveyed got that question right. So Americans were smarter ... or I just hope the surveys are targeting really dumb people.

Honestly, I think many of us would be surprised just how low the general level of education is in the supposedly sophisticated western world. People just don't know that much beyond the basics they need to get by. Makes me feel good about cultivating such a wide range of general knowledge, that's for sure.

And while there were no figures available for Australia in such as survey, I'm quite certain we'd get similar figures here ...

There are dumb people in the world ... many are Americans ...

Reading this article at the New York Times website about an authors new book on American anti-intellectualism. The usual stuff -- Americans know little about the world, Americans distrust smart people and learning (just look at their President for proof of that). But the most amazing thing is how little many Americans know about even their own history and country. This quote says it all:

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

I mean, what can you say to people who clearly are so in the dark about their own history, let alone anyone elses.

But that wasn't my overall point. I think this sort of anti-intellectualism has been pretty prevalent in Australia as well in recent years, though not quite in the same way. We just came off 11 years of a PM who really didn't want people to learn a lot of our history, just the history he liked. We have a certain kind of conservative elite who take every opportunity to demonise educated people as some kind of bad influence on society.

While I think American has a very unique brand of anti-intellectualism, Australia is definitely not immune to it.

Though hopefully this might change a little now -- after all, we have a self-described "nerd" for PM :)

Underbelly: Ridiculous media suppression

So everyone now knows that Underbelly has been banned from airing in Victoria, and banned from the Internet altogether. But the reasoning behind this and the ridiculousness of it all in the modern media age is what I want to mention here.

Basically, the judge's thinking goes: We have a murder trial coming up, the series relates to the trial, therefore showing the series will pollute the jury pool, therefore the series can't be shown until the trial is over. I think they'd ban it in the whole country if they could, but I doubt the Victorian Supreme Court has that power.

But why just the series? Underbelly is based on books that have been available for years. They're still on sale. And there's websites and news articles everywhere that are all still freely available.

And here's the ridiculous part: this has all come about due to a trial where the defendants name is suppressed and the case is not mentioned. So we can't even know who is stopping this, or how the case relates to Underbelly (reminder: I'm in NSW so this is only an academic interest in the ban -- I'll watch this with everyone else in Sydney tonight).

Except ... we can. Five minutes of research on Google told me exactly who the suspect is, who was murdered, and exactly how the case relates to Underbelly and some of the characters in the series. I won't say it explicitly here, but read this article from a very major Victorian newspaper, and you will know all.

That's the stupid thing about these bans now. In the distant past, it would have worked, because newspapers were a day to day affair, old news went away, and people forgot. Now everything is there for us all the time, news old and new.

And of course, the last point is that Underbelly will now probably be the most BitTorrented Australian series of all time. Usually there isn't much incentive to get local shows on BitTorrent. But for thousands of Victorians, they now have plenty of reasons. And archaic laws declare they could actually somehow be in contempt of court for doing so (let alone breaching copyright).

So when will the courts wake up and notice what century we live in?

Damn Google ... or Optus ... or something ...

It is so incredibly annoying when things don't work properly. Especially when you don't even know what it is that's stopped working.

Since at least yesterday morning, my blog posts have gone a bit weird. Can't get any images to upload properly (missing my wonderful image of the Deschanel sisters from the previous post!), and posts themselves, while being added to the index, aren't having their unique page created.

If I could blame Blogger I would, but there's no info and I'm sure others would be affected. If I could blame Optus I would, but why would their servers just stop accepting images (wondering if it's an issue with *new* files, since the index is an existing file being updated).

Anyway ... it's annoying! And it's giving me some serious trouble with posting my big Underbelly feature before Wednesday, when the series premieres.

Dumbest lawsuit EVER

This story caught my eye because it's about Google, but man, the stupidity and ignorance of some people is astounding ...

Real estate agents launch defamation action against Google

Two Victorian real estate agents have launched a defamation action against the search engine company Google.

Counsel for agents Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran of Castran Gilbert, appeared in the Supreme Court today for a directions hearing, alleging their clients have been defamed by articles found via Google searches.

That's right! They're not suing Google because of something Google did, they're suing Google because another site had an article about them they didn't like, and Google wouldn't remove the link! Apart from the sheer idiocy of this, and Google's complete lack of obligation to remove links they don't like, these people have defeated their own purpose already.

By committing to such a stupid lawsuit, and getting all the attendant (bad) publicity, it now takes just seconds to find out what they're suing over!

Go here -- this is the article, at Melbourne Indymedia, and author Richard Jenman's Web site also. I mean, did these two get sued as well? Not that they deserve it, but they must have been targets.

Do you hear that Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran? That is the sound of the world world laughing at you. You two are complete and utter fools, because now I know what you did, and can tell the whole world, and so can everyone else. If you had left this alone, who would notice?

