Something Besides Tax

Wiimote Whiteboard Software

2010-04-17T14:49:00.002+10:00

This is just a list of software you can use to get the Wiimote Whiteboard working:

Johnny Chung Lee's original Wiimote Whiteboard program: http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ - FREE - once you have connected the wiimote to the computer via bluetooth, you need to run this program to help translate the Wii's signals into mouse click and drags. Once its up and running, you can use your infrared pen as a mouse. You don't get any digital ink capabilities with this, so you'll need to use whatever your computer has (e.g. paintbrush) or download third party digital ink (or interactive whiteboard) programs).

Boon Jin's SMOOTHboard
http://www.smoothboard.net - free trial, $30 USD to remove registration popups. This program is an EFFECTIVE REPLACEMENT of Johnny Lee's Wiimote Whiteboard (in fact it's a derivative, with a LOT of improvements). Not only does this program translate Wiimote input into mouse clicks and drags, but it also has built in basic digital ink capabilities. It has a toolbar to make using written annotations in Powerpoint really easy. If you already have Powerpoint on your computer, I reckon $30 is all you need to spend to get 90% functionality of an interactive whiteboard that you would normally use.

SMART Notebook 10
http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Board+software/ - if your employer already owns the hardware, the licence is free. However, if you want to use it with a Wiimote Whiteboard, it's $450 AUD (www.electroboard.com.au is the Australian distributor).

This company actual makes the physical interactive whiteboard as the brand Smart Board. They make different models, but use the Notebook 10 software to leverage its use.

This software is miles ahead of Smoothboard in features and cost. If you have used Paintbrush with your Wiimote + IR pen, and then use the Notebook 10 software, you don't want to go back. You will need to shell out $450 though for the competitive licence.

ActivInspire by Promethean
http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=ConGenericProduct.268
Personal edition is free - Professional Edition is $299 USD.
I haven't tried it yet - but I am going to assume that since this company is a competitor to SMART tech, and also make their own physical interactive whiteboards, their software should be of similar calibre. I don't know the difference between the Personal and Professional Editions, but I have downloaded the Personal edition and will try it out soon (I've just checked the licence and I am permitted to use it with the Wiimote Whiteboard without further permission - that's one up on SMART).

KindleLab - http://www.kindlelab.com
Open source (FREE?) software designed for interactive whiteboards. I downloaded this ages ago and had trouble using it (wasn't user friendly in my opinion). I'll download it again to see if they have any updated versions and see if they are any better.

Australia's Classification System

2009-11-26T19:36:00.002+11:00

Australia, apparently unlike most other similar countries, does NOT have an R18+ classification for computer games. The highest rating is MA15+. This is different to films and movies which DO have an R18+ rating. So, if a game is very violent, like Left 4 Dead 2, and doesn't meet the MA15+ requirements, it will be refused classification and not permitted for sale in Australia.

The makers of Left 4 Dead 2 then modified the game to remove some of the more extreme aspects and gore. So now, it's been classified as an MA15+ game. Some games aren't so lucky, and are never sold in Australia. Many people have called for an R18+ rating so these video games can be rated that way - this providing more choice for the average 30+ year old gamer.

So - for having an R18+ classification:
* more choice for gamers, most of whom are NOT children
* less likelihood of super-violent games being 'slipped-in' at MA15+
* allowing parents and responsible adults to decide what games they and their kids play.

Against having an R18+ classification:
* video games are more interactive, so playing them will turn us all into axe-wielding psychos.
* The Office of Film and Literature Classification already lets stuff in under the MA15+ radar, so imagine the crazy crap they would let in under an R18+ rating (SA Attorney General view).
* and my contribution - what if a bunch of 15-17 year olds want to play Left 4 Dead 2? If the game maker submitted it originally as it was (with all the gore and extreme stuff), it would have been rated R18+, what incentive then would there be for the game maker to change the game? This may reduce the choice available for the MA15+ folks.

So what do you reckon? A gaming lobby, Gamers4Croydon, are trying to set up a political party to run against the SA Attorney General's (Michael Atkinson) seat. They obviously think it's a big enough deal to put in all this effort - that's democracy for you. I hope they run against him - not necessarily because I want Atkinson out, but because I'm interested to see if a single issue like the classification system for computer games would make a dent in Atkinson's seat.

altered photo

2009-09-24T07:26:00.002+10:00

Parallel Importation of Books

2009-09-17T23:21:00.006+10:00

(picture licensed under a CC-BY licence from Ian Wilson)

The Productivity Commission has recommended that the laws enforcing the parallel importation restrictions (PIRs) be repealed.

If Australian publishers meet certain conditions, the Copyright Act 1968 effectively bestows upon them a monopoly in the local book market. Booksellers in Australia are restricted from imported a cheaper version of the book, and must buy it from an Aussie publisher instead (if available).

On the whole, this means that Australian publishers wield considerable market power, and arguably make supernormal profits as a result.

I just bought a book from The Book Depository (UK) for $34.40 plus a $2 international transaction fee on my credit card. The Book Depository charges in pounds and does NOT charge for shipping. At the local second hand book store across the road from my office, the same book goes for $40. At Borders further down the road, it's $59.95. Ouch.

Even if you accounted for foreign currency exchange differences, it seems to me that the Australian book retailers are charging a lot more for these books that our overseas counterparts. Presumably, that's because they have to buy it from Aussie publishers. When it comes to the relationship between booksellers and book publishers, booksellers appear to be the price takers.

An interesting quote from the Senator Carr on Printnet reveals something about these margins (or supernormal profits). He says (and presumably the printing/publishing industry agrees) that the margins the publishers make from best sellers are used to invest in more risky and unknown Australian authors. That is, the (supernormal) profits are used to invest in some authors which produce "cultural externalities" which would otherwise not be commercially successful.

Graeme Connelly (CEO of Melbourne Uni Bookshop) reckons "much of the argumentation by publishers (to the Productivity Commission) has frankly been rent-seeking."

Allan Fels made an interesting remark about the (then) Prices Surveillance Authority 1989 report recommending the repeal of PIRs on books. "It made a terrible mistake. It said there were two problems. Never give a politician two problems. Cos they'll take the easy one and solve it. We said that (a) there was a delay in books getting to Australia and (b) the prices were too high."

In 1991, amendments were passed requiring Australian publishers to supply the books within 30 days of publication in order to receive PIR protection. This solved the delay problem, but did not affect prices.

One other thing about Senator Carr: he thinks that the publishing and printing industry should be *tin foil hat on* "protected" *tin foil hat off* because we need the excess capacity in Australia to ensure the maximum dissemination of ideas. That is, despite the internet providing almost no barriers to dissemination, we still need books (and hence the decision makers and gatekeepers, publishers) to get the ideas out there.

I dunno about that, it might be true, it might not be. Something tells me, if we lift the PIRs, although the publishers can kiss some of their supernormal profits goodbye, they'll be just fine.

Let's maximise consumer surplus!!

The Gospel and Intellectual Property (rival goods)

2009-09-05T15:42:00.004+10:00

I've just finished reading "The Future of Ideas", a not so recent book by Lawrence Lessig. It talks about rivalrous goods and non-rivalrous goods.

A rivalrous good is one where my use of the good (say, a car), will rival your use of the same car. We cannot drive it at the same time. Most physical objects are rivalrous to some extent. A public park is non-rivalrous, until it gets really crowded, when my use and enjoyment of the park is negatively affected by your (and the thousand other people) use of the park. It will then become rivalrous.

Intellectual property, and knowledge in general, has the character of being non-rivalrous. If I learn something from you, say a recipe for chocolate brownies, you do not need to unlearn it. My use of the recipe does not rival your use of the recipe. Although, if we shared one oven, hopefully we can use the same recipe, otherwise the use of the oven will be rivalrous!

ANYWAY... I was thinking about the Gospel (aka Good News), and how people tell other people about Jesus. One of the great things about the good news of Jesus, is that, if I know it in my head, I can tell you all about Jesus. I do not need a leaflet, or a pamphlet or a bookmark to tell you about it. Leaflets may be finite (and their use rivalrous), but the gospel itself is not rivalrous. Millions of people tell millions of other people about Jesus all the time, and the gospel will never diminish in it power.

Interestingly enough, one might say that the act of telling people about Jesus, actually enhances my ability to tell more people. Like they say, practice makes perfect. Also, websites tend to be regarded as non-rivalrous, as MANY people can visit a website at a time. Although they do have their limits, as Denial of Service attacks can overwhelm a website by visiting it from many computers simultaneously.

So, non-rivalrous news (the good news about Jesus), from an almost non-rivalrous source (a website) - try Two Ways to Live.

A new nerd convergence: MAKE and copyright

2009-07-25T15:49:00.000+10:00

And you thought taxified Harry Potter titles were an unholy nerd alliance? As it turns out (from SMH) Amazon, who sell the Kindle and the e-books that are read on it, made a booboo. It turns out that they were selling books by George Orwell (like 1984), but after they were sold and downloaded to individuals' Kindle, it turned out they didn't have the rights to do so, and Amazon apparently snuck in, and deleted the e-books from everyone's Kindles and refunded the money, without decent notification.

Enter MAKE, a print and online magazine dedicated to DIY and lots of cool nerd stuff like electronics. For example, there are LOTS of Wiimote hacks on Make. KipKay, a popular online DIYer regularly makes videos for MAKE. Very cool - for example:

Anyway, it seems MAKE have published (through their blog) a "workaround" in order to get the Orwellian books back on the Kindle. "How?" you ask? One word, "copyright". In Australia, Orwell's books have entered the Public Domain because copyright in Australia (for literary works anyway) is life of author plus 50 years. In the US (where Amazon wasn't allowed to sell the books) the term is life of author plus 70 years. Nothing quite like a bit of copyright arbitrage. Of course, you actually HAVE to be in Australia to download the book (from an Aussie Uni site). A US resident will probably still be infringing copyright if they carry out the workaround unless they're in Australia.

Read the MAKE "workaround" here.

The Lazy Susan Code of Conduct

2009-07-23T19:19:00.004+10:00

For those unaware, myself and others have authored the "Principles of Yum Cha", otherwise known as 'The Yum-Charter". Principle 23 refers to the 'Lazy Susan Code of Conduct'.

Here it is, a living document, if you will:

The Lazy Susan Code of Conduct
1. Subject to the below clauses, the Lazy Susan ('LS') shall be revolved as fast as is necessary to eat Yum Cha.

2. If someone is retrieving a dim sim from the LS, you shall not revolve the LS to the extent that the retriever has difficulty retrieving the dim sim.

3. As a matter of best practice, you shall wait until the retriever has retrieved their dim sim before revolving the LS.

4. Chilli sauce saucers shall be distributed evenly on the LS.

5. Depending on circumstances, empty bamboo baskets shall be placed in the centre of the LS, OR on a part of the table close to trolley traffic.

6. The LS shall not be spun so fast as to cause any objects on the LS to move, or any sauce in saucers on the LS to spill.

