Porn For Children

August 12, 2007 | etbe

James Purser writes about the current plans for Internet filtering in Australia and concentrates on the technical issues (whether it will degrade the ISP service) and the issue of who’s moral standards should be enforced for the entire country.

But the fact is that children have never had any problem accessing porn. When I was in grade 4 at primary school (~9yo) a group of boys decided to walk to the local shopping centre at lunch-time and I joined them. At the shopping centre the other boys read Playboy (that was before such magazines were required to be displayed in sealed plastic bays). I didn’t read Playboy because there were some electronics magazines that were more interesting. When in grade 6 (~11yo) a friend told me about his parents video collection which featured fellatio and sodomy. I don’t recall whether he offered to show me the videos but being a good friend I’m sure he would have done so if I had asked. In the early years of high school some boys ran a black-market for second-hand porn magazines (ick), they also sold new magazines that were significantly more expensive. When in year 12 digital porn was just becoming popular and the exchange of porn on floppy disk began.

I’m sure that now children use USB sticks to exchange porn that they get from the Internet or other sources.

When I was in year 10 a female dancing instructor ceased working for the school after an up-skirt picture of her was stuck on a notice-board (I guess that her resignation was related to the picture but can’t be sure).

The evidence that I witnessed while at school is that 15yo boys are prepared to photograph unwilling women and exchange the pictures, and that the exchange and sale of all manner of porn is not uncommon at school (including primary school). I don’t think that the schools I attended were in any way unusual in this regard.

When I was at school cameras were large. Unless you had a polaroid camera (which was even larger) the film had to be developed – and the staff at the photo company were potential witnesses. I expect that these factors significantly decreased the amount of such activity.

Now a significant portion of children have a mobile phone and it seems that a built-in camera is a standard feature in all new phones now. Digital cameras (which have much better quality than phone-cameras) are becoming quite cheap. It’s widely regarded that giving a teenager a mobile phone is good for their safety (and it certainly makes it easier to discover where children claim to be) and it’s also widely regarded that a digital camera is a good toy (babies as young as 2 are often given the old camera when their parents get a new one). We should expect that the number of children who have digital cameras to rapidly approach 100% of children who desire them.

Given these factors it seems to me that it would be a good idea to allow teenage boys access to better quality porn than they are unable to produce (with either willing or unwilling subjects). It has already been shown that increased access to porn reduces the incidence of rape. I expect that the same also applies to the issue of making porn, people who have good access to porn will be less inclined to make their own.

There is some nasty porn out there. If they were to try and prevent access to porn that is illegal under Australian law (IE pictures of children, animals, rape, etc) then I don’t think that anyone would object. But preventing access to soft porn such as Playboy (which is so tame that it’s hardly porn by modern standards) is a really bad idea if it will increase the risk of up-skirt photos and the production of child rape movies.

Let’s be sensible and accept the fact that children who want to see porn will see it and focus our attention on what type of porn will be seen by children and whether the “actors” are consenting adults.

PS I spent several years living in Amsterdam and working as a sys-admin for ISPs there.

Microsoft Hires University Drop-Out for Recruiting Campaign

August 10, 2007 | etbe

news.com.au reports that MS has hired former Miss Australia Erin McNaught to sex up the computer industry’s geeky image and describes her as a “University Drop-Out” (later in the article it’s revealed that she deferred her course so she might end up completing it). Hiring her is supposed to demonstrate that IT careers have “gone from geek to chic”.

There are lots of more professional ways of demonstrating that idea. One way is to compare the median income of IT people ($54,422 according to payscale.com) to the median for the Australian population ($13,200 to $20,000 for females and $31,200 to $41,600 for males in 2006 according to the ABS) which clearly indicates that IT people get paid more than most Australians.

Another way is to use adverts such as the Apple adverts for Mac vs PC, and Novell adverts for Linux vs Mac vs PC. Note how the female Linux character in the Novell adverts is cool and cute while still keeping all her clothes on.

Yet another possibility would be to find some cute female MS employees and get them to do the promotion. MS is one of the largest IT companies in the world and has a large presence in Australia, surely they have enough female employees that they can find someone to do this promotion who isn’t famous for wearing a bikini!

Hiring a model who is famous for swim-suit work to promote the computer industry isn’t going to affect the career choices of any but the least talented male students and if anything will scare off female students (who are already under-represented in the computer industry). The fact that the news.com.au story included a set of pictures of her in swim-suits and lingerie with the title Erin McNaughty really says it all.

