I think this image (safe for work) sums up the whole idea quite well…

As one of the commenters on flickr says “Girl - Lens - Girl - Lens. I’m so conflicted!”

As mentioned a while back, I was planning to donate to Child’s Play Charity 2006. Well, I did. Today I got an email from Gerard Long the eCommerce Manager for DStore who’re managing the Australian side of the wishlists.

Anyway, apparently all up, between the two childrens hospitals (Sydney Childrens Hospital, and Mater Childrens Hospital in Brisbane) over AUD$13,000 worth ot toys, books, games, and other related items were donated.  See the official word over on the dStore site.  Not a bad start for something which had only 4 weeks to run, and was mainly contributed to by the more net-aware folks.

Internationally though - over USD$760,000 (AUD$972k) has been raised so far - through money donations, sponsorships, auctions, and gift purchases through various wish list companies.

That truely is a phenominal amount of money we’re talking about.

There’s plenty of useless quizzes and things like that around, so what’s one more to add to the bunch? Hey, atleast I didn’t send it to you with “OMG. Send this on to all your friends - it’s SOOOOO funny”

I scored 40 on the foodie quiz. Apparently I’m

“a gastro-warrior, a culinary thrill -seeker with a palate that knows no barriers, no shame – and no frozen potato waffles and mass produced condiments.”

That’s good, right? 

(And no, this isn’t the “thing” I was referring to… I’m keeping you in suspence. Think of this as like a mid-break teaser. And no, it’s nothing to do with food.)

This probably comes as no suprise to you at all, but I’m a Sci-Fi fan.

Really, the entire genre is something that I really enjoy. From the classics from Isaac Asimov and George Orwell, through William Gibson (his cyber-punk/bridge-series is great) and Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon is my all-time favorite book). 

A few years back, someone (I forget who) directed me to a little site called “Sennadar” - which hosted a ramshackle web forum (which has since been upgraded), where a fellow by the name of James Galloway would release his stories.  I’m not talking about short stories here - I’m talking large novel-length stories.  The kind you’d expect from a professional author. It’s not just one, either. James is now writing the last book in a series of eight full-length books.

James’s stories have steadily been getting better and better, and his latest work in progress (outside of the Sennadar universe) is called “Subjugation“. If you’ve got some time, and can read books on a PC Screen, I suggest you check it out.  Sure, it could use the work of an editor or an english teacher - but for someone who only recieves messages of encouragement and thanks as payment - it’s fantastic.

In the TV/Film space, I havn’t had much exposure to the real “classics” (call it leading a sheltered life, if you will). When I was younger I used to obsessively rent out Star Trek TNG, DS9 and Voyager episodes. At one point, two neighbours were also just as obsessed (Hi Cath, Drew, Matt) - so I used to spend hours watching these videos. 

More recently I’ve enjoyed the Stargate series (both Atlantis and the original SG1). 
I still really love my Firefly - tragicly cut down in it’s prime by the evil Fox network - but I’ve taken to Battlestar Galactica with somewhat of a passion.

If you’re watching a TV series, as it airs - you’re slowed down to getting one episode per week.  For some reason, networks like to “shake things up a bit” and put several week long breaks in the middle of all the good shows. This is because of the way the US TV Season goes - they run the good stuff during the “Fall/Winter and early spring” - and this puts Christmas in the middle of the season. 

This brings me to my core theme tonight - Cliffhangers. For some reason, TV Shows put cliffhangers on the end of their seasons, and the mid-season breaks.  This means that for several months of the year, you’re left with a feeling like you’re missing something (yeah, the conclusion - smartass). A perfect example of this, from Battlestar Galactica would be Season 2 - Resurrection Ship, Part I  and Season 3 - The Eye of Jupiter

For me, I spend most of the last episode of a season (if not every damn week) looking at the “Time Left” counter going “please oh please oh please don’t stop yet”. Followed inevitably by the “Oh no, not yet you bastards!”.

Going back to the Subjugation story I mentioned above, for a moment. As James writes a chapter, he releases it on the forums. Sometimes it can be a week between chapters, but more often it’s a month or two, depending upon study, work and life demands.  I’ve noticed this same behavior has been happening more and more with me, as it does with the really good sci-fi.  James can be downright bastardly (such as with the latest chapter of Subjugation), and he’s getting better at leaving his audience clammoring for the next chapter to be finished.

All in all - I just wish I had a time machine (or some way to extract the entire finished TV show/book from the writer/author)

(PS: If you’re wondering why the sudden slack-off in posting rate over the last few days – it’s nothing major. I’m just trying to figure out how to write about something that happened the other day.)

Saw this on one of the internal work message boards:

Project Baby has now gone from Build & Acquire, to Advanced Acceptance Testing. So far he hasn’t been returned to the manufacturer.

Still no word on if there’s a vendor patch for the Buffer Overflows - they have a manual work around, last I heard.

*ahem*

Atleast, that’s what I’m guessing, anyway. Asok, it seems has telekenesis. The day before, he was doing the concentrate-hard thing that Hiro does.

By the way, Heroes, really does rock.

Having Hayden Panettiere (”Claire Bennet” - aka the cheerleader) and Ali Larter (”Niki Sanders” aka Crazy split-personality webcam stripper) really doesn’t hurt at all. 

…give it to Aeoth’s sister. (Seen here)

Sorry Aeoth… but you’ve gotta laugh (atleast, after your sister replaces it).

Although, the actual manual does have warnings telling you not to whack your friend in the face with the Wiimote, there is no safety warning for “whacking the Wiimote into the coffee table”.

