Sadly, the majority of Australians are sheep I think. (which is probably why Kiwi’s love it here).

When the Port Author massacre happened in Australia, our politicos took the public outrage as a good excuse to ban nearly all defensive or offensive weapons in Australia. People still get shot, only now the criminals are the only ones with guns and other weapons, and the police get to investigate our murders rather than justify our self defense. We’re not even allowed pepper spray for crying out loud! Retires getting beaten up in their own houses are becoming almost weekly news stories simply because there is no danger anymore to the criminals.

Now, in another show of rampant zealotry, Our current Labor government is not only planning on making ISP’s filter all of their traffic to restrict us to looking at only that which they deem suitable, but now it seems they plan to force all ISP’s to inspect all their traffic looking for possible copyright infringement so they can do the movie and music industry’s jobs for them.

Will someone please sack that idiot Stephen Conroy before we end up living in the Labor governments version of Taliban Afghanistan? I’m starting to wonder if this guy is actually being subsidised by movie and music companies. Just about every time he opens his mouth, it seems to cost us another right or freedom. Perhaps it’s time we got ourselves a constitution so the personal preferences of our transitory politions have less chance of becoming laws. More

Another example of Australian Stupidity is asking our government to push ahead with the emissions laws that just got knocked back. People, it’s sad but true that the cleanest large scale viable power generation we could have at this time is Nuclear, and Australia has backed away from that in fear. So telling our politicians to clean up our atmosphere is going to have only one real result. Low income people will suffer. Why? Well because the government doesn’t really have any new tech to roll out, they don’t have any new power generation methods or anything that could actually help the root of the problem. All they can do, is make it more expensive to process power and manufacture products.

Now what do companies do when their costs go up? Why they up their prices to consumers of course. So, your power bill goes up a thousand or so dollars a year, the power company pays the government the extra money they took from you, and business goes on as usual. Power usage won’t change much, and the government gets to look “green”, just for rooking the moronic sheep we call a populace.

People… The only net effect of these emission trading schemes is to make your life harder and take your money. There is no new technology or cheaper power options, it’s all about making it too expensive for you to use the power you do now (regardless if you already use the minimum you can already). That’s it! That’s all they government can do. Of course they can’t tell you that or you’d reject outright it so it’s shrouded in vaguarities and catch phrases to make it seem green. But wake up people, get a clue! This isn’t going to hurt the companies in question much, they will either get subsidised, or pass on the cost to us, or both. This is going to hurt our pockets and if you don’t believe that, your a fool.

So next time the government tells you how wonderful they are for pushing emission trading schemes, remember that what that actually means, is to make your life harder and much more expensive in the hope that you won’t be able to afford your current lifestyle and will therefor use less power.

Microsoft, who have been known to patent tiny and sometimes seemingly obvious things (timed mouse clicks for example) while riding on the shoulders of giants who often gave their truly revolutionary discoveries unencumbered by patents, has been bitten by the spurious software patent issue themselves. Microsoft Word it’s been ruled, is in breach of somebody else’s software patent (related to XML tagging). Better yet, an injunction forcing them to stop the sale of such infringing products has been granted also (Word and Vista). This has led to speculation that there may be something to the theory of Karma after all and that what goes around really might come around.

Sadly Microsoft has way too much money for this to make much of an impact on them. They’ll most likely pay the fine (290m), perhaps create a workaround and carry on business as usual. But still, the more money they have to hand out in the US, the EU and anywhere else that dislikes their practices, the more likely that at some point in the future, the board will realize that their version of business as usual isn’t really all that profitable anymore. Read more at Reuters.

Facebook grows by the day … and I use it too … even though I don’t completely get it. I mean I do get the find people fast bit, but the details of daily life laid out for the world to see? Heavens remember our teachers struggling to get people to do journals? Isn’t this an electronic journal … anyway back on track …

Oddly facebook tells me that I cannot when signing up for a business account use an email that begins with info@ because that type of email indicates I am a business …. duh, that is why I clicked on set up a business account …

It says my email address is invalid.
Unfortunately we do not support email addresses with generic prefixes (e.g. info@, webmaster@ etc.). Since email addresses of this nature are typically used for organizations and businesses, we do not allow them to be used for personal Facebook accounts. You will need to use a personal email address that does not contain this type of prefix. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Oh and to indicate how stupid the thought is … how to fix the problem … just create an alias from facebook@ to info@ and problem solved … come on guys.

Funny and relevant, at least if you are in Australia.
Censordyne

Say no to censordyne folks! Since when have politicians been technology proficient enough to even consider make decisions like this?

I’m thinking ….

Toyota has developed the wheelchair in collaboration with researchers in Japan. The system analyzes brain wave data using signal-processing technology and delivers neuro-feedback to the driver.

Several months back we became aware of a technology that is alleged to help people improve their brain patterns — to become more productive. I went to a seminar by Hope139.com and learned that you can monitor brain action and through neuro-feedback improve your ability to think. I was intrigued, but not intrigued enough to fork out the big bucks they desired.

In contacting “traditional” medical professionals and health insurance companies, I was informed that this technology is not widely recognized and getting any type of reimbursement would be difficult at best. This was in fact confirmed by the presenter at the seminar I attended. And yet the idea seemed logical to me and I wondered about it a fair amount since. The idea may be starting to gain some recognition however.

Last week when I learned from Mike Industries (a blog that used to be full of great things and thanks to twitter is now near useless … present story being a rare exception of late) that a company was now making a “toy” that allowed you to levitate a ping pong ball with EEG waives, I became even more intrigued. That videor story suggested that work was underway to do all sorts of things with brain waves, including flying jets. I really think there is something to all of this … you exercise your body to become better at a skill be it juggling, writing, typing, running, basketball … and on and on. Why not your mind? And I suppose we do exercise our mind on some level — we do multiplication tables, division problems, figure things out, do jigsaw puzzles, be we get no truly objective and simultaneous feedback (unless I suppose you are juggling knives … hmmm).

Now this week Toyota announces a wheelchair that responds to brain waves! Exactly! Now how can they tell you there is nothing to this technology on the one hand and then on the other use a wheelchair that uses the very concept?

I’m intrigued and thinking this will be the next big thing — much bigger than the Segway which was to revolutionize our world as we knew it.

I’d love to replace my computer mouse with an eeg … but not to strap on a helmet to do it …

According to Informationweek, IE8 has been out for only a very brief period, and yet many early adopters have already changed back to IE7. They also say that IE is now down around the 67% mark in overall popularity thanks to Firefox and Safari.

Makes for interesting reading and highlights again why you should never code your site in browser specific language.

It is the year 2009 when data is readily available and their on-line service does not offer a year end summary for download. Amazing. I’ve been doing this with my Discover Card for years. I call to ask how to do it and they tell me:
a) not available on-line
b) they’ll order me one and mail it (like that’s going to help me … I’d still have to key in the data)
c) it will take two weeks — I want to finish my taxes in the next day or two

Doubt I’ll still have the card at this time next year. What a bad job of providing something that they already have, my data.

So if you are considering a Bank of America Credit Card, I’d recommend against same because their customer service is poor — go somewhere else.