Posts filed under 'General News'
I was going to run this story yesterday but never got around to it.
Daylight Saving in Canberra will be extended by a month, starting next year, according to a press release from Chief Turnip Stanhope (I reserve the right to dislike him).
Next year Daylight Saving will start on the first Sunday in October and end on the first Sunday in April the following year, which is an extension of about about a month (although the difference would be slightly different each year) over the current system where it starts on the last Sunday in October and ends on the last Sunday in March.
This will make Daylight Saving a bit more sensible as it will be closer to having an equal amount on both sides of the summer solstice.
I do have to wonder how much further it will be extended though. Will it eventually grow to the point where it exceeds half a year? Which would effectively cause our official timezone to be an hour ahead of its current location, and the non-Daylight Saving period to be called “Daylight Wasting?”
I hope it doesn’t grow again, although I fear that it is inevitable, and we will see it happen some time in the next decade.
Samuel
June 14th, 2007 at 11:31am
This article in the Winnipeg Free Press is good for a laugh. It would appear that they ran out of last names in China a long time ago, and China now have so many people with the same name that the Chinese government are considering some amusing measures to fix it.
To get an idea of how serious this problem is, 85% of China’s population share a mere hundred surnames…that would be like having the entire Sydney White Pages filled with just Smiths and Browns.
A quote from the article:
In April, a survey reported by Xinhua News Agency said that Wang was the most common surname in China, with about 93 million people sharing the name. That was followed by Li with about 92 million and Zhang with about 87 million.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has reported that at least 100,000 people share the name of “Wang Tao”, the newspaper said, causing problems in daily life.
The solution to this, apparently, is to alter Chinese laws to allow children to be given hyphenated names (such as what I have). This would unfortunately take a few generations for the effect to take hold, and of course the problem there would either be only slightly fixed, or result in names that won’t fit on a page in the phone book. It also doesn’t help from a pronunciation point of view that many last names are very similar:
Under a proposal distributed to police departments around the country by the Ministry of Public Security, parents called Zhou and Zhu would have four options when naming their newborn, the China Daily reported.
Their child’s surname could be Zhou, Zhu, Zhouzhu or Zhuzhou.
The simple thing from my perspective would be to allow people to change their names so that you could have a larger set of names, however there seems to be some cultural issues surrounding that idea.
One thing I do know though, until it’s fixed, trying to ring Wang Tao when I forget his number is going to result in a large profit for a bunch of phone companies.
Samuel
June 13th, 2007 at 10:50am
I was trying to avoid writing anything about Paris Hilton’s jail sentence, however it’s very hard to avoid hearing about the story over and over and over, and therefore hard to not think about it. One thing did occur to me though that I think is worth sharing with you.
Late last week I walked past one of the stores in Westfield Woden and noticed that they were featuring t-shirts in their front window with the slogan “Free Paris” on them. The t-shirt annoyed me, as I can’t see any good reason why Paris Hilton shouldn’t spend time in jail for her criminal activities. In hindsight I would like to have started ranting and raving loudly at the front door of this store, although it wouldn’t have achieved anything, and I tend not to be quite that extroverted.
The one good thing I can see here is that the people who produced these t-shirts have just lost their market. Ms. Hilton’s release in to house arrest in her mansion is about as close as you can get to a full release without releasing her, and will probably be suffice for the people who wanted her released. I can’t see the t-shirt sales going anywhere now, unless the stores add an “I” and a “d” to the t-shirt with a marker pen so that it reads “I Freed Paris”…but even then I can’t imagine that many people would want to buy a shirt which has been written on (autographed shirts excepted).
I’m not going to comment on Ms. Hilton’s mental state, which is apparently the reason for her more lenient house arrest sentence, however I will defer to the following quote from the fictional mayor of Arcadia Waters, Col Dunkley, from the television programme Grass Roots, as a seemingly adequate description of her psychiatrist.
“You can always find an academic who’ll swear on a stack of bibles that he agrees with you.”
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh…but I just find it peculiar how often this psychiatrist will jump to Ms. Hilton’s defence, and say whatever he needs to say in order to get her out of a tricky situation.
Samuel
June 8th, 2007 at 12:26pm
The A380 has come and gone again.
I think this message from Ryan sums it up:
1.45pm WTF? We had the whole office outside in the cold mate, very unimpressed….. Whats the story samual?
