Rubenerd

It's been over a week since Google's surprise revelation that they would no longer be filtering search results in the People's Republic of China and the shock still hasn't seemed to have worn off for most people. I think we're playing up the significance far too much.

The consensus, from Twitter folk to newspaper writers seems to be Google's move is scaring the communist party and it's only a matter of time before the very fabric of the country falls to pieces as free speech and beer start pouring from every rooftop. I think I got my analogy a bit confused there.

I think it'd be healthy if we all take a step back, stop foaming at the mouth and look at this realistically.

The Chandler Bing Factor

Firstly, I think most people forget that while Google owns and dictates the terms of the search market in the English speaking world, they're minnows in others. Baidu rules the roost in China, not Google. If Baidu all of a sudden refused to filter search results I think it would be newsworthy, but as it stands now it'd be as if Bing announced something like this in the English speaking world. A few stories will be written up, some hysteria would be generated but most people wouldn't know or care, and the norm wouldn't change.

It's clear the Orwellian restrictions on free speech in places like China are not sustainable and will inevitably collapse upon themselves after enough people start to chip away at their foundations (I think I mixed up another analogy, crap) but let's not play up this event with Google in a similar vein to the second coming of a deity or a new type of grilled cheese sandwich maker.

Hypocrisy sounds like a water dwelling adhesive

Along with the placing of too much significance on this event, there's another angle in all of this that I think is being ignored by most of the mainstream press and it regards something going on closer to home.

Shortly before my family trip to Europe in December I posted a quote drawing comparisons between the Great Firewall of China and the proposed mandatory internet filter in Australia. I got a comment from James, the writer for DigitAsia:

It saddens me that western countries are critical of China’s Great Firewall when they fail to practice what they preach. The Great Australian Firewall is just another example of western hypocrisy- and just another reason for China to rightly resent the west.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to equate the persecution of political dissidents in China with the actions of the Australian government (and its an insult to those people who have been persecuted) but I wholeheartedly agree the West is in no position to criticise free speech and press in China when they themselves are setting up draconian filter systems and monitoring, whether it be the Great Firewall of Australia or the wire-tapping of phones by the NSA in the United States, or the so called "three strikes rule" for accused (not convicted) file sharers being debated in various parliaments around the world as we speak.

Scaring myself

Sorry I scared myself, I started to get a bit too serious there which is not in keeping with the tone of this blog. The Bird is the Word. Alan A'Dale. Grilled cheese sandwiches. That's better.

Well that's just a tad bit worrying.

Delta chief executive Richard Anderson has reiterated his bullish view that the carrier’s large fleet of ageing Boeing MD-80s retain a cost advantage over newer Boeing 737-800s that is largely driven by lower ownership costs.

I think I've told this story here before, but just in case I'll write it again: during a business trip several years ago my father was on business in the US and was walking with some American colleagues across the tarmac to their aircraft when one astute aviation buff stopped dead in his tracks and refused to let them board. He recognised the registration on the fuselage as being the one from a plane that had suffered fairly severe damage in an accident previously and had obviously been patched back together.

I'm not saying the Delta airline management are being reckless, and I can only imagine the tough times they must be going through in this economic climate, but claiming MD-80s are cheaper than 737-800s because they're free compared to buying new aircraft sounds fishy. It's as if they're trying to rationalise in such a way to cover up something else. They should have left it at just this:

The carrier’s chief also claims that the maintenance costs on the MD-80 are lower than the 737-800 and crew costs are not quite as high.

My other concern is these smaller jets have shorter ranges and are hence placed on shorter commuter routes, which means they're exposed to far more pressurisation and depressurisation cycles which would add up to greater stresses far more quickly. If anything, smaller aircraft should be replaced more frequently.

Perhaps I've just been spoilt by Singapore Airlines which has one of the youngest fleets of aircraft in the world, if you're to believe The Wikipedias. Or that just might be their flight attendants. Don't worry, I didn't just write that.

If I'm worrying over nothing, feel free to post any corrections or clarifications you deem necessary.

Don't remember when or where I saw the above picture, but what's to stop somebody… printing that picture? Wouldn't a more apt replacement for content they didn't want printed be… a blank page?

Ah, but what is "printing"?

I suppose we're getting into philosophy now: can you "print" a blank page? I've unwittingly done it many times with blank paper shooting out of the printer, but has it truly been "printed"? I would define "printing" as material being adhered to paper, but if the definition is merely having paper passed through a printer then perhaps you could print a blank page. Would it still have printing if a printing press creates a page full of white space?

I'm off to print a blank page to stare at for a while.

Fortunately I've been spared from having to do this lately, but adding this tip here in case Murphy's Law comes into effect. Previously when I dual booted FreeBSD with a NT flavour of Windows I'd always install the latter first, owing to it's tendency to shamelessly screw with boot orders and MBRs like the monopolistic Borg creature it is. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

If other operating systems have damaged your Master Boot Record, you can reinstall it either with /usr/sbin/sysinstall or with boot0cfg(8). See man boot0cfg for details.

