Aaron Poeze

That litigateous church is at it again spreading their message of hate, but looks like the geeks and nerds trumped their silliness with no trouble at all.

h/t BlackFive

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Christianity, comics, protest, Westboro

The 2010 Aussie Election race is on with the widely expected declaration from Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced today that we vote on August the 21st.

Julia Gillard has only just taken over the role of Prime Minister from Kevin Rudd after a cloak and dagger leadership spill. Rudd was sinking fast being, frankly, incompetent but it was the mining industry tax proposal which appears to have killed him off. Nice to know mining companies run our country isn’t it?

Julia is our first female Prime Minister and she draws the advantage and disadvantage of being the deputy Prime Minister during Rudd’s time. An advantage of not being too new a face and seen as being more competent than Rudd but she carries with that the baggage of the knifing and her own complicity in Rudd’s stuffups. Indeed, despite being so new, tarnish is already showing which is why Gillard has rushed us to an election.

Her opponent Tony Abbott is hardly a great alternative being a bit of a religious nutter and terribly prone to foot in mouth disease. He’s also part of the old Howard gang and indeed emphasised the very unpopular ‘Workchoices’ laws were not coming back today. Of course Howard himself said the GST was dead, dead, dead and how truthful was that? However, he is seen as decisive and strong willed which go in his favour. If he keeps his big mouth shut the Liberals would probably win but we’ll see about that in practice. I definitely expect Labour’s outcome to be worse than last election but if it’s enough for the Liberals to win, I cannot be sure. It’s very hard for opposition to win without a strong mood for change. At this time I think the Liberals will get it which is my preference too.

As for the minor parties, I think the Greens will do well in this election mostly feeding off Labour’s fall. The ‘Family First’ party will probably do about the same as usual and the Nationals will decay even further.

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2010, Australia, election, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott

If you want to waste time but have fun doing so gaming is a good way to do that. Digital downloads is a distribution method with obvious cost and sales advantages to the companies but they are also advantageous to us as gameplayers too.

• They are much cheaper even at US dollar or Euro rates
• You can browse and buy from the comfort of home without a visit to the store
• No stuffing around with disks, ie non-pirate no-CD functionality.

There’s also some problems;

• I have yet to see a provider of these services deal with the issue of game access once they close, for example. All that money and gaming goodness? Goodbye most probably.
• You have to actually download the games. If your connection is slow this is a very long delay, if you have bandwidth limits this is costing you extra.

There also some interesting developments. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is one of the least exiting of course, but it does show a changing landscape from games being cut and dried products to games being services offered. I expect this to continue until we simply buy game time at a very low rate but we don’t actually own the games. Games as services started long ago thanks to the internet with such simple things as patches and forums. Now these are often automatic or integrated. This is happening more with expansions and mods and extra content of various sorts. In a sense the Massive Multiplayer Online software (MMOs) such as World of Warcraft are miles ahead in this games-as-services development. I expect we will see the same with other software.

Socialised gaming is also a development which shouldn’t be ignored and this includes the ‘achievement’ systems, twitter-like info feeds, chats and voice services.

More exciting are the new blood of Indy developers getting their hands on exposure and thus money as well as the revival via smaller devices such as mobiles, iPads and netbooks. These can’t run the usual new games. That new game market has ossified into the same old FPS or other cookie cutter genre offering and so a lot of clever, interesting and dare I say fun ideas have been coming into such non standard games on those platforms.

Anyway back to the topic at hand. There are several digital download games providers of note;

Steam is probably the most popular. To use steam you have to run extra software which is essentially a games browser, social and download tool. I can’t say I like that. Games on steam are well presented and quite numerous. There appears to be a younger focus. As I have reported before steam support is very slow. The real Steam killer for me though is it installs games a bit differently and so many mods will not work with games from Steam.