Well, 1:45pm was accurate when I left for Mt. Ainslie…unfortunately the time blew out to about 2:15. There were an awful lot of very cold people on the top of Mount Ainslie, and worse yet, due to the altitude of the plane, it looked just like any other plane to the naked eye.
That being said, the cameras picked it up pretty well, and Channel Nine (who seemed to be the only television station up there) may have some good footage on their news bulletin tonight.
I’ve cropped those images so that you can actually see the plane without squinting, however you can get a slightly larger version if you click on them.
As quickly as the plane came, it went again. One quick lap of Canberra was all we got. Mind you, it was that far behind schedule that it’s probably not even back in Sydney yet.
So, to all of you who froze because I was relaying the 1:45pm time, I apologise…I hope you have a heater nearby, I know I need one.
Samuel
June 7th, 2007 at 03:10pm
The Airbus A380 is in the air and appears to be on time for a 1:45pm Canberra Flyover.
Samuel
June 7th, 2007 at 01:06pm
Hello to everyone who is landing here today for details on the Canberra A380 flyover. The details are in the post below this one, however I will outline my plans for coverage of this event today.
Around 1PM the plane is scheduled to take off from Sydney Airport, I will be monitoring the media for information about any delays. If there are delays I will inform you, otherwise I will be heading to the top of Mount Ainslie.
1:45 (or whatever time it gets here): A380 will be over Canberra and I will get some photos, if time, weather and flyover route permits, I will also get some video of the plane.
After this I will come back here and post whatever photos and video I have of the flyover.
Samuel
June 7th, 2007 at 11:34am
Apparently the enormous Airbus a380 will fly over Canberra at an altitude of 5000 feet today. I’m not currently sure what time this will happen, but I will be sure to have the camera ready.
Update: Looks like the A380 will leave Sydney around 1pm for its flight to Canberra and back. I’m still pursuing details of the Canberra flyover. End Update
Further Update: With thanks to Qantas Corporate Communications I can inform you that the A380 will fly over Canberra at an altitude of approximately 5000 feet (1524 metres), around 1:45 this afternoon. This will occur after the A380 flies over Sydney Harbour at about 3000 feet around 1:15pm. The plane isn’t scheduled to land in Sydney until 3pm, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the A380 does a couple laps of Canberra.
Approximately 200 Qantas corporate customers, frequent flyers, media representatives and staff will be the lucky people to go down in history as the passengers on the first flight by the Airbus A380 to carry passengers in Australia. I’ll wave to them, I wonder if they will wave back?
Many thanks to Qantas for their quick response to my request for information. End Update
10:20am Update: Obviously this story is a high priority for me today! I’ve been informed by someone in the know that the aviation industry is experiencing some delays in Sydney today due to the weather. No word on whether that will affect the A380 flight, however I’m sure the media will be sure to tell us if it is late leaving Sydney. End Update
Samuel
June 7th, 2007 at 06:27am
It amazes me how long this story has taken to reach fruition. I was first alerted to this story at the end of February by a former work colleague, however I wasn’t sure of my own non-disclosure obligations from when I worked for Telstra through a casual employment agency last year. So, rather than making a public announcement at the time, I filled a few local media people in on the details. Nothing much happened on this story for a while so I didn’t continue to pursue it.
Yesterday the story rocketed back in to life when Telstra announced that they are going to close 13 call centres across the country. (Telstra press release) (Article on news.com.au)
Details of what is actually happening in Canberra are scarce, but 2CC news are reporting that Telstra are claiming 35 jobs will be lost in Canberra. The reality of it is that 75-80 jobs will be lost in Canberra as Telstra are only counting permanent staff, not the staff employed on a casual basis by third parties, which in Canberra means the staff employed by Julia Ross Hot.
Telstra have decided that they don’t want any call centres with less than 200 employees, unfortunately the Canberra Broadband Helpdesk, one of three in the country, and one of two to be closed, employs about 75 people.
This is not Bigpond support which is contracted out to Teletech, but instead is the wholesale line fault division. The basic role of these staff is to log faults reported by ISPs and schedule technicians to attend to and fix the problems, these staff also run tests for technicians, allocate new resources (exchange ports etc) to fix problems, and escalate issues which are more complex and require phone lines or other equipment to be replaced.
The three call centres often struggle under the load as it is, there is no way known that Brisbane can handle the load, which means problems are going to take longer to fix as it will take longer for appointments to be arranged, technicians will spend more time on hold waiting for tests (therefore getting through less jobs each day…and getting paid less now that most of them are contractors paid on a per-job basis), and followups will be almost non-existent.
