iPhone Phanatics

I started out on PC's, went to Macs fairly early on, and now I have both in one with my Intel MacMini. Even during all my Mac years I owned a PC, it just didn't get turned on much. I've been as enthusiastic a Mac convert as most Mac users, but in regard to all the hype surrounding Apple's new iPhone, i just have to say... get a life people! My 60 gig iPod has 8,000+ songs on it, a few games, 1500 pictures of Tasmania, the entire New Testament, and 3 or 4 entire series of TV from 'Blakes 7' to 'Chasers War on Everything', as well as about 80 episodes of the comedy podcast 'Channel Frederator'. It gets used every day, and that means its also very scratched.

Now we've got the iPhone. Enthusiastists camped out at Apple's stores for days before they came out to ensure they got one, but what exactly did they actually get for their money? As I see it, there are going to be quite a few problems with the iPhone.

1. Battery Life - Apple have been touting some pretty amazing times, and I frankly don't believe them. Anything with a screen is going to chew through power.
2. Size - this thing is just too BIG to be a phone. Sure it looks great, but its too heavy to comfortably sit in your pocket, and your keys are going to scratch it to a terrible state in no time at all.
3. Storage - its hard to understand why anyone would buy one given there are 60 gig iPods out there versus the iPhone's 8 gig. The batteries can give you 7 hours of video, but can you fit 7 hours of video on the iPhone?
4. Cost - the iPhone is about 10 times the iPods cost per gig of storage. 'OK', you say, 'but its a phone not a media player'.
5. Support - all the rest of us in other countries may, or may not, be able to find a service provider who supports it. Even if we do, it'll cost us an arm and a leg to subscribe to one.

The problem is that Apple aren't really pushing it as a phone, they're trying to sell you on the idea that its a pocket computer that can also make calls. That means a lot of people are going to be disappointed when the shine wears off and they wake up to the fact they could have bought a laptop for the same price. I predict in the next few weeks, we'll see a lot of "I bought an iPhone and wish I hadn't" stories.

Computers Get it Wrong

The computer illiterate 95% of the population (no, just being able to use one DOESN'T make you computer literate) will tell you that computers never make mistakes, that they are always correct because they use logic and maths. They think this makes them cleverer than the previous generation of people, who blamed "computer error" for everything bad that ever happened.

Any programmer, of course, will tell you that computers DO make mistakes, BECAUSE they use maths and logic. Remember how the world was going to end in 1999 because of Y2K? Remember how Pentiums added 2+2 and got 3.999999? Logic is great until you encounter a statement like "I am lying to you when I say this statement is a lie". Maths is a great way of describing the universe, but it has SOME limits, like the fact that the number zero doesn't really exist, and therefore if you try to divide by it you're in trouble. When applied to computers, there are always limits on maths imposed by the hardware, maximum values on floating bit variables and integers, etc.

A fair while ago, I dropped a tongue-in-cheek email to the creator of Lux, Dustin Sacks, showing that if you sat there putting more and more armies into a country instead of finishing off your opponent, eventually the numbers wrapped around and your chock-a-block country went back to zero population. Even though no-one in a normal game would ever come REMOTELY close to the number of armies I was talking about, Dustin fixed the problem in a later release - or so I thought.

But not quite. See that room in the middle of the screen snapshot with 341 million soldiers in it? The turn before, it has just under 2300 million. Presumably, having reached the magic number of 256 (binary 8 bits limit), my population reverted back to zero plus the income from this turn, which I must admit, was fairly high by this stage of the game. It just goes to show that the best laid plans of mice, men and programmers will always provide a few "hidden features" (programmer jargon for "bugs") for the adventurous or just plain stupid to discover. Just like real life.

