Rubénerd!

I haven't done a good ol' fashioned Jim Kloss inspired rant here for a very long time, and this evening's tutorial class gave me the motivation again to pen one!

(Photo from AtomicMPC Australia)

*twitches*

So today in class we were performing a nice, generic discussion on information systems. The example our subject co-ordinator chose was the NBN, or the Australian National Broadband Network.

Our tutor had some choice words for it. He claimed it was far too expensive, and that it was unessisary in light of broadband connections that are good enough and do everything we want to right now. He cited wireless as a more cost effective and viable alternative, and that only major hubs like hospitals should be connected with fibre.

He (and his apparent idol Tony Abbott) was absolutely correct.

There is no point implementing a national power grid whatsoever. It would be far too expensive, and is unnessisary. We have existing gas lines, and gas powered stoves and lights, both of which would be the only things we'd ever use this newfangled electricity for anyway. You don't even need to have a gas pipe, you can get it "wirelessly" with canisters. Power cables should only be linked to major hubs like hospitals.

Hippie concepts like "future proofing" and "not knowing what we may use the infrastructure for in the future" are nothing more than petty money grabs. And WiMAX will solve everything, and in a cost effective way.

Tomorrow never comes

Can you imagine if we'd had people like that at the turn of the century when we were implementing our power grids? People back then had no idea we'd be using their connected electricity to power refrigerators, let alone computers that would be connecting us to the rest of the world. The point of fibre isn't to provide faster internet (though that would be nice), it's about giving us a framework for the future. A framework other countries have already had for decades. And even if WiMAX were a viable alternative, has he not heard the financial disaster stories about it?

This, from a tutor at one of Australia's premier technology universities. Thank heavens my other teachers have all had other views.

The cold hard truth is Australia is not at the same level as other developed economies today domestically and in our international connections, and we risk slipping even further if we don't get serious and think long term, rather than relying on these nonsensical band-aid wireless solutions which we can't even get working reliably today.

I'm used to living overseas and would be more than happy to go somewhere else if our telecommunications infrastructure continues to crumble at the hands of short sighted people, but others have an understandable attachment to their homeland and would rather not have it become irrelevent.

I guess my economics teacher was right. Countries, like companies, export products they're optimised for. For Australia, we dig stuff out of the ground and put it on barges, heaven forfend we try to do anything more.

Calming down now!

Changi Airport will be the world's first airport to reinforce its perimeter fences with fibre-optic sensors to detect intruders. ~ TODAYOnline

So in Australia we're still squabbling over putting fibre into the ground to bring us back in line with the rest of the world, but in Singapore they have enough of it spare to put it to use[less]?

It's the world's best airport, but I hope this isn't a sign of any change in priorities. Next they'll be removing those trays of free lollies from immigration or the koi ponds because terrorists might poison or hide in them respectfully.

With ISPs mulling data caps in the United States and Canada, their arguments ring true for us here in Australia too.

Streaming, online gaming, downloads, smartphones/tablets switching over to Wifi mode when they are in range, and of course all of the standard stuff like email/web/IM/etc...

Indeed. This is why automated web backup and online video streaming services are im(practical, possible) for most Australians where data caps are the norm, and where in some cases they're actively encoraged for dubious reasons. Of course the NBN and sorely needed government investment will fix everything!!1!!!one! Right?

In the meantime, Stop The Cap! Not referring to baseball caps, though I don't look good in them anyway.

Reading a blog post from the always fabulous Renai LeMay on Delimiter (Give Turnbull a break, he’s a funny bastard) got me thinking. Always a dangerous thing.

Creative Commons photo by Mushroom and Rooster on Flickr

Better learning late than never

I grew up in Singapore and Malaysia and have only recently started to take a keen interest in Australia's infocomm industry, and with politics here in general. I like using the word "keen" because it reminds me of Commander Keen which I still maintain was (and still is) the greatest side scrolling game of all time. Allegedly I'm weird however for preferring the classic episodes to the later isomorphic projection ones. But I digress.

Coming back to Australia, one of the characters I wasn't able to easily compartmentalise was a bloke by the name of Barnaby Joyce. Man, what a rogue senator. He's always such a rogue. He's like... a rogue guy who rogues with his rougeness.

I kid, the guy I really found difficult to place goes by the name of Malcolm Turnbull.

Here's a person who has actually worked in the real world for part of his life before becoming a politician so he has a grasp of what the general public go through as opposed to a secured cushy job in Canberra that's insulated from the real world. He has a semblance of IT knowledge. He takes the train and talks to regular people. He's still a politician through and through, but has a refreshing candour few others dare posses.

More surprising still was he was a Liberal, and that as a guy brought up in a Labor family I didn't feel guilty liking him. When Senator Conroy was first peddling the mandatory internet filter and Kevin Rudd was tacitly endorsing it, I came close to thinking I'd vote for the coalition under Turnbull's leadership. When he was ousted, many of us on Twitter pushed him to pull a Don Chipp and either start his own party, or run as an independent. I'd have voted for him.

As an aside, ultimately I supported The Greens again given Senator Ludlam's continued determination to call out Conroy for his filter and relative lack of IT knowledge. I was glad beyond belief there was a voice of reason and common sense in the senate through this debate, and a nice counterpoint to folks like Fielding who thinks humans use dinosaurs as land transport devices 6000 years ago. Everyone's entitled to their own beliefs, but this was a guy in a debating chamber of our government. Its downright scary.

Malcolm Turnbull's 640KiB moment

Now we come to the point raised by Renai LeMay in his Delimeter article.

