Give us this day our daily splash
Forgive us our hangovers
As we forgive all those who continue to hangover against us
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil, and someone... give us all a ride home.
Tom Waits, The piano has been drinking (live)
Joseph | 22 May 2007
He pours the wine into his coffee cup
Cold War Kids, Red wine, success!
Joseph | 21 May 2007
All I wanna do is drink beer for breakfast
All I wanna eat is them BBQ chips
The Replacements, Beer for breakfast
Joseph | 20 May 2007
While we're on the topic of Telstra and football, I went to a game at the Docklands over the weekend. During the quarter breaks, the scoreboard exhorted the 40,000-odd crowd to protest against 'the ACCC, which is shirt-fronting highspeed broadband in Australia', among other dubious footballing metaphors, by clicking on some buttons at nowwearetalking.com.au. (The ACCC is Australia's competition regulator — it has the authority to rebuke businesses for practices that it deems anti-competitive.) The ads carried no branding, and the only mention of Telstra was in the hasty 'authorised by' line at the end of the message.
Telstra is obviously playing bully here. It's clear to most observers that Telstra is the primary obstructor (as it has been for oh, ten years?) preventing the development of internationally and nationally competitive broadband services in Australia.
Which, ironically, is exactly what nowwearetalking.com.au was saying late last week:
I don't have much sympathy for Telstra's rivals in this whole debate either — it's pretty clear that everyone wants to make a buck out of the big goldmines along this new frontier, and the only entity that might even conceivably have the interests of consumers at heart (the ACCC?) is in way over its head.
But far more objectionable is this craven, cynical attempt by Telstra to mobilise citizenry on the back of blatant misinformation, manipulating their desires without giving them the facts — 'we're trying to bring you faster broadband, but the regulator won't let us'.
When social leaders stir up other elements of society with this sort of mischief, the result is a lynch mob. And that's precisely what Telstra is trying to achieve with nowwearetalking: an on-line lynch mob to do its dirty work.
I'm glad someone kicked them in the balls for it. And of course it was someone in particular — probably a five line script written out-of-hours by an Optus or Primus employee. Sadly, it wasn't a bit of push-back from the citizenry. But still, Telstra got very churlish about it:
Joseph | 14 May 2007
(Just to insert something between two kvetchings regarding a certain telecommunications company, here is a picture of a man dancing with a dog:)
Joseph | 13 May 2007
The execrable AFL website, domineered by those little troglodytes at Telstra, has a lot of content that is only accessible to Internet Explorer users in Windows. Because, as we've discussed before, reaching a majority of the market is good enough. When you have a monopoly.
One of the things that is locked away from prying, presumably communist Firefox and Safari users is the radio broadcasts. So for you folks on Linux and Mac OS X, here's a playlist that'll get you MMM, 3AW, SEN, 6PR (in short, anything but ABC) broadcasts on gameday.
If it doesn't work with your preferred player, try opening it in VLC.
Joseph | 13 May 2007
According to Jakob Nielsen — whose official title is 'Usability guru', in case you didn't know, by dint of a decade of mainstream media reportage of human-computer interactions, though to be honest I fall into the category of young upstarts who think that Jakob's pedestal is perhaps higher than deserved, even if he does bring rigour to this profession of self-proclaimed experts who base their usability analyses on their own particular tastes and not much else, 'oh look, the command line is making a comeback' — maybe I should start again.
According to Jakob Nielsen, usability guru, 'user participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule' when it comes to big socially constructed edifices on the web. On YouTube, on Flickr, on Wikipedia, and so on, 90% of users are 'lurkers', 9% contribute haphazardly, and 1% of users dominate the production of content. If it is true (actually I think it varies widely according to the type and identity-building attributes of the content being produced, but his ratios are a useful generalisation of the splits) — if it is true, this is an imbalance with really interesting consequences down the track. None of which I'm going to discuss.
My internet profile is indisputably lurkery. I've been lurking since at least 1997. It's not creepy or anything, and occasionally (like now) I do pop my head up, but by default I'm much more a consumer than a producer. Hell, I don't even have a MySpace.
Anyway, I must have seen a thousand YouTube videos in the last couple years. Tonight I thought I'd upload a couple, so I could join the 10 per cent, just to see what it's like. Here they are:
This is some Unionist choir, singing the Billy Bragg staple at Melbourne's Trades Hall, for the otherwise good fun launch of Shane Maloney's 'Sucked In' last Thursday (yes, that is Shane getting his head in the way the whole time).
These events are no place for a computer programmer, but after a few beers and a few wines, Kel and I did have an enjoyably vociferous dialogue with Tony Wilson, Angela Pippos and Ray Cassidy about the ramifications of Costello's budget on the forthcoming Federal election. Bananas were discussed, as was Dustin Fletcher and SportsBet. We were there because Inventive Labs recently developed Shane's site, and because there was an open bar tab. Anyway, the camera is a bit shaky because I was laughing so hard. Union choirs are an hilarious artefact of a bygone era in Australian politics.
And this is my token Wii video, which is the new picture of your cat. Enjoy:
Joseph | 12 May 2007
This is very embarrassing. I'm about to write something of a defence of 'citizen journalism'.
