Sunday, January 30, 2005

Landeryou... Once a Trouble-Maker, Always a Trouble-Maker?

I was living on campus at Melbourne Uni in 1991 when Andrew Landeryou was sacked from his position as President of the Student Union under an absolute riot of controversy. And I remember it well -- the events gave the official student newspaper Farrago (itself both target and source of much heated debate) fiery fodder for months.

Until today, however, I had no idea he had continued building on this notoriety past university life, but I have just been enlightened, and shocked, and amused, to see that fourteen years on, the man is now being chased by federal police, was once mixed up with good ole' Solly Lew and has skipped the country. Heh!

Friday, January 28, 2005

Schapelle's Court Proceedings

Relatively good article.

Another short article with picture can be found here.

BEA Systems "Fallling Workload"

Due to their misleadingly biased surveys, perhaps?

Thursday, January 27, 2005

How Much Does Microsoft Pay David Coursey?

Coursey betters his own previous, overly-biased, pro-MS garbage in the linked article from eWeek.com, Ziff Davis' enterprise and IT news portal:
Microsoft doesn't generally outright lie to people, so when the company says it's ready to fully—and rapidly—comply with the ruling, I believe it. This is another example of how Microsoft is trying to get its legal problems solved as quickly as possible.
So, so many things wrong in that paragraph. Microsoft are trying to solve legal problems quickly? Whose time scale are you on, David?

He follows that pearler with a dig on the European Commision judge's name. (Top class, Coursey. No, really.) And then another, actually attempting to belittle the judge himself:
Suppose Judge Bo Vesterdorf had been ruling in a case that actually mattered?
Typical, patriotic American bullshit at its best. Except that Coursey -- thankfully -- isn't a typical American. (Thank god for that.) It obviously pays well to suck up Microsoft's arse. Why else would any supposedly knowledgable IT journalist ignore basic facts that prove again and again that MS have done the dirty on anyone they could?

Let's see -- plenty of other one-eyed, blind-eyed, pro-MS propaganda to choose from here.
Customers want Media Player
They do? Whose customers are these?
It reflects the new world in which there are non-American opinions that matter and must be taken into account.
Beggars belief, that one.
There is also the prospect that Microsoft will be targeted as a way of punishing an American company and/or protecting local enterprise.
Is this guy for real? Oh yes David, people "target" Microsoft purely because they're American. Factors such as previous anti-competitive behaviour and duplicitous actions taken by the massively rich company on both local and global levels don't come into it, do they? Oh no. No, really.

Wow. Stuns me that this man is still actually allowed to publish. Perhaps it is done purely to rile others like myself, who see his branded words and reach once more for the bucket?

Well, if that's the case Ziff Davis -- it's working.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Happy Australia Day... Celebrating "Spazzys" Style

Charming. This Australian all-girl band appear to be literally hell-bent on demonstrating the uglier side of Australian hooliganism to anyone who'll listen.

Talking about Brisbane's Big Day Out festival, "Lucy Spazzy" says:
"At the after-party, I was breaking glasses everywhere when a friend came looking for me and a guy I was talking to from Polyphonic Spree said 'I don't want to hang around with you guys, you're too drunk'. No one wanted to converse with me."
She sounds surprised. Did these girls grow up in the back of a ute or something? Honestly, I'm speechless. Is this sort of behaviour meant to win them fans?

Ally Spazzy explains: "Australians can out-drink, out-play and out-do the internationals."

Ah, gotcha. We're a nation of beer-swilling pissheads. Better make sure we don't lose that title, huh.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Schapelle's Letter Home -- Who's Helping The Others?

"I believe I WILL BE coming home soon, I have too much support from so many people for the courts to convict and with such an ABSURD case..."
She must have amazing strength; I don't know I could remain as positive for as long as Schapelle has, her courage and faith strong in this letter to her mother, written almost a month ago. And I can't help but wonder if any of the hundreds of Australians currently in Indonesia "assisting" in Banda Aceh (with the thousands of others there) have bothered to visit Schapelle too?

There are so many others in need at the moment. Why does the world rush to the aid of some, and not others?

In Indonesia alone, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people not affected by the tsunami who still face daily threats of violence and war, of poverty, lack of education and disease. My own mother was there for two months prior to the tsunami in December, travelling with a missionary group providing aid to the badly burned children, orphans and many, many other in Maluku, victims of the horrific, ongoing violence between Christians and Muslims.