Any others that should be there?

Censordyne and the Parody/Satire Exception

2009-07-23T10:46:00.000+10:00

In case you haven't already noticed, the independent political campaigning group GetUp! have launched a TV ad against the Australian Governments plans for mandatory ISP level filtering of the Internet. They use the likness of the packaging for Sensodyne toothpaste and have called it Censordyne "good, clean, internet censorship".

SMH story here.

Apparently, GlaxoSmithKlein (owner of Sensodyne), is not a fan of GetUp's use of the likeness of the toothpaste brand. They are even thinking of legal action, as they weren't consulted about the use of the brand.

The first thing I think of is the parody and satire exception to copyright infringement in section 41A of the Copyright Act 1968. Basically, you can reproduce a substantial part of a work, and avoid infringement if:
* it is for the purpose of parody or satire; and
* it is a fair dealing

I suppose the question is, (and I couldn't find anything in the Explanatory Memorandum in the amending Act which introduced s41A):
Does the parody have to be a poking fun at the thing being reproduced? That is, does the exception only apply if GetUp were in fact poking fun at the toothpaste rather than something else like a Government policy?

If you remembered the anti-ads by the Footy Show, those were poking fun at the ads themselves, so it's an obvious parody. But if you are using a toothpaste brand to poke fun at policy, is that covered by the exception?

Then you have to consider the satire part of the exception. The Australian Copyright Council (fact sheet G083v03) makes a distinction between parody and satire, and regards the satire exception to be more strict in the sense that more elements have to be present before one can regard it as "satire".

Food for thought.

Harry Potter: the taxified version

2009-07-22T12:01:00.002+10:00

My colleagues asked me the other day whether I had read any Harry Potter books. I didn't, not because I don't like Harry Potter, but because I generally read non-fiction books. I speculated, however, whether I would be more willing to read Harry Potter if the titles were something like "Harry Potter and the Tax Act".

We then sought to "taxify" the titles of the Harry Potter books. I don't know how to write "markup style" text, so I've done it in Word, and made it a PNG file. Here are the results: (the blue text was written by me afterwards, so I take responsibilty for the lameness of the sub-titles).

P2P - a legit business model?

2009-07-20T21:47:00.003+10:00

Let's face it, P2P file-sharing arguably presents the biggest leakage to copyright revenue for traditional professional content, like music, movies and computer games. In Australia, iiNet is being sued by Roadshow Films (with backing from AFACT). Case ref: [2009] FCA 332.

Roadshow alleges:
* by a user making available a movie file via BitTorrent, the user is making the movie available to the public, thus infringing the "right to communicate to the public".
* by downloading a copy of the film onto their computer, the user has infringing the "reproduction right".
* by providing the facilities for this infringement, iiNet has authorised the infringement, which is an act of infringement itself.

So, in this case, the copyright holder (Roadshow) is probably sick of chasing down each and every infringer (the evidence submitted indicated that Roadshow had enough information to identify the infringers but wanted iiNet to do something about it [i.e. disconnect them]), and wants the ISP to take action, and failing that, the copyright holders takes action against the ISP.

Meanwhile, on the otherside of the world, The Pirate Bay is trying to get a legit business model up and running supporting the P2P method of file sharing.

SMH report here.

If this Pirate Bay thing works out (which in my pessimistic mind, it won't), maybe everyone around the world, including Australia and New Zealand can stop worrying about the "three-strikes and you're disconnected" idea that's been floating around for a while now. New Zealand tried it, and had to pike after a public outcry.

Story stub here.

(I love this site, they've disabled selecting text, it's a copyright holders site, how funny!)

Someone got causation and correlation mixed up again!

2009-07-20T21:25:00.003+10:00

SMH reports that a visiting US professor reckons that KRudd's computers in homes strategy maybe counter productive.

SMH report here.

The report essentially says that "Yes, kids with computers at home tend to do better at school, that is, there is a CORRELATION between home computers and academic achievement." BUT the more important qualifier is that computers at home do not CAUSE kids to do better academically.

That is, a child might do better academically because their PARENTS are more educated or more well off, and these parents are also likely to have a computer at home. That is, A and B (academic achievement and computers) are caused by C (parents' background). Not B causes A.

Therefore, if you simply introduce B into a house (computers), it may not affect C (parents) who are ultimately the main cause of academic achievement (A).

This is exactly the thing that happened a while back in the US. According to Freakonomics (the book, not the blog), some President promised free books in the homes of every school kid because studies had shown that academic achievers at school tended to have more books at home. What the study didn't show was that the achievement may have been due to the parents' educational background. It was this background which caused both the child's academic achievement, and the number of books in the house.

Surprise, surprise, when the books arrived, nothing happened, because books don't cause academic achievement.

So, will the same thing happen with free or taxpayer subsidised computers in Aussie homes? Professor Vigdor says that in North Carolina, the introduction of computers actually made the results of some school students "significantly worse."

Are we ready for a taxpayer funded education devolution?

A random thought about DRM

2009-07-07T21:01:00.004+10:00

DRM is Digital Rights Management. It is the technology implemented by content creators and distributors which technologically enforce the limits of rights granted to the licensee.

Sometimes you can get content without DRM. For example, if I buy a CD from JB Hi-Fi, the licence would mean I could play it at home, but not publicly. I would also be not permitted to copy this CD (the right to reproduce is 'reserved' by the artist or the recording studio etc). According to copyright law (sect 109A Copyright Act 1968), however, I CAN (no matter what the recording studio says) rip the CD to my computer (thus converting it from PCM to MP3), and transferring it to my iPod.

Furthermore, despite the restrictions described by the licence (for example, not being allowed to make 100 copies to give to my friends), there is nothing physically stopping me from doing it.

This is content without DRM. The licence and the law say you can and can't do certain things. Physically, though, (whether legally or illegally) I can do anything I want with it.

Enter DRM:

For example, say I buy a song from iTunes, and the licence to that song says that I (the licensee) can:
* play this song on 5 authorised computers, and
* play this on iPods registered to me
* burn this song to CD 3 times.

Once I burn the song onto CD 3 times, it will no longer burn to another CD. iTunes will recognise what's already happened to the song and prevent the burning. Furthermore, if I email the M4A song file to a friend, he won't be able to play the song (which MUST be iTunes) until he enters my username and password, thus authorising his computer in my name. Again, the file itself, in combination with the player (iTunes) actually physically control what I can do with the file. That is, the DRM technology physically limits which I can do in accordance with the licence.

In this sense, the licence and the law say what I can and can't do, and the DRM controls what I can and can't do in accordance with the licence (even if the law says I might be allowed to do something else beyond the licence permissions).

My question is, why bother with DRM? Isn't the law and licensing enough to protect the interests of copyright holders? Aren't all consumers law abiding citizens? Okay, maybe not. In acknowledging and conceding that THE LAW AND LICENCE IS NOT ENOUGH to guide the behaviour of some consumers (i.e. the 'pirates' argh), copyright holders implement measures (DRM) to physically (rather than legally) 'guide' the behaviour of those consumers.

DRM measures are now protected by law. Section 116AN will treat someone who circumvents a technological protection measure (TPM, the legal, generic reference to DRM) as if they had infringed the copyright holder's rights (e.g. copying etc).

But my question is, why bother protecting DRM with law? Law and licence doesn't guide the behaviour of pirates. That's why we have DRM in the first place. So it seems logical to assume that pirates aren't going to have regard to the law when it comes to circumventing a TPM. If an iTunes song holder wants to burn a 4th CD of the song, they'll just rip one of the CD's they burnt before. Burnt CD's are DRM free (just like the ones from JB Hi-Fi).

So why have a legal regime (s116AN/TPMs) designed to protect a technological regime (DRM) designed to protect another legal regime (copyright licenses and statutory exceptions), when pirates don't respect the copyright licencing regime in the first place?

This seems silly to me, and this is without even considering the fact that DRM has the potential to:
* stifle innovation
* restrict competition (iTunes and iPod are dominant for more reasons than the style of the iPod)
* prevent a consumer from exercising their extra-licence fair use/dealing statutory rights.

What are your thoughts? It seems to me that the marketplace is in need of another regime to protect the rights of copyright holders, without making life supremely difficult for everyone else (whilst at the same time undermining the respect people have for the law)**.

** According to the Australian Copyright Councils Information Sheet G25 TV and Radio: home taping ("time-shifting"):

Q: Can I record programs that I'm watching or listening to so that I can enjoy them again later?
A: NO, You can only record programs that you are NOT watching or listening to. This is because the new time-shift provision says that you can only make the recording in order to watch it or listen to it "at a time more convenient than the time when the broadcast is made" Section 111.

I wonder what happens if I decide to record NCIS tonight on tape, and instead of changing channels or going to bed, I decide to watch the first 5 minutes while it's recording and then go to bed. Uh oh....

Graduation photos

2008-03-28T00:26:00.002+11:00

If you're looking for graduation photos, scroll down after the article about Easter.

Why Easter is like Company Tax

2008-03-28T00:20:00.002+11:00

When I say the word “imputation”, what do you think of? ‘Franking credits’ or ‘Jesus’? Well, it can be both!

The company tax system passes on ‘franking credits’ to its shareholders. Shareholders are effectively given an income tax credit for the income tax paid by the company in which they are a shareholder. Let’s say Company XYZ makes $100 profit. It pays $30 company tax (company tax rate = 30%), leaving $70 profit after tax.

Imagine now that Company XYZ has one shareholder, Tim. Company XYZ pays Tim a $70 dividend. Attached to that dividend will be a $30 franking credit. Some people call it an imputation credit. In Tim’s individual tax return, he’ll include the $70 dividend as assessable income, AND the $30 franking credit as assessable income. That totals $100.

Assume that Tim has lots of other money coming in and that his marginal tax rate is 30%. The tax on his dividend and credit is $30. Since Tim has a franking credit $30, it will reduce the tax payable on the dividend back to $0. That is, the company has effectively paid Tim’s tax bill on his dividend.

To put it another way, the tax the company has already paid through the company tax system has been IMPUTED to Tim instead. That is, the company tax has been CREDITED to Tim. That’s why it’s called the imputation system.

In some ways, the company is really the shareholder’s representative when it comes to paying tax, despite the fact of it being a separate legal entity. The company tax system merely brings forward a tax payment to Consolidated Revenue rather than waiting for a shareholder to pay the tax when they lodge a tax return.

Okay, so what does this all have to do with Easter and Jesus and stuff?

Firstly, a quote from the Bible:
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
“God made him (i.e. Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

When Jesus died on the cross, he was actually acting as our substitute and representative. On the cross, he dealt with the problem of our sin (i.e. our rejection of and rebellion against God). That is, he paid the penalty of our sin (i.e. death and God-forsakenness). In other words, our debt is transferred to him, and he pays it.