Xzibit Continued

Just a quick update to yesterday's story about Xzibit, the US rapper. After having a rant on his MySpace blog about supposedly being the victim of racism by a member of Rove's staff, the comments started being left by Australians in droves. After some 350-400 comments, 95% of which disagreed with him, suggesting in various ways that he have a little less attitude and a little more understanding, he took down both the MySpace blog post and its comments. That didn't stop people posting comments, they just posted them to other blog entries that had nothing to do with the original post instead. But taking it down? It seems the principle of Freedom of Speech only applies when you agree with Xzibit. To quote the man himself, "If you have a problem with what I say in my blogs stay off my site people." I guess that says everything you need to know about the man.

That Ugly 'Racism' Word

Racism is in the News today, on at least two fronts. Firstly, John Howard's plan to stamp out abuse in indigenous communities has very predictably been labelled racist, despite him clearly saying these emergency actions would be implemented nationwide; and secondly, US rapper Xzibit stormed off the set of 'Rove' because a staff member said "we came a long way just having you on the program". Its kind of hard to see how that remark is racist, but if you look hard enough, you might be able to interpret it that way. I would think it had more to do with the rap/hiphop culture and Rove's audience demographics and preferences than skin colour, but obviously Xzibit didn't see it that way.

Australia just ISN'T a racist country. Sure, like anywhere, there are individuals who will hold their own bigoted opinions, but this isn't the US, where there are clear socioeconomic boundaries between different ethnic groups. Most people in Australia don't notice race unless its specifically pointed out to them, and the average street of Suburbia has people of different original nationality in almost every house. We are so multicultural now that we simply don't notice differences any more. That is the very OPPOSITE of racist, and a real testament to the Aussie way of life and the principle of a "Fair Go" for all. So "Keep it G", Xzibit, and next time don't impose your own racially-skewed views on us… there's a word for that, and we all know what it is.

The Stunt Men

In the last few days, Prime Minister John Howard announced the government's response to an appalling report into sexual abuse among indigenous (aboriginal for those who don't understand Political Correctness) communities. The measures are hard-hitting and comprehensive, and must have taken more guts than any PM of this country has shown in the past 50 years. The Opposition labelled it as a political stunt designed to pull votes in the coming election.

Union officials were caught on video berating and abusing employees, but it was just a political stunt according to Kevin Rudd. Rudd's plan to chat with the Dalai Lama is just a political stunt, says Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Justine Elliot says the Federal Government's new fairness test is just a political stunt. And Mr Howard scratching his nose on camera, I'm sure, is just a political stunt designed to pull in votes from the nasally differently-endowed. Likewise, whenever Mr Rudd goes to the toilet, I'm sure he pulls a few political stunts out while he's in there.

In fact, a search of Google News reveals a whopping 698 political stunts in today's news alone, although to be fair, not all of them are in Australia. It seems even foreign countries are pulling political stunts, presumably for the benefit of one Australian party or the other.

I am getting very sick of the phrase, and the election is still a few months away. It's to be expected that in an election year, those in the running will try to be more visible and remind the public of what exactly it is that they do, to justify their ridiculously high salaries. But whichever way you look at it, Mr Howard's bold action on the indigenous abuse problem took guts, just like his decision to send troops to Iraq did in the face of massive opposition here at home, or his decision to stand firm on same-sex marriages not being allowed. And love him or loath him, THAT is why he's been Prime Minister of Australia for so long now.

The Smoking Gun

A man who sexually assaulted a woman in Melbourne then forced-marched her to a nearby service station to buy cigarettes (see story here). That's where he made his big mistake, of course. These days courts seem to hand out ridiculously lenient sentences, so if the assault had been all he did to her, he might have been walking the streets again in 18 months or so. But forcing her to buy cigarettes? Surely in this day and age of unbridled smoking antagonism, that's Attempted Murder! Forget prison, let's just hang him now!

Today some of the other Australian States caught up to Tasmania and banned smoking in bars, pubs, etc. In a month or two, smoking in all indoor areas, and most outdoor areas, will be completely banned. I grew up a vehement anti-smoker, took it up at 28, quit at 34, took it up again at 38. I've always smoked 1 mg cigs, in the belief that smoking a whole packet in a day was the same as someone else smoking 2 or 3 or their 12 mg ones. According to doctors, I was wrong, and have the same chance of harm as them.

