No to Australian Clean Feed

The "Clean Feed" sounds like a really good idea. But it is not.

A plan is afoot in Australian Federal government that is going to make the internet worse for nearly everybody to stop a tiny minority of pervs who will easily bypass these measures anyway. A large investment and inconvenience for no effect other than being seen to do something.

The "Clean Feed" will slow your internet access down, making it unusable for some purposes that rely on speed.

The "Clean Feed" will block legitimate web sites, not on purpose, but because they will trigger flags in the filter algorithms, such as breast cancer sites.

The "Clean Feed" opens the way for future abuse, where the filter is used to block unflattering information and legitimate criticisms of the government or of companies with effective lobbyists in the government.

The "Clean Feed" will cost a lot to implement.

The "Clean Feed" won't prevent the determined people from obtaining the illegal or explicit material that they want.

The "Clean Feed" cannot guarantee that explicit material will never accidentally slip past and be viewed by children.

Just stupid. Stop the failure before it begins.

Thought Police (CourierMail)
Worst minister for communication ... ever (smh.com.au) 2
Filter advocates need to check their facts (abc.net.au)
Alternative three-step safe Net plan for families (sage-au.org.au)
ISP-level content filtering won't work (zdnet.com.au)
Filtering trial a failure (efa.org.au)
The Net Censorship: Liberty or Tyranny (libertus.net)
Net censorship backlash (theAge.com.au) 2
Giants say no to porn filter trial (AustralianIT.news.com.au) 2
Clean Feed Backdoor (PCAuthority.com.au)
Worse than Iran (BrisbaneTimes.com.au)
Conroy misleads the Senate on 'illegal material' (DefendingScoundrels.com)

Microsoft Access Runs Slow

*** Check the printer (see below)

Why MS Access?
Ugh. Most of the research that I am involved with has the requirement that data be collected in isolated settings. Which means no internet, no network, no support and sometimes not even any power. Still, the principle investigators would like data to be entered on site. I like using a web front end on a nice enterprise rated database management system, however this just doesn't cut it for the remote sites.

Inevitably, after examining the offerings of Epi Info or EpiData, we fall back to Microsoft Access. Not because MS Access has any particular inherent quality over these other packages, but more because if there is any local support then they may very well be able to handle MS Access rather than EpiData. Plus most investigators know of MS Access and have seen some of the slick databases that we have produced as opposed to the almost hideous but functional results one gets from other software.

What is wrong with Microsoft Access? Many things. The worst of which is that the databases tend to bloat themselves full of air rather quickly, esp if I start dynamically modifying forms; in 2007 you can tell access to compact itself on exit ... but if you're running the database on a network drive then you might just find the entire database has deleted itself, I kid you not. 250 fields per table is a very sad limitation with regards to questionnaires despite what some normal form nazis would say. Occasionally MS Access will put itself in a state where it will crash for no readily apparent reason when editing forms, although I have to say that version 2007 does this far less frequently. The object oriented nature of things means that vital options are splattered all over the place in hard to locate places. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can make discovering that vital little property a rather lengthy investigation (but nothing as bad SAS). Form construction can be a right dog compared to HTML. The creation wizards (forms, reports, tables etc) are almost worse than useless.

However the results can be pleasing, and the level of control is well above that of most other packages. Once you have built up a set of standard VBA modules then you can become quite efficient at producing solid forms which can produce codebooks, analysis conversion code, some statistical output and so forth.

When Microsoft Access runs slow
Occasionally you run into a nasty problem; like when Microsoft Access (2007) starts operating exceedingly slowly when you are editing forms or reports. Clearing temporary files, removing and reinstalling Microsoft Office, cleaning the registry (thank you CCleaner) just doesn't seem to do squat. Then just as you are about to defrag the drive and are contemplating wiping the whole system to reinstall everything from the operating system up, you realise the network printer server is down. Set the default printer to something local and MS Access speeds right back up again. What the hell?!

Blog Reading Level

Apparently if you are reading this blog then you must be a genius. However, I think if you are a genius then most likely you aren't wasting your time reading blogs like this. I'd like to apologise about the text reading level and thank John Dvorak for pointing the CriticsRant site out.