Gamersgate is not as well known. It also has a very large range of software which is very simple to download and install. It’s often cheaper than the competition too. Gamersgate support is even worse though. One game bought had a payment issue due to their credit processor where funds left my account but no game was delivered. Gamersgate, while fast responding, did nothing to help and I had to go through the bother of a charge reversal to solve the problem.

Direct2Drive is the one I probably use most. This is more because it rarely seems to have problems with it. Simple to use, decent range and no issues.

Good old games known as GOG are a specialist one who have, as their name suggests, a bunch of old games available. In the context of old games GOG has the best range. I do think GOG are a bit overpriced.

The last major competitor Impulse, requires software to be installed to use and frankly I haven’t given it a go nor seen reason to.

There are many other digital providers. Specific companies such as EA or MMO ones have their own digital download services. There is certainly a lot of competition which is good for prices and improvements too.

If anyone knows a reliable Australian one let me know.

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digital downloads, Direct2Drive, Gamersgate, games, GOG, Impulse, steam

Windows 7

Now that I’m actually using Windows 7 both starter and home premium editions I can say a few things about it. As you know I used the rather icky Windows Vista before. There are two obvious differences:

The taskbar has been significantly improved over Vista where now instead of having to click through stacked items you just mouse over the stack you want and it pops up. It is also more icon based than text based so more can be fitted in.

The other major difference is the UAE is less irritating. It’s still irritating but less obviously so most of the time.

There are many other less significant changes. For example, there’s a more or less automated home networking system which is nice enough but only good if all are using Windows 7.

Changing backgrounds have also been added even with an Australian theme pre installed in the home premium edition. A nice touch really.

It still has it’s issues. No bluetooth driver for my mobile, odd bugs with older games. A very pushy internet explorer. You know, Internet Explorer is just a firefox downloader.

There’s also a new Action Centre which collects the various issues you are suppose the deal with such as Windows updates and security or bug issues. A good idea but it has too many serious flaws such as telling me I have no video drivers installed just after I successfully updated the drivers and bugging me to rechange windows update settings after I changed them to my preference.

I’m not convinced it’s faster to boot or shutdown than Vista was on the older hardware but IMO that was fast enough on Vista anyway. I haven’t been irritated by this issue on Windows or Linux for many years now but it seems some people get very annoyed about it.

A very silly issue when I clicked on the games folder on Vista it would take several minutes to load up. Windows 7 is much faster, perhaps 10 seconds if that.

I would have to admit overall this is definitely better than Vista which will deservedly go down in history as a shitty OS and all they really had to do is remove the problems especially fixing the UAE. I think it’s also better than Windows XP at long last.

Ubuntu 10.04

I’ve also switched back to Ubuntu from Kubuntu on version 10.04. It’s nice to see Ubuntu has dumped the ugly brown default theme. First impressions do count.

Overall I’m impressed it’s super smooth and everything “just works”. They have switched to Mac-style on having the close and resize icons on the upper left instead of the upper right of windows but this setting can be changed back to the right if you desire.

There’s more social media focus and Ubuntu One is built in now which is a cloud computing service. Cloud computing is everywhere now, I may even blog on that. It’s very much where things are going right now.

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10.04, operating system, ubuntu, windows 7

I’ve gotten an Eeepc 1005PE which is a netbook (ie small) computer. I’m very much happy with it so far and am typing this up on the system. I’ve decided to compare it with the iPad which is also recently released.

Price was $469. The iPad is $629-$1049 depending on HD space and if you want 3G. The Eeepc is far and away cheaper which greatly enhances it’s value.

OS: Windows 7 starter 32bit, iPad uses iPhone OS 3.2. The iPad doesn’t do multitasking and cannot run flash.

Processor: Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz, iPad uses 1GHz Apple A4 chipset which contains an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU

Memory: 1GB DDR2 RAM, iPad has 256MB DDR RAM. This is probably why there is no multitasking yet.

HD: space 250GB, iPad gives a measly 16-64GB

3D capability: Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150. By desktop standards this is very much underpowered. In practice this lets you play lowball 3d games such as Civilization IV. It will not adequately run more demanding games such as Risen. The iPad has 3d capability via the A4 chipset.