It's embarrassing not least because 'citizen journalism' is a stupid coinage for a concept that has been kneaded and pummelled in so many directions that it is approximately meaningless. But it's even more embarrassing because I'm arguing against someone who is trying to champion a lost cause — what Chris Scanlon rails against will happen anyway; the cold water he attempts to pour upon it is like a raindrop falling upon the fourth ring of Hell.
But I'm an obstinate prick, and this is an opportunity to set out some ideas I hold dear. In today's Age, Scanlon has written an article called 'DIY journalism is not a real alternative'.
Like one who has learned his VCE English well, he begins with a dictionary definition:
"Citizen journalism" is a broad, loose term that encompasses everything from sending a photo or video to an established news organisation or posting comments on an online forum, to writing a blog or editing or writing for a collaborative online publishing venture.
This is not a bad definition — for a columnist in a wide-circulation newspaper. It's the very definition being promulgated by the press, because it works in their favour. Fairfax, in particular, has been big on the idea that if you send them your happy phone-snaps of the Burnley tunnel disaster, or the Moomba parade, or snowfalls in June, congratulations, you're a citizen journalist. Fairfax actually thinks its own blogs are citizen journalism too — the syrupy irony of chief Fairfax blogger James Farmer (who writes cute little rants against Connex) calling his blog 'Citizen' appears lost on them.
What this and most definitions of the concept egregiously labelled 'citizen journalism' get wrong is the emphasis: it's on the source. The source is important, and a journalist/columnist will always think it's pre-eminent, but there's actually a higher power when it comes to 21st century media in society: the consumer. Hang on, let's get another Scanlon quote, one that gets to the heart of his argument:
For example, when federal Communications Minister Helen Coonan needed to defend the Government's changes to the cross-media ownership laws, she reached for the hype surrounding citizen journalism. In a speech to the Millennium Forum in Sydney in October last year, Coonan claimed: "While traditional media are constantly on the lookout for new media to invest in — think Rupert Murdoch and MySpace or PBL in Australia with ninemsn and Channel Seven and Yahoo!'s recent partnering, the rise of citizen journalism is challenging even these evolved business models."
This is interesting, because we find ourselves wedged. Coonan is the strategist/figurehead in the war against traditional media diversity in Australia. Scanlon pits this putsch against Coonan's apparent advocation of citizen journalism.
I'm pretty sure that Coonan's understanding of this phenomenon is even more diaphanous than Scanlon's. But the typical argument against the blandification of Australia's mainstream media is that the consumer is left without a smorgasbord of viewpoints — that Rupert Murdoch (who hardly cares) or James Packer (who really doesn't give a shit) and their vassals (who we can assume do) will dictate what the good people of Australia think about taxes or land rights or industrial relations or Glenn McGrath's legacy or turkey slaps on Big Brother.
Assuming nobody but loonies have ever seriously read Green Left Weekly, it's arguable that an overflowing buffet ever existed before in the lucky country. Recently a sizeable chunk of Age journalists defected to the Hun — who noticed? Even Andrew Bolt, that dimply scourge of the hand-wringing left, began his career at The Age.
But if the smorgasbord wasn't being served up before, it is now. If there is an active issue that I care about, I read The Age and I read the Herald-Sun. Then, because I consider myself a humanist and often find myself slightly left-of-centre in political arguments, I read Larvatus Prodeo. I check in on Mr Spleen for a second, if usually somewhat rabid, opinion. Arguably the most reviled journalist [ie, in this sense, not-columnist] in Australia, Christian Kerr, writes deliciously polemical articles at Crikey — I agree with hardly anything he says, but his opinions are an important part of my media consumption. Oz Politics, with its wealth of polls analysis and reasonable balance of commentators, lets me drill down and make comparisons.
And if I need to know more about American politics, I favour Google News and The New York Times as a first port of call, but for deep analysis I move on to Daily Kos to get blue views and Real Clear Politics for red. I also quite enjoy Wonkette for DC news.
As I've said, citizen journalism is a stupid term, and a better one, albeit more pretentious, is 'media triangulation'. By indulging in a variety of sources, we can more easily locate our own opinions. Traditional journalism places a great deal of emphasis on objectivity. This journalistic objectivity is generally interpreted as meaning 'both sides of the story'. In reality though, stories are usually lop-sided. To take a contemporaneous example, the mainstream Australian media has made a great fuss over big business' response to the ALP's proposed industrial relations reforms. But in the sphere of opinionation, most commentators have noted that it is something of a beat-up — business will always co-operate with the government of the day (because there's no margin in protestation), and there are few votes in appeasing BHP anyway — where are they gonna go?
Scanlon thinks that he can debunk these two new 'attacks' upon traditional media in one: by saying that Coonan's reforms are reliant on the rise of citizen journalism. The problem is, they're worlds apart. Yes, the assault on mainstream media diversity needs to be debated. But you can't do it by denying the potency of online media dissemination. If Coonan has genuinely attempted that diversion, Scanlon has totally fallen for it.