Digg destroys accounts without warning or investigation

Imagine trying to log into your Digg account and you read something like:

An unknown fatal exception has occurred
Whoa! Something blew up. If you think you reached this error in error please do not hesitate to contact support.

Interesting. Better contact the aforementioned support. They got back to me very quickly with:

Your account was removed for mass comment spam. Due to the nature and severity of abuse, your account will not be reinstated. This decision is final and irreversible. --Digg Support

My reaction was "What?! I didn't ... oh wait." I'll explain what probably happened later.

I was feeling particularly calm after I worked out what went sour. Being kicked from Digg is actually not a bad thing as I was wasting a lot of time trying to educate the redneck fools that seem to be flooding into Digg. The quality of the commenters has degenerated significantly over the years and I guess I was ready for retirement from the scene.

3 years work gone

However I had been a Digg member for almost three years and had written many many postings, some almost essay responses which take a while to create, finding references and making the argument simple to follow. I often make notes and keep drafts in text files so I do have a number of the larger comments preserved. So my direct response to their deletion message was:

That's sad. Would it be possible that I could somehow acquire all my comments as there are many thoughtful essays and some witty comments that I did not take the time to collect.

Along with my summation of why I thought they might have deleted my account, expressing my high opinion of the ideals of Digg and thanking them for the speed of their response. Again, a very quick response:

Sorry, but all comments and history from your account have been removed. --Digg Support

Ugh! That's really sad. Fine, nothing lasts forever.

Why

Why was I booted from Digg? Well I can only give my best guess. Digg Support says comment spam. Technically correct. However investigation by an intelligent being might have come to a different decision than instant irrevocable deletion with no appeal.

Like most people, I have become interested in the environment. My vague standpoint was that we should probably look after the environment. Climate change has been made controversial and when I saw an article claiming that "Global Warming Had Been Over For Eight Years" I felt kind of relieved. But the article in The Australian seemed a little weak. So I started tracking down sources, including the NASA scientist upon whose work this statement was made. I used my research credentials and managed to get a reply directly from the scientist. The article had it all wrong according to him. Fine. I then looked at the interviewed scientist of the article, and found she was tightly involved with corporations, very anti-environment, actively advocating destruction of any environment for development and other things like whale hunting. Easy to find this all on her blog. Her scientific references were very limited, having fewer publications than I had achieved before I even became an academic. The journalist who interviewed her was a right wing political appointment, the newspaper journalist who republished the interview was also a right wing shonk. Both journalists failed to do even the most basic of fact checking. The newspaper article was quoted far and wide, so I took it upon myself to present the evidence where ever I was allowed. Some media organisations pulled their reprinting of the article.

This started me thinking about what was going on. I began looking at the other climate change junk that was spreading around Digg. I noticed the same people making the same arguments. A little investigation showed that their arguments were incorrect or badly flawed. I started responding to the climate change deniers with responses that included references to hopefully enlighten them or perhaps the plebeians who came after. I had a little more passion given my experience. I became aware of "Institutes" and "Think Tanks" that were heavily funded by carbon-profit industries to produce propaganda. I made connections with like minded individuals. I also started noting some dirty tactics that deniers were taking, such as finding articles that report on climate change and they would submit them to Digg with very derisive comments, which meant that nobody else could submit the article to Digg.

One particular imbecile was making an incredibly stupid argument. He would state it on any article on climate change, almost as soon as it appeared. I thought it odd at the time that he would always say the same thing but mix his words and sentences around. I had a standard reply that had links and references that directly refuted what he was saying. He was prolific so chasing down his terrible argument was quite a test.

My mistake was using the same response every time. Digg deemed this spam. I was banned. My alleged spam message:

@**** Completely incorrect. Read the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, in chapter 9 alone there are over 50 pages referring to volcanic activity.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm

I sent one last email to Digg support.

I am now pretty sure you deleted my account in error. I found my comments saved in friend feed and still can't work out where you got spamming from, even given my handful of identical replies to ****.

That was nearly two weeks ago. I don't expect a response if the deletions are as irrevocable as they implied. I am somewhat relieved, as I no longer feel compelled to step on the misinformation spreaders as the task was becoming quite a chore and I am very busy with work.

I certainly have no desire to rejoin Digg: build a reputation, a library of links and a work of comments that can all be deleted instantly without warning.

