Rubénerd!

Here's an article from the Australian ABC. Tell me if you can spot the problem.

A fully-marked New South Wales police highway patrol car has been stolen. Police say highway patrol officers stopped a car on the M7 near the Richmond Road off-ramp in western Sydney at around midday. Officers say there was an altercation and the driver of the car struggled with police before breaking free and stealing their fully-marked highway patrol car. The driver, identified as Arthur Partsch, was last seen travelling north in the light blue Holden Commodore sedan. Officers have warned anyone who sees the car not to approach it, but to contact Triple-0.

Did you catch it?

We're being warned to call the police if we see a patrol car. I wonder how many calls they must have got from people spotting all the hundreds of cars on active duty?

I avoid Australian terrestrial television like the plague, but fortunately I was tweeted that Channel 9 informed us of the licence plate of the specific patrol car in question. Georgina even went one step further and (shock!) told me what it was!

So a lesson for reporters appealing for information from the public: give us the specifics as well. I wouldn't want to sick the SOS-Dan force on you.

An eyebrow-raising story just published on ZDNet Australia made me realise I'd never commented on Bitcoin here before!

The story

Written by Luke Hopewell less than an hour ago:

The ABC has caught one of its own trying to mine Bitcoins using its infrastructure.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) looked set to become a haven for Bitcoin virtual currency mining last year, after a so-called "miner" placed a piece of code in the production environment, which could have potentially netted to thousands of dollars. The ABC's security systems, however, had other plans.

I thought Bitcoin was an interesting concept when it first came out, but I had reservations. I wasn't alone; while it clearly appealed to certain Libertarian minded people eager to escape the clutches of taxation and runaway government defecits that could devalue "real" money, there were those who claimed it would fail for the same reason every other online currency has. Such a discussion is beyond the scope of this post!

I like to say I'm a reformed Libertarian!

No, for me the concern was about energy. To introduce scarcity into a system of abundance, Bitcoins are manufactured through a computationally intensive and complex program. Referred to as "mining", people would be awarded at random for their efforts. Well no, people with more powerful and more expensive setups are statistically more likely to be awarded stuff, and those who can't afford them wouldn't. Libertarianism in a nutshell ;).

The problem for me is, while the Bitcoins mined with this program are virtual, their impact is real. Thousands of CPU hours burning real energy most likely produced from dirty fossil fuels created this stuff. If you're going to run a program on your computer 24/7, the least you could do would be to have it do something useful, like finding cures for diseases. If that doesn't rock your boat, spare the planet your extra energy use and put your machine on standby when not using it!

Which brings us back full circle to this article in ZDNet. This worker at the ABC, a government owned company and therefore owned by Australians like me, were using our computers and money to power them to generate Bitcoins for themselves. To me, that goes beyond what we'd normally describe as misuse of property.

I'll be interested to read the outcome of this investigation as more details emerge.

"Voltaire was asked to condemn the devil on his deathbed, and all he said was: I don't need more enemies!"

I just finished watching the open forum and discussion programme Q and A on ABC1 and was delighted my man Christopher Hitchens was one of the panellists! The other guests included Waleed Aly, Father Frank Brennan, Sally Warhaft and Anne Henderson. You can download and watch it from the ABC website.

To say it was a stimulating discussion would be the understatement of the century. Their discussion topics ranged from natural disasters, to why people feel the need to be religious, to the nuclear threat of the Iranians, freedom of women (or lack thereof), the rights of homosexuals... and for some bizarre reason a discussion on why "talent" means Roman Polanski can "get away" with it.

The first topic was spearheaded by an audience member who asked Chris why he thought when good things happen God gets praise, but when bad things happen such as natural disasters, it's merely referred to as Gods will that we can't understand. Chris drew comparisons to ANZAC Day in Australia with the war memorials across towns in the United Kingdom and the lack of such memorials in three towns described by the Church as "blessed". Unfortunately yet another example of the same kind of unfortunate, one sided thinking.