If you think the need for these call centres is offset by the number of people who are now on DSLAMs (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers) owned and operated by ISPs other than Telstra, think again. The only thing this does is change who maintains the exchange equipment…there is still a big heap of copper wire owned and operated by Telstra, and this tends to have more issues than exchange equipment. The impact of ISPs running their own DSLAMs on the workloads of these call centres is minimal, although it does increase the buck-passing a bit.
Conveniently for Telstra, the closures tie in with an asset consolidation they are in the middle of. For Canberra, this means the two buildings they own on Northbourne Avenue (the one with their logo, and the little one next door) will be sold. The staff who aren’t losing their jobs will be moving to a new building in Symonston before the end of the year.
The information I have is that, if probed too deeply about the local job cuts, Telstra will unfairly blame the ACT government. Apparently they were in “negotiations” with the government earlier this year for office space in Civic (a commodity the government don’t have at their disposal), in exchange for a guarantee about the number of staff Telstra would employ. The negotiations, which were never really serious, went nowhere, but telstra may use the ACT Government as a scapegoat if the pressure gets a bit too much for them locally.
Incidentally, if you have noticed a thing that looks a bit like a phone tower on the roof of Telstra’s taller building in Dickson, don’t be too concerned about it. Telstra’s actual phone tower is further down Antill Street, at the back of the swimming pool carpark, roughly between the tennis courts, putt putt golf centre, and storm water drain. The thing on the Telstra building’s roof has nothing to do with mobile phones.
Samuel
June 6th, 2007 at 07:17am
Unless you’ve been avoiding the media in the last week, you would probably be aware that in July, ABC Television will screen an excellent documentary from British film maker Martin Durkin called “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which quite brilliantly proves, with the aide of many prominent scientists, including some from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that global warming is not caused by carbon emissions, but rather by variations in solar activity. In fact, the history of global warming and cooling drives the changes in carbon levels in the atmosphere, not the other way around.
It also shows that, far from being an apocalyptic disaster, we have been through many much warmer and much colder periods, and somehow all the polar bears and humans managed to survive.
Unfortunately the version which will be screened on ABC Television in July will be a shortened version of the 75 minute documentary screened by Britain’s Channel 4 in March, and unfortunately I really can’t see how they will achieve that without leaving out important parts of the documentary. They will still prove everything, but leaving bits out may leave a few holes in the story, which would be most unfortunate as this documentary is very comprehensive, even going so far as to explain where Al Gore’s peculiar “documentary” “An Inconvenient Truth” went wrong by skipping important facts and figures.
Thankfully, the full version of The Great Global Warming Swindle is doing the rounds on Google Video and bittorrent, and a DVD with the full documentary and even more information will be on sale soon.
For your information, here is the full version as provided on Google Video. It is quite long for a web video at 75 minutes, but it is well worth the investment in time, and I would urge you to watch it when you have some spare time.
It’s about time that there was a documentary showing the logical side of the global warming debate, and it has arrived.
I would like to thank 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys for bringing this fantastic documentary to my attention, it’s good to have something like this to confirm my long held belief that global warming being caused by human activity is a complete and utter nonsense.
Samuel
May 26th, 2007 at 03:03am
As I write this, relatively popular local website The RiotACT is offline. Normally a website going down for a while wouldn’t be even remotely worthy of me posting it here as a news story of any significance unless there were special circumstances applying to the site, however in this case it is newsworthy because a similar thing happened yesterday.
I didn’t actually notice RiotACT go offline yesterday as I spent a few hours in the morning getting Samuel’s Persiflage online, slept most of the day, woke up, had something to eat, and went to work. However when I went to check RiotACT I noticed that there was a short message from site admin Johnboy mentioning that the site had been offline for a while due to a database issue, the site had been restored from a backup, and most things from that day had been lost.
This morning RiotACT is down again, and whilst I didn’t see what happened yesterday and therefore can’t compare the two incidents, I can say that it really doesn’t look like a database issue this time, as visiting the RiotACT home page prompts me to download a file, which turns out to be the WordPress standard index.php file:
<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define(‘WP_USE_THEMES’, true);
require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’);
?>
Visiting any direct links to articles, which in theory should direct your request to index.php for processing via an Apache mod_rewrite rule, is returning a completely blank page…no headers, no nothing!