Screen: 10.1 inch, 1024×600. iPad has 9.7 inch 1024×768 with a wide viewing angle. The 1024×600 is a rather uncommon standard which can cause issues with things likes games not designed for this standard. The iPad can be viewed from a wider angle which is good for sharing but not good for privacy. Both screens are very crisp and are backlit.

Battery Life: 14 hrs, iPad has 10 hrs still respectable but not as good. Batteries are heavy, the Eeepc has obviously gone for more time rather than less weight.

Wireless connections: 802.11b/g WiFi, No 3G, bluetooth. iPad has 802.11n WiFi, 3G optional for a price, bluetooth.

Touch: only standard laptop style touch mouse. As everyone knows the iPad has a full touch screen which is much better. I use a Logitech M305 cordless mouse with the Eeepc which uses 1 USB port with a truly tiny signal receiver and adds the mouse. This, frankly, is a portability issue. So I must choose the ease of a mouse or the portability of the touchscreen. The iPad is obviously strong here with the only exception being it means fingermark smears on your crisp display.

Keyboard: yes, it’s big enough and easy to use. The iPad uses the touch screen to emulate a keyboard which is so-so in landscape and poor in portrait and of course chews up screen space.

Webcam: Yes a decent 0.3M pixel one is built in. The iPad does not have a webcam.

Sound: Stereo and microphone built in. iPad has mono and microphone built in. Many would use headphones of some kind via bluetooth or the jacks.

Connections: power, VGA video out, 3xUSB, ethernet, SD card, microphone and audio jack. The iPad has an audio jack and a dock connector. The Eeepc is much better here.

Form and weight: The Eeepc is 1.27kg compared to the iPad’s 0.68-0.73kg making the iPad roughly half the weight which is quite a lot less. The iPad also looks sleeker and is not as thick as the Eeepc.

I should note here in case you’re not aware that although the Eeepc, other netbooks and the iPad compete with each other in the same, as I call it, “home or office-roam” market, they have a significant difference in focus. Netbooks such as the Eeepc are offering a full blown computing experience with full application flexibility and fully accessible and flexible filesystem. In other words a miniaturised desktop. It’s designed for you to do with it as you wish. The iPad does not do this, it is instead a very large iPhone without the mobile phone. It’s focus is presentation and the responsive touch interface/OS. This makes it more an entertainment unit. It’s also built around sales through it’s built in and largely mandatory stores. This greatly decays it’s value beyond the price issue.

Obviously I’ve already decided the Eeepc is the superior choice but the iPad still has something to offer.

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1005 PE, A4 chipset, Apple, ASUS, comparison, eeepc, iPad, netbook

You know Windows Live is such crap.  I mean that.

Firstly there’s the email which doesn’t do it’s job on junk mail filtering.  Then when you try to mark it as junk the server doesn’t respond.  And that’s half the issue with their email, it is frequently down.  Nowadays all I get is junk there, I simply don’t use it.

Then there’s Games for Windows LIVE which I truly despise.  Fallout 3, an otherwise excellent game, uses this awful system.   When I first installed Fallout 3 Windows LIVE was automatically setup in Xbox mode instead of PC mode and I very nearly wasted money getting a game expansion which would only be available for the Xbox version of the game.  After berating Microsoft for it they helpfully advised me they’d not have refunded my money or even my ‘points’ if I made the mistake of trusting them.  They also didn’t bother to help me fix the problem.  Fortunately Google search solved that one for me.

I recently reinstalled Fallout 3 on Windows 7 which, despite coming for the same company, is a decent job.  However, again Windows LIVE struck.  This time a bug in Windows LIVE and Windows 7 made the game fail.  Don’t these people have any internal communication?  That problem too was fixable via Google search.

I do use MSN messenger, another Windows LIVE branded product.  This one has not been such a disappointment but I’m trying aMSN again which seems to be better implemented and doesn’t have adverts.

