Confirmation bias?

Maybe so. Whatever the case, I really hate it when I agree with a politician. It usually indicates that you're wrong, but in this case I don't think so...

Swan says 'infamous billionaires' threatening economy via ABC News.

I particularly like this:

"The infamous billionaires protest against the mining tax would have been laughed out of town in the Australia I grew up in, and yet it received a wide and favourable reception two years ago," Mr Swan wrote.

I really must be getting old!

Forget Gina Rinehart

The future is in data mining, just ask Google. I've known for a long time now that they're data mining their users. Shit, everyone does it and has done as soon as the facility was available (it used to be simple browser cookies but it's so much more now).

There was a great episode of Hungry Beast a couple of years ago showing how much data Apple or Google (I can't recall which) was accumulating on it's users without them even being aware of it. Sadly I can't find it now, but here's a couple of treats:

Google data mining in 2010.

Welcome to the new privacy.

With regard to the latter, I'd like to go on record as saying that if Google CEO Eric Schmidt really believes that "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." I cordially invite him to put his money where his mouth is and let me have a browse of his personal computer, otherwise I suggest he pipes down.

I was going to suggest something significantly more harsh and unsavoury (and assuming google doesn't retain multiple revisions of autosaved drafts my secret is safe), but this is hosted on Google servers (a decision I am now regretting) and it would be absurdly trivial for them to backtrace my IP address, contact my employer (yes, I am foolishly posting this from work) and make life uncomfortable in one way or another.

The old "If you don't have anything to hide..." argument against personal privacy is, in my opinion, the single most irritating and revealing of low intelligence and/or an agenda by the invoker of any moronic argument in existence. Bruce Schneier puts it more eloquently.

Anyway, if you thought Google was surreptitiously mining you for data back in 2010, hold onto your hat:

ABC Lateline; Google is watching you

I dabbled briefly in Facebook, but found it to be an utter waste of time and hence deleted my fake profile with it's fake details. Likewise Twitter, and perhaps eventually this blog. There are certain harm minimisation strategies I employ to reduce my exposure as much as possible. Never, with a very few notable exceptions, use your real name for anything, ever. Enable private browsing (though as the Lateline article mentions, Google "accidentally" overrode those settings in the Safari web browser - whoops!), I never, ever remain signed in to my phony Google account (sorry to disappoint, my name is not, in fact Lemmi Winks as I have led you to believe) and I am mindful of opening other browser tabs (and to a lesser degree, the tabs I already have open before I sign in to Google).

I sign in, post a comment or blog, and sign out again. Regrettably I do have a "real" Google account with my actual name (which a "proper" privacy nut would never have) and my phone is "owned" by Google since it's running Android (but what's the alternative (apart from the obvious - a simple mobile phone or none at all), an iPhone? Hardly a bastion of not data mining.)

Another method is to have a separate browser platform (probably not Google Chrome though) which you do all your stuff-which-is-data-mined in. Or you could just drop out altogether, an increasingly appealing prospect, but one which, for now, I reserve for after hours. I mean, I've gotta fill the work day in somehow, right?

Tough times for the Sunshine state.

Truly gobsmacking piece on SBS World News Australia last night. What really shocked me was that a UPS delivery driver not only thought that it was perfectly OK to drop half a million dollars on a place to live (I don't know what UPS delivery drivers are paid, but if it's less than about $150,000 per annum then he's insane) but that he would find it "Very painful" to leave.

What the fuck?! By your own admission you can't afford the payments, but you've drunk so deeply from the Kool-Aid of real estate bullshit that you can't bring yourself to cut the rope attached to the millstone around your neck? Drown then, and no sympathy from me.

Sadly, this enlightening video is only available for 6 days from today. Do watch it if you didn't catch it last night:



Of course it'll never happen here!

Pissing in the wind

There is presently (at least in the media and "official" circles) much brouhaha about a video which purports to show some US Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters. Whilst pissing on the bodies of your slain enemies is undoubtedly petulant and childish, really, what's the problem? Does anyone honestly think the dead guys give a fuck?

There have even been comparisons drawn with the torture which went on at Abu Ghraib. Absurd! Ridiculous! Those people were alive, and hence suffering fear and degradation, the dead people in the video are no longer capable of feeling. They have ceased to be. Shuffled off this moral coil. They are an ex-parrot!

Helloooo 1984

Personally, I found this: Punk's not dead, it's just gone to moral rehab - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) truly shocking, despite the ABC's attempt to lighten it with humour.

Does this look like someone who's enjoying themselves? (Obviously the recipient of the haircut, not the hairdresser who is no doubt enjoying the moral high ground and righteously leveraged power trip.)

(AFP: Chaideer Mahyuddin )

Police stormed the venue and arrested fans sporting mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans and chains, who were on Tuesday taken to a nearby town to undergo a 10-day moral rehabilitation camp run by police.

Ah, a "reeducation camp" if you will. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave, though I daresay Stalin and Hitler would thoroughly approve of the means, if not the message.

But where is the global outrage at this aggressive, blatant deprivation of liberty? Whoops! That's right, I forgot, it's a religious act, so you're not allowed to say anything disparaging.

The hypocrisy makes me want to puke.

What is this I don't even

I'll leave it to Scott Adams to turn this into an amusing comic strip, it's done my head completely in.

So I'm trying to procure a computer on behalf of someone who is going to conduct some research. That's cool, it's part of my job. Uh-oh, they need a non standard computer. This should be no biggie. I can see why large organisations have standard boxes - a drone in HR or Finance doesn't generally need anything fancy, but researchers, well, research; cut 'em some slack eh? A little flexibility shouldn't be hard to build into the system...

Anyhoo, thanks to the wonders of online procurement I should just log onto the vendor provided corporate page where our "approved" systems reside, click a few radio buttons to enable the laughably simple options (larger hard disk plus an additional hard disk) I need and off we go. Alas, the options aren't there. Hat in hand, I humbly approach the higher powers.

Several days (I shit you not) pass and lo! The options for larger hard drives have been revealed, praise be! Sadly, still no option for a second hard drive. More offerings are burnt at the altar. More time passes. Still no second hard drive option.

Eventually I am directed to contact the vendor for a custom quote. This goes surprising well considering our account manager at the vendor and the previous glacial response times I've experienced. Sadly, the drones in Finance are well versed in this practice and won't release such an order without approval from on high.

Thus more delays are introduced. Before we go through the looking glass, to clarify, I work in the field of IT, but not for IT (as in the centralised service here).

So, a bunch of morons, let's call them IT, spend about a week dicking me around, then, as part of the policy I have to send my custom quote (which I had to get because they're too useless to enable some options on a web page) to them for approval. Here's where it goes from the sublime to the ridiculous; I request approval from them, they, to my astonishment, request approval from a third party, who grant it to them and they in turn grant it to me.

It seems that we have engaged, at considerable expense, the services of a procurement agency. It further transpires that they control the options which are available on our vendor provided procurement page.

Huh? How the fuck does that make sense to anyone? Maybe it's just me, maybe this all does makes sense, I'm just too stupid to understand it.

I just want to do my job. Should have been a simple matter of a few clicks and job done instead of just over a week of bureaucracy.

What is this I don't even, truly.

Blow up the pokies.

With apologies to The Whitlams.

I feel no small sense of irony that those who condemn poker machine reform are, in effect condoning problem gamblers as a legitimate source of revenue.

If the government could reliably tax heroin or methamphetamine you would be able to buy it over the counter at the corner shop. Follow the money, as always.