She travelled with an amazing woman, a young missionary, who has been emailing back with updates on their situation. I quote here from a couple of her letters:
"Just want to let everyone know a little about my experiences in Banda Aceh and surrounding areas. It seems the whole world has gathered in Aceh - Estonians, Cubans, Russians, French, Spanish, Pakistanis, Singaporeans, Americans, New Zealanders, Germans, Japanese, Australian and Malaysians to name just some. The place is a tsunami of aid - food, medicines, clothing, health workers and aid groups. In fact so much money has been given that many aid groups will struggle to find reliable ways to get it to the people."
"...One day I sat in a car with my sister (who also came). We talked about the masses of aid that was there and how easy it was to get tonnes of goods in. We cried together for the people of Maluku who also suffered a great tragedy but have had little assistance in comparison. I felt if only I had a portion of that aid how many lives we could touch. I thought of my faithful band of Indonesian workers not having enough dressings for burns patients and of the tonnes of medical supplies pouring into Aceh. The Indonesian government have made it so easy for the aid to pour into this area, but it is so hard just to get a little extra baggage for medical supplies for our brothers and sisters in Maluku."
The abundance of aid and money pouring into Banda Aceh highlights just how little there is elsewhere. Sudan and Cambodia are two other nations desperately in need of our help. Where are their saviours?

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Shiny New Toys

Went off to buy a Mac for testing today, came home with a Toshiba e800 PDA. YUM.

Still need the Mac though. Looking for a secondhand laptop in good nick with OS X installed, preferably also able to dual-boot into OS 9.2. I just missed out on one of the four on sale the local Mac retailer had, but methinks it was meant to be -- the PDA appeared, as if called by God, just at that moment.

I can justify anything.

Also today I purchased a Firefox cap from the Mozilla store. I have actually been looking for a good black cap, have worn the current favourite white one to death, so this fits the bill nicely. Geek labels. ;-)

Proprietary vs. Open Source? Depends Who You're Asking

Ridiculous, a proprietary software development firm conducts a study on what is ostensibly a huge threat to their income and -- surprise, surprise -- the outcome is in their favour.

BEA Systems study of 1000 software developers has concluded that: "The majority of European software developers are concerned about using open source software due to a perceived lack of reliable support".

Quite honestly, so what? Where's the Microsoft comparison, the other side of the coin? I'd bet my life that there are even more concerns with those products. (Ok, maybe not my life. I'm not that keen.)

Love to know how they got in touch with the thousand developers, if, perchance, it was through their own business dealings. Ho-hum. Can we have some unbiased studies please?

Actually, bugger that. Who needs studies? We want progress. Why do proprietary software makers always have such trouble with that concept?

(Yes, that was a rhetorical question.)

Next!

Gates Is Going Down

Excellent, excellent article. Backs up my own thoughts on the downward-slide of Micro$oft, which, if I'm not mistaken, has been gathering speed of late.

They've lost the plot, really. Always far more interested in making money, the internet was badly underestimated by Gates on all sorts of levels, and it's biting him in the arse now big time.

It also doesn't surprise me one jot that they are having so many security issues now. I have always suspected MS were putting extra loops and holes into their products to allow them various doorways for future spy missions. Silly of them to assume no one was smart enough to find them.

Monday, January 17, 2005

BusinessWeek: Mozilla Is Gaining on Godzilla

This article is featured on the cover of BusinessWeek magazine this week.

Read it online and tell yer friends!

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Working Email Addresses to use in Schapelle's Fight

The email address for Downer given in the last post did not work, so here are some others I have found (and written to; see below for my message, feel free to use it either wholy or in part. Just -- please, do it!)

Politicians

Email Prime Minister John Howard: http://www.pm.gov.au/email.cfm -- this page contains a working form for easy submission of your requests. Use it!

[Bennelong residents may email Prime Minister Howard using this form instead: http://www.johnhowardmp.com/default.asp?Menu=comments]

Email Alexander Downer: A.Downer.MP@aph.gov.au and minister.downer@dfat.gov.au

Contact the Australian Government (online form): http://www.australia.gov.au/feedbackinquiry.php

Contact Australia's Attorney General, Philip Ruddock (online form): http://www.ag.gov.au/www/ministerruddockFeedback.nsf/Feedback

Contact the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues, Kay Patterson, also Senator of Victoria: senator.kcpatterson@aph.gov.au or use the online form at http://www.senatorkaypatterson.com/

Other Australian Senators' Email Addresses: http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/senators/email.htm

Email the Liberal Party Secretariat: admin2@liberal.org.au


Media

Contacts for the ABC: http://abc.net.au/contact/ and http://abc.net.au/news/contact.htm

Contacts for The Australian newspaper: [really long link]

Contacts for The Advertiser and Sunday Mail newspapers: [another long link]


My letter
Dear <...>,

I write regarding Schapelle Corby, currently sitting in jail in Bali.

I feel torn that Australia is giving so much time & aid to this country, when one of our own is suffering daily and sitting in jail although it is likely she is innocent.

What is the government doing for her at the moment?

Can you please keep this issue in the media spotlight?

We cannot forget her -- she needs Australia's help.

I beg you to please keep fighting for Schapelle, she is unable to fight for herself while kept captive in a foreign land.

