This illuminated roadside sign machine thing was seen on Sydenham Road, Marrickville, on 26 April 2010. I think there’s an important message here for all of us. Click to embiggen.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2010.
It’s Anzac Day, Australia’s national memorial for those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that other country.
I’ve written two quite lengthy pieces for the last two years, Anzac Day Rememberings and then Anzac Day 2009: Sacrifice. I have nothing more to add today.
They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning
We will remember them.
Lest we Forget
As I wrote last year, we trust that our politicians, who decide where and when these men and women serve, make worthy decisions about their most valuable contributions. Sometimes they never return, or return… changed.
Prime Minister Rudd, Sir, are you making worthy decisions? Tony Abbott, are your policy proposals also worthy? Please look me straight in the eye when you answer that.
[Photo credit: The rosemary sprig was taken from Matthew Hall's Twitter page from 2008. If I owe someone for that usage, I'll make good.]
A criminal is dead, and Australian media dances on his grave. Another man dies after being chucked out of the country — but he’s a criminal too, so who cares? And something about a volcano and aeroplanes.
After a ridiculously long break, here is episode 11 of The 9pm Edict. Enjoy.
You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:36 — 6.5MB)
For more information about the topics covered in this episode, check out how the Victorian government may have to pay compensation for the death in prison of Carl Williams, the bizarre case against Christine Nixon, the federal government’s changes to refugee processing, Tony Abbott’s border protection truck, how Australia leads the global economic recovery, and the sad tale of Andrew Moore.
If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]
Are your data backups up-to-date? Are you sure? Have you tested them lately? Could your business survive an equipment failure, flood, fire or theft?
In the Patch Monday podcast this week, I take a look at backup options for small and SOHO businesses. Is it time to move beyond sticking a tape drive in your Windows Small Business Server? After all, terabyte hard drives are under $200, and cloud storage options are available for just a few dollars a month.
We hear from Sally McIntosh of PR firm Condiment Communications with her lack-of-backup horror story, and my mate Garth Kidd who does storage and backup stuff for the big end of town. He reckons it’s worth bringing this enterprise computing attitude to small business backups.
You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.
Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
[This is the second in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a business perspective. They're written for my small business clients over at Prussia.Net as part of a review of our own internet hosting service, but I'm hoping they'll be of general interest. Enjoy.]
As I explained yesterday, the big cost in providing internet hosting is paying humans to provide support. However there are still some technical factors that affect the price, and that’s what we’re looking at today.
Most internet hosting customers would be familiar with the usual measures: the amount of storage space you get and the amount of data transfers (“bandwidth”) per month. Those raw measures of capacity are certainly important. You need enough capacity to meet your needs. But you also need to consider performance, reliability, scalability and flexibility.
Melbourne’s $1.3 billion myki smart card ticketing system still hasn’t been rolled out to buses or trams even after experts were flown in two months ago. Sydney’s Tcard project was cancelled and now it’s starting again. What can we learn from these transport IT disasters?
hat’s what I spoke about in this week’s Patch Monday podcast, which I’m now posting on Friday. Slack, eh?
My guest is Tom Worthington who, apart from teaching computer science at the Australian National University, has a strong personal interest in transport ticketing systems.
You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.
Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
Regular commenter Bob Bain has been adding lots of information about the availability of X18+ and other adult content to my previous post about Refused Classification material. Interesting stuff.
[This is the first in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a business perspective. They're written for my small business clients over at Prussia.Net as part of a review of our own internet hosting service, but I'm hoping they'll be of general interest. Enjoy.]
Internet hosting prices are usually explained in terms of the amount of storage space you get and the amount of data transfers (“bandwidth”) per month. However the real cost factor is paying the humans who provide support.
Some technical factors do affect the price of hosting, and I’ll address those tomorrow in Internet hosting: the cost of reliability. But with storage and bandwidth prices always dropping, particularly when set up on a large scale, hosting is now so cheap that Google, say, or WordPress.com and many others can provide free hosting in exchange for advertising. Or in Google’s case with Gmail, monitoring your email to build a profile so they can target advertising at you.
No, the humans are the expensive bit, and the cost can vary dramatically depending on how that support is provided. Here’s just a few of the factors.
“The only difference between a Nation State and a Mafioso protection racket is the letterhead and the rituals — and the series of concessions, hard-won over eight centuries, that we call ‘civil liberties’.”
That’s the start of my guest post today for Electronic Frontiers Australia, entitled Without civil liberties, government is just a criminal racket.
It’s an essay that combines some thoughts about the constant battle for civil liberties with my reaction to the video posted by Wikileaks at Collateral Murder. It’s footage from 2007 showing a Reuters photojournalist and his driver and others being killed by US helicopter gunfire in Baghdad. It’s footage the US Department of Defence didn’t want you to see. It’s challenging to watch.
This is one of a series of guest posts for the EFA as part of their current fundraising campaign.
Australia’s planned mandatory ISP-level internet filter will block Refused Classification (RC) material. Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy says that’s “child pornography, pro-bestiality sites, pro-rape websites and material like that”. But it’s actually more than that.
I covered this in the most recent episode of the Patch Monday podcast, back on 29 March, but I forgot to re-post it here. Consider that fixed.
My guest is Professor Catharine Lumby, one of the authors of Untangling the Net: The Scope of Content caught by Mandatory Internet Filtering.
You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.
Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
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