The second part of that Bible quote is about us becoming the “righteousness of God”. What this means is that we have our previously very bad relationship (remember the rebellion?) restored. That is, because of Jesus’ death on the cross, we can have a right relationship with God. The presumption is that Jesus was sinless and already had a right relationship with God; “him who had no sin”.

This status of a right relationship (i.e. ‘righteousness’) is credited to us, or imputed to us. That is, we have the status of being righteous, when we well know that we are far from righteous. Everyone has rebelled against God in some way. (Romans 3:9-20)

Company Tax = Easter
In many ways, the company tax imputation systems provides a useful illustration to explain some key points about Easter and the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross. Those who don’t pay the liability are treated as though they have paid it. This is only possible because someone else has paid it on their behalf.

Company Tax ≠Easter
There’s one important thing that company tax won’t tell you: Jesus didn’t stay dead. The big idea behind Easter is that Jesus rose again (i.e. the resurrection). Do you really think we’d have a 4 day long weekend in honour of some 33 year old ‘moral teacher’ that died and stayed dead? If we did, we'd never go to work.

They grow up so quickly....

2008-03-27T22:40:00.008+11:00

*sniffles*
Today's grads and cadets who have finished their respective development programs. Special Guest: The Commish.

The shot with five people is the cadets with the Commish.

Apologies for the graininess. I turned off the flash and the camera automatically cranks up the ISO, hence the excessive digital noise.

I used Picasa to tidy it up a bit.

I HAVE REMOVED THESE PHOTOS. IF YOU WANT A COPY, EMAIL ME.

Try This

2008-02-22T03:45:00.000+11:00

One day I'll make this...

Poor Form

2008-02-22T03:43:00.001+11:00

Wow - it's been August since my last post. Hopefully I'll think of something to put here soon.

Swiss Train Video

2007-08-29T09:51:00.000+10:00

Here is a video of our train ride. We are in a tunnel, and are getting out.

I hope this works.

Paris

2007-08-29T09:07:00.000+10:00

Hey, guess what, BJ and I met up with...

oh wait, I'll give you some time to guess first.

Okay.

BJ and I met up with Kev Chan in Paris the other day. It was a lot of fun. I tell you what, Kev lives on the edge when it comes to travel. Anyway, we saw lots of things: Notre Dame, Montparnasse Tower, St. Germain Des-Pres, The Sacred Heart, and just a lot of walking around.

Montparnasse Tower is the only skyscraper built within the Paris city-walls. It's quite low rise across all Paris, and the only 2 tall things are the Montparnasse Tower (its really a big building) and the Eiffel Tower.

The tour guide said it was better than the Eiffel Tower because:
a) You can see as much as you would if you were on the Eiffel Tower
b) You can see the Eiffel Tower
c) You can't see the Montparnasse Tower
d) It's cheaper to go up than the Eiffel Tower
e) The queue is shorter than the Eiffel Tower
f) There are less people at the base of the Montparnasse Tower trying to sell you keyrings.

Anyway, here is a picture that BJ took of Kev and I at the top of Montparnasse Tower:

Ahh... it's getting late. I might just publish this now. Just in case I fall asle...

Montreux - chocolate hangover

2007-08-27T01:01:00.000+10:00

I was very close to leaving BJ behind in Montreux. She liked the placed so much, I was afraid that she didn't want to leave.

Funny story, there is a casino in Montreux. Montreux sounds like a nice place, right? You'd think the casino would be a flash, trendy place right? Well, not in Montreux. After dressing up nicely, we arrived at what could be described as "Hornsby RSL but not as nice". I think the Irish Pub at Asquith Leagues might even be a toe ahead.

The casino was signposted with a CASINO sign, in red neon lights. We were a little let down. The food, however, redeemed the institution. We didn't even take a picture of the place. Sorry. What, hang on, BJ DID take a photo of it. Ooops. Here it is in the day light:

But do you know what was cool? The train ride there was something else. We took a "panoramic" train ride from Lucerne to Montreux. We were at the front of the train. "The front?" you ask. Yes:

Cool huh?

We also took the liberty of paying a visit to the Nestle/Cailler factory. Free samples. BJ enjoyed it, and I managed to exhaust a vial of lactase pills in one hit.

We also stopped by an old castle in a place called Gruyere. They have a cheese factory, but they also have a castle. Check out the view from the castle:

After Montreux, we went to Paris. I'll blog that later. We're in Amsterdam right now.
We met up with Kevin Chan in Paris. His blog is http://inkev.blogspot.com/ hopefully he'll updated it before us, so you can have a look see about Paris.

Montreux

2007-08-24T10:32:00.000+10:00

BJ broke the "world's most photos taken in one day" record.
We'll need to wade through the photos to find some pithy-ergo-blog-worthy shots to post here.

In the meantime, it's 2:30am here in Paris, and I should really be going to bed.

Bye for now.

Lucerne (or Luzern)

2007-08-24T09:58:00.000+10:00

The picture is the view from our hostel room in the late arvo. Not bad huh? Lucerne is a smallish town in Swizterland, where the people mainly speak German first, then French, then English. The town has a river running right through the middle (the Reuss River), flowing from Lake Lucerne, through goodness knows where to eventually end up in the Rhine River. The river flows really quickly, and I'd say that if you fell into it, you'd have buckley's chances of saving yourself. (you'd probably get hypothermia first).

The weather is cool and fresh, a welcome change from the hot and humid weather of Rome and Venice. Lucerne is a small town, and there wasn't much to see except for landscapes. Plenty to see in terms of mountains etc. There are several bridges crossing the river, and one of them is a big old wooden one, and the picture below was taken from it. As you can see, its got lots of flowers lining it. They really like flowers here.

It was cool having a river racing past outside your hostel window. Just the novelty I suppose. The place seems really laid back too. Not over-populated by neither citizens, tourists or traffic.

Oh yeah, if you DO fall in the river, your best bet is to be save by someone wielding this hook.

Also, there are lots of ducks and swannings paddling about in the River. How they get from one side to the other without being swept away beats me. Anyway, you already know what a swan looks like. But do you know what a swan looks like when its getting food from the river bed?

Venice

2007-08-24T09:15:00.001+10:00

Welcome to Venice. It was really warm here, and of course, humid. We got off the train station, and were met with the big canal. Quite a novelty really, being met with a canal minutes from leave the train. People get around in mini-ferries, or water-buses, or "vaporetto". There are not "streets" in Venice, just pathways, some quite narrow. Pull up any map of Venice, and you'll see that it is built like a maze. Alot of paths don't meet at the end. So when your directions say "take the first right", don't think you can get away with taking the second right and find your way around. Some of the pathways are really narrow, like the second picture above.

Besides the pathways, there are lots of mini canals feeding off the main big one. The mini canals can only fit small private boats and gondoliers. There are LOTS of gondoliers. Some of the mini-canals are a bit smelly, as the water doesn't ebb and flow as well as the main canal. The first picture above is an example of the mini canals.

There are LOTS of vaporettos going back and forth. They are also very regular. The vaporetto is operated by 2 people. One drives, and the other throws the rope on the big metal thing at the stops. The third picture is of a vaporetto rope-throwing operator. We took a picture of him (well, BJ took it at my insistence) because I thought that he looked like a chubbier version of Vin Diesel (that one's for you Glenos). BJ doesn't know who Vin Diesel is. That's to her credit I suppose.

Another thing, what I've seen of Italy, can be summed up thusly:
The top 5 most prominent things Italy has:
1) Big old churches
2) Smaller, but just as old statues and monuments
3) Scaffolding on said churches
4) Scaffolding on said statues and monuments
5) Italians

After Venice, BJ and I caught the train to Lucerne (Switzerland).

Okay, here's some scaffolding...

There's a church under there somewhere...

Pompeii and Naples

2007-08-24T08:39:00.000+10:00

Hi all. We made a day trip to Naples (Napoli) and Pompeii the other day. It was REALLY hot, and I was willing to pay exorbitant prices for some lemon sorbet, or lemon granita or SOMETHING cold. Anyway, here is a picture from Pompeii. See if you can have a guess of what it is.

I'll give you some time to guess.

Ready?

Okay now?

It's a kitchen! The hole on the right is a oven (a pizza oven if you will - your original wood-fired oven!), and the 2 round things on the left are grain milling machines. So you put the wheat grain in there, shove a big cylindrical stone in the middle, and rotate the stone (with human power or animal power?) and out comes flour. (pronouced = flower - that's for you Glenji).

Of all the things I could have shown, why show a kitchen? Well, you should know me enough by now not to even ask that question.

The other thing is that the whole complex is still unfinished. That is, most of the city is still underground, and archaeologists are still digging it up now. The area available to tourists is only about 20-30% of the total Pompeii city area.

And another funny thing. I have experienced the definition of a Tourist Trap. When we booked the tour, it was pretty straightforward. The bus picks us up outside our hostel at 7:00am, and we drive to Naples, have a look around, then drive to Pompee and have another look around, and catch the bus back home. Somewhere in there, we have lunch.

The first part went to plan. We had a tour guide on the bus, who talked about Rome etc, and when we arrived in Naples, she got off, and swapped with a dude who got on - the local guide. The local guide was easier to understand, and we actually got off the bus and walked around Naples for a bit. The coastline is REALLY nice, and the rest of the town can be characterised with:
a) historical buildings
b) historical statues
c) rubbish on the streets
d) graffiti on said buildings and statues

Bit of a shame really.

ANYWAY, afer baking in the sun, we hoped back onto the bus and headed for Pompeii - YAY!

When we arrived in Pompeii, its not just ruins. There's a hotel right next to the entry, and lots of places selling gelato. (by the way, I'm sick of gelato now, the novelty has well and truly worn off). We got literally FUNNELLED into some random shop, that makes some kind of jewellery out of sea shells. It was very nice. But the issue is that this was never on the itinerary, and thus we had no opportunity to object. Before we knew it, BJ and I and a hundred of other tourists plebs were being assaulted by salespeople.

We got out of there. Then we HAD to have lunch at the hotel's dining area. (The jewellery shop is in the same building as the hotel). The dining area was HUGE. I'm not kidding, this place was designed to serve food to about 20 coaches of tourists simultaneously. Whilst waiting 20 minutes for our food, BJ and I talked to 2 couples from the UK on holidays. I think they were retirees/empty nester types. They seemed really laid back. Anyway, we finally got served semi warm food by very sweaty waiters. Running around in a double breasted suit never helps the temperature.

The very fact we were FUNNELLED into a jewellery shop and a cafeteria posing as a hotel restaurant tells me I must have experienced a tourist trap. I wonder, between the bus company, the jewellery shop, the hotel, and the Pompeii site, who was paying who commissions. Ultimately, it was US!

Back online

2007-08-24T08:15:00.000+10:00

Hi all,

I'm in Paris now, with some spare time, and a net connection, so hopefully I'll fill you in from between Rome to now.

Timmeh

Apologies in order

2007-08-18T02:26:00.000+10:00

I think apologies are in order. You may notice that the name of this blog is Something Besides Tax, and even the URL is nottax.blogspot.com. And YET, I accidentally sneaked in a reference to tax in my last blog entry.