It will be interesting to see what explanation is provided if and when RiotACT is brought back to life this time.
Update: Apparently this time they were offline due to a botched upgrade. End Update
Samuel
May 24th, 2007 at 03:42am
Yesterday I made a few predictions about the federal budget, and in a moment I will check my accuracy on those predictions, but first my overall opinion on the budget. Generally I was quite pleased with the budget, the surplus was a bit bigger than I expected, and as such so was the amount of spending, most of the cuts to income tax were expected, although perhaps a bit bigger than I expected towards the top end of the scale, and I shudder to think how much money the government can afford to lose in tax from the top two income tax brackets.
I was pleased to see a bunch of one off payments to a lot of people who would fall in to the lower tax brackets instead of massive tax cuts there, as tax cuts are permanent (relatively speaking), they cost money this year, next year, the year after that, etc etc etc. A lot of the one off payments are an awful lot larger than any tax cut would have been, and on a one-off basis, are sustainable. There is a bit of election grandstanding going on here, but overall the payments were targeted at those who really deserve a helping hand, and were well thought out. (OK, so 2GB and 2CC’s Jason Morrison did convince me of that one a little bit…I was thinking roughly the same thing last night but Jason ran through the economic arguments a whole lot better than I ever could have).
I thought education did pretty well, increased opportunities for teachers to study, and incentives to do so, something I think a lot of reports have been showing is lacking. The “coupons for tuition” idea is absolutely brilliant, and possibly the first real, widespread initiative, to do something useful with the data from the years 3, 5, 7 and 9 testing and benchmarking of students literacy and numeracy testing (although year nine is excluded from the scheme, I did think it should be included for at least the first two years of the scheme…or is the ACT the only place to test in year nine?).
I am a bit sceptical of the merits of the “extra money for schools that have a large increase in student performance” scheme, or at least I was, then I thought about all of the distant schools, especially aboriginal communities who could benefit from this…now if we could just convince the states to actually maintain the schools properly.
The thing that really interested me though (and people who heard me talking to 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys at 7:40 this morning can skip this section as you’ve already heard most of it) was the automated online tax returns. For once the hansard people at Parliament House don’t have proof hansard online so I’m unable to quote what treasurer Peter Costello said, but I’ll do my best to explain it.
Basically instead of filling out forms or going through the whole E-Tax process you just go the ATO website, presumably login somehow (probably the same way you verify your identity with E-Tax) and you are presented with a pre-made tax return produced by a computer (although Mr. Costello would have you believe the commissioner writes them all). This tax return will (theoretically) have all of your income, Centrelink payments, bank interest…in fact everything you would normally find on your tax return. All you have to do is review it and, if you agree with it, click submit, otherwise you can modify it to what you believe is correct.
I can see this working in one of two ways. Either it will be based on the tax paperwork filed by your employer(s), Centrelink, bank etc, which would effectively mean you would lodge your tax return some time later in the decade, or it would be linked the the government’s favourite little project, the National Access Card, or as I like to call it the “National Not An ID Card”…this is about the only way I can see this working with any kind of efficiency. I’m not going to go in to the whole debate about the card here (although you can feel free in the comments), but on the whole, with the proper safeguards, I have no problems with it, and this would be not only a good practical way to provide an extra service to the public, it would help to cut down on tax fraud, and save a whole lot of time and money on processing tax returns from individuals, and verifying them against business records.
Now, how did I go with my predictions:
Tax cuts: Yes, but not as minor as expected, half a point.
Infrastructure: Well they had the already announced Murray-Darling basin funding, and there was some stuff about water tanks…half a point
Education: Looks like a full point there
Environment: Bob Brown said $4 billion, Peter Costello said $4.3 billion. Add in rounding and it looks like I was overly cynical. No points on that.
Total: 2 from 4 or 50%, not too bad, if this were high school it would have just made it through as a pass. Of course if I only talk about my original predictions it’s 2 from 3, which is 67%. On the whole, pretty good.
So to briefly summarise this for those of you who didn’t feel like reading all of that, I’m 95% happy with the budget…I would have preferred a bit more spending on infrastructure, but overall I thought it was a very sensible and balanced budget once again from Peter Costello and his staff. A hearty congratulations are in order here, so well done. I will, much like last year, send a letter to that effect shortly (although last time I did send an email).