There’s been a fair degree of animosity directed at Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the past 24 hours over his claim that there is no evidence that Australians would benefit from higher speeds than available under ADSL2+ broadband.

Unfortunately this has only been the latest in a series of gaffs about internet connectivity from a man I thought knew better; it wasn't as if he even prefaced his remarks by saying "at present". Renai aptly compares this comment to Bill Gates claiming that you'd never need more than 640KiB of memory

One of the fundamental constants of IT -- ironically enough -- is progress. Moors Law (through various interpretations) is famous for predicting the power of integrated circuits would double every 18 months, and that existing power would halve in cost in the same time. I think the case can also be made for internet.

In 1997 when our family got dialup at home in Singapore, we were excited by how much material we could get through this tiny serial modem. We could get weather information, articles for school projects, news from back home in Australia, and even some shopping. Had someone told me back then we'd be watching 720p video over the internet at some point, I would have laughed! It would take too much bandwidth! It'd be too slow! I didn't have a supercomputer that could interpret and play such high resolution video! And why would I want to when I could go to a video store and buy a shiny new LaserDisc or VCD?

Heh heh, LaserDisc.

My point, and I do have one

The point is, we have absolutely no idea what we'll be using the internet for in the future, and its incredibly short sighted for Malcolm Turnbull to claim our current speeds are adequate and all we need.

Singapore, as a small densely populated island nation and a pioneer, continues to be one of the few countries in the World in which broadband Internet access is readily available to just about any would-be user anywhere in the country, with connectivity of over 99%.

Having grow up in Singapore in an ocean of cheap, fast, unmetered bandwidth I'd even make the case that Australia's third world communications infrastructure is ill equipped to meet our current needs let alone future use. That's partly due to the geographic size of the country which is nobody's fault other than Slartibartfast, but nevertheless Mr Turnbull's assertion that our needs are currently been served by ADSL2+ is flawed, let alone his pontifications about the future.

I love the word "pontifications", I've come close to changing the Thoughts category here to Pontifications. That'd be sweet.

The problem is, he has a responsibility to tow the party line, and the Liberal's relative lack of inititive and leadership in this NBN debate other than to claim everything should be privately funded for short term gain means he has to endorse this position, even if perhaps he feels differently.

For reasons unique to his character, Malcolm had an unusually large amount of political capital with more pragmatic folks, but I feel comments like these are starting to erode it. People who used to respect him on social networks such as Twitter now reguarly mock his positions. Its a shame.

Forgive the terrible telecommunications pun, but I'm confident he can recover from this if he makes an honest effort to reconnect with his tech savvy fans who seem baffled and dissolusioned with him lately. As Renai said, he's a cool bloke. The ball is in his court. Which I shudder to say, because I was never very good at tennis. I can't run fast enough.

Creative Commons credits (hey, alliteration)

• Photo of Malcom Turnbull at Media140 by Jason Ilagan
• Photo of IBM PC user from 1988 from the Bundesarchiv
• Photo of the Raffles Place Singtel Building by me :)

Why did the EFA retweet my post about Ned Flanders, and what does he have to do with the proposed National Broadband Network (Wikipedia)? Read on my friend!

Geese love ganders...

During an impassioned discussion on security and the NBN at this year's EggNOG conference (sorry Andrew!) Arbor Network's Roland Dobbins asserted the internet fit the critera of a failed state and urged that the NBN be designed in a more secure fashion. If we don't he fears we may be responsible for creating a "cesspit".

As Ry Crozier reported in IT News Australia:

"Jonathan really likes it when I mention his name in posts for absolutely no reason."

Well that was clearly the wrong quote.

"If the network isn't defensible and there's not an active push to impose law and order, there's a danger [the network] wil [sic] become a cesspit and fail," as it had in China and Russia where criminal hacking had taken the place of litigation in the West as part of "legitimate" business strategies, he said.

I first read that as a "cesspit of fail". That colourful language would have been way cooler, and probably would have soften up the audience of nerds in attendance. While we're on this subject, it has always bugged me that attendance has a double T. Why does it need it? Even Mr. T only needs one, and if I brew a cup it only needs one. Except for green tea, they often need two.

But I digress

"We have to take positive action," he said, believing that an unmanaged network could rapidly become unmanageable, insecure and then un-securable.

I read this and my nervousness centre started up. I was shattered. These Rolling Stones lyrics doing anything for you? No? Okay then. The problem with security, as he rightly points out, is its much harder to patch an insecure system than it is to actively design a system with security in mind from the beginning. This I can completely understand and appreciate.

I suppose the thing that worries me is what he means by "positive action". To be blunt, it sounds ever so slightly Conroy-eque. Take these recommendations, implement them, and don't ask questions otherwise... you're against positive action!

We could read this as a cynic and assume his company has some magical new software or system to make the NBN more secure, or that he'd be able to offer his services for making it more secure for a fee. I know Singapore networking folks but I'm a complete AusNOG virgin so I wouldn't know. Frankly, its hard to judge his intentions, or the intentions behind Orewllian-ly titled "positive action".

You promised Ned Flanders!

The point I made on Twitter and got retweeted for this afternoon by the EFA (HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!1!!!one!!!) was the idea of inventions. Why did my iTelephone autocorrect that word to that? Even if such a plan was founded on good intentions, as Ned Flanders said to Marge when the residents of Springfield rebuilt his destroyed house only to have it collapse as a result of faulty workmanship: "I can't live in good intentions Marge!".

I would be more than happy to be proven wrong about this, but talk of this nature creeps me out.