I shall further my previous transgression by perhaps shedding some light on the reference to the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936. In case you didn't know, there are currently TWO main laws with govern income tax in Australia. The Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (ITAA1936), and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA1997). Until the mid 90's, we only had the ITAA1936, and it was very unwieldy, voluminous, and written in not-very-easy-to-understand legalese.

To make it clearer, and easier for lay people to understand, the then Keating Government initiated the Tax Law Improvement Project (or 'TLIP'). Its task was to re-write, in several stages, the old ITAA1936, into a new, better structured ITAA 1997. After a couple of phases, some parts of the ITAA1936 were removed, and replaced by the new ITAA 1997. However, until the TLIP was completely finished, we would have to use BOTH acts CONCURRENTLY.

When the Howard Government came to power in 1996, the priorities had changed. GST was the new big priority, and we published whatever we had redrafted into the ITAA 1997. (it was introduced in Parliament in 1995, and enacted in 1997). The project has been put on hold indefinitely.

So that's what I meant when I mentioned the ITAA 1936 with reference to cleaning the Colosseum. It took 4 years to clean about half of the outside. Funny, it only took 8 years to build the thing in the first place, and that was 2000 years ago.

Rome

2007-08-17T07:18:00.000+10:00

Hey, I'm in Rome. The place is littered with really big, old buildings. Most of them are churches. The other big old buildings are, The Colosseum, statues of various people, monuments, tombs, fountains, columns appearing in the middle of the city etc.

The photo above is from the Colosseum, and hopefully you can make me out in one of the pictures. I was on one side, and BJ was on the other when she took the picture. BJ is very good at taking pictures. Everytime I try to take a shot, it's blurry.

Anyway, the Colosseum is pretty big. The tour guide said that they have lost about 60% of the Colosseum due to earthquakes and stupidity. Completed in AD 80, its a pretty old building. Apparently, the building was held together (by the Romans) with a couple of tonnes worth of iron clamps. Some bright spark decided to remove the clamps and the place started falling apart. Also, it was used as a quarry. That is, bits and pieces of it were removed to provide materials for other building projects around Rome.

I overheard an American tourist (by American, I mean from the USA) say: "Gee, I thought it would be bigger than this". Now I'm hard to please, but, lady, they built the thing in 8 years over two thousand years ago. Give them a break. Maybe it was the massive queue to get it that raised her expectations.

And another thing, most of the outside of the Colosseum is REALLY dirty, from all the car exhaust. They undertook a cleaning project to give it back its like off-white look. However, like the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936, they stopped halfway for no good reason. So now, you can see the line where its dirty on one side, and clean on the other. I'll show you the photo later.

A few comments and observations about Europe and Rome so far:
1) I can't see why people catch the 'travel bug' so easily. Travel is a pain. And I gotta say, a lot of the time, it just feels like I'm in Sydney, but not in English, and away from my family and friends and church. What's the big attraction exactly?
2) Why would anyone want to spend so much money building stuff so ridiculously big? I mean, I can see why you'd want to spend money NOW on OLD stuff for HISTORICAL reasons. But why oh why, back in the year WHATEVER, (say, St Peter's Basilica, commenced in 1506) would someone think "let's spend LOTS of money and time building a ridiculously large church". I know it was a different era, but it would have been nice to see the results of someone in power saying "gee, we have a lot of materials, labour and money at our disposal. Let's help the community by building schools, or affordable housing or SOMETHING useful". I know they look nice, but the REALLY HIGH ROOF OF A CHURCH SERVES NO PURPOSE. It might be good to keep the place a big cooler. But if you have the money and expertise to make a dome like the one at St Peter's, I'm sure some shutters would do fine. Okay, I've calmed down now.
3) The tap water here is fine.
4) Gelati is really easy to get. It is really warm here. BJ has renewed her love for Lemon (or Limone) Sorbet. And forget Frozen Coke or Slurpees, the way to go is Lemon Granita (which is basically the same as a Froken Coke, but with WAY LESS AIR pumped into it).
5) The place I'm staying at is a little Zizkov-like, but not that bad. It is interesting to note that, in the immediate area, about 40% of folks are of African descent, another 40% of Indian, and probably 20% are of Italian descent. So much so, there an Eritrean Restaurant around the corner. I don't know of any Eritrean restaurants in Sydney.
6) There are HEAPS of shops selling el-cheapo souvenirs. You know the ones I'm talking about. They smell like moth-balls inside, the signs are misspelled, the stuff is a little on the lame-looking side, and the shop next door is selling the exact same stuff. And not only that, they are all RUN BY CHINESE PEOPLE! WHAT THE!?!?

BJ and I are going to Venice (Venezia) tomorrow. Off to bed now. Ciao.

Cesky Krumlov

2007-08-15T03:30:00.000+10:00

The photos above are from a smallish Czech town called Cesky Krumlov, about 3 hours train ride south west of Prague. As a rule of thumb, you can measure how big a town is, geographically and economically by its train station. One thing about most European rail stations I've seen so far, the platforms are usually really low, and you need to climb some stairs to get on board. So having no platform, like Cesky Krumlov is not a big deal, but the place looked really isolated.

We walked for a couple of kilometres through a suburb that could have been any suburb in Sydney. Someone told me that it was a beautiful little town. Not quite sure what they meant yet, until we crossed a bridge and encountered the entry to the "quaint little town" that is Cesky Krumlov. The picture up top is the entry to the town. It looks like a prop from Robin Hood - Men in Tights. And that's the flavour of the whole little town. It's as if, in order to attract tourists, the council had decided that Cesky Krumlov should have a certain Mel Brooks-esque feel about it. The streets were narrow, and made of cobble stone. Tourists were EVERYWHERE, there was a nice river running throught the town, and a nice bridge.

Most of the shops were selling jewellery, mostly amber type stuff. We didn't buy anything. There is a castle too, but I'll show you a picture of that later. It started raining while we were looking around. I left the umbrella back in the hostel room (which was a REALLY NICE hostel room by the way). The rain was really heavy, and many tourist caught out like us took refuge in shops or their doorways. We didn't want to make a run for it, it was REALLY slippery. The rain eased eventually, and we safely made the 200 metre trip back to the hostel.

Apparently there is a nice old building built into a cliff wall. The second picture is of it at night time while we were having dinner. We only stayed for one night, and the place was so small, I think that's all that we needed. The place is nice, and I wouldn't go back there myself, but I would certainly recommend that anyone who can be bothered to make it to Prague should be also bothered to visit this nice quaint little town.

Prague

2007-08-14T07:50:00.000+10:00

I'm lazy - yes Kristen, we are going to Paris in a couple of weeks. I can't be bothered posting a comment...
The picture above was from my bathroom window in Prague. Man, getting there was a funny story. I won't give much away, but let's just say that it's the first time I've ever been in an elevator without an inner door. That's right, the lift had a floor, and ceiling, and 3 walls. The only doors were the ones on each floor, and you could watch them go by in all their glory everytime you took the lift. I don't have a picture because it was too crammed to fit me and a camera.

We stayed in a suburb of Prague called Zizkov. I thought the place was a little shabby, I mean the whole suburb, not just our place. I told our tour guide "Simmon" that we were staying in Zizkov, and he apologised for it. It's hard to describe the place, but I'll try to use Sydney parallels that are doomed to fail. Zizkov is part of Prague. Try to imagine the whole area like the Sydney CBD, and Zizkov is like Redfern. I'm not ragging on either Zizkov or Redfern, but all I'll say is that it's not really a "tourist accommodation" area.

And the other thing, Prague has the most amazing public transport system I have yet seen. Their "Metro" = our CityRail, but a million times better. Train stations are mostly underground and are aplenty. Trains come every 2.5 to 5 minutes. No joke. The trains are nice too. Then above ground, there's the tram system. Plenty of stops everywhere, and trams come at the same frequency. I asked the tour guide about it. He told me that the Communist government during the Russian times built the public transport system because no one owned cars. How cool is that.

Another cool thing, the WHOLE place is cobble stone streets, made from rounded trapezoidal brinks of granite. This means that cars driving over it is REALLY noisy, and when its wet, its perilious for both cars and pedestrians because its so slippery.

Interestingly enough, our street was one of the few that had asphalt down the middle. Really weird, it was cobble stone for about a metre from the curb into the road, and it looks like someone just poured tar or asphalt down the middle. I asked Simmon whether it was to provide better traction for cars. He said: "No, when the communists dug up the cobble stones to lay or fix some pipes, they were too lazy to replace the granite, instead they just poured on the asphalt."

In my ignorance, I asked him why there were so many cobble stone streets. He replied "before asphalt was around, what else would you make a street from?". Good point. It makes me wonder, somewhere out there, there is a really big hole, where a lot of granite used to be.

Things about Vienna

2007-08-09T15:43:00.000+10:00

1. There are lots of really old and big buildings, mainly churches. The one above is Karlskirche.
2. The rest of the buildings in Vienna are mainly 4 storey low rise blocks, mainly white or off-white.
3. Trains come every 4-5 minutes. They go so fast, that you are not sure if they are stopping at your station until the last minute.
4. Not only is the train itself fast, but the speed at which the doors close means a virtual amputation for would-be commuters attempting to enter the train when the doors are closing.
5. Pretty much everyone speaks German and English. I know I should make an effort with speaking some German, but I would rather be an annoying English-speaking tourist instead of an embarrassing trying-to-speak-German tourist.
6. I saw the plaque at the top of this post. This one's for you, Dave Symonds.

Luke 3

2007-07-11T20:16:00.000+10:00

Hi all,

Here are some questions for you to ponder about Luke 3.

Q6 If Jesus didn’t need to repent, why do you think he received John’s baptism?

Q7 Why does Luke include the genealogy at this point in his gospel? What point is he trying to emphasise?

I'll post my comments on these questions after a few other people have posted!

See you at Winter Training! (see dates and topics on www.standys.org.au)

Net Present Value & the Gospel

2007-06-11T15:29:00.000+10:00

Do you know what Net Present Value (NPV) is? It's the value of something when taking into account interest rates and the time that you have or don't have it.

For example, you have $100, and you put it away on deposit at a bank for 1 year. If the interest rate for the entire year is 7% p.a. and it is simple interest (let's keep this simple), your investment will be worth $107 by the end of the year.

So, if someone wanted to borrow $100 off you, you would ask them to pay you back $107 at the end of the year, cos that is what you could have gotten had you the opportunity to put it on deposit. The NPV of a $100 deposit in a year term would be $107.

To NOT put it on deposit, is to actually lose money, because it could have returned $7 if on deposit.

And that's partly the reason why in Matthew 25:14-30, the master is extremely disappointed that the last servant didn't even put the money on deposit. Obviously this lazy and wicked servant didn't grasp the concept of net present value. But that isn't the main point of the parable.