The moral is BACKUP! If you have comments or submissions that you want to keep then you definitely cannot rely on Digg keeping them for you.

Australian iPhone Nightmare

Australia and the great iPhone 3G data rip off. Greedy Telcos exploiting iPhone hype.

The announcement

Great hubbub surrounded the release of the new iPhone 3G and the wonderful announcement that it would be available for sale in the finest land to ever grace the face of the planet; Australia. The new iPhone is just like the old one but has 3G compatibility and built in GPS.

The Concern

Exciting right? However, shortly after the release, I wrote a long essay to my friends and family to be calm, as I believed that the companies that were going to offer the iPhone would get the plans all wrong. I had the sinking feeling that the marketards at Vodafone and Optus will go for the profit gouge of Australian iPhone users by putting high end talk times on the iPhone plans with their excessive 3G internet charges.

I hardly use my phone to talk, my communication is usually via email, SMS, IM, twitter, etc. I don't want a plan with lots of talk. I don't particularly want lots of SMS. I want LOTS of internet. I want to use my wireless networks as much as I want; I don't want them charging me for using my home wireless network.

Before the iPhone announcement the phone companies' internet (data) plans were a mess. Optus has $15 for 200Meg, Vodafone has $12 for 100Meg. Both are simply pathetic. Will they extend their mobile internet deals to iPhone? Vodafone has $39 for 5Gig (+$100 per Gig over the limit) or Optus has $30 for 1Gig (+$150 per Gig over). Yes there are other plans and ways of bundling which usually tries to claim added value with things like unlimited land line talk time. I don't want talk time!

I am a Mac user and I would love to sign up for mobileme to get the synching of contacts and calendars. The iPhone is a perfect device for my work flow.

However, I didn't think Optus or Vodafone would offer plans that favour my usage. Worse; I think that the plans will be quite similar between Optus and Vodafone, enough to hint at collusion but different enough to avoid it legally.

To summarise: the iPhone is a marvellous device that could allow me to have internet everywhere. Mobile phone companies are profit grabbing scum who will tear away the value of the iPhone.

The essay was all conjecture, of course.

I posted similar concerns to Whirlpool and garnered a large number of like minded responses, but had the post removed without reason by a moderator who refused to comply with the site's policies that direct him to explain. I could read all sorts of conspiracies into that, but I imagine the moderator is fairly clueless (a quick examination of the post structure shows this) and overworked.

The reality

Well Telstra managed to get into the iPhone customer grab at the last moment. Telstra pre-empted the other companies by partly releasing their plans early. As much as I loathe Telstra, there were aspects that I didn't mind so much, such as the free WiFi at Telstra hotspots - which would be exactly where I would be directing most of my custom if I lost my senses and signed up with Telstra.

Optus also offer free Hotspot WiFi access but they are very cagey about where these hotspots might be, Optus Customer Care were pretty much clueless on this (Optus WiFi Hotspots Optus Azure WiFi Hotspots). Telstra say they have WiFi at selected hotels, Airports, Starbucks and MacDonalds (Telstra WiFi Hotspots). As far as I can see, Vodafone has no wireless hotspots that I could find except their stores which have this sneaky bluetooth dealie that they plan to use to send advertisements to passers by.

Vodafone were all set to announce their plans when Telstra shot off their mouth early. Vodafone went quiet and headed back to the drawing board.

Optus, like the complete pack of greedy imbeciles they are, went ahead with their pricing plans that they already had thought up. And why not? Since they had an overwhelming response by people who had no idea of the plans but were ready to fork out the big dollars on pre ordering. A nice big profit gouge that tightly links your data time with talk time. Read the fine print, as the iPhone probably won't work properly with Optus if you're not in the right area. It seems Optus installed "standards compliant" phone towers that few phone manufacturers seem to comply with, including Apple's iPhone.

Telstra 3G Coverage
Optus 3G coverage
Vodafone 3G coverage

Vodafone Australia hasn't come up with any plans as yet, but have hinted at respectable new data plans right on the very first day of the announcement of the iPhone 3G. If Vodafone New Zealand is anything to go by [$250/month for 1Gig data] then Vodafone Australia is going to try to extort the most extreme amount of money out of purchasers as they can. I wish the public wasn't so passive. At least Canada has stood up for itself with an online petition decrying the extreme corporate greed.

