Rubenerd

Pete: …she was comatose.
Dud: Comatose? Comatose to her head?
Pete: Coma-toes… to her head… shaddup!

Clipmarked from Greens MPs:

Monday, 30 March 2009

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown has called on the Australian Government to reveal the extent to which the alleged Chinese cyber-spy network has infiltrated Australia.

Overseas reports are that China has hacked into Tibet-related networks in 103 countries.

"It is extremely unlikely that China has not spied on the Tibetan representatives in Australia and New Zealand and the government should reveal what measures it will take to counter this type of espionage in Australia," Senator Brown said.

Senator Brown has written to the Attorney-General asking for reassurances on the security of the internet in Australia from Chinese government hackers.

"With the Dalai Lama due to visit Australia again later this year, it is important to know that we are not infiltrated by the so-called GhostNet network," Senator Brown said.

Senator Brown said that there are more than 20,000 internet police inside China.

Funny how these things change isn’t it? Wonder how long it will be before the Last.fm About page is revised and edited now that they’ve sold out and that democratic and independent music are lower priorities than making money?

I guess it’s true what they say: most people have a price for their ideals. It’s sad :(

Clipmarked from www.last.fm:

Back in the 20th Century, Felix Miller and Martin Stiksel were running an online record label whose mission was to get independent music out to the people who wanted to hear it. A few years later, university student Richard Jones started tracking what he and his friends were listening to on their computers with a project he called Audioscrobbler. Last.fm brought these ideas and desires together. Luckily, these days it’s about letting people choose the music themselves – rather than subjecting the world to Felix’s music taste (or we’d all be listening to Elvis and Japanese surf garage). Last.fm has always been about making music culture more democratic: everyone listening to music how they want to, when they want to. Without a middle man making your decisions for you.

Yesterday you might have read my somewhat harsh tirade against Last.fm in regards to their decision to keep their service free for everyone in the world, provided you’re American, British or German. I’ve learned a few things about the decision since yesterday.

1. Scrobbling music will remain free. I’d add that we don’t know how long it will be, but for now at least we can still keep track of music until a similar alternative service become available.

2. It seems the decision was more the result of "old" media companies being clueless and greedy, just as they did when they shut down internet radio streams in Singapore recently. Therefore I’m less angry at the Last.fm staff about this than I was before because I know the decision might have mostly been out of their control, but the flip side to this is I don’t want to support a website such as Last.fm and therefore support old media companies.

3. Remember when it was called the WORLD Wide Web? Using the excuse in point 2 above along with saying that nobody else other than Americans, British or German people are financially viable and worth the trouble reeks of hypocrisy if those people get the service for free and we have to pay. If they needed funds, charge everyone: I imagine there’d be far less uproar about this if they went that way.

4. When they claim the service won’t be affected for those in the US, UK and Germany, they’re wrong. Previously being a free site globally meant people around the world were contributing their musical tastes and sharing their local culture, now it will be a far more homogeneous mix. This will hurt the people still using the service.

I’ll still be scrobbling to Last.fm, but starting now I’m on the hunt for alternatives. Bummer.

Meg: Mum! How’d you get these blueprints!?
Lois: Oh, your mother has her ways… she has her ways…

Lois: Can I have the blueprints to the Domico house?
Civil Servent: Yeah sure, here you go.

I really enjoyed using Last.fm over the years to keep track of the music I’ve listened to, to share my favourite artists with friends (and more recently family) and to discover similar artists. I’m starting to have second thoughts now though.

According to their official blog, they will start charging us a fee as of tomorrow if we reside outside the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

Today we’re announcing an upcoming change to the way Last.fm Radio works in some parts of the world. In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change.

In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month. There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.

So let me get this right: you guys are going to continue to exploit and perform data mining on my listening habits and charge me to subsidise free services for select parts of the world instead of charging everyone? That’s not cool.

I wouldn’t have minded paying for Last.fm. But paying because I’m from the wrong country? That’s the most insulting thing any online service (or offline for that matter) has ever done.