The main point is that it doesn't matter how long you have been a Christian, you are still treated the same in the sense that we enter our master's joy, and "well done good and faithful servant". But also, those lazy and wicked servants are actually "other" servants, (Luke 19:11-27) in that although they do not reject the king's rule outright, they are there because of "faithless association" and will not make it into heaven.

Hazar for CVLI

2007-05-30T18:59:00.000+10:00

That's right folks, it's finally possible to show excerpts from TV shows and movies, without having to get prior permission from the copyright owner (which can take weeks and cost [from experience] $110 upwards), without having to use "words of critism or review", without breaking the law.

Previously, the only realistic legit way of showing excerpts of a movie or TV show was for the purpose of criticism or review. In the context of a sermon, it is highly likely that showing video would be used as an ILLUSTRATION to explain a point to a sermon, rather than directly criticising the video itself. Therefore, the typical example of a "sermon illustration" video, would mean that the church would be infringing copyright (that's right folks, BREAKING THE LAW). Unless the church got permission beforehand, it would be illegal. Typically, it would take a fair bit of time and money to get permission, if you got it at all.

Now, however, the Church Video Licence, organised by Christian Video Licensing International (CVLI) (pretty much the same folks who do the CCLI licence for our church music) means that a church can buy a "blanket licence" which gives them permission to show thousands of films and videos. The licence is reasonably priced. Of course, it doesn't mean we should be showing video excerpts willy-nilly. Although tempting to do so, it would only be done if it added to the understanding of the bible passage rather than detracted from it.

So, hazar for not breaking copyright law so easily anymore!

Church Songs

2007-03-20T14:48:00.000+11:00

I am wondering, what makes a good church song? Before I go ahead on this topic, I would like you to read the last page of the January 2007 edition of The Briefing. If you can't get it, I'll summarise it. Ian Carmichael, in saying that we should put a blanket ban on Hillsong music, gives 3 reasons:
1) When singing their songs, we publicly endorse them. And we don't want to be doing that do we?
2) When singing their songs, Hillsong financially benefits through royalties and other stuff. We don't want to be bankrolling harmful teaching. (the edition makes it clear that the teaching of Hillsong is not great, actually, pretty bad.)
3) When singing their songs, we compromise our theology, mainly because some of their songs are way off target, or even the good sounding ones mean different things to different people due to their ambiguity.

Next, read this article in the Southern Cross Magazine: The Big 3 Issues in Church Music

I wanted to point you to Trevor Hodge's recommendation that "Blessed Be Your Name" (by Matt Redman) is a good song. Also, I want to draw your attention to Trevor's recommendation of "Here I am to Worship" (by Tim Hughes) - he qualifies this recommendation with: "Needs to be balanced with teaching or songs that reminds us that worship is all of our life, not just our songs."

My question is this: does a good song need to be "balanced" by anything - or should they be able to stand on their own? No doubt there are many songs out there that praise God for his creation. Is it a bad song if it does not sing of his redemption of us in Jesus?

The other thing is the Blessed Be Your Name song (which I actually find really good musically). I would like you to read Andy Judd's case study of this song on the Garage Hymnal site:
Case Studies of Questionable Lyrics He ultimately gives the "pass mark" to this song because the major questionable line of "You give and take away" (taken from Job) "My heart will choose to say... Blessed be your name" makes sense in that the saints can praise God because by definition, that is what we do (because of God's grace and Holy Spirit). BUT since the song does not qualify the line of "My heart will choose to say" with words to the effect of "by your grace" or "by your Holy Spirit" does this make this a bad song?

In any case, would trying to fit such qualifying lyrics render the song so unsingable, that it becomes a bad song on grounds of musical lameness or unsingability. What are your thoughts? What makes a "good" church song? What are some examples that you think are good and not-so-good songs?

Tax Deductible Child Care - What do you think?

2006-12-15T00:36:00.000+11:00

A report was recently published by a parliamentary committee chaired by Bronwyn Bishop. The topic was about balancing work and family life. In particular, this report focussed on making child care more accessible or affordable. One of the recommendations was to make child care expenses tax deductible, and retain and even extend the current child care rebates to nannies (currently only parents who send their kids to approved centres get the rebate).

I have a major concern about any kind of rebate, or tax deduction relating to child care. It is that this only addresses the demand side of child care. Don't forget, the government doesn't want to send kids to child care centres purely for the sake of socialising them and making them well adjusted individuals. The main reason is this: Australia is currently experiencing record lows in unemployment rates.

In fact, some may say we have reached or gone below our Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU). Sometimes colloquially referred to as the "natural rate of unemployment." That is, we have reached a point where businesses are having to pay the workers more to keep them and pay more to find new recruits. As one commentator has said "We're not running out of jobs, we're running out of workers". When businesses have to pay more wages, their increased costs are passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices. Higher prices means more inflation, more inflation means interest rates will probably go up again.

So, where have all the workers gone? Well, at least for part of the workforce, they are at home, looking after their kids. Why? Because any money they make at work will be severely reduced by the cost of having to put their kids in a child care centre.

Why is child care so expensive? Why are there so many waiting lists? How on earth will tax deductions and rebates help? THEY DON'T in my opinion. The presence of high prices for child care and waiting lists is more a result of supply-side mismanagement. You bring down prices in 2 ways - reduce the demand for that service offered at that price or increase the supply of providers willing to supply childcare at that price. Tax rebates and deductions will only serve to fuel demand.

Why is there a shortage of child care centres? My theory is this: Child Care Centres need workers. Quite often, these workers have the qualifications to work in either a pre-school, infants section of a primary school or a child care centre.

If you got paid the same no matter what, and the school jobs offerred school holidays, which job would you go for? The fact of the matter is that child care centres cannot compete for workers on the basis of same pay and conditions. They really need to pay their workers more to keep them. These increases costs are reflected in fees.

So what's the answer? I have no idea.

TPM submission - slammed

2006-12-15T00:30:00.000+11:00

As it turns out, the Attorny General published the original submissions, (including mine), and gives the public another 2 weeks to respond to those submissions. These are known as submissions-in-reply. It seems a fair few copyright owners don't agree with me. Can't say I blame them really. One of them talked about how I was confusing copy-control TPMs with access-control TPMs. Confused? You're telling me, I didn't even know I was supposed to make a distinction.

In any case, I'm an amateur in this area of law. But it was fun to participate in the legislative process of this country for once in my life. Hey, maybe I'll even vote one day. Can you believe that there are plenty of other countries out there where people don't get anywhere near the same right or opportunity to participate in the machinery of government?

Anyway - I want to write another post before I go to bed.

TPM submission online

2006-11-03T01:05:00.000+11:00

I think this will be the closest I will ever get to being published.
I sent an email to the Attorney General's Department a while back, and all the submissions sent are available for viewing.
Click Here
A few things you might notice:
1. For some strange reason, I decided to include my mobile number in the submission, which is now online for all the world to see. Stupid. (maybe I'll get a call from someone asking me how I did the Coke and Mentos video)
2. My grammar is poor, despite the fact that I have a bad habit of correcting other people's grammar.
3. There is another site which hosts the "submissions in reply" to submissions like mine. Unfortunately, the link merely takes you back to the first link above. Once they fix it, it'll be interesting to see what other people have said about my submission (assuming that someone bothered of course)

It's often said that we all have one book inside us. For me, however, it's only 2 pages long, and its an email.

Sound Recording Effort

2006-10-24T21:53:00.000+10:00

Gus and I have been working on ideas to record the 6:30pm church sermons so they can be podcast on the St Andy's website. From what I can see, it also appears that Kristen is also working on the website. I can't wait to see it.

Anyway - anyone have ideas about to record the sermons? These are the options that we have come up with so far:

Option 1: add LINE-IN capability to church laptop (the one used for Powerpoint) through the use of a USB sound card, and run Audacity. Found file would then be removed via USB flash drive and taken to the webmaster's computer.

Option 2: acquire a small mp3 player with a line-in recording capability. Preferably, it should also have a removeable media slot (e.g. SD card) so that the player can be permanently mounted somewhere in the sound desk.

Option 3: acquire a second hand Xbox, mod it to run Linux, get the same USB sound card device in Option 1, attach it, run Audacity for Linux, run Linux support for USB sound card, acquire USB keyboard and mouse, acquire small LCD screen, acquire composite video to VGA converter (so display from Xbox can be viewed on LCD screen). Permanently install Xbox in the sound desk somewhere.

We're trying out Option 1 this week, as we've already ordered (read: Ebay) the USB sound card, called the Griffin iMic. I went to EVERY computer/audio/electronics store in Sydney city the past few days, I swear, you can't get it except for online.

If Option 1 works, how sweet life will be. If it doesn't (i.e. computer can't handle recording audio and powerpoint at the same time) then Option 2 or 3 it is. I can't see why Option 1 wouldn't work. We're only recording the sermon, so the Powerpoint is pretty much inactive anyway. We'll see I guess.

Part of me wants Option 1 to fail, just so I can have a shot at Option 3. Which makes me wonder, selling mod chips may very well be illegal come 1 January 2007, but will using an already modded xbox be illegal then too?

That's a whole other topic - don't you worry, I'll post something about that soon.

Gadget Geek

2006-10-11T00:42:00.000+10:00

I'm not just a nerd (with respect to copyright), but I'm also a geek (with respect to gadgets). I must give kudos to a blog run by an Australian Intellectual Property (that's IP, not Internet Protocol) academic. I've added their blog link, it's named Weatherall's Law - because Kimberlee Weatherall is the name of the academic. She has a good writing style. If you ever want to grab a small dose of 'current affairs' IP debate, read her blog.

ANYWAY - the fun thing about copyright law, is that its got so much to do with hi-tech stuff and gadgets. Allow me to demonstrate. If you have a TV, you may want to get a Digital Set Top Box (STB) in order to get clearer reception, and access to extra channels like ABC2. If you want to replace your VCR, and do away with video cassette tapes, you may wish to upgrade your STB to an Personal Video Recorder (PVR) aka Digital Video Recorder (DVR). PVR seems to be more common in households, while the term DVR appears to be used for commercial uses such as surveillance.

Anyway, a PVR records your TV show onto a built in hard drive. All decent PVRs have a timer function, just like your usual VCR. However, PVRs also have the capability to store and use an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). Its basically your TV, but used by your PVR and displayed on your TV. The beauty with this thing is that you can set your PVR to record all instances of a particular program, not matter when it shows. So, if you really like Futurama or The Simpsons, you just tell the PVR to record all broadcasts of those shows, even if they appear irregularly or erratically.

The big problem in Australia (and is regarded as something that is holding Australia back in the technology dark ages) is that EPGs are very difficult to come by. You see, you want your PVR to update its EPG regularly, automatically. That usually means that your PVR will need to connect to the internet or a computer, and upload an updated EPG file to its PVR programming hardware.