Smoking is addictive, and there's only one way to fix the problem for good. That's to stop the sale of cigarettes, period. The social consequences would be dire, crime would go through the roof until the jitters of being forced to go cold-turkey passed, and there would always be an underground of illegal tobacco growers, just as there is, and always will be, with marijuana. Publicly, the government says that smoking costs the nation a lot more in healthcare bills than the revenue from selling cigarettes raises, but I don't believe that for a minute. The bottom line is that governments are about money, and if there wasn't a profit from selling cigarettes, they would already have been banned.

Who do you believe? I, for one, believe nobody on the cigarette issue, from the Government to the Quit campaigners to the Doctors of the 50's who told us all how much they recommended Camels. Smoking is a curse, and like all curses, it will take a Witch Doctor to see it lifted.

You Know You're Living in 2007 When…

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You've forgotten that solitaire used to be played with real cards.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you, and people who live in your house.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
7. Every commercial on television has a website at the bottom of the screen.
8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
10. You get up in the morning and check your email before your shower, shave or coffee.
11. You tilt your head sideways to smile. : )
12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

Primetime Bloodbath

And while I'm still on the topic of television, the following article was in our school's newsletter this week:

House Of Horrors - The Prime Time Bloodbath
350 ACTS OF VIOLENCE
234 GUNSHOTS
139 OBSCENITIES
THAT’S WHAT FREE TV AIRED 6pm-10:30pm IN ONE WEEK!

Those were the headlines in a Sydney newspaper this week. Primetime television is awash with death and violence… disturbing images across all stations and time slots… Those involved in the seven-night survey sat through a week of murder, stabbings, torture, car and airplane crashes and blood shed, as well as sex and nudity. They said they had not realised how desensitised they had become until they started actually taking notes and counting. For example, there was a scene in CSI (Nine) with a man buried up to his neck; then tree sap was poured on his head. You saw him screaming and then the investigators were examining a headless corpse, again and again. The television stations need to be more responsible, BUT we as parents need to be more accountable. The Bible says to train up a child in the way he/she SHOULD go. The premier of NSW said that this relentless march of televised violence and sex into the nation's lounge rooms is a grim reality for parents who are struggling to act as censor for their children. Even the Prime Minister said that parents had the greatest responsibility to monitor their children’s intake. I believe he is exactly right. Stop blaming the television channels and do your God given job. I would recommend that you get rid of your TV, or at least remove off your roof the aerial which brings into your home all this junk! You can control the use of selected DVD’s in your players instead. We will reap what we sow. We cannot do our job properly at school, if you do not support us in this issue.

Personally, I think the statistics quoted in the article are a bit low. Yes, low! I would be amazed if there were not a lot more violent acts and deaths in a whole week's TV. I discovered a site ages ago which, as a parent, I have found very useful. When it comes to deciding whether to hire a certain DVD or whether to take the kids to see that latest movie at the cinema, check out screenit.com

Check out, for example screenit.com's review of the movie "Ocean's 13", here. As well as a handy summary of the movie, shown below, screenit.com goes through every single occurrence of bad language, scary scenes, sex, violence, etc, and even issues to talk to kids about after the movie. One of the web's most useful sites.

More WIN Losers

A few days ago I had a whinge about free to air commercial TV stations and the number of advertisements they run, which appear to have far exceeded the legal maximum, especially on WIN TV. How bad is the problem? Last night I set my Miglia to record a program starting at 11:15 pm and ending at 11:45 pm, and the Miglia records for 5 minutes before AND after the set time. Out of my total 40 minutes of recording, I didn't get one single second of the program I wanted. That's right, the program which was scheduled to begin at 11:15 pm in the TV Guide hadn't even started yet at 11:50 pm! Pathetic, and definitely not viewer-friendly.

