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Script Challenge solved, finally!

08 February 2012 in Language, Personal by Stilgherrian | Permalink

On 4 August 2007, I set a challenge. Could people decipher a passage of English text written in an unknown script? Well yesterday, 66 months later, dario finally posted a solution. Congratulations, Sir!

As I mentioned in my follow-up comment, it turns out that the text wasn’t the work of Ursula K Le Guin as I’d originally thought. Oops. It’s actually a document related to the fantasy universe of Danny, the guy who developed the script. I hope to have more details about that soon.

dario says he’ll eventually post “an analysis of this fascinating script and a report of how I arrived at the solution”. Meanwhile, I’ll be organising a suitable prize for him. Stay tuned.

I’ll close comments on this post. Please feel free to continue the conversation over at the original post.

Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

07 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper…

Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV and have it streamed back to their smartphone, tablet or computer at a more convenient time, was a legal form of time-shifting under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968.

Even if competing telco Telstra had a supposedly-exclusive deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) to stream live video coverage of matches to smartphones. Even if the delay between an Optus customer starting to record a game and playing it back was just two minutes.

Telstra is paying the AFL $153 million over five years for this now-not-so-exclusive streaming right. Optus pays the AFL nothing, because they’re just providing a technical service through which individual customers make their own “solely for private and domestic use” recordings.

Josh Taylor covered it for ZDNet Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned me to write an opinion piece that was published this morning, Sport has to think outside the box. Do please read it. It seem to have struck a chord, because I’ve received a lot of compliments.

Then the ABC’s Linda Mottram asked me to chat about the issues on 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio, along with her subsequent chat with a talkback caller on the same topic.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:06 — 11.1MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is. And I will of course suggest that you listen to Linda Mottram’s morning program regularly.

I’m thinking of writing up some of my thoughts on how future sporting coverage could be done technically. Meanwhile, do you feel as I do that the days of cashed-up major sporting codes are about to end?

[Update 8 February 2012, 1015: The Sydney Morning Herald has published a follow-up piece this morning by rugby legend Roy Masters. Court has gambled with codes' futures. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to draw me a diagram of what the fuck he's talking about.]

The 9pm Edict #17A

07 February 2012 in The 9pm Edict by Stilgherrian | No comments

Residents of the depressingly tight-sphinctered Melbourne suburb of Prahran torture their dogs. True. And it’s ugly.

Also this week, Australia gets a new masthead for quality journalism, and everyone goes all wet and judgemental. Something something football on the internet. And I finish all the things that I meant to do on New Year’s Eve but didn’t.

Despite being recorded more than five weeks after the previous episode, this is really just a continuation. More or less. Shut up I’m telling this story don’t question me.

Look, I’m going to be writing some more words for a bit, so feel free to scroll down or click through or whatever and just play the podcast, OK?

Read the rest of this entry »

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:50 — 18.7MB)

Talking “The Global Mail” on Radio 2SER

06 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

I thought I’d be too busy today to pay much attention to the new quality Australian news outlet The Global Mail. But then around 2pm I got a call from Radio 2SER in Sydney asking for a comment.

And so it was that at 2.30pm I was interviewed for the station’s current affairs program The Wire by Calliste Weitenberg, along with The Global Mail’s managing editor Monica Attard.

If you haven’t caught up with this yet, The Global Mail has no advertising and no subscription fees. It’s funded entirely by philanthropy — in this case $15 million over five years from Wotif founder Graeme Wood, a man I previously called an arsehat over another matter.

The radio story includes my approval of the new masthead’s long-form journalism and the experience of the editorial team, and notes that it’s easy to differentiate between Wood’s open philanthropy or the similar position held by Al Jazeera and the more power-hungry approach of Rupert Murdoch or would-be media magnate Gina Rinehart.

What it omits is my observation that despite Attard’s claim that everyone is their audience the staff seem almost entirely white middle-aged middle-class types, that you can’t possibly be everything to all people, and that I’m hanging out for things like database journalism and innovative storytelling techniques.

And don’t get me started on the custom sideways scrolling that simple doesn’t respond to trackpad gestures on my MacBook Pro.

But all that said, it’s only Day One for The Global Mail. I wish them well.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:38 — 4.4MB)

The audio is ©2012 2SER-FM 107.3, and you can download a podcast of the entire episode. But as usual I’m archiving and mirroring the relevant segment here.

Weekly Wrap 87: Rain, unseasonable risk and videos

05 February 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 30 January to Sunday 5 February 2012.

It was an odd week. It rained. A lot. And the continual greyness felt like it was threatening to trigger seasonal affective disorder unseasonably. I figured it was best to generally ignore the world. I’m amused that this seemed to cause some distress in certain quarters. Thank you for taking an interest.