So, who compiles, makes and distributes these files? There is basically one main market leader in this area in Australia, IceTV. Presumably, the folks at IceTV spend most of their time either reading TV Week, typing up the week's program schedules for the various TV networks, converting them into EPG files, and putting them on their servers. The main PVR product that uses the IceTV EPG system is Topfield, also a market leader in the Australian PVR market.

If you have time, read this article.
In short, Channel Nine is suing IceTV because of this EPG file making/publishing. What's the official reason? COPYRIGHT!! Channel Nine are basically attempting to assert copyright over their weekly schedule (not the program's themselves, that's a given, but just the schedule), and that IceTV are infringing copyright by copying, compiling and publishing this schedule through their EPG system. IceTV are claiming that they are merely compiling already public information.

The first hearing will be in the Federal Court of Australia in NSW, Court Room 20C on Monday 16th October at 10:15am. If you're in town, you might want to stop by. By the way, the filing number is NSD935/2006.

So, why is this a huge caper? Well, one of the best features of a PVR is the "set and forget" feature of an EPG. The Topfield PVRs, are usually sold with a 12 month IceTV EPG subscription (yes, you gotta pay for the EPG service, at least in Australia). To manually enter in all the programs and times from all the networks every week would make a PVR even MORE work than your VCR. If IceTV lose this case, it would be a significant setback for the EPG system in Australia, and also a setback for the PVR industry. Nevertheless, the PVRs are steadily gaining ground in Australia, as the prospect of skipping your advertisements during your viewing of Futurama or Law & Order or whatever, combined with getting rid of VHS tapes, combined with being able to record someting in the range of 55 hours of TV, combined with crystal clear reception, will be so enticing that people will be willing to part with their $100's to $1000's of hard earned cash.

And I haven't even touched on the even bigger copyright issue on the horizon associated with PVRs, the new time-shifting laws that will come into force on 1 January 2006. If I ever get around to it (I really need to start on my European Tax Law assignment!), I'll write an article (no guarantees on brevity) about time-shifting.

Allow me to part with these questions:

Before reading this article, did you know what a PVR was?
How much would you be willing to pay for a PVR?
What kind of features would you want in your PVR?

Sorry Glenoes

2006-09-28T00:07:00.000+10:00

I just discovered, I left Glenoes' "blogholesun" off my links. Whoops. I've just added him on. He's now at the top to compensate.

What's new?

Jesus: Sin Cleaner

2006-09-20T22:21:00.000+10:00

I was at Bible Study (aka Growth Group) on Monday night, and we did a study on Mark 1 and 2, and we attempted to come up with a symbolic/pictorial depiction of one of the stories about Jesus (i.e. narrative) and what it tells us about Jesus. Kate choose the one with the paralytic guy who got lowered through the roof. Here's the picture she drew. It is hauntingly accurate of the real thing if you ask me.

Ignore this one

2006-09-20T22:00:00.000+10:00

I just wanted to change my photo from the fake Tim Yap to the real Tim Yap. And seeing as I have no idea how to get a real picture of me as the profile picture, I figure I could just upload one into a post, and cross reference it.

By the way, this is a photo of me on Dave and Kristen's wedding.

Bundanoon Bust Up

2006-09-20T16:56:00.000+10:00

It's finally here! My first posting to You Tube. Diet Coke and Mentos rocket, as verified by myself, and Eddoes. Thanks to Teds for the great camera work.

Click Here

Enjoy

You Tube coming soon...

2006-09-17T23:13:00.000+10:00

Hi there,
I have just recently filmed something that I think you might find amusing. Once I edit it properly, I'll upload it to YouTube, and post the link here.

See you soon,
Tim

Submission... submitted!

2006-09-15T00:50:00.000+10:00

That's right folks, I've just sent off a nice juicy email to the Federal Attorney General's Department seeking an exception to be created in the Copyright Regulations.

The exception sought is to allow folks making legitimate back-up copies of computer programs under section 47C of the Copyright Act 1968 to be protected from civil or criminal liability (by 'excepting' from being infringers), when they have to use a circumvention device to circumvent a technological protection measure (TPM).

That is, if I want to make a back-up copy (say, an ISO file) of Battlefield 2, I have to defeat EA's copy protection mechanism (the TPM) by using a special duplication/imaging program, for example Alcohol 120% or CloneCD. The programs are likely to be considered a circumvention device.

Therefore, in my opinion (it's always a matter of opinion until it goes to court) as the law now currently stands and as the law is proposed, the act of backing-up Battlefield 2 (although permitted under section 47C), is an infringement of copyright under Division 2A of the same Act.

So I'm merely asking the Attorney General to ensure that the protections afforded under section 47C are maintained, and shielded (i.e. 'excepted') from the liability provisions of Division 2A.

It's not written by a legal genius, it's simply written by a computer nerd. Eventually, they say all submissions will be published online. If they do that, I'll post the link on this blog.

The Iron Chef

2006-09-14T02:15:00.000+10:00

I recently attended a 21st birthday party on the weekend. Besides being a terrific party with excellent food, speeches, punch, and music (and the company), the theme was to come dressed as a character from a movie or TV show.

I came dressed as a character from the SBS show, The Iron Chef. I was a "challenger" as they wear 'normal' uniforms while the Iron Chefs wear uniforms resembling silky pyjamss. Anyway - I carried a speaker around my neck, which was playing the theme song to the show.

It was observed that the song sounded rather military-esque, with the snare drum rapidly rolling, and grand orchestral notes of strings and horns. Upon further investigation, it seems that the Iron Chef theme is actually from the soundtrack to the 1991 motion picture BACKDRAFT. In fact, most of the music played during the Iron Chef episodes are Hans Zimmer creations from the soundtrack. The particular theme song I was playing is called "Fighting 17th".

I suppose the dilemma now is whether watching the Iron Chef now makes me think of fire hazards and accelerants, or whether watching Backdraft (which I haven't seen in a LONG time) makes me think of the Chairman abruptly biting into a capsicum, and celebrity judges giving their thoughts with an American accent.

By the way, Hans Zimmer makes some great film scores. Most of the Jerry Bruckheimer / Don Simpson movies I've seen had scores done by Hans.

Audioslave... again

2006-09-14T00:10:00.000+10:00

I think its apparent that Audioslave is now my new favourite band. Anyway, if anyone is considering buying Audioslave's new album "Revelations", you can get it from:
Dirt Cheap CDs = $15 (album only) (damn!, I just bought it from JB)
JB HiFi = $18.99 (album only)
JB HiFi = $24.99 (album + Bonus DVD)

I also just bought the Live in Cuba DVD for $10 from Dirt Cheap CDs. You can check out their website. Or, if you want, I can stop by the Pitt St store and get it for you and you can pay me back.

Temple of the Dog - An Impulse Buy

2006-09-11T22:25:00.000+10:00

Okay, so I bought the Pearl Jam Live at the Garden DVD for $10 at JB HiFi (hereafter known as 'JB', not to be confused with John the Baptist). I enjoyed the old Pearl Jam classics, and some of their newer stuff. Then I came across a song that I don't remember being on any albums. Eddie Vedder did a duet with a woman (whose name eludes me) and the song sounded familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

So I decided to try to find out the name of the song by Googling some of the lyrics that I could make it. I can't remember what I searched, but I ended up at this site: www.reachdown.com which is a site decided to what is known as Temple of the Dog. This I thought was rather odd. I clicked on some links to finally get me to the lyrics page, so I could see the words to what I discovered was the song "Hunger Strike". Then I noticed who wrote it. It said: "Music/Lyrics: Cornell".

I thought to myself: Is this the Cornell of Chris Cornell? The former lead singer of Soundgarden now leader singer of the relatively recent Audioslave? Mind you, I didn't know much about Soundgarden or Audioslave, although I was thoroughly familiar with Rage Against The Machine.

Anyway, I read on to see that Temple of the Dog was a one-off tribute to a singer called Andy Wood. It was a collaboration between Chris Cornell (Andy's flatmate), Stone Gossard (Guitarist in Andy's band: Mother Love Bone), Jeff Ament (Bass Player in Mother Love Bone), Matt Cameron (Drummer from Cornell's Soundgarden) and Mike Cready (Lead Guitarist, high school friend of Stone Gossard) and a cameo in some songs by Eddie Vedder (some random guy that Stone and Jeff heard on a demo tape).

As you will note, all collaborators but Chris Cornell make up the band Pearl Jam.

As soon as I found out that fact - I bought the CD right away without listening to any of it. One of the best albums EVER.

By the way, the album came out in 1991, the same year as Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger and Pearl Jam's Ten.

You should listen to it sometime. And another thing, does it strike you as odd that Soundgarden is related to Pearl Jam through Temple of the Dog and that Soundgarden is related to Rage Against the Machine through Audioslave? Is there anything else about Chris Cornell that I should know besides being one of the best vocalists ever?

Unhealthy obsession with Copyright Law

2006-09-06T23:15:00.000+10:00

It has come to my attention that the Exposure Draft of the Copyright Amendment (Technological Protection Measures) Bill 2006 has been released by the Attorney General's Department (excuse the passive voice). This is to give effect to obligations arising under the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement.

One of the key changes is that it will make the ACT OF CIRCUMVENTION ITSELF an offence under the Act, as currently - only the sale and marketing of such circumvention devices is an infringement under the Act.

Assume for a second that a "mod-chip" for an Xbox is a circumvention device (more on that later). As the law currently stands, the person who sells and makes them is breaking the law (i.e. infringing copyright), while the customer who uses the modchip and the modded xbox is not infringing. The amendment will make the customer liable.

I say ASSUME because the Sony v Stevens case (where a dude selling and installing modchips in the PS2 was sued by Sony, because the modchip overrode region coding and allowed pirated games to run on the PS2) confirms that the "Sony System" of preventing the running of pirated games (which, is practically identical in its functionality to the Xbox system) is NOT a technological protection measure (i.e. TPM), and therefore, the modchip was NOT a circumvention device.

The reasoning being, a circumvention device overrides a TPM. That means a TPM needs to be present before suing someone for supplying circumvention devices.

This is great news for uber nerds in Australia wanting to tinker with their PS2s and Xboxs. Unfortunately, this is bad news for intellectual property lawyers, as some of them are of the opinion (and I share this opinion) that the TPM provisions of the Copyright Act were too narrowly construed by the High Court judges.

Of particular note, the judges, in attempting to discover the purpose or intent of the provision, did not look to the extrinsic material of international treaties and its obligations. It seems that the judges took a rather literal and linguistic approach to the provision.

The Exposure Draft also changes the definition of a TPM. One wonders, if the case were to be litigated in 2007, whether the High Court would have come to the same conclusion in light of an amended definition of a TPM.

I'm not just interested in this because I am an uber nerd who's dying to tinker with my Xbox.

The issue of TPMs and circumvention devices also affects users of computer program who wish to make a back-up copy of a program they have bought (i.e. they are the licensee). Section 47C allows a licensee to make a copy of a computer program for back-up purposes. The purpose can be to allow the user to store the original media (i.e. CD or DVD ROM) and use the back up instead or vice-versa.