~ Rickmb, Last.fm forums

The fee isn’t what rubs me the wrong way here, it’s the selective and abrupt way in which they’ve decided to announce and implement it. Ironically my dad and I have been using Last.fm so heavily lately to show our musical interests we were both considering buying voluntary subscriptions; I even suggested it as a birthday present just this previous Friday… I have the email to prove it!

Damn my Aussie passport!

I guess we’ll be saving some money now and sticking to using it as a record of the songs we’ve played and to generate our own charts: no more listening to music on the site itself. Heck if I find another site that allows you to do the same thing or similar I’ll be leaving last.fm and deleting my account in a heartbeat.

My concern is that this could well spell the beginning of the end for the site. Fewer people are going to use the site if a subscription is required, which… would reduce advertising revenue…. It is quite likely that it will not recoup the loss. An alternative would have been to contact members saying "hey, we’re in a bit of trouble – please consider taking out a subscription." A donation model, in my opinion, would have been a better option (at least at first).

~ robhogg, Last.fm Forums

A non geometric tangent thingy

Last.fm was a brilliant website. Cynically, this is why I’m not the least bit surprised this has happened. I can count on one hand the number of reputable free websites that offered services that haven’t pulled stunts like this.

It also speaks to the [lack of] integrity on the Internet in general, and how we shouldn’t expect anything to be permanent or reliable. The lesson here is the Internet is a transient, fickle thing run by people with short memory and attention spans and thus should not to be taken seriously. In other words, the internet is turning out just like the real world. As I said, I’m not surprised as much as I am just sorely disappointed.

In the meantime, I’ll be looking into alternative sites to "scrobble" to and keep track of songs I’ve played. I’ve heard good things about blip.fm, will have to investigate.

Earth Hour is over in Adelaide and most of Australia now, but it’s still coming up for Singapore and most of the rest of the world! Don’t forget at 20:30 / 8:30pm your time to turn your lights off for one our to spread awareness of energy conservation… and have some fun of course :).

Google has just added a link to their own Earth Hour page on many of their international home pages, passing the information on for what it may be worth, even if they claimed you’d save "C02" instead of "CO2" ;-). I guess to be fair "CO2" doesn’t have the right subscript notation as well.

Earth Hour invites one billion people in more than 2800 cities representing 83 countries to turn off their lights for one hour – tonight, Saturday, March 28 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Paris, Sydney, London, Cairo, New York, Los Angeles and Cape Town, will join together to demonstrate their commitment to energy conservation and sustainability. Here’s how you can participate:

• All you have to do to Vote Earth is turn your lights out for one hour tonight, Saturday, March 28 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time, in your city. Your light switch is your vote!
• Set your computer’s power management and save up to $60 on your electricity bill and nearly half a ton of C02 over the next twelve months. Climate Savers Computing Initiative provides instructions on how you can save electricity all year long through efficient computing.
• Join Earth Connect and share your opinions about climate change through blogs, e-mails, and Twitter. The goal is to gather one billion words to present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.
• If you are affiliated with a college, help your university reduce its environmental impact by adopting green computing practices. Pledge to Power Down for the Planet and create a video to teach others about the importance of energy efficient computing in the fight against climate change.

Earth Hour is about more than dimming lights for sixty minutes; it’s about making a commitment to reduce energy consumption throughout the year. As Google’s business grows, we want to make sure we minimize our impact on the Earth’s climate through responsible environmental practices every hour, every day.

I have a healthy dose of scepticism regarding this whole Earth Hour business and how much of a difference it’s really making to our planet, but I must admit it was kind of a fun thing to take part in :).

These are the photos I took around Mawson Lakes (our suburb near uni) a few minutes ago with my D60. I was nervous about what people would think of a weird guy walking around a neighbourhood at night with a camera, so I bumped up the ISO a few more levels and lowered the aperture number to take the photos faster!

You can also view these photos on my Earth Hour in Mawson Lakes gallery.