For those of you waiting to see how the public reacts to this…next week’s Newspoll is a waste of time as most of it will be done before people have had a chance to work out what the budget means to them. The week after that will start to show a trend, but it’s the one after that which really counts. The predictions I’ve heard this morning indicate that if there is between about an 8-10% “two party preferred” swing to the coalition, we will see an August election, and the coalition will be almost unbeatable. (And this comes from people at both ends of the spectrum).
Time will tell.
Samuel
May 9th, 2007 at 09:13am
And Greens leader Bob Brown claims to have been handed full costings for the budget’s environment spending. He calls the amounts being spent “a massive let down” and “a slap in the face for Australians hoping to see big spending on environmental issues.”
The figures he claims to have been handed and subsequently released, if true, do indeed fit his descriptions, but I think he has been handed a dud…a bit of Liberal trickery to get him all hot under the collar and jumping up and down on the one spot shrieking about how horrible it all is, only to be made look like a fool when the spending is much higher later on in the night…naturally, if that is the case, the environment spending will get an awful lot more coverage than it would otherwise have received, thanks to Senator Brown’s angry noises.
Samuel
May 8th, 2007 at 06:30pm
Tonight is federal budget night, and I feel like making a few predictions. Unfortunately these days almost the entire budget is leaked by the government ahead of budget night (possibly so that the public actually know the budget announcement is coming), so my predicting ability is limited.
Tax cuts: Minor changes to income tax, most likely the changing of tax brackets by a few thousand dollars here and there.
Infrastructure: I’m expecting a big spending spree on water infrastructure, probably something to do with recycling storm water and pumping it in to the river system.
Education: Given that the university student unions are still whinging about the (fantastic in my view) move to voluntary student unionism, I believe the federal government will throw money at both tertiary education, and some of the services which may be suffering a bit, on the condition that no money goes towards union coffers. Personally I can’t understand why the universities don’t just do what CIT did and turn the “union membership fees” in to “union service fees”, nobody has to join, but the unions still get the money…perhaps CIT are just smarter than the universities.
There you go, my three predictions. I’m aiming for at least 66% accuracy here. Anybody care to add their own predictions?
Samuel
May 8th, 2007 at 12:28pm
Today was supposed to be a happy day, with the birthday of this blog and Australian talk radio, but as this blog has a growing audience in the US I feel that there is minimal room for frivolity today.
At the time of writing this message there were up to 32 dead and nearly as many wounded in the worst school shooting in the US to date. I would like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere condolences and best wishes to everyone who has been affected by the Virginia Tech University shooting today. It is truly terrible news, and it really does make the case for Australia’s gun control laws.
There will be a low key celebration of the second birthday of this blog later today at the birthday moment, however I will not be conducting the other planned celebrations today.
I will, however, leave Australian talk radio to do what it has done so well for the last forty years, cover and discuss a breaking news story of massive magnitude.
This, unfortunately, is a very sombre day.
Samuel
April 17th, 2007 at 06:08am
Some of you have been concerned enough to send me emails about my well-being, others have just been concerned, and the rest of you are wondering what I’m babbling about.
I have not been well this week, I was rather ill during Easter due to a combination of mild food poisoning and general ill health, and have been mildly better during the week. I have been well enough to work a midnight to dawn shift during which a minimal amount is required of me, and then sleep pretty much all day in an effort to feel a bit better and not put up with constant nagging headaches. The one upside that I can think of here is that I don’t have to use up any sick leave for this to work, and I can still feel somewhat useful and productive. On the other hand, you could call me insane.
This should explain why I haven’t posted anything here for about a week. Even now I have no intention of writing much, and probably won’t write much at all until next week. I will, however, make an effort to post some video excitement here tonight or tomorrow for your entertainment.
In the mean time, here are my footy tips for this weekend. Eventually I will get around to writing the results from last week.
NRL Round 5
Bulldogs V Sea Eagles
Dragons V Storm
Panthers V Eels
Rabbitohs V Knights
Raiders V Roosters
Titans V Broncos
Warriors V Cowboys
Tigers V Sharks
AFL Round 3
Magpies V Tigers
Blues V Bombers
Power V Crows
Saints V Bulldogs
Dockers V Eagles
Swans V Lions
Demons V Cats
Kangaroos V Hawks
As a footnote, I haven’t forgotten that on the 17th this blog will officially turn two years old, and you may be interested to know that on the same day, Talk Radio in Australia will be 40 years old.
Samuel
April 13th, 2007 at 04:34pm
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