Of all the panellists, naturally I thought Christopher Hitchens was the star and centre of the show, but I was really impressed with Waleed Aly's (pictured above) comments as well. When the discussion of nuclear arms was raised, Chris made the comment that the new Hamas logo contains a mushroom cloud and that any organisation that uses torture and rape to advance their agenda should answer for such crimes, Waleed added and rebutted by saying no discussion can legitimately take place about Iran without discussing Israel's own nuclear weapons and abuses. In my view, I think they were both right, but as Sally Warhaft said it would take an age to address the question, so I'm going to leave it at that! Does Waleed Aly have any books in print I can get copies of?

Father Frank Brennan (pictured above) seemed like a genuinely nice person and I appreciated his obviously heart felt opinions, but he lost me when the issue of homosexuality was raised and he simply could not say the Catholic Church condemns it and considers it a sin, even when he was asked directly. Unfortunately that was also the only time I was unimpressed with Waleed as well; he may be a member of a vast majority of rational, moderate Islamic people of whom I know many, but when asked if his own religion officially condemned homosexuals he talked about politics instead. That said on Father Franks part, he did make a critical point that conversation is what we need which I found refreshing if only because that's what I've been saying myself here for years!

I thought Anne Henderson (pictured above, far right) didn't get enough airtime, but to be honest I was somewhat offended as a non believer by her assertion that you needed to be a member of a religious charity organisation in order to do good. It may have not been her intention, but as Chris pointed out organisations such as Amnesty International do valuable work helping people around the world without the need for celestial oversight.

One of the other highlights was towards the end when a young women openly addressed the panel by saying she could walk the streets of Iran without fear of persecution and that all the things Chris was saying about eliminating poverty by giving freedom to women were exactly what she experienced. He replied that her saying that was an insult to all the women in that part of the world who have been raped, tortured, imprisoned and who's testimony is deemed of lesser value in court.

If you just read my crappy review here you could be forgiven for thinking the discussion was heavy and full of anger, but aside from the one brief incident the atmosphere wasn't hostile. Having watched so many interviews with Chris on American shows where the American anchor rapidly deteriorates into a rude shouting match it was nice to see the conversation remain civil with plenty of humour and laughs thrown in. For subjects like this, you really, really need it.

I have to say, compared to Richard Dawkins who I mostly agree with on issues of atheism and Sam Harris who I seem to agree so wholeheartedly with it's scary, I agree with less of what Christopher Hitchens says but overall I thought he still had the impeccable wit and talking points down with his performance in Australia. I just wish he were coming to Adelaide.

One other talking point they did raise which I did find heartening was the possibility of an atheist Prime Minister in Australia. They all seemed to think an atheist President of the United States was out of the question but for Australia having an atheist PM would be possible. I hope they're right.

Aside from the final line that Chris delivered which I paraphrased at the very beginning of this post though, I think Sally Warhaft (pictured above) had the best line of the evening and it'll be the one I'll end my terribly worded and constructed review on:

"Palestinians need a state. Israelis need to feel safe"

Oh yeah, and I forgot one other thing :)

ASIDE: Every small screenshot in this post is linked to the full sized screenshot in uncompressed PNG format so you can see exactly what I can see. The file sizes are almost 1MiB each, so don't click if you're on dialup... unless you have lots of free time!

I claim no ownership over the programming presented in the player itself, I'm merely showing them for the purpose of review.

The mighty little EyeTV

For some reason I've had really bad luck with computer hardware over the last few years. Faulty external hard drives literally burning out the internal FireWire port on my MacBook Pro, D-Link routers failing more times than I can count on one hand, new batteries barely holding a charge, ExpressCards that only work when they want to, not being able to use a brand new headset... I was starting to think electronic gremlins had it in for me.