To celebrate my 23rd birthday yesterday, my sister (who’s in Adelaide studying at the same university I am) and I braved Adelaide’s bafflingly confusing public transport system and went to Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills for some German beer and grub, and for a bit of a photographic expedition. Good times!

I’ve been making the mistake of taking far too many photos and not uploading any of them, so this afternoon I made the time to pick the best shots and upload them to a Flickr photo gallery, surprisingly named Birthday in Hahndorf!.

Hahndorf is a beautiful little German heritage town in the Adelaide Hills in Australia with many German souvenir shops, restaurants, delicatessens, pastry shops, art galleries and coffee shops. Wikipedia’s Hanhdorf article has a lot of information about it’s history.

The OpenStreetMap for Hahndorf gives you an idea where it is in relation to the Adelaide city area:

The German influences are really noticeable in the architecture and design of many of the buildings and streets. At this time of the year when the weather is getting cooler in a part of the hills where it’s usually cooler than the rest of Adelaide it starts to feel really authentic. The only hint you’re still in Australia are all the Holden cars parked along the side of the road!

Our favourite German restaurant and pub in Hahndorf is the Hahndorf Inn on Main Street; we’ve been coming here since we first visited Adelaide back in 2004 when we were trying to decide what city in Australia to study in (it’s good to have some recent history to recall in times like this in my birth country!)

The food is ridiculously good and reasonably priced, especially compared to German grub in Singapore which can cost over $100 for my sister, dad and I. They also have authentic German beer from Munich on tap which tastes great and is also reasonably priced.

Given it was my birthday I got the German mixed grill which had roast pork, sliced potatoes with herbs, klöße, sauerkraut and a selection of würstes and mustard. As I said, it was ridiculously tasty! Elke got her usual schnitzel, and of course we got plenty of authentic warm pretzels! We had some chocolate cake and coffee for desert after sitting and talking for an hour or so.

I’m regretting posting these photos now, they’re making my hungry again! Do you reckon they do home delivery to Mawson Lakes?

After a certain time on weeknights the buses back to Adelaide only leave every hour, so after a few hours of eating, taking photos and walking around we rushed to the main bus stop with just a few minutes to spare. I’d love to come back with my camera when in less of hurry, as I said Hahndorf is a beautiful place.

You can view the rest of the photos I took in my Birthday in Hahndorf Flickr photo gallery.

As for my birthday, I had a great time even if I spent all morning doing homework! I got some great presents and an amazing delivery as well, but those will be for another post. Thank you all for your birthday wishes on Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook and emails :). I was worried how down I’d be feeling considering it’s only my second one since mum moved on, but it would’ve been hard to feel bad with all you guys sending me messages all day. Thank you again!

My sister’s reignited obsession with The Sims 2 on my Mac has led to me playing it a bit again myself. I don’t play many games because I find them a waste of time generally, but along with the SimCity series (not including SimCity Societies, yuck!) The Sims is one of the few games I’ve ever played that I’ve found engaging and more addictive than… something addictive. It messes with your brain!

For some retro fun, while looking through the Mod the Sims 2 website yesterday I came across an object by Numenor which is none other than a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Yes, your Sim can now write Basic programs on a retro ZX Spectrum right there in your Sims 2 house, or play original games complete with the same generated music sounds and tape loading noises!

There’s something so right about this!

I was born in 1986 so I was only a tiny person when the home computer wars at that time were playing out, but since 2001 I’ve been buying and playing with some of these inexpensive 1980s home computers, including a ZX Spectrum which has since become my favourite. The fact these tiny, beautiful, quirky machines are still functioning even today attest to the durability, quality and robustness of their designs. Granted machines made today are a magnitude of order more complicated and powerful than machines made then, but I doubt most personal computers built today will still be running without problems in 20 years.

I left my Spectrum back in Singapore, bummer! I’ve been using it on a plasma screen television too, I’ve been meaning to find a tiny little colour TV to use with it, or even a small LCD with a TV tuner. Time is the problem, perhaps for now I’ll let my sims play with one, and I’ll live through them :).