The The Impotence of Proofreading

You work very horde on a paper for English clash, and then get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=) and all because you are the words liverwurst spoiler. Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence. This is a problem that affects manly, manly students. I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term that my English teacher in my sophomoric year, Mrs Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague. And that's all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague. Not just anal community colleague, because I wouldn't be happy at anal community colleague. I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation, I really need to be challenged, challenged dentally. I know this makes me sound like a stereo, but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue. So I needed to improvement or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison (in Prison, New Jersey).

So I got myself a spell checker and figured I was on Sleazy Street. But there are several missed aches that a spell chukker can't can't catch catch. For instant, if you accidentally leave a word your spell exchequer won't put it in you. And God for billing purposes only you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling your spell Chekhov might replace a word with one you had absolutely no detention of using. Because what do you want it to douch? It only does what you tell it to douche. You're the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit. It just goes to show you how embargo one careless clit of the mouth can be.

Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint. The teacher read my entire paper on A Sale of Two Titties out loud to all of my assmates. I'm not joking, I'm totally cereal. It was the most humidifying experience of my life, being laughed at pubically. So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice: 1. There is no prostitute for careful editing. And 3. When it comes to proofreading, the red penis your friend.

By Taylor Mali

World Wide Colossal Cave

Who is the man in that picture? If you don't know, shame on you... you're looking at Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web. I was doing a little browsing on the history of the Internet and the World Wide Web today (no, they are NOT the same thing) and ended up at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. That's where Berners-Lee first proposed the idea, and CERN also, therefore, had the world's first website. Check out the story, and the original proposal he submitted, here.

In the proposal, Berners-Lee refers to two things I would never have guessed were influential in the creation of the web we all take for granted.

Firstly, the original ADVENT game by Crowther & Woods, also know as Colossal Cave to later generations, which was probably the first game to create an alternate world with which one could interact realistically and with some degree of intelligence. Its use of nodes and links were a major influence on the idea of the web.

Secondly, Apple and their much-maligned early programming language, presentation software, and all-round ideas visualiser - HyperCard. Over the years HyperCard copped a lot of flak, but for those of us who were there, it was the first programming language which made graphics as easy as text, and allowed the creation of just about anything, in a very simple to learn language.

Strange to think that two of the oldest bastions of popular computing pathed the way for the globe-spanning super-encyclopedic oracle of human knowledge we have today.

Berners-Lee's original Proposal

TV or Not TV

Free-to-air television sucks, we all know that, especially here in Tasmania where we only have 4 stations. In these days of Pay TV, video and DVD, online movie and TV channels, etc, the only programs that the free-to-air stations can afford are the cheap or old ones, with a sprinkle of newish popular stuff just to keep the viewers from turning off completely. We can't expect quality, so surely we should at least be able to expect quantity...

There are laws governing what can be shown on TV, how much of the airtime can be advertisements, etc. But those laws are obviously ignored. Take, for example, the program I recorded with my Miglia TVMax last Saturday, mid afternoon timeslot, the classic "How the West Was Won". You can see from the screenshot that the total length of the program was 194 minutes, and that when I marked the adverts to be cut out, it reduced the running time to 137 minutes. That's 70% program, 30% adverts, or if you prefer, one minute of advert for every 2 minutes of actual program. In amongst a total of 137 minutes of content, WIN TV managed to squeeze 57 minutes of advertising, and that's in a low-view timeslot. In primetime, the ratio of adverts to actual content sometimes runs close to 50%, I suspect.

The practice is self-defeating. In a bid to squeeze more out of the budget, the stations are forcing viewers to switch away from them in droves. This means the advertisers are getting less and less value for their money, which means the TV stations need to put even more adverts into every hour of TV to pay the bills. It won't be too many years, I suspect, before TV channels in Tasmania close completely, a victim of their own shortsightedness.