Well that, and fucking around in the rain caused me to catch a cold. Sort of. I conquered the cold with massive doses of Vitamin C. I am a hero.

I was less of a hero when it came to tackling certain technical problems with my computer. I’ll whinge about that another time.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 123, “Skipping security is human nature”. Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, explains how V = EC2 explains everything. Or something. I don’t know. Listen to the podcast.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Rain clears, momentarily. As I said, I was raining almost the entire week, making Bunjaree Cottages a slightly a dreary place. But when the rain did clear, this was the view from Rosella Cottage.]

Gold Coast again, for Kickstart again

05 February 2012 in Internet, Media, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

Oh dear. It’s that time of year again. The annual Kickstart Forum on the Gold Coast is coming up at the end of February.

This is a start-of-year get-together for IT journalists and the vendors who wish to spruik to them. There is also drinking. Allegedly. I’ll be there along with the usual suspects from Sunday 26 February.

Freedom of Information panel, orderly and disorderly

05 February 2012 in Internet, Media, Transparency by Stilgherrian | No comments

On Tuesday 21 February 2012 I’m on the panel for “Freedom of information?”, presented by the Recordkeeping Roundtable.

The promo sayeth:

In a connected world where information sharing is easier and has more impact than ever before, is the current framework of FOI, information security, privacy and archives laws and practices delivering the information society needs in a timely and appropriate way? This panel discussion will be about:

  • assessing the effectiveness of current information access and security laws and methods — are they hopelessly broken?
  • the culture of secrecy and withholding by government agencies
  • how technology and activism offer those with the skills and motivation some alternative and very powerful ways to access and reveal information, and
  • what can be done to address the current state of things and move to better ways of making information available when and where it’s needed.

I think I’ll be rabbiting on about the internet and stuff. Information security, digital distribution, authentication of records, WikiLeaks, Anonymous. That sort of thing.

My fellow panelists are former diplomat Dr Philip Dorling, who now leads the journalistic pack in FOI stuff; and Tim Robinson, Manager, Archives and Records Management Services at the University of Sydney. The moderator is Cassie Findlay, Recordkeeping Roundtable co-founder and digital archivist.

It’s at the Australian Technology Park, Redfern, Sydney, and doors open at 5.30pm for a 6.00pm start. It wraps at 7.30pm for dinner. Admission is $5 and you should probably register.

Talking Twitter and censorship on ABC Local Radio

30 January 2012 in Conversations, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Twitter has announced that it now has the capability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, and naturally there’s been a global outcry about the threat to free speech.

I wrote a piece for Crikey today, explaining the positive spin the company was putting on it all, and pointing out that Twitter does still need to justify its valuation of $8.4 billion when its revenues are a mere $100 million.

But Crikey is suffering “technical issues” right now, and I can’t point to that article just yet.

Until then, here’s an interview I just did on ABC 702 Sydney and ABC Regional Radio around NSW with Dom Knight.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:59 — 10.9MB)

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is.

Weekly Wrap 86: Linux, paranoia and a few rants

29 January 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 23 to Sunday 29 January 2012.

This week included the last of my output from Linux.conf.au. I’ve just gathered all of my Linux.conf.au coverage plus selected other people’s in one place for your convenience.

Add this week’s media output to last week’s and you can see why I’ve been kind of exhausted. Thank the gods, we’re having a pseudo-long weekend.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 122, “War on the internet: it’s all about power”. The podcast covers the previous weekend’s War on the Internet forum Electronic Frontiers Australia and The Greens, and featured Suelette Dreyfus, co-author with Assange of Underground; Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam; Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane; and headline speaker Jacob Appelbaum, internet security researcher, software hacker and activist.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • D-Link gave me a DCS-930L Wireless N Network Camera, which they sometimes describe as a “cloud camera”, the arsehats. I’ll be writing about that separately.
  • On Wednesday Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, bought me a coffee.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Three sprigs at Threefold. Three sprigs of mint in three brown bottles grace the windowsill in the toilet at Melbourne's Threefold Foodstore and Eatery. I think that's just a wanked-up word for "cafe". I had the spatchcock, thank you very much.]

My complete Linux.conf.au 2012 coverage

29 January 2012 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

Here’s everything from the Linux.conf.au 2012 conference on one place. All of my coverage, plus that of Angus Kidman for Lifehacker and Sam Gentle.

This will be a boring post for anyone not interested in Linux, so I’ll put the content after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

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