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aMSN, Fallout 3, Games for Windows LIVE, Microsoft, windows, windows 7, Windows LIVE

Just attended my second Dawn Service of ANZAC Day.  The weather held up this time and the turnout was very good, even better than last year.

It was good to see so many people involved in this rather important nationalistic event.  Yet this involves the diggers and veterans of two nations, not just Australia, but New Zealand too.  New Zealanders were also involved with and mentioned in the service.

We will remember them.

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Anzac, Anzac day, Australia, military, remember

Soon it will be Anzac Day here in Australia and the ABC have done a Gallipoli special which I think is worth a squiz.

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Anzac day, Australia, Gallipoli, history, military, Turkey, WW1

John McCain didn’t consider himself a maverick. Surprised? No I didn’t think so either. But it does undermine his integrity a tad huh.

Do you want a real maverick? Sarah Palin. This has either long been her nature or she took the maverick idea to heart. Let’s face it she’s outside the norm. A wildcard who should have not only the Democrats but the GOP rather worried as well.

She’ll shoot her a deer for breakfast. Emerged as an inexperienced nobody who is thrust on centre stage and manages to survive. Perhaps not quite so lucky as Obama though. She’s physically attractive which is as rare as hen’s teeth in politicians. A foreign expert on Russia! She quit her job dumping her responsibilities which would conventionally be political suicide. She will go and actually talk to the voters she wants to represent at townhalls, stadiums or indeed in any way she can. That’s lead to her hosting her own TV show on ‘Real American Stories’.

For good or for ill Sarah Palin is a real maverick.

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John McCain, maverick, Sarah Palin, USA

One good reason to put up with smelly pigs is bacon. What is it about the “magical porcine meat candy” that appeals so?

Recently Boq of Argghhh! posted Oelund’s novel way to quickfry your bacon. It combines the porcine delight with noise and fire-power all at the one time.

I don’t move in gun circles but I do speak geek from time to time. If you thought Oelund went too far some enterprising people sell plush bacon toys. My First Bacon has a face which looks suspiciously like Homer Simpson’s

If that wasn’t enough for you there’s always bacon on bacon! How is it possible to reach such epic porcine bliss you ask?  Introducing Squeez Bacon. Yes it’s exactly what you think it is. It has a shelf life of 12 years!

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bacon, geek, My First Bacon, pig, porcine, pork, Squeez Bacon

Yesterday was Earth Hour. I didn’t blog on it at the time because I don’t have an hour to spend on foolishness. However I think I would like to express my displeasure of it.

The conservatives of course are aligned against the green movement and push instead to leave lights on to both protest that movement and to celebrate the basic technological ability we have as humans to extend light past the setting of the sun.

Even many progressives see the event as having no real impact and being symbolic at best.

But symbolic of what? Saving the Earth? I have a very old statistic of 7% in my head. On average 7% of electricity use in an Australian household is lighting costs. This is an old figure and I’m sure with modern lighting systems such as the more efficient fluorescents the number would be even lower. I’ve looked around in Google and various numbers appear. 7% is good enough.

It’s hardly surprising. Even a stock standard incandescent uses only 60W of power which is lower than most other appliances. So even if all people really switched off their lights the total electricity dip would be expected to be no more than 7%. Which is pathetic. To add insult to injury doing this at night means the savings would probably be closer to nil given the way the electricity system works.

This author takes the trouble to show very clearly that Earth Hour has no impact and no savings compared to other days. So Earth Hour really just wastes the goodwill of people. In essence *wasting* energy on a merry go round of a feel-good illusion.

So many these days think the idea of self denialism is a good one. Self denialism has a place in disciplined conservation of many kinds but it is now being applied inappropriately where denial has no benefit and is usually applied symbolically without discipline so that the denial is limited in time or scope or even fact. Earth Hour is just that. Limited in time for not even a day of the year, but one hour. Limited in scope to only some countries and only some people who support it. Limited in fact as described above. It’s like a fat person skipping breakfast then stuffing take away for the rest of the day.