I assume Vodafone Australia will come up with something incredibly short sighted like starting at $70/month with $300 talk credit and 250Meg; $100/month for 500Meg; $170 for 1Gig. Utter morons. There must be some way to get their $39 for 5Gig plan on the iPhone.

Internet Data

Let's examine data quotas. Despite the US offering unlimited data plans, Optus seems to think that 1Gig of data per month is the high end. Let's look at what this gets you.

Take the Optus iPhone price plan pages. The "pricing post paid" page is 68K of html and 380K of images, styles sheet, javascript and graphics, so 450K all up. Say you only visit 4 pages per site on average, this would mean 1.8Meg per site. Now imagine that you might also want to use the YouTube app on your iPhone, and perhaps download a song or a new fun game from iTunes. The high end user will probably want to restrict viewing to about 10 sites a day. Remember this is the high end data plan we are talking about, the people on the 50Meg plan should just disable their internet except for emergencies.

An article at APC Magazine by Danny Gorog, comes to a bizarre conclusion on data usage that is much more conservative that what I have here. He is obviously following the phone company doctrine of limited net use and I believe that he may very well be leaving himself open to legal suits because of his statement:

"I'd anticipate that very few users will actually be able to use more than 250MB of data per month" - Danny Gorog

Which shows a similar blind uninsightfulness of the corporate sector that is indicative of the magazine's authorship, which is leading to their rapidly depleting subscription numbers (by which I mean me).

You will need to be monitoring your net usage very carefully as Optus want to charge you ~$360 per Gigabyte when you go over your limit, which is nothing short of criminal. This means that song you just downloaded from iTunes probably cost you $1.75 above the iTunes charge and watching a couple YouTube videos will approach the cost of going to the cinema.

The data plans offered by Optus are a joke. From my quick and dirty calculations, I estimate that 1Gig would be a light user, 2Gig an average user and 5Gig a heavier user. Why not just have unlimited data plans?

Apparently the communications companies don't see the iPhone as a proper internet tool. That data usage will be just some limited browsing. They're also afraid of a skype type application taking away from their talk time. With this short sighted view they are crushing many of the useful applications for mobile internet.

Uncouple internet(data) from talk time

Forcing people who want higher internet (data) quota to take talk time that they won't use simply stinks. It is a very similar situation to the bundling of pay TV channels.

This is a great opportunity for one telephone service provider to take the lead, offer cheap unlimited data plans for an extra $10 on any plan and capture the market.

Instead we will see a competition starved market with companies that see nothing more than an opportunity to make a bump in their profit graph. Instead of providing a better service they will complain how much it costs to deploy their towers and how the Australian market can't support unlimited quota, all the while making $8 billion a year profit. Fat executives in suits, laughing and shaking each other's hands in salute of their delusional belief that they have done a good job and giving themselves big juicy bonuses.

Given everything I have said, there are still deals for people who want a phone for talking with some dabbling on the net. I predict many of the low end users will be caught by the horribly unreasonable excess charges for data. Optus may have seen this as they are offering some temporary unlimited plans so people will realise they have to change their net behaviour or upgrade their plans.

I wish the government would properly regulate industries as I'm tired of being subjected to the whims of collusive, profit above all type companies.

Vista cycle of life

I have had Office 2007 for quite a while now but a workmate pointed out the SmartArt and I thought I would have some fun while we tried to repair his Dell M1330 that was infested with Microsoft Vista. Thank you Dell. There are plenty of articles around the net stating that Vista is slow, incompatible and buggy. Recently there have been articles stating that Vista marks the decline of Microsoft, and will advance the uptake of Linux/Ubuntu and Apple OS X. Certainly I am never one of the first people to uptake a new operating system, so I have hung off Vista while people go through the pain of a new Microsoft system. The wailing is not unfamiliar, I simply assume that these complainers do not have the memory from previous major version releases from Microsoft.

So my Microsoft Windows Vista experience is limited to solving this particular problem. Which was Vista trying to start, then resetting. I ran SpinRite over the drive and it came up OK. We tried to rescue the system a number of different ways that Vista allowed us to no avail. We tried to install Vista from scratch and still had errors, even after removing the whole partition. So a hardware issue, not a Vista problem. However Vista did not help any. This particular Dell M1330 needs a good going over.