Now I think I see what is happening -- they are essentially suing over Google's algorithm. Because so many other people have linked to these jokers names to expose them, the Google algorithm has placed these articles highly. It's so funny they can't seen the problem here -- now stories about this case will put their names at the top of Google for all the wrong reasons, again!

I'd like to see this case go to trial, please. SHould be good for a laugh.

The unsaid truths about the Microsoft/Yahoo deal

Naturally been reading a lot about this deal, mostly at work, but a little in my own time as well, and it's quite interesting to see the varied coverage. Mainstream media are just fawning over Microsoft as usual, talking up how clever they are, but as usual, they've missed the point. Tech news has been smarter, but I've rarely read a few key points.

The most interesting to me is that this is a clear admission of absolute failure by Microsoft. They still dominate the desktop and OSs and make huge money from those sectors, no matter how lumbering they appear. But they have absolutely failed in the online space. Spectacularly so.

They are saying loud and clear that they can't compete with Google at all where they are now, so this is what they need to do to try and get somewhere against them -- the biggest aquisition deal in their company's history. They still have a tonne of cash on hand, so an aquisition deal is all they've got left.

(A far cry from the "Microsoft backs Google into a corner" rubbish that some media is running with.)

Secondly, if they think this deal is all about search and advertising, they're probably going about it the wrong way again. Even combined, Microsoft/Yahoo still only represent about 30 percent of the online search/ad market, still less than half of what Google have. What they should be doing is looking at their strengths and Yahoo's strengths -- online applications and e-mail. I think Gmail is the best, but the market shows Yahoo's e-mail is the biggest. And Microsoft has the obvious advantage in application software, which could work very well combined with Yahoo's consumer online know-how.

Instead, they're trying to take on Google at what they do best -- search and advertising. Contrast this with Google's approach, and what helped them to dominance. Google didn't take on Microsoft directly for a number of years, instead working on two fields Microsoft had little direct initial interest in. And as Google came to dominate there, they could branch out more, then Microsoft saw the danger from this new rival.

So if Microsoft wants to fight back against Google, is trying to attack them directly the right way to go, when Google did the opposite in return to begin with? Only time will tell I guess, but there's a long way to go in this whole battle.

The other biggest issue is integration of product -- does Microsoft want to become more like Yahoo online, or make Yahoo more like Microsoft? The former would make more sense (and more likely bring success), but the latter seems more likely given Microsoft's history -- and more likely to ruin this deal. Yahoo have created and bought a good set of consumer online properties, while Microsoft have had very limp success, if not outright failure. Microsoft just doesn't seem to know how to reach consumers online, while Yahoo have done very well in that aspect of their business.

People joined Flickr and deli.cio.us because of the quality of service and innovation they offered. Microsoft just didn't have that and still don't, despite the resources they have. If Flickr ends up looking like Windows Live Photos, people will leave in droves, because that's not what they signed up for.

So really, if Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo for their user base, the best advice they could take would be to not drastically change the Yahoo properties at all.

There's so many other issues (such as corporate culture, Yahoo's embrace of open source vs Microsoft's hate and the Australian implications with NineMSN vs Yahoo7), but these above points are mostly being overlooked.

Addendum: Will people stop talking about Microsoft's monopoly and Google's "monopoly" as if they're the same thing produced in the same way? The legal status of monopoly doesn't come from dominating a market alone, it comes from dominating a market then abusing that power to keep the monopoly by crushing, damaging or abusing competitors. There's been an abundance of information over the years to show how Microsoft did that, but none as yet, as to how Google might do that. The worst Google seems to get is speculation on how they *might* abuse their power -- but they haven't done it yet.

(Wow ... that's the most I've written about technology for a while ...!)

Can't help it ... have to mention this one ...

I know the methodology is dubious, and I know it doesn't say much except how stupid the viewers of a certain UK TV channel are, but ... damn ... this one is funny, and worth mentioning:

Nearly quarter of Brits think Churchill a myth: poll

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll which shows nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth, while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

Read the whole thing -- I dare you to.

While I know the headline is the worst, conflating a guaranteed-not-very-scientific poll with a national trend for their whole country, but seriously, who could possibly be under the impression that Winston Churchill and Gandhi were fictional? It's just nuts ...

The article also mentions Florence Nightingale and Richard the Lionheart as other figures believed "fictional" by a large percentage, and while I think they're slightly different and slightly more forgivable examples, it still reaks of extraordinary stupidity. Florence and Richard are both very real of course, but both people that are imbued with plenty of popular myth to go with their reality -- not to mention lacking obvious film of them a la Churchill and Gandhi.

But still, where are these people that were polled and what can we do about them?!?!

Enough already ...

Why is it that four day weeks after a holiday always end up feeling worse when they're done than regular five day weeks? Am I just being forced to fit five days of work into four, or is it something more sinister?