To really save substantial amounts of electricity we could switch off the heaters and airconditioners around the world probably killing off a good number of people thus reducing population stress. Then we can really feel good, can’t we? Or maybe we can take it the whole way and switch off the generators. Then we can go back to fur, fleas and fires.

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denialism, Earth Hour, efficient, electricity, environmentalism, green

The cases of paedophile and other abuse within the churches, particularly the Catholic church never stop. The church has tried secrecy and bribery but the silence is no longer and many are opening up to what honestly happened and now it reaches from the ground floor right up to the Pope.

The good news is that some of this behaviour is out in the open now and the church has some pressure to stop it repeating as it has over the years. For it is always easier to talk about good and evil when preaching to externals but to face it within is entirely another matter.

Many of those with the paedophile disease (for want of a better term) have been attracted to the church for both good and bad reasons. On the darker side is the amazing degree of exposure to children with little supervision and a great deal of trust on your side. The Scouts and Teachers face similar issues. On the other hand many probably do not want this paedophile disease (for selfish reasons if not altruistic). Many may believe the church offers them hope to purge this evil, this sin, from themselves and thus they will enter the church with every intention of stopping their behaviour. Intentions which cannot be and are not fulfilled.

And so the church draws large numbers of these kinds of people towards itself and provides them with excellent opportunity to carry out their dreadful harm towards children. And in so concentrating them allows the paedophiles to build up supportive networks for mutual protection.

If caught out, the attitude has been of forgiveness and minimalising the impact on the perpetrator. Often not informing the police, often continuing exposure to children. All in all a very soft approach. A softness which has cost countless kids very dearly indeed.

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Catholicism, Christianity, church, evil, paedophilia, Pope

Tomorrow is the South Australian (SA) State Election held every 4 years or so. We’ve had the incumbent Labour (read leftish pro-union for US people) Premier Rann for while now, he certainly slipped in by the skin of his nose in 2002. 2006 saw a very solid improvement in his position as Premier but things have not gone so smoothly since then.

A while ago there was a bit of hoopla doo about Rann and some barmaid but frankly I have no interest at all where a politician puts his penis, and I doubt it even happened.

What I’m more interested in are things like jobs, the economy and their impact on my personal life.

So what have they done? Well there’s been plenty of roadworks lately. Have you noticed how the activity goes through the roof whenever there’s an election pending? I think they desire to impress us with the road improvement but all they do is cause traffic snarls and pissed off commuters. The roadworks are superficial though. The only real work I’ve noticed which is at Anzac-South Rd Intersection took far too long.

They did this and that with the tram lines and sporting events in the city which I approve of.

They have this desalination plant happening. In this dry state it’s a marginal decision in my view despite the presumably higher running costs. There must be better solutions which cost less.

I’m not at all happy about the rapidly rising costs in basic bills and fresh food especially electricity. Nor am I impressed with the 2009/2010 budget or our states high tax situation.

Finally there’s the question of the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) being moved to a new location. I’m not sure this move is that beneficial. Sure the RAH site is now cramped but really we need better hospitals in the suburbs not in the city.

The opposition Liberal (read conservative for US people) leader Redmond has the problem that I have no idea who the hell she is. Like nearly every liberal leader in this state they change them more frequently than I can keep up. At least this one doesn’t appear as bad as some of the other idiots they put on the throne.

She does have the advantage that I like the state to be opposite to the Federal which is Labour held at this time.

Her main pushes are to stop the RAH move (meh), do this expressway (which they have all promised) and one thing which I definitely like which is to lower land taxes.

Locally speaking the incumbent Labour member is definitely more photogenic than the new Liberal guy who has been shunted aside in favour of Redmond. At least I’ve seen the Labour member in person.

An interesting note is I’ve seen nothing of the Greens (very left environmental minor party) here. No advertisements or mailouts or any contact at all. Perhaps they take the reduce in reduce-reuse-recycle seriously.