Flights of Fancy

I am sooooo sick of people knocking the Virgin Blue and JetStar airlines and swapping horror stories of how terrible their service was, how they did everything wrong, and how they will never fly with them again. Its the same in the UK, but the target of their frustration there is EasyJet. To all these people I say "Do what you're told and there's no problem." Let me throw my own personal experience into the pot. Every time I've flown between Tassie and the Mainland, it's been with Virgin Blue. Firstly, there was the price - Virgin flew two adults and 3 kids to Melbourne and back for around $400, and the nearest competitor was over $900, the plane didn't crash and we got a cup of tea and a biscuit. What more do you want on a flight? Do you expect when you catch a bus that you'll be waited on hand and foot?

These airlines operate on a shoestring budget, and the savings are passed on to the consumer. That means if they say be there by 9:00 am and you arrive at 9:10, they can't help you. Live with it, you're all grown up now and you were told when to be there. The airlines have rules and procedures to follow, and even if there is still half an hour till the plane actually takes off, if they keep letting people on, they will never take off. Fuel calculations have to be made, safety procedures explained, etc. Try doing that to an audience when people keep trickling in.

The big airlines can afford to give you another flight free when you were stupid enough to be late, because every passenger is paying for the late idiots in every ticket they buy. If you want a no-frills price, you have to accept the fact that that means everything in the process, from check-in times to baggage weight, has to be much more strict to meet that price. So lay off the cheap airlines and stop blaming them for the simple fact that you, a supposed adult, couldn't follow simple instructions. I've yet to hear a single one of these rants where the airline could really be said to be at fault, and I'll continue to fly Virgin Blue, and be quite satisfied with them, for the foreseeable future.

Use Algebra

The mother is 21 years older than the child. In 6 years from now the mother will be 5 times as old as the child. The question you need to answer is: "Where is the father?" Hint: You can solve the puzzle using ordinary algebra. Check the Comments of this post for the answer.

Brain Teaser

Find at least 18 creatures in the italicized sentence. The names appear in the words, they're not mixed up anagrams, jumbled or combined words. Check Comments for answers (not now, after you've had a try! Shheesh!)

Kneel in the kayak grasping the boat, but don't wrench the bullion or scowl at the chart. Behind the taped and sealed painter is a benevolent collier. The foxglove is in the bath.

No Yahoo's from Me

Last night I saw an advert on TV for a Pirates of the Caribbean competition which could be entered online at yahoo7, by following the links there. I went to Yahoo7 and couldn't find any mention of the movie or the competition, and their search box just did a Google search which brought up lots of references to the first 2 movies, but nothing recent. There were some competitions down the bottom of the page, and every one that I clicked on took me to pages which said "Thanks, but that competition has already closed". Almost every link on the page took me to some sort of ad-referral sponsored page, in fact.

On the face of it Yahoo7 seems to be a great place to make your home page - after all, there are TV Guides, Weather, Mail, Music and Messenger, all sorts of topics life Lifestyle, News, Photos, Travel and Real Estate. But overall, the site is just waaaay too commercial now. What happened to the "good old" Yahoo which was just as likely to be your home page as Google or the now defunct Excite? Unfortunately, like so many successful websites, it was bought out by business, who then set about changing it to what they, in their business frame of mind, thought it should be. Businesses should stick to what they do best, running a business. If the dotcom implosion and fallout of a few years ago teaches us anything, its that the web is a very fickle place, and normal rules of commerce don't apply there. The inevitable result of big business trying to run the web is that they ruin whatever they touch, just as King Midas did. The web isn't about business, no matter how many opportunities they think they see there, and never will be. Most of these sites get you to sign up so they can tell their shareholders they have x million members, but the fact is that most people who sign up never go back to the site again. Yahoo7.com.au may look great in PowerPoint presentations to the shareholders, but it's not worth the server space it takes up, and in a year or two it will join many, many other "Once Were Great" websites in the "Jumped the Shark When It Was Bought Out" trash pile.

Late Night TV Asks "How Dumb Are You?"