Edit: Seems like Wii Have a Problem (…not sure what I can say about the domain… except that it’s easy enough to say)

Slashfood has a post, related to a SF Chronicle article about the practice of Tipping in restaurants in the US, and how some establishments are switching to a service charge.

Coming from a society where tipping is (except for high-end restaurants) considered non-necessary - I can only see the tipping practice as a way for someone to get undeclared income. Then again, they’re supposed to declare it on income tax.

Apparently, some establishments in the US are adding a service charge, in lieu of a regular tip, others are adding the service charge to pay back-of-house staff.

Honestly, I think menu prices should adequately compensate all staff. Some (like several commenters on Scott Adams’ post about tipping last month ) give the argument that it encourages staff to be more attentive, or give better service.  Sure, that may be true - but imo, you should be giving good service regardless.

In Europe a lot of places had service or “plating” charges, which would compensate staff - I think that’s a slightly better alternative to tipping. I still think that the business should have all staff on a salary.

I will rarely tip in Australia - and when I do, it’s usually only to the next $5, unless I’ve had exceptionally good service. 

Side-On shot, as requested.

Others, without the de-colouring

 Spider, Spider. 

Before I get started, a quick run down of the federal government’s “Access Card” plan is to have an all-purpose card, used for accessing government services. This card would contain a smart-card chip, which would store certain information, as required by each government agency you use.  There is also discussion that there will be a certain amount of capacity left on the card, which businesses and users could use for other functions.

I’ve been listening to Background Briefing from today titled “Getting smart: The Access Card”.

In it, Joe Hockey, MP (Minister for Human Services, Federal Minister for North Sydney) gives some comments in support of The Australia card.
“The only information we’re going to hold [in the government database connected to the card] is what’s already on the face of your drivers licence”,  Mr Hockey then goes on to say “So, if someone tries to break into that database, [...] if they try to break into this, the only thing they’re going to find out is what already they can find out by stealing your wallet”.

Great, Joe - I’m glad you’re an IT security expert. Oh, wait, you’re not. Infact, on his “Meet Joe” page on his site, I can’t find any sort of information to indicate that he has any sort of IT knowledge.  Joe repeatedly describes the card as a “mini ipod” , which demonstrate a stunning lack of understanding as to how the technology works.

There’s two parts to this ”Access card”:

Part 1: The back-end / central database - This will apparently only contain some basic information about you - at first.  It’ll be controlled by the government, with access to only government agencies.

Part 2: The actual card, or rather: the smartcard chip. - This will store all sorts of information. Initially, it’s slated to replace Medicare, Veterans Affairs, and Centrelink Benefits cards. Mr Hockey says however that people will be able to connect it to their home PC, and place information on the card - such as medical history/etc as desired.  Joe even says that you may choose to store other data: Bank account information, shopping lists, Australia Post, etc.

What relationship the card will have to the backend, is unclear as yet. Mr Hockey says that they don’t want to store anything beyond the basics (so, your basic stats - as per your drivers licence).

Ok, so lets go from here -

Someone breaking into the central database, will “simply” steal information on nearly 21 million people.   Sure, it’s “only” drivers licence info, but hey - it’s a great start.
With this information, I could call up Telstra, and connect or disconnect services. Yeah, I’ll probably need an account password - but, since I’ve got this huge database, I can probably quite easily dig up the names of family members. “Oh, sorry, was the password “Jimmy”, or maybe “Mary”? I’m so forgetful”.
OK, so it’ll be significantly better protected, but I doubt it can be secured quite like the ATO databases (which are, presumably, isolated from the public networks).

The main issues I have are to do with the card itself.  To allow confidential data to be stored on the card itself, is to encourage it’s wholesale misuse. I’m not talking about the card being used as an all-purpose identity card - that’s pretty much a given (just like a drivers licence is now).

There are promises that the data embedded by government agencies will be secured from duplication - it’ll need a pin code to be validated by the card itself, and will only be able to be decrypted by authorised users.

Regardless, I still don’t trust it - there will be (unsecured) space for others to store data on (video rental companies, supermarkets, whomever else asks for you to load your card on). Just having companies ask you for this card, which contains so much data (even if it is secure by today’s standards) is risky. 
You’re trusting that a business won’t look at any of the other data on the “public access” section of the card - either intentionally (spying on what other services you use, and grabbing all that other data), or unintentionally (say, by poor software design).

Implementing a card like this, is one thing - updating the cards in a timely fashion, when security issues arise is entirely another.  I’m certain that it’s a when, not an if - if we have learnt anything about IT Security, it’s that nothing is secure for any appreciable amount of time.

Already, someone has demonstrated that they can copy the content from the e-passports. They can’t modify the data, but they can load it onto another smartcard. Combined with some other functions, that person can then pass through the automated immigration control gate at places like Sydney Airport. 
What makes it worse, is that someone could quite easily do this without you ever knowing it. Since the e-passport is contactless (meaning there’s no electrical path from the chip to the reader), someone can walk past you with a specialised receiver, and duplicate the content of every e-passport within range (50 feet or more, if the right type of antenna was used).

What’s the solution? I’m not certain as yet.
Yeah, I criticise politicians who bag something out, without giving an alternative solution - but this is a major, wide reaching scheme. 
Do we need some sort of reform with regards to Identification to government agencies? I’m not sure - quite possibly. 

I am certain that we don’t need a central identity card which has such potential for misuse. We already have relatively secure means for identification - a Drivers Licence or Passport will suffice for all of those, that I can see.