You may be familiar with the concept of "imaging" a disc. If not, I'll briefly explain it. If you buy a computer game, it comes on a disc, or CD. Quite often, after installing the game on your hard drive, the game will require you to have the CD in the CD drive in order to allow you to play the game.

The game itself remains on the hard drive, but the requirement for the CD is merely a means to authenticate you as a genuine licensee by detecting whether you are in possession of the original disc. Now, if one was paranoid about losing the disc, you should be, because once you lose that disc, the game on your hard drive becomes unplayable. Therefore, one might, and can under section 47C, make a back-up copy.

You may decide to make a back-up copy in the form of another disc. The other option is to create a file on your computer which looks like a disc. The file is usually an ISO file, and the process of reading the original disc and turning it into an ISO file is called "imaging".

Either way, both methods require your computer and CD drive to read the contents of the original disc. Computer game companies, in an attempt to prevent unauthorised copying, have incorporated a number of "unreadable" or "bad" sectors at the beginning of the disc. This means that when trying to copy the game, the bad sectors "throw off" the computer and the CD drive, thereby preventing copying. The games are often referred to as "copy protected games".

In my opinion, these "bas sectors" fall within the CURRENT meaning of a TPM under the Act. However, since licensees in Australia (i.e. customers who have bought the game legitimately) are allowed to make a back-up copy under section 47C, can they employ a method which CIRCUMVENTS this TPM in order to make that copy?

Examples of such "circumvention devices" are programs like Alcohol 120%, CloneCD, and GameJack. These programs are SPECIFICALLY designed to enable copying of copy protected games by forcing the computer to ignore those bad sectors (or read them in a certain way) and therefore not get thrown off by it.

The law is currently not clear as to whether we are currently allowed to use imaging software which incorporates a circumvention device.

However, the Attorney General's Department is currently reviewing the "exceptions" to the TPM provisions. One of them is to specifically allow the use of circumvention devices to enable the making of a back-up copy of a computer program (e.g. games).

They are currently taking submissions and will close on 22 September 2006. Since I am an uber nerd with an unhealthy obsession with copyright law, I will prepare a submission to the Attorney General's Department. Quite exciting really, as this will be my first contribution to the legislative process! And to think that the first contribution to law-making would be in the tax field, HA!

Fearless

2006-09-03T23:54:00.000+10:00

I just got back from the movies, after church. We watched Fearless. I gotta say, I wasn't that impressed. I mean, there was plenty of martial arts butt-kicking, more so, the movie opens up in a tournament scene with lots of fast fighting.

I gotta say though, most of the movie is actually a flash-back, and its not that the flashbacks are that lame, there's plenty of martial arts too. However, I didn't really like that bit where *warning: spoiler ahead* it was set in the countryside.

I hear that this is Jet-Li's last "Chinese Epic" movie. And I really wasn't expecting extended coverage of Jet Li's interaction with, Moon, a vision impaired girl, living in a Chinese version of Hobbiton.

Really wasn't worth the $15 to be honest. I much prefer Kiss of the Dragon, as James rightly pointed out, being Jet Li's better/best movie.

What do you think of "Fearless"?

Wedding Bells

2006-08-07T23:46:00.000+10:00

Okay - so I'm late in publishing news. I never said that this site was going to be the place where news was going to be broken. Anyways - Erns and Hezza are engaged!!
Since I am speechless, I will try to express my elation, joy, surprise and excitement by hijacking the quotations of other people: (okay, some are just random quotes)

"Holy Crap!" - Frank Barone - Everybody Loves Raymond
"Woohoo!" - Homer Simpson - The Simpsons
"Excellent..." - Monty Burns - The Simpsons
"What the?" - Rove McManus - Rove Live
"Married men don't live longer, it just seems longer." - Tony Denozo - NCIS
"No soup for you! Come back, one year!" - The Soup Nazi - Seinfeld
"Oxygen! I need some oxygen! This is major!" - George Costanza - Seinfeld
"That's gold baby!" - Jerry Seinfeld - Seinfeld
"You beauteeee!" - Chris Handy (aka "Buddha") Channel 7 Rugby Commentator

You know, I thought I had more quotes in me. How disappointing...

Telemarketing Calls

2006-07-29T09:54:00.000+10:00

Okay, I know this is an old topic, but recently I have been getting a lot of telemarkting calls during dinner time. I know these people are only doing their job, and there's no need to be rude to them - it's just that when I say "I'm not interested", they just keep talking to me.

I find this very frustrating. I am quite happy to be polite and say "I'm not interested" even if I say it 4 or 5 times. It just that the persistence of the caller makes me a little upset.

I have found a way to make these calls, not a reason to get frustrated or upset, but perhaps to have a little fun, and at not too much expense for the caller:

Me: "Hello"
Caller: "Hello Mr Yap, you have been selected to receive a new mobile phone"
Me: "I think you have the wrong number"
Caller: "Is this [my phone number]?"
Me: "Yes it is"
Caller: "Then I have the right number - in order to receive your free phone, I just need to ask you a few questions - do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "Hang on, I don't understand. Why are you calling me? I don't remember entering any competition. Are you sure you have the right person?"
Caller: "Yes, I am sure you are the right person. Do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "I don't understand - but why are you calling ME?"
Caller: "I'm not just calling you, you have been selected among a group of residents from your county... uh suburb."
Me: "My suburb? - Yes, but why are you calling me?"
Caller: "I'm not just calling you, a few other people from your suburb have also been selected."
Me: "Oh, I see. But how did I get selected?"
Caller: "You have been chosen at random. According to a survey, people in your suburb spend on average, between $40 to $50 in mobile phone calls. Do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "Hang on, why are you calling me again? I don't understand, why are you calling me?"
Caller: "Do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "I don't know why you're calling me, I don't feel comfortable answering that question. Can we please end this conversation."
Caller: "Thank you" [hangs up]

As you can see, this call went for about 2 minutes, a lot longer than the usual "GO AWAY" type conversation. But the difference is, I came away from that conversation feeling, well, a little amused, rather than frustrated. And I didn't even have to get nasty with the caller.

So, if you find yourself getting regularly frustrated with cold callers at inopportune time, perhaps its time you had a little fun. You may want to try something like this:

Me: "Hello?"
Caller: "Hello, this is Bob from So-And-So Communications - "
Me: "Please enter your password, followed by the hash key."
Caller; "Hello?"
Me: "Please enter your password, followed by the hash key."

Or something like this:

Me: "Hello?"
Caller: "Hello {blah blah} do you own a mobile phone?
Me: "Blue"
Caller: "Sorry, I didn't hear you, do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "About 4pm, give or take half an hour."
Caller: "Sir, I'm not quite sure I understand you, do you own a mobile phone?"
Me: "Woollen jumpers are my preference, they keep you warm even if they get wet. Did you know professional kayakers wear wool?"

etc etc.

Any way - have fun with it. Remember, be polite.

Communications Infrastructure - what the?

2006-07-07T00:15:00.000+10:00

Can anyone please tell me why Australia, the country renowned for its innovation and creativity, has such a poor telecommunications system?

I've been scratching my head lately as to why Telstra hasn't been privatised already. Or at the very least, why the darn thing hasn't been split in half.

I know some of you would say that since its a government enterprise, built with taxpayer's money - it should remain in taxpayer's hands. I'm not so sure about that. I know Chob will want to qualify me severely on this one, but the practice of privatising government owned businesses (otherwise known as Public Trading Enterprises "PTEs") stems from at least two things:

1. An underlying ideological belief (whether founded or not) that the private sector is more efficient at running certain enterprises.

and

2. The government needs money, lots of it, and really soon.

How do we all feel about the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank (1991 through to 1998 - raising a total of $8.1 billion), or QANTAS (1993 and 1996 - raising a total of $2 billion), or Australian Airlines (whoops - 1992 - $400 million). Are you still burning with anger?

As for staying in the public's hands - the government isn't giving it away - its getting money for it. I suppose what the government does with the proceeds is a related yet separate issue.

Now to Telstra. It owns pretty much all of the copper wire and telephone exchanges that carries all of our usual phone calls on the Publicly Switched Telephony Network (PSTN) otherwise known as the good old Plain Old Telephone System (POTS). Only recently has Optus laid some of its own cable and infrastucture.

So - how do you get phone services from other carriers like AAPT or Primus Telecom? These companies rent the phone lines from Telstra via wholesale, and rent the lines back to you via retail. So Telstra is a wholesaler. However, you can all get Telstra phone services to your place. This also makes Telstra a retailer.

No big deal right? No until Telstra the Wholesaler and Telstra the Retailer do something like this:

OPTUS: Hello Mr Telstra Wholesaler - I would like to rent some wholesale phone line from you.
TELSTRA THE WHOLESALER: Certainly, that will be $30.36 per month.
OPTUS: Umm, but your good buddy, Telstra Retailer is offering phone line rental to the general public for $26.95. I can't even sell to the public at that price.
TELSTRA THE WHOLESALER: That's why he's MY buddy. Now bugger off or pay.
OPTUS: Or go to the ACCC.

And it did happen in December 2005.

And even if Optus wins the court case, the fact remains that Telstra is one company that does two things.

Although the plan to operationally separate Telstra has been approved by the government, its still one company - which will always carry the risk of "internal collusion". In my opinion, the best way to ensure that Telstra the Wholesaler treats Telstra the Retailer just like every retailer is to fully privatise Telstra the Retailer. As for Telstra the Wholesaler - I'm not sure what we should do about that one. Perhaps we could keep in in the government's hands for now. However, the government doesn't exactly have a good track record with encouraging or producing an environment conducive to rolliing out fibre optic cable or whatever else is better than the good ol' twisted pair copper lines we all know and love.

So I say, split Telstra, flog off the retail part, and keep the wholesale part for now. Maybe then we'll see some decent pricing on phone line rental, which is the major sticking point for consumers trying to get a good deal on ADSL.

What does "goodness" mean?

2006-06-04T13:21:00.000+10:00

Okay, I am not talking about good vs evil goodness, but dietary goodness. I have just looked at a box of muesli bars and written in nice big colourful letters is "with the goodness of grains." It reminds me of reading a box of rice bubbles bars (LCMs I think), and it claimed to have the "goodness" of 1 cup of milk.

What in the world is "goodness"?!?!?! It's certainly not anything to do with water content - otherwise LCMs would be all mushy! As for the goodness of grains, does this mean I can feed it to livestock?

If there's one disturbing trend about the marketing of food, it's the use of the word "goodness" to give the impression that the product is healthy by relating it to a healthy product.

Can the goodness of grains be the carbohydrate energy content? or the fibre? can the goodness of milk be fat? or calcium? or sugar? or lactose? (that's NOT good).

Does Nicorette gum contain the "goodness" of 2 cigarettes?

Okay, I'm off to have my fruit, after all, if I wanted the goodness of a piece of fruit , I'll eat a piece of fruit.

