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Labour policies and Internet Censorship

Glen Turner writes about how Internet censorship could hurt science [1].

The ABC has an article about what is planned [2] which includes “Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools“. If Senator Conroy sticks to that plan then section […]

Low Power – They Just Don’t get it

For a while I’ve been reading the Lenovo blog Inside The Box [1], even though I plan to keep my current laptop for a while [2] (and therefore not buy another Thinkpad for a few years) I am interested in the technology for it’s own sake and read the blog.

A recent post concerns a […]

Fluorescent vs Incandescent lights

Glen Turner writes about silly people who think that fluorescent lights don’t save energy over their lifetime [1].

A compact fluorescent light (one that is designed for the same socket as an incandescent globe) is not the most efficient light source, the Luminous Efficiency page on Wikipedia [2] lists a CFL as having an efficiency […]

Twilight of the Books?

I’ve just read an interesting article in the New Yorker titled “Twilight of the Books” [1].

It started with some depressing statistics about literacy. One comment that I couldn’t figure out concerned “the panic that takes hold of humanists when the decline of reading is discussed“. The decline in literacy concerns me because I want […]

Contract Pay Rates

In a comment on my post about Bad Project Management [1] Don Marti [2] says “the more money you charge, the less of your time people waste, and the more seriously they take you” and “you can affect the client more, whether you’re peddling idiocy or wisdom“.

That’s a nice theory, however I don’t recall […]

A Better Design for Child Seats

The current method of carrying young children (less than 4-6 years old) in cars is to have a special car seat fitted in the back seat. This has several significant problems:

It takes significant space in the back seat. The child seat is going to add at least 10cm to the length required in the […]

Apprentice Computer Journalist Wanted

In a comment on my post about apprentices [1] Don Marti pointed me to a blog post of his from 6 months ago where he mentioned a need for an apprentice [2]. I had read the post in question before but didn’t think about it when writing my previous post.

When I was about 17 […]

Bad Project Management

I have just read a rant by Sean Middleditch about bad project management [1]. He describes his post as “personal, rather angsty, and especially whiny” but I think it’s useful and informative. He makes some interesting technical points about PHP programming (I wasn’t aware that there were so many ways of easily getting things wrong […]

The Net – Good for Literature

A recent news article has Doris Lessing (a Nobel prize winner for literature) claiming that the net has “created a world where people know nothing” [1].

However the Internet is a great tool for learning for people who choose to use it in that way, for example I have learned many interesting things from reading […]

Christmas and New Year

Christmas is billed as a family occasion and a huge amount of advertising money is spent convincing people that they need to have big expensive family events. This is good for the advertisers but not good for people who have no family to meet up with (orphans, people who live in different countries to their […]