If there is anything else that we, or I, or Australia can do, please let me know.

Thank you for your time and attention here.


Tips

  • Include your postal address if you wish to receive a reply.

  • Be polite!

If anyone has other contacts, links or new on Schapelle, please post them in the comments here.

Schapelle Needs Help

Again, searching for info on Schapelle, hardly a thing to be found. I have, however, stumbled onto the page linked above, which outlines the basic story to date & gives some excellent info on how to help get Schapelle out:

1. Contact the Australian Prime Minister and the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking them to place pressure on the Balinese Government to release Schapelle Corby.

* Australian Prime Minister: John Howard, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia

* Australian foreign affairs Minister: Alexander Downer A.Downer. MP@aph.gov.au

2. Contact the Indonesian Consulate in Australia and demand that they set Schapelle Corby free. Threaten to boycott all travel to Bali until they grant Corby her freedom.

* Consulate General - Republic of Indonesia, 72 Queens Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia; kjri@kjri-melbourne.org

3. Anyone who has ever experienced a problem with their luggage being tampered with at any Australian or Indonesian airports or has dealt with corrupt customs officials in Indonesia, please email your experience to: hfs_inc@hotmail.com
The site is also collecting donations for her cause, see the link for more info on that.

On a side note, I find myself torn inside by Schapelle's story. This presumably innocent girl has been sitting in jail for a number of months in Indonesia, the country Australia is falling over itself to assist since the tragic Boxing Day tsunami.

Of course we want to help our neighbours -- the innocent amongst them, that is. I fully back Howard's decision NOT to offer a total annihilation of all Indonesian debt. Who knows where that money will go? As we are seeing even now, the Indonesian people do not want to be told how to live or how to rebuild their country, and we should, as Howard is doing, respect their wishes.

And we should also be, again, as Howard is, cautious about the rebel and militant presence in Banda Aceh, and in the rest of the nation. Indonesia is a Muslim country, their social customs are different to ours, their heirarchy and rulers do not follow the same standards we are accustomed to in Western nations. There are many, many other factors at play, and to blindly assume all Indonesians are victims in the wake of the tsunami is foolish, to put it lightly.

Schapelle is living proof of this. She is being held without adequate proof of guilt, and likely to be used as an example of what Indonesia authorities define as "punishable evil".

She is far, far from that.

AUSTRALIA -- DO NOT FORGET SCHAPELLE.

Thunderbird's Storm Is Just Beginning

Great review of Thunderbird, my default email client for a couple of years now.

Google Loves Firefox Too

Yeah, I know: this has been there for ages. It's still way cool.

Gotta love Google.

No news at MozillaNews

What's happened there? Last post is back from December 20th. Hello, anyone home?

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Media Chauvinism

One of the better articles I've read on "The Breakup".

(That's Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, for those of you who've been under a rock for the last week.)

My opinion? As the writer of the linked article also implies -- Brad is a very, very naughty boy.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Greer is Gone

Had it slightly wrong the other day. Germaine Greer was appearing on the UK's Celebrity Big Brother, not the Australian version. And now, five days into the series, she has quit.

Can't say I blame her, being stuck in a house with both Brigitte Neilsen and Jackie Stallone [what on earth are they thinking?!] plus a lingerie model, a drug-loving dancer, and a host of other wannabees and B-graders... death by plastic, perhaps?

The big question, however, is how her image has suffered -- if at all. An interesting article in The Australian quotes various Australian feminists on this question, and it seems opinion is divided.

Personally, I say "Good on her" for going in there, but can't help being surprised and disappointed she has quit. I have a feeling she'll regret it in the long run, too -- not for initially entering the reality TV show, but for not sticking around till the end. She'll be watching the series on her own television now, and undoubtedly there will be many prime opportunities in which she could have put Jackie or Brigitte in their place, or added inestimable value to the vapid talk of the remaining plastic fantastic.

Actually, that is not entirely correct, apparently there are a few brain cells left in the house. Just don't ask Jackie.

Monday, January 10, 2005

More on Schapelle

Ok, immediate after posting earlier I found some news, albeit brief, on Schapelle Corby.

Not enough though. She's obviously had a miserable Christmas and New Year, with no friends and minimal contact with family.

My thoughts are with her.

What's happened to Shapelle?

I'm stunned by the fact that I can hardly find any news on Shapelle Corby, the Australian girl who's currently sitting in jail in Bali waiting for her trial. She has been charged with importing -- yes, I said importing -- 4kg of marijuana to Bali.

Ridiculous, the whole story, really. Everything looks like a setup of mammoth proportions to me, but I'm struggling to keep track as there is just no news to be found! Google News currently returns absolutely nothing for a search on her name. Strange, and shameful on the part of the Australian media, and our government. Yes, there are other major events going on, but Shapelle, 28, is there by herself in a small cell where she has no freedom, and no idea of how long she'll be there.