Bad Eggs

2006-05-02T21:53:00.000+10:00

Its funny. I come up with great ideas for my next blog article. Of course, I'm never at my computer to write it out immediately. So I often forget. So before I forget, I'd like to remind myself that my next article will hopefully be about the "GAP year".

However, for this article, I'm going for the topic of bad eggs. I have a carton of eggs in the fridge and there's no expiry date on them. So how do I know if they are still good to eat? So far I've got these rough ideas.

1) If you can't remember when you bought them, chuck them out
2) If the shell is soft, chuck them out (or at least in the direction of someone you don't like)
3) Put them in some water. If it sinks, its good. If it floats, then burn it at the stake. Hang on, I think I'm confusing it with something else.

And another thing. You can fit an amazing amount of stuff in Erns' car.

Infant Logic released

2006-04-17T20:47:00.000+10:00

That's right folks, Richard Beeston's second album is now out. Infant Logic is a bit heavier than his debut album, Regenerate. I am not professing to be some expert muso, on the contrary, I can't even read music, I have only about 70% hearing, and my voice range is less than an octave, making it very difficult to sing along to Jeff Buckley.

Mind you, Richard's got an excellent voice range too. The Infant Logic album has a lot more electric guitar in it, which threw me off a little bit, as I really enjoyed Regenerate because of the good use of acoustic guitar (I love the sound of acoustic guitar). Mind you, just because there's electric guitar doesn't mean I don't like it. I mean, I like Audioslave, so that must mean that electric guitars aren't inherently bad.

In all, I think Infant Logic is a jolly good album. Can't wait to play it more often on the train on the way to work. As an aside, when I bought Regenerate, I listened it all the way through on the train to work, and all the way through again on the train on the way back home. That's right, twice a day, for a couple of months.

By the way, Regenerate, the name of Richard's debut album - is pronounced ree-gen-a-rit, as in the noun, not the verb, that is a person who is regenerated. I must admit, I was calling it by the verb form (ree-gen-a-rate) for quite some time.

Go and buy Infant Logic - I bought 2 of them!!

www.richardbeeston.com

Real RSS site

2006-04-01T23:04:00.000+11:00

Okay, was a little distracted last time, here's the real site for the RSS feed.

http://nottax.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Description of my day

2006-03-30T23:02:00.000+11:00

Okay, I told you that I would not describe the events of my day unless the circumstances in fact warranted it. How about I tell you today's circumstances, and you can judge of they warrant publication?

Circumstances:
BJ and I went to the ABC studio in Ultimo tonight to be part of the studio audience for The Chaser's War on Everything. We went with Aileen and Stephen (Aileen organised it), and mum and dad.

I reckon it was great. I know BJ had fun too, she was laughing more than me (and you know how much I laugh). Even more interesting was the fact that mum and dad liked it too. I guess its one of those unusual times when both parents and children find the same thing funny. (I don't think my parents think that The Simpsons is very funny, but I still think its good value).

I think The Chaser rocks - I have the old CNNNN newsbar scrolling on the bottom of my desktop, just above my taskbar. The short gags are well worth the nauseous sensations I experience when the newsbar is scrolling across my peripheral vision. See what I mean by The Chaser:
http://www.chaser.com.au/ ;
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/
http://www.cnnnn.com/ ;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNNNN ;

I think they are one of the funniest satirical groups to reach our media for a long time. There are many reasons why I like them, one of them is because they are what one might call "ballsy". That is, they do funny stuff that I wouldn't dare do myself, but would love to watch another do it. For example, asking Malcolm Turnbull "Pursuit Trivia" questions during a press conference.

Anyway - off to bed for me!!

RSS XML address

2006-03-30T22:56:00.000+11:00

Okay, after getting about 300 requests within a period of less than 4 days for the RSS location, here it is: http://sage.mozdev.org/

2. If you don't use Mozilla Firefox like most normal people, then may I suggest downloading Firefox from here: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/, then follow Instruction 1.

My part time job

2006-03-29T21:18:00.000+11:00

If you're wondering what I do in my spare time:
http://www.mtvasia.com/News/200601/24013079.html

Okay, not tax, but close

2006-03-29T19:54:00.000+11:00

Okay folks, here's a NON-TAX OPINION.
I think we should scrap the 4c per litre petrol discount system. Why? Because for the average petrol tank, you only save between $1.50 and $2 per fill. But the real caper is that the petrol industry is a very low margin business (from a retail perspective). Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the recently re-branded Coles/Shell and Woolies/Caltex outlets are happy taking a 4c per litre hit to their profit margins.

So how are the petrol chains going to maintain their profits? From all the extra profits that have been brought in through the supermarket chains!! The idea is that customers are more likely to shop at Coles to save 4c per litre at Shell petrol stations. Therefore, because of this deal, Coles brings in more customers, makes more money, and subsidises the petrol operation to keep the deal going.

Essentially, what's happening here, is that ordinary grocery shoppers are subsidising petrol consumers. Admittedly, I would imagine that vast majority of "ordinary grocery shoppers" are in fact the same petrol consumers. But there would be a significant portion of the population who cannot afford a car or to keep one on the road, and yet there are partially funding the expensive habits of car owners.

P.S. I shop at Woolies, and use the docket at the Waitara Caltex Woolies near the Blue Gum.

Efficiency

2006-03-25T23:11:00.000+11:00

Okay, back to my rant about a 'good tax'. A good tax, in addition to being equitable, should also be efficient. 'Efficient' in this sense takes on a specific economic meaning. It does NOT mean cost-effective, or that you get more kilometres per litre of petrol.

A tax is efficient if it does not distort economic decisions. A tax is understood to be 'inefficient' if people stop or start buying something because of tax considerations. The same can be said for producers and sellers. They should not be discouraged from selling something merely because of the tax system. Therefore, for a tax to be efficient, it must minimise any interference with the price mechanism of supply and demand. (I sound like an loyal capitalist, don't I?)

Put another way, an efficient tax is one that you don't notice as you go about your economic life.

In Australia, there seems to be little of that, especially with the myriad of concessions, rebates, subsidies and tariffs. These are designed specifically to modify economic behaviour. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially with respect to market failures, such as pollution. It may in fact be desirable to heavily tax a particular industry that pollutes alot in order to protect the environment. It may in fact be desirable to provide concessional tax treatment to Australian film ventures in order to encourage Australian arts and protect Australian culture and identity.

Generally, however, it is desirable to have a tax that does not meddle with people's decisions.

Okay, another section break. Ah forget it, I'm going to bed. Goodnight.

Sorry - I mislead you - Equity

2006-03-25T22:22:00.000+11:00

I must confirm the rumours that ths blog may not necessary be "something besides tax". My first opinion for the day (see if you can tell if this is the poor researched or the better researched one).

OPINION: I think the GST should be on everything.

Why do I think that? Allow me to mention some criteria that a "good tax" must fulfil. It has been commonly accepted that a tax must be equitable, efficient, and simple.

Equity - this means that the tax should be 'fair' and perceived as such by the community. Admittedly, a lot of people in Australia still think they are paying more than their fair share. I would argue that this may be a cultural thing. Folks in Japan love paying income tax, they see it as part of their civic duty.

Equity often finds its expression in the personal income tax system through the use of progressive income tax rates. That is, as you earn more money, the more tax you pay on that extra money, and therefore your marginal rate increases, and therefore so does your average rate. An increase in your average rate of taxation means that a greater proportion of your income is paid in tax. This is often referred to as vertical equity. This expression of vertical equity upholds the principle that those who earn more should pay a higher proportion of their income in tax. Some may or may not agree with this principle, however, this is the system as it stands.

Another aspect of equity is that people who earn the same (or are in similar economic circumstances) should have the same tax burden. Therefore, a person who earns a salary should be taxed the same as a person who earns a wage, or who makes money on the sharemarket, or who develops property or who runs a business. If all these people are earning $50,000. they should all pay the same amount of tax. This is known as horizontal equity. This is not manifested well in Australia. I'll tell you why later.

Okay, time for another section break - I'll talk about efficiency in the next post.

First posting written in the first person

2006-03-25T22:07:00.000+11:00

Hi there,

I have no idea how this blog is going to operate, perhaps I can run some ideas and opinions past you.

Firstly, it seems there has been an explosion in the phenomenon of blogging, as well as personal podcasting. This appears to demonstrate an underlying perception that people actually want to hear/read what the author has to say. Further, it also appears to assume that people have the time or will make the time to read it.

I'm no rocket scientist, I know that a maximum of 3 people will read this blog in the next 7 days or so (2 people being me and BJ). Note that maximum allows for zero people to read this post in the next 7 days.

Secondly, I'm wondering what sort of content should be in this blog. I understand that blog is short for weblog, and therefore finds in origins in the documentation of events. However, I must be honest, I often find reading protracted accounts of someone's day rather daunthing, especially if the day was in fact uneventful.

This leads me to conclude that this blog will predominately house content of a non-narrative nature, unless the circumstances are so extraordinary that they warrant a detailed account of the said circumstances.

Thirdly, and this is really an extension of the second point, I think this blog will probably be made of a a variety of humorous material (humorous to me, not necessarily to you), poorly researched and ill-informed opinions, and better researched and more informed opinions.

These opinions will be on anything.

I think its time for a nice looking section break. I'll end the post here, and resume on the next post.

"Something Besides Tax" receives critical acclaim

2006-03-24T18:38:00.000+11:00

After viewing the blog for the first time, well known internet blog critics Joe Mantovani and Sarah Ciabatta have rated the Something Besides Tax blog as "innovative, and cutting edge". This is even before the release of any details of what this blog is actually about. Rumour has it that the blog is NOT about tax, however, nothing much else has eventuated. Stay tuned.

"Something Besides Tax" blogspot launch highly successful

2006-03-23T23:55:00.000+11:00

Location and Time: Sydney, Australia: 11:55 pm - Tim and BJ's study table

After much preparation, including the reading of all the terms and conditions offered by Pyra, the Something Besides Tax blogspot was successfully launched, with a myriad of celebrities and VIPs attending the launch function.

Amongst the who's who, were the late Jeff Buckley, (who Tim was listening to in the lead up to the launch), Pierre Omidyar (the guy who invented eBay, on which Tim was looking for cheap TV tuners in the lead up to the launch), and Larry Sanger (one of the people behind Wikipedia, on which Tim spends too much time looking at articles, such as the article on eBay).

The launch almost didn't even go ahead at all, with early reports indicating that Tim was struggling to come up with a decent user name. An inside source has quoted Tim as saying: "I tried over and over again to get an easy username, but they were all taken. After the fourth attempt, I was very tempted to give up then and there."

It seems that Tim did manage to eventually arrive at a username. However, when asked about this username, Tim simply gave a blank stare for several seconds and said: "Crapola, I can't remember, but I wrote it down somewhere."

Sources indicate that the title of the blog: "Something Besides Tax" is not entirely true, with reports that Tim has spent so much time in the tax field, he will find it difficult to write about anything else.