Just too much ... crap really ... there isn't much else I can or would say about it, but I really need to think of something different. A different direction to go, and I don't think I know what that is, or more likely how to get there.

Anyway, I've signed up for the RPM challenge. Day 1, not much so far :)

For the weekend, recording music and several woodworking projects. Thinking about Etsy as well.

I'm as Australian as [Insert Product X]

It's Australia Day tomorrow, which for some people apparently just means a chance to embarrassingly appeal to every cheap patriotic sentiment out there to sell stuff.

"Be an Aussie, buy X ... if you're a true Aussie, you'll buy X ... if you love Australia, buy X ... don't buy foreign X, buy Aussie ... and so on."

I guess it's just the commercialisation of everything really, but don't these advertisers see just how embarrassingly cheap and obvious they are? Though I have noticed a new possible trend of "Australia Day decorations" in the neighbourhood, so maybe my expectations are too high.

We need to get back to what Australia Day really is all about ... a good long weekend :)

Heath Ledger and the death crawl obsession

Since it popped into the news this morning, it's been hard not to read endless amounts about the surprising death of Aussie actor Heath Ledger. i didn't know anything about him personally of course, but he was a good actor in many roles, and showed a lot of promise for the future. Outside of Brokeback Mountain, really most of his best work was in some local movies, like Two Hands and Candy.

Not much else I can say here really, but I had to notice the media vultures out in force, the apartment swamped with cameras, the endless media attention to his final chapter. Ledger was notorious for hating the papparazi, but I guess they got the final word.

Hard to say what killed him at the moment -- everyone was ready to say suicide this morning (except police), now it appears as if it may have been an accidental drug overdose. He was ill with pneumonia and taking sleeping pills. Apparently ones with some odd side effects. Coroner will know soon, but facts never stopped the media from guessing.

It always happens where you least expect it. River Phoenix was the poster child for clean living, as it went. Ledger probably didn't kill himself, but this puts the papparazi's Britne/Lindsay/Winehouse obsession in perspective. Read last week that AP have Britney Spears' obituary already written, just in case. Bet they didn't see this one coming.

I guess we have at least one more movie -- Ledger is about to play The Joker in the new Batman movie, Dark Knight. Did look good, and now I imagine it will do even better.

No one can resist this story now.

Probably the stupidest thing Steve Jobs has ever said

In all the hoopla last week at Macworld, and the launch of the MacBook Air, Steve Jobs was quoted on a different, but related topic, in the New York Times.

And it has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard him say. He's asked a question about Amazon's new Kindle e-reader device, and this is what he has to say about it:

"It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore."

I mean, what does that mean exactly? On that basis, I suppose he's telling Amazon to go out of business all together, because if no one is reading, then what are they doing selling books? While his basic stats might even be true, this doesn't stop plenty of authors, publishers and retailers up to Amazon from selling to that other 60 percent -- not to mention the millions in other countries who still read, in far greater percentages than the US. I think all us writers, and readers, should be offended by this statement.

And even then, I think Jobs misses a point closer to home -- reading and the Internet. Even if people are reading fewer books, I think an emormous amount of people are actually reading far more than they would have a decade or more ago -- through e-mail, websites and blogs. The Web has been largely a positive step for literacy (many issues aside), and from computers, to phones and PDAs, to new gadgets like the Kindle, people have more places and ways to read more than possibly ever before.

So if that's what Steve Jobs really thinks, then so be it. The rest of us will just keep on reading (and writing, naturally).

How to feel like a criminal every day

Very simple -- just go into many, if not most retail stores. Oh, and it helps if you are young (or even youngish) as well. And possibly (though not always), carry a bag.

This is something that's really started to annoy me recently. The persistent "can I check your bag" rubbish that any young person gets when leaving many retail stores. Not only is it a pointless exercise, it is often demeaning, and always complicated and inconvenient. It's got to the point where I won't go into many shops if I've already got bags or shopping from other places -- it's just not worth it.

Of course, you just know that any older person who is in the same situation will never have their bags checked, even though they're just as likely to be thieves.

And to make it even more farcical, 90 percent of the time when they check you, it's such a minor, cursory check that anyone really trying to steal could hide things well enough to get away with it anyway.

In many ways, it really is a "perception of security" issue, just like most airport searches and most modern security. They want to show people they're trying to tackle thieves, while not really doing anything much to truly stop it (well, not with this step anyway).

So mostly, I just grin and bear it, or just avoid the various stores altogether. Of course, I wonder when they're going to start making us turn out our pockets ... maybe I'll be old enough to be out of the "criminal" category by then.