Get it? Hey, I thought it was funny.

<(^^<) (>^^)>

Just a quick post to inform you all I voted for Ray Foley for the Irish Meteor radio awards! Not sure if international SMS text messages are counted, but budda diddly boom! "The Ray Foley Show… Today Eff Emm!"

"VOTE NDJ 4" to +353 85 711 4444

While we were driving around Europe we decided to flick through local radio stations, and by far our favourite DJs from the whole trip were Ray D'Arcy and Ray Foley from Today FM in Ireland. They're banter literally became a highlight of the trip, so much so that we'd often dordle in the car outside a major tourist attraction so we could finish hearing them ramble and rant on an idea before we got out.

"VOTE NDJ 4" to +353 85 711 4444

We noticed while we were there the Irish sense of humour is surprisingly close to the Aussie one… perhaps because of our common heritage of British oppression ;).

When I first bought this Western Digital MyBook back in 2008 I thought 1TB was so gigantically massive as to be practically infinite, but here I am in 2010 with four of them and they're almost all full to bursting. Because I travel and study abroad I need external drives, and I spent extra money to have FireWire versions, so I decided to swap out the 1TB drive from one of the enclosures and fit in a 1.5TB instead of buying another separate unit.

Thanks to some detailed instructions from Carlton Bale it didn't take too long and am now in the process of moving all my stuff over to the new drive. Wonder how long this one will last?

It's been so heartening to see all the reports of assistance and aid pouring in from around the world for communities devastated in the Haiti earthquake disaster, but at the same time I'm angered beyond belief that some "people" (and I use the term in a loose Darwinian sense, not a moral one) are already exploiting the tragedy to further their own agendas. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Firstly we have this story by Naomi Klein of disaster capitalism that Annette Shacklett shared in her Google Reader feed this morning:

Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that the Heritage Foundation has been one of the leading advocates of exploiting disasters to push through their unpopular pro-corporate policies. From this document, they’re at it again, not even waiting one day to use the devastating earthquake in Haiti to push for their so-called reforms. The following quote was hastily yanked by the Heritage Foundation and replaced with a more diplomatic quote, but their first instinct is revealing:

"In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region."

I've read The Shock Doctrine twice now and as soon as news of the disaster broke in Haiti my first gut wrenching thought was how it was going to be exploited. Some people take the high moral ground, some the low ground, and some dig trenches.

Speaking of morals, or the lack thereof, the tevangelist Pat Robinson couldn't wait to use the disaster as a platform to further spew his nonsense. From Yahoo7, the Aussie Yahoo! news portal:

American televangelist Pat Robertson has blamed the devastating earthquake in Haiti on a pact between the impoverished nation’s founders and the devil.

“They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon III [sic] and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil,” he said.

Forgive my language dear reader, but when I see exploitation I have to comment on it: I'm just dismayed there isn't a Hell for Pat Robinson to go to when he dies. He's a charlatan, fraud, bottom of the barrel scum and a coward.

Update

In my haste to write this post and publish it I failed to notice his name is spelt Pat Robertson, not Pat Robinson. Please accept my apology if your name is Pat Robinson and I associated you with an arsehole.

While my dad, sis and I were on our Eurotrip over the New Year holidays (photos coming soon) we were placed in self imposed 24-hour-instant-Twitter-news exile, which to tell the truth was kinda refreshing. The only thing we had to worry about in Europe was being buried in a freak Irish, German, French, Czech or Austrian snowstorm, or finding plastic explosive in our baggage from Slovakia on arrival in Dublin. But I digress.

Checking out the headlines in Google Reader which has two weeks worth of unread posts, it seems the biggest story that broke while we were away were the strongest earthquake since Australia was colonised hit Haiti, decimating entire communities and the livelihoods of so many already desperate people which made my heart skip a beat and clench in despair. A Gaelic speaking police officer was also shot in Dublin sparking fears The Troubles may not be over despite the recent handing in of arms.

In the tech space we have the Google Nexus One phone, the fact 3D televisions in lieu of Avatar are the bees knees, how there's still no Apple slate tablet and the alleged malicious hacking by the Chinese government of many Silicon Valley sites and tech companies by the Chinese government. Well, that was a poorly constructed and superfluous sentence ending. The Nexus One is an evolutionary, GSM friendly version of the Droid with an OLED screen that's unusable in daylight, and Google is no longer censoring Chinese content on their Google.cn website, claiming they'll leave if approval is not met.

What else? Marian Call also performed at Whole Wheat Radio and released some one day only CDs of which I missed both, and speaking of D'OH my primary DIY desktop power supply inexplicably blew up in my room which was a "surprise" upon our arrival back home. I don't have a need for fancy graphics cards so it was only a 400W PSU which I'm hoping won't be too expensive to replace.

I'm sure that's not it, but it's a start. Anything else I should know about?