She's a gorgeous looking girl, who could just as easily be me. Or you. Or the person next to you.

Come on Howard, Downer -- get back on her case. Please. Don't forget Shapelle.

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Listen to the Animals

Reports are starting to emerge of amazing animal stories from areas hit by Boxing Day's tsunami. Possibly the most incredible is from Yala National Park in Sri Lanka, the country's largest animal reserve, where not a single animal perished, despite destruction and total devestation all around them. Human bodies were found throughout the park by volunteers cleaning up, but not a single dead animal.

In this great age of technology, where people can order anything from tissues to televisions online and common objects like phones, radios and refrigerators can speak to each other to determine our needs, all the hi-tech processors and systems in our world were not able to protect us -- humans -- when Nature chose to exert a bit of force. Yet across the globe, animals -- and, it must be noted, the native tribes of the Andaman-Nicobar Islands -- needed none of our oh-so-advanced resources to know innately that danger was coming and to be prepared.

Another heartwarming story is of the one-year old orphaned baby hippo calf, Owen, as they've named him, who has latched onto a 100-year old giant tortoise of similar colouring since being rescued by volunteers from the Indian Ocean off Kenya. Owen follows Mzee, the tortoise, everywhere now, licking his head and protecting him from imagined danger.

This story, too, shows something so important that we can learn from animals: Acceptance. We humans still have just so far to go.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Victoria's Patient Crisis

Had a brief but interesting conversation with a male friend last night, who staunchly refused to believe any good about Howard or the Liberal Party, and absolutely decreed that Labor are wonderful and should therefore be leading this country.

I'm not a huge fan of politics, and am not saying I necessarily have any preference either for or against my friend's, however... blanket denial, blanket acceptance... ok, so he was, quite literally, very pissed.

Wish I'd had the linked article on hand at the time. Honestly, he was rather belligerent, which is a whole 'nother problem actually: near the start of our first date, he claimed "You could say I'm almost an alcoholic", and earlier tonight he cancelled tonight's date (with moi! Sacrilege!) on the basis of having no cash this week (post New Year's, which he and I had enjoyed together) and thus going out will be pointless as we can't get beers.

I actually rarely drink, and refrained from stating the logical and the bleeding obvious: it's summer, it's a beautiful night, there's a gorgeous park and miles of clean beach and shallows just metres away... And that's only the stuff that Nature is providing. As muso's, song-writers even, both of us, we could...

But I am busy, testing & working, and (as mentioned last post) getting lost in the goings-on of our wide, wide world. If he needs to see through such thick, amber-coloured goggles, then he ain't the one for me.

Next!

Friday, January 07, 2005

And we're off!

I haven't blogged for a while, but what with everything going on at the moment, it's kinda hard not to feel a bit philosophical.

And celebratory! Hell, it's a new year. Bring it on. What a way to end the last one, eh. Nature is awesome, and frightening, and pales all else into insignificance.

The web as a means of communication has come of age with the recent disaster. Relief teams in affected areas are broadcasting their needs, donations are being collected world-wide via every spec of available web space, and images, video and trillions of written words are freely flowing across the globe, allowing us all -- or at least those of us with net access -- constant updates on the nightmarish situation, giving us a vicarious sense of devastation, loss and bewilderment, a virtual feeling of being there.

Some brilliant writing in the form of blogs from the affected areas: Amit Varma's India Uncut, the True North Foundation, also from India, and Ceneus Blog from Sri Lanka, all excellent reading; then there's the Indonesia Help site and IndonesiaHelp.org with the best round-ups of news, information and links to all sorts of resources. Also check out Channel News Asia for some fascinating first-hand accounts and images.

Personally, I've become enthralled by the tale of the Sentinelese, one of the five small aboriginal tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, just north-west of the tip of Indonesia and the epicentre of the quake. The Sentinelese, whose lifestyle has remained unchanged since the Stone Ages, are hostile to outsiders and shoot poisoned arrows at anyone who attempts to make contact, be they friend or foe. For this reason, authorities from nearby Port Blair have been faced with a particularly difficult task in trying to assess the current state of the small tribe, and the task is made all the more impossible given that no one knows for sure exactly how many Sentinelese there were before the wave hit anyway.

However, it seems the majority of the five tribes have survived the tsunami, with a naked Sentinelese recently shooting an arrow up at a hovering helicopter, and members of the similarly hostile Jarawa tribe actually coming out of their safe forest retreat to let officials there know they had all survived. Magical.

And then there is the delightful -- albeit, somewhat bizarre -- news that Germaine Greer, the Female Eunuch herself, has agreed to take part in this year's Australian Celebrity Big Brother. Whatever next... says the addict herself.

2005. Bring it on!