Let's face it, late night advertising isn't ever likely to be interesting or informative. Anyone who can only afford to pay the very low rates for advertising in the 1 am to 4 am timeslot probably hasn't got a product that's worth selling. But with so many recording and timeshift options these days, perhaps advertising in that timeslot is actually a smart thing to do, given that more people than ever before will see your advert, next day when they watch what they recorded last night. That being the case, advertisers in that time slot need to start treating their audience as normal human beings, and stop assuming that because their advert is on at 2 am, anyone watching has incredible bowel pain, is lonely for company, or is just completely stupid.

Mind you, you'd have to be incredibly stupid to fall for some of the sexy-sms style adverts. In the centre of our picture is the "Text your postcode and we'll set you up with a root in your area" scam. They assume you already have internet access, because the only way to read the full terms and conditions is on their website, and yet somehow you will never have heard of Messenger, MySpace, Meetro, FriendFinder and a thousand other online services which allow you to search by area, for free. Never mind the small print on the ad, which charges you $4 per message received by you from them - if you're stupid enough to send in your postcode and live in a big city, what is to stop them from sending you a thousand contacts at $4 each?

Then there's the "Guess my cup size and win $5,000" scam. Seems easy to me, she's obviously a C-cup, but again, the small print takes the cake. You've actually got to answer 2 rounds of 5 questions each, at $5 per message, to even go into the draw for the prize. That's a raffle that costs $50 per ticket, and you can bet that the last question would be something like "What was the population of Brazil in 1867, and name them all". How dumb are people? Well obviously dumb enough that the promoters figure they'll make a fortune off this moronic scam.

An Honourable Mention has to go to the Adult Literacy adverts. For years, the people who organise these campaigns haven't been able to figure out the fundamentals of their target market - that they can't actually read! I used to live with an illiterate guy, and I can tell you that having the phone number dancing around with little eyes and singing the number at you just doesn't work because (a) you've had to make the jingle so complicated to get all those numbers in that no illiterate can remember it, and (b) just because he's illiterate doesn't mean he's 5 years old. One of the biggest problems my friend had with the whole Adult Literacy sector is the tendency to treat every client like he was a naughty 3 year old, not an adult. Better results could be had by using a plain sans-serif font, large and totally immobile, on screen in the same place for the whole advert. Stupid jingles like "One-three-double-Ooooo-six-triple-five-oh-six" with overlapping digits that are comic-style, move, jiggle and blink are the last thing likely to get results. They may not be able to read, but they can probably copy numbers down - if only you'd give them something decent to copy from. And as for the genius who decided to put adverts on the back of taxis that say "Can't read? Phone…" - he or she should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

More things I've learned watching TV lately

1. Even in a murder where there is only one witness, the witness will be asked 1 or 2 questions by each attorney and then dismissed, spending less than 2 minutes on the stand.

2. No meeting is ever concluded when everyone says "That's it"... you always have to wait until the person leaving the office opens the door and is halfway through it, before making them pause so you can say your final piece.

3. Every class ends with the bell ringing 10 seconds after the teacher starts the lesson, and he always picks a person to wait a minute.

4. No-one can ever walk past a table in a prison without having their tray upset by the person at the table.

5. In any trial, as long as the opposing attorney keeps saying "Objection" the Judge will keep saying "Over-ruled" and allow the questioning to continue, no matter how irrelevant it appears.

6. Any time a witness breaks down on the stand and admits to fault, the accused is automatically innocent of whatever he was charged with.

The Long Way

If you want to do a road trip all the way around Australia but you're worried about the rising price of fuel, here's a handy tip - the trip is almost 1 km shorter if you drive around Australia anti-clockwise than if you drive clockwise. It takes a bit of lateral thinking but most people can work out how and why fairly quickly. Just in case you're having an off day though, I'll post the answer in Comments to this post.

Clean Up

It's not exactly springtime, but maybe its time for some spring cleaning! I was filling some ink cartridges, spilled ink everywhere on my wife's best tablecloth, and she'll kill me if she sees it like this! Luckily, to clean it up all you have to do is stare at the dot in the centre, and all that messy ink will disappear...