By aggregating opinions, by compiling subjective analyses, the opportunity for an enlightened understanding of the zeitgeist is greater now than ever before. That Crikey and Wonkette are privately owned, or that DailyKos and RCP are dripping-sleeve partisans, is beside the point. That a lot of valuable opinion is served up via Blogger, and therefore hosted by Google, is also irrelevant. Do you think any Google employee has ever read Ms Fits? If they had, and if they somehow took umbrage, would it matter? If she were uprooted, there are any number of places she could easily plant herself again. And if she were silenced, there's a hundred others (arguably not as humourous) we could read in her stead.
This is the brave new unstoppable world. If you care about an issue, you can feast on a hundred different views. You can consume as narrowly or as widely as you like. These sources are infiltrating the lives of everyday folk. At the moment you are at the forefront, but it will increasingly and inevitably become the norm. Every single Google/Yahoo/Live search brings it nearer. And it's a good thing. Embrace your agency. Happily ignore — or don't — Mr Scanlon. It's up to you.
Joseph | 7 May 2007
I'll admit that when, two-and-a-bit years ago, I annotated the Poignant Guide with this:
how not to write a technical manual (please get to the point!)
... I didn't really 'get' why the lucky stiff.
And though I've been a regular reader of his Redhanded ever since, and though I've dabbled in a little hoodwink.ing, and though I've sat through such, well, mindfucks as Everyone Is Here In The Future and quite enjoyed the antics, and though I have myself sprouted similar (though less skillful and perplexing) philosophies, still I've never quite understood his motivation. I mean, he's kinda weird.
However, today he directed us to hackety.org, which supplants Redhanded and operates as something of a mouthpiece for his noble new project, Hackety-Hack.
On the about page he explains it:
I’m not so interested in acronyms and technobuzz. I’m more into how hacking weaves into life.
Think of how often ordinary people type
http://into a browser! That’s hacking, friends. It’s an obscure code that has found its way into the mainstream. Can’t you see the tremors of the infectious hacking spirits, breaking their way into everything??Anyway, along these lines: I try to abide the Hackety Manifesto.
Yeah, I think I get it now.
Joseph | 4 May 2007
There's a lot I would like to say about Microsoft Silverlight, and I've had several weeks of having a lot to say in intra-office fulminating against Adobe Apollo, but it has already been said, and more efficiently. Still, I want to add my voice to the choir.
Proprietary software never really went away. But for something like the last two or three years, I haven't felt obliged to use it — and that has made computing, which I do most of the day, most of the year, a much less anxious activity. I don't mind proprietary software, I just try to avoid it.
Proprietary software development platforms are another matter entirely, and proprietary web runtimes are the worst of them. The desktop has largely been forsaken to proprietary platforms since their inception (due to the monolithic nature of operating system production), but the web has resisted them with remarkable durability. Flash might have gathered a large install base, but for making serious stuff, it hasn't really crossed over into mainstream respectability.
Until now, it seems. Following the mostly successful Web Standards backlash against the the legacy of the Browser Wars, we're starting to lean back on our laurels and wonder, just wonder, if proprietary ain't so bad. People as obviously clever as Dan Webb are putting down the healthy pint of beer (as in 'free as in beer'*), and drinking the Kool-Aid.
It's understandable — the web is built of constraints, and constraints by definition make it harder to express your creativity. But this is important: we have to call bullshit on the latest 'solutions'. These little magic boxes being hawked by the big end of town might seem attractive to you, the web professional, because they promise a cornucopia of super-slick animated transitions, or drag and drop, or offline sync, or whatever is currently not floating the boat you're developing.
But they are built to lock in some users (you being their primary target), and worse, to lock out others — like those brave pioneers out on the free software frontiers of Linux, BSD & etc. And what of accessibility? And what, without wanting to get too melodramatic, of the developing world? Big corporations who build stuff to make a buck have a habit of ignoring those without any. That's their choice, but is it yours? Will the hundred dollar laptop run Apollo and Silverlight?
'But Mister Pearson, are you saying I can't use Rich Internet Application frameworks because of the starving kids in Africa?' Well, that would be silly, and if you're asking that you've misinterpreted my argument. The Web, in its disarming technological simplicity, is a mostly level-playing field for participants — barriers to entry are assessed and adjusted down where possible. Platforms built on principles of exclusivity and opacity, principles of 'this is the majority slice of the market!' and 'we have to protect our IP!', invariably turn out to be bad for everyone. Why aren't you developing or using ActiveX anymore?
If there are tools missing from our toolbox, we should start preparing standards and joining open-source teams to build them. We should follow something closer to the Rails model of technology advances (open-source, but extracted from large-scale deployed applications, with heavy emphasis on pragmatism) rather than trying to be all things to all people. The mantra is not 'what we have now is good enough', though there are still many possibilities arising from enlightened JavaScript development that are unexplored, but that 'if we need it, we will build and distribute it freely.'
And for the record, "Cross-platform: Windows and Mac" is the web equivalent of "Oh, we got both kinds of music. We got country and western."
* Excuse my somewhat ham-fisted attempt at EFF-nerd humour.
Joseph | 3 May 2007
Topographic view
The qualifier
Two weeks with the apple and the lone star (illustrated).