Get famous from MySpace in a whole new way

Read this story if you don't know it yet. While on the one hand it's quite amusing, because it shows that quite clearly, no matter how much kids think they're computer savvy, many of them really don't understand the power of social networking, but on the other hand, this kid is clearly a little turd (who will hopefully grow out of that eventually though) who still sees no problem with what he did and has expressed not the slightest amount of remorse.

And no doubt there were probably elements of the police who overreacted in various ways. I don't blame the neighbours for calling the cops (500 drunken teenagers marauding through your street?) but these situations can always go bad. Hell, it could easily have been worse I guess.

But there's one thing I don't get. After having watched this story reverberate through seemingly every media outlet in the country today, it's just become pathetic. Images of dozens of cameras and reporters staking out this kid and his mates while they mug for the cameras just seems to be missing the point. I thought the days had long passed when these little dumbshits to get their 15 minutes of fame for being thick (or worse).

But here we are again: this kid has been an idiot, and his reward has been to get on every TV channel and newspaper in the country.

Bet this whole thing has done wonders for his MySpace friend count.

The inverse quality of celebrity-hood

John Scalzi has an excellent post about another reader emailing to tell him that because he's dared to express (somewhat liberal) politics on his blog, this reader will no longer be buying Scalzi's books anymore. Scalzi goes on to rightly say how pathetic this is.

He illustrates this with a magnificent point about himself and his relative level of celebrity:

I don’t want to be disingenuous or artificially humble about my notability, but at the same time, let’s have some perspective. Let’s say I am a celebrity among science fiction writers. Fine. You know who is more famous than me? My cat. Who is more famous than her? Wil Wheaton. Who is more famous than him? Neil Gaiman. Who is more famous than Neil? Tila Tequila. And thus, we learn the value of celebrity.

He illustrates a point I've long thought for years now: The more famous you are, the less likely you are to actually be in that position for any useful reason or accomplishment. (Let's call that Turner's Law of Modern Fame :) )

And I think he tells us something about modern celebrities in general. Outside of politicians and sports people (who have some, but limited worth in their field), is any overwhelming celebrity worth anything great deal at all? We live in an age where "true celebrity" means Britney or Paris -- the very worst of us, with little to no talent or value whatsoever, except as a freakish sideshow. There might be the occassional exception (JK Rowling maybe?), but it's becoming more and more true.

The "celebrities" of value now are people in their own specific fields, whether it be the bloggers of BoingBoing, or Neil Gaiman (or even Scalzi) as sci-fi/fantasy authors and so on.

Being famous to a specific group of people (large or small) semes to have more intrinsic value than any of the overwhelming celebrity of the modern age. It's where Id like to see myself and my writing within a few years. And from what I can tell, it's a hell of a lot easier on the "celebrity" as well!

Winning and losing the "format war"

News reports in the last couple of days seem to suggest that Sony's Blu-ray format has won, or will likely win, the "format war" to control next generation video content. After spending a pointless couple of years fighting Toshiba and HD DVD, it appears that Blu-ray probably has won, with their 70 percent share of Hollywood studio output, and large penetration mainly from PlayStation 3 consoles.

But in the long run, I suspect they're both losers. The linked Valleywag article got me thinking about this one again, but I would rather see online video become the ultimate future format, as has been the case with music and MP3s. This mostly relies on sufficiently fast broadband of course (which will happen for enough of us over time), but if online distribution becomes the way, then physical format is irrelevant.

With the reality that most people will be happy to stick with regular DVDs for the forseeable future, online distribution still has plenty of time to establish its superiority over any new physical format anyway. And I do really despise the attitude of the studios, who see a new physical format as just a way to boost sales by convincing people that everything they own has to be bought again in the new format.

So Sony may have won for now, but I don't think any new format is a winner in the long term. Of course, they're busy developing download stores for the PS3 (as Microsoft is also doing for the Xbox 360 and plenty of other players the same), so I think the big companies see this as well and are hedging their bets.

Can anyone watch television news anymore?

It's on in the other room right now, and I don't usually ever watch it deliberately, but every time I leave it on I'm just left with a sense of utter revulsion as to the sick spectacle that nearly all television news has become.

There's nothing informing about it, there's nothing revelatory, or illuminating, or often even factual anymore. So often now it's just a exercise in narcissistic voyeurism -- "These people were brutally murdered here today, and we've got a reporter live on the scene".

It's all about story narrative for them now. They don't follow stories for relevance, or importance, or meaning, but for storyline, and what works best to draw in their audience. Of course, long ago I decided that a well-written piece of fiction on a topic would beat a "factual" news report on the same topic everytime, so it tells you how much they know about storylines anyway.
</rant>

Well ... I will take a deep breath now ... stick to ABC news if I ever want to watch it ... this is probably no great surprise to most of you. Stick to online news from smart sources ...

(For added relevance, check the link above. An essay by a former US network news correspondent turned academic, showing what TV news has become from his time on the job. Scary and illuminating.)