I will try not to let this incident over ride my expectations of the next service pack edition of Vista. In the meantime I will not hold back on poking fun.

Windows XP is running slow

Being a computer geek is somewhat like being a doctor. People will approach you from out of the blue, seeking advice on what ails them. The most common question I am asked is about a mysterious slow down. I have a list of items I usually run people through but, people being people, will forget mostly everything by the time they get back to their systems. For these people, and my own reference, I have listed out the steps you can take. Note that this is for Windows XP, and not Windows Vista or Windows M.E. or Windows Pustule. For people who are experiencing a slow Vista ... upgrade to Windows XP. You heard me. Upgrade.

There's nothing groundbreaking about the list below, you can find many similar lists by googling around. This is just the stuff that I like to do, and now you can too. Without asking me about it. Below is only note form so if you want more detail for any step then check out my handy technical resource.

Backup first:

Backup your machine before doing any of this. Norton Ghost the whole drive is great if you can do it – not easy with a laptop. Use some sort of backup software (My Computer > right click on C: > Properties > Tools > Backup Now …) if you can’t ghost, or at the very least make sure you have copies of all of your documents and photos burned to CD or DVD (multiple copies, multiple CDs/DVDs).

Here is a cool trick. (1) Get a new hard drive, possibly larger, maybe faster, maybe more on drive cache, hopefully NCQ. Replace your current hard drive with the new one. Reinstall windows. (2) Buy an external USB hard drive case and insert your old hard drive, you now have a complete backup and all of your files accessible by USB. Should things go badly with your new install then you can always put the old hard drive back in your computer and use the new hard drive as the external drive.

Make Windows XP run faster:

1) Remove anything by Symantec (Norton AntiVirus)
- For antivirus use Eset NOD32 or free Avira AntiVir
- Run a complete disk scan for viruses

2) Download, install and run Spybot (and maybe adaware)
- safer-networking.org
- Run a complete scan
- Don’t let it stay resident

3) Remove software you won’t ever use, sometimes (rarely) they have resident services
- Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs

4) Check what is running at startup
- Start > Run > msconfig > Startup
- Untick anything that you are CERTAIN you know what it is and don’t want it running.
- Use Google to find out about start up items that you are unsure of, but if still in doubt then leave it in.

5) Clean up the browser
- Use Firefox, or Chrome not Internet Explorer.
- Don't install toolbars from google or yahoo or whatever. Figure out how to disable them if you already have them installed.
- Firefox > Tools > Clear Private Data > tick everything.
- If you HAVE to use Internet Explorer then make sure you have the latest version.
- Internet Explorer is covered mostly by “Disk Cleanup”
- Internet Explorer > Tools > Internet Options > General > Browsing History > Delete > Delete All

6) Install Adblock Plus
- Firefox > Tools > Ad ons > Get Extensions > Adblock Plus
- Don’t forget to subscribe after restarting Firefox – the subscribe window is often behind the main window

7) Clean the registry. A little dangerous, maybe skip this.
- ccleaner.com
- CCleaner is decent enough, and free.

8) Check disk
- “My Computer” > right click on Drive C: > Properties > Tools > Check Now …

9) Disk cleanup
- “My Computer” > right click on Drive C: > Properties > General > Disk Cleanup

10) Defragment hard drive
- “My Computer” > right click on Drive C: > Properties > Tools > Defragment

11) Run disk maint software like spinrite
- grc.com

Alternatives:

OR backup, reformat, re-install Microsoft Windows and all of your software.

OR forget Microsoft completely, format hard drive and install the latest Ubuntu. Free! Open source - so you can know it is good.

Hard core:

If you’re game to handle the full power of geekiness to speed Windows XP:

1) Check IDE drives are in DMA and not PIO mode.

2) Check Virtual Memory size and location

3) Disable unneeded services
- BlackViper

4) Carefully examine your files. This may not speed things up but will let you know about your drive space usage.
WinDirStat

Hardware solutions:

1) Add more RAM.

2) Replace HDD with faster, larger HDD with NCQ and a larger cache.

3) Replace computer.

4) Get a Mac.