I belabor all this to put in context the thrill I felt today when I went to the NextByte Apple store in Rundle Mall, bought myself a USB EyeTV Digital TV tuner, plugged it into my terrestrial antenna, and it worked the instant I plugged it in! They've definitely come a long way from the first TV tuner card I bought back in 2002 that plugged into a PCI slot on my desktop and was more temperamental than I am without coffee!

An example of a HD signal compared to the resolution of my MBP. The show is Q & A, a fascinating political debate show on ABC1. They really need a show like this back in Singapore!

For those who haven't seen this device before, the USB EyeTV Digital TV Tuner is a small device barely larger than a regular USB memory key but with a coaxial cable plug on the other side which you plug the cable leading to your antenna into. I bought the most basic version for AUS$120.00 that comes bundled with a small desktop antenna, a USB extention cable for those using a MacBook Air, and the EyeTV software that lets you view shows, make recordings and skip advertisements.

There are many different models with different capabilities; there are dual signal switching versions which will pick the best signal out of two inputs in realtime (useful for in cars I've been told) and there's even a so-called Deluxe version which comes with a fancier annena and other goodies. Both of these also let you record a channel which watching another, but I didn't feel I really needed this, or that the extra cost justified it.

After dragging the EyeTV.app application over to my /Applications folder and launching it for the first time I was presented with a setup wizard that told me to plug the antenna into the EyeTV device, then plug the device itself into the Mac. Then it was simply a matter of scanning for the digital versions of all the free-to-air Aussie channels, and then I was watching them. The whole process took less than 10 minutes!

An example of a regular digital TV signal showing the quality of the graphics on the commercial Channel 10. Don't worry, I watch SBS World News and ABC News!

When I bought the EyeTV tuner I knew I'd be plugging it into the terrestrial antenna, so I went to Dick Smith (for my American readers, it's basically like Radio Shack) at the Myer Centre in Rundle Mall and purchased a shielded coaxial cable for $12. I thought I'd humour myself by plugging in the bundled antenna and trying it out first, but it couldn't find any channels at all. Plugged into the wall, I got perfect, 100% reception and distortian free images for all the digital versions of the free to air Aussie networks, including all the High Definition channels. Very nice!

The picture quality is ridiculously good! While the regular digital TV pictures come through and take up a sizable part of my MacBook Pro's 1440x900 resolution screen, the high definition versions take up almost the entire screen! Of course you can make them full screen which I'm sure would work great with an external second monitor, but for me I just get a kick out of watching Huey's Cooking Adventures on my Mac desktop!

One of the shows I really missed when I lived in Singapore was Huey's Cooking Adventures! Go Huey!!!

Recording shows is also a snap. As I said before the basic version that I bought doesn't have the capability of viewing other channels while you're recording, but the recordings it generates are indistinguishable from the original! Unfortunately the output is a .eyetv file which has to be played in the EyeTV application, but you can easily export to QuickTime or even sizes for your iPod.

The only thing that I don't like about the EyeTV software itself is that it uses the American Month/Day/Year format instead of the International Day/Month/Year format. I can tell that 08/29/2008 actually means 29/08/2008 because there isn't a 29th month, but I'm worried it might get a bit ambiguous and confusing when it comes to 02/03/2010 or something similar!

Screenshot from the HD signal from SBS, Australia's multicultural station that plays shows, news and movies in foerign languages, as well as local Australian debate shows like Insight. ABC and SBS kick arse over the commercial stations by the way, except for Huey of course ;-).

ASIDE: For what it's worth, on my sites and on my computers I always use Year.Month.Day to clear up all ambiguity, and so that the computer can sort them properly!

I was going to discuss the different high definition channels that the EyeTV can pick up in Adelaide and what has changed since 2005 when I was hear last, but I've decided to leave that for another post. I'll add the URL here once I've finished it.

The final verdict? TV tuners have come a long way! If you have a modern Mac with at least a G5 or Intel processor and want a quick, easy and affordable way to watch terrestrial TV channels, absolutely look no further! Aside from the date problem and the proprietary recording format which you need to convert from, it's perfect! Four and a half stars :-).