Family First (religious minor party) are still trying to hide behind a veneer of ‘family friendliness’. They are a very strange mix of left and right wing largely taking the worst aspects of both.

There’s a bunch of micro political parties the most influential will probably be the save the RAH one obviously opposed to Labour’s RAH plans. Gamers4Croydon may prove interesting too playing off the discontent of many people unhappy with game ratings restrictions and the internet filtering idiocy.

I saw an even more interesting political sign while driving to work. A pro-lifer micro political party advertisement who use the political title ‘AbortSA’. So crass it would make a drag queen proud and must have other states snickering up their sleeves.

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Australia, elections, SA, South Australia, voting

The US healthcare system is confusing to me. The quality of service can be very high due to advanced technology but it’s also very expensive.

The wealthy can afford exceptional quality care.

The poor get nothing. However I’m told they can get emergency care and thus probably clog up emergency with non critical cases. Most of these would not be treated past emergency level and so back they would come later on.

Quite some time ago I advocated for our society (and the US) to underpin opportunity moreso than equality (because we are not truly equal). Part of that is a fair but not overgenerous healthcare system, especially for the young who should have the capability to make and build a life for themselves.

The bulk of people who work and their families rely on employer paid health insurance schemes which appear to have rather irregular qualities. These insurance companies provide a capitalist-socialist system which dominates US healthcare. They are actually less efficient than most Governments and exclude any high risk people from cover. This means the people who need healthcare the most get it the least.

I also know many people here find US healthcare one of the worst aspects of touring there. Foreigners don’t comprehend the complex system, are exploited when sick and often cannot get proper care even with insurance. America is a very dangerous place to get sick.

US healthcare is also suffering from the same healthcare issues that the rest of the West is experiencing. Part of this is the aging population which need more care and part of it is the rapidly rising cost of care, especially of the more advanced kind. This other aspect includes the huge profiteering possible by healthcare providers at every level from insurance to hospitals to clinics to prosthetic manufacturers to medical packaging to waste disposal because of the near limitless demand. Capitalism has always been weak where supply or demand are inflexible.

The US can be a very proud country but I see little to be proud of in healthcare. Many US citizens get no healthcare. Citizens who do get care pay far too much. For longer term illness the road can lead to financial ruin. The statistics of health in the US are below par for Western nations.

Obama wants to hopefully change the healthcare system. However resistance to the idea is very high in the US because Obama’s solution is seen as a socialist response by conservatives, and really it is.

It’s very easy to say socialism is bad and the poor should pay for their own healthcare, when you are well covered. The argument about whether healthcare is a right or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the willingness of US citizens to help each other. Conservatives seem to be selfish in this area but that’s hardly surprising given the cost of healthcare and current spending patterns in Government. Let’s face it, spending has been far too high. What the GOP has failed to do is come up with a realistic solution themselves. Both now and during their terms of power. Obama came up with his plans but really these sorts of changes are more suited for better economic situations like when the GOP was in power. The timing is poor and his efforts should rather obviously tie more into economic and job recovery than side issues like healthcare. So the struggle to get some healthcare reform passed into law is on. And on and on it has gone.

But what are we seeing in this political dance past the haze of voting battles?

Obama is failing to lead. He’s stooped so far as to deem passage of law due to his ineptitude. He has poured enormous effort, time, power and wealth into this one venture and has achieved precisely zip. This goes past healthcare too. Apart from spending money what has the man done?  He lacks inspiration, he lacks hope, there is no change and he even lacks an iron will should it have been necessary to ram his ideas down throats. We’re also seeing the now ancient story of an incompetent, self interested Congress. I only add this second part because I’ve long felt it’s been much more important for Americans to repair their Congress than pick the best President.

I really feel that Obama’s political ambitions will be dashed upon the rocks of healthcare resistance.

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health, health insurance, healthcare, obama, reform, USA