It seems to me that Danni Ashe (wikipedia link) is better qualified for the MS job – after all she has even been recognised by the Guinness book of records for her work in sexing up the computer industry. Unlike Erin she has created web sites herself and started a very successful online business. Surely if being famous for wearing bikinis makes Erin suitable then being famous for wearing no clothes at all makes Danni even more suitable! :-#

But seriously, has anyone ever hired the Chippendales (wikipedia) to advertise in the computer industry? There is a reason why that sort of thing doesn’t happen, and the same reason would apply to hiring an ex miss-Australia.

Updated to fix a bad link.

Two Questions for All Serious Free Software Contributors

August 8, 2007 | etbe

What do you think is the most important single-sentence of advice that you can offer to someone who wants to contribute to the free software community? I intentionally didn’t mention what area or type of advice or what “contribute” means, interpret it how you wish and give multiple answers for different interpretations if that seems appropriate to you.

If you had the opportunity to say one sentence to someone who knows about computers and free software (EG they have used both Linux and Windows and done a small amount of programming) to convince them that they should join the free software team, what would it be?

Writing an essay about your thoughts is fine (and I’m sure that many readers of my blog could easily write an interesting essay on each of those topics). But please preface it with what you consider to be the most important sentence.

Please either track-back to this blog post or post a comment with a URL of your post (comments are moderated but I usually approve them in less than 12 hours and often much faster – I approve all sensible non-spam comments). If you only offer two sentences (and decide not to write an essay) then the comment section can contain your entire answer.

Note that by Serious Free Software Contributors I am referring to people who feel that they are serious about it. If free software matters to you and you go out of your way to help the cause in the way that best suits your abilities then it means you.

I will write another post with a summary of what I consider to be the most interesting responses (including links to any blog posts with long answers).

PS This post is not what I consider to be a “meme”.

Hot Water

July 31, 2007 | etbe

A response to a post I wrote about things to do for the environment suggested that there would be a health risk to lowering the temperature of a home hot-water system to save power.

I have just been reading about so-called tankless hot-water systems. The concept is that instead of keeping a tank of water hot (which means that you lose some energy due to the insulation not being perfect) you heat water when you need it. The down-side to this is that you need a moderate amount of power to heat water as rapidly as it’s used. The GoTankless.com products use between 11KW and 27KW of electricity. The early implementations of this idea used gas – the occasional carbon-monoxide problem with gas appliances makes me inclined to avoid them so it’s good that there’s an electric option.

One of the benefits of the tankless system is that it runs the water at a lower temperature than a regular hot water system. For a tank storing hot water you have to run it at a temperature that kills bacteria (or at least dramatically inhibits their growth) – which means greater than 50C, but for on-demand water it’s safer to have it run at something close to the desired temperature (probably not much above 40C) and not use the cold tap. Lower temperature water avoids the risk of scalding for children and the elderly and if the “hot tap” is running at a good temperature for a shower then you can just turn it on, wait 30 seconds for the pipes to warm up, and jump in! Incidentally it really sucks the way most showers have the taps under or behind the flow of water, so if the water becomes too hot before you get in then you end up getting minor burns in the process of turning on the cold tap.

I still think that solar hot water is the way to go. It apparently combines something like a tankless system on water that comes out of a tank heated by the sun. So during winter it operates like a tankless system but in summer you get more hot water than you can use.

This web site about Solar hot water systems indicates that they have a similar technology to “boost” solar hot water, so if the Sun doesn’t make the water hot enough then it can use electric or gas systems to further heat the water. It’s also interesting to note that they offer Heat Pump hot-water systems, it’s a pity that they apparently don’t support combining this with solar heating. Another interesting feature is what they call the Water Guardian that pumps cold water from the pipes back into the water tank and avoids wasting the water that you might otherwise run down the sink while waiting for it to get hot.

Porn vs Rape

July 30, 2007 | etbe

Chris Samuel blogs about a plan to censor porn from the Internet in Australia. According to the ZDNet article the Fundamentalist Christian party Family First wants a national porn filter to protect children.

However there is strong evidence to suggest that the incidence of rape decreases as the availability of pornography increases. Access to porn prevents rapes!

The question is whether protecting people (mostly women and children) from rape is more important than protecting the strange and unusual (by the standards of modern Australian society) religious beliefs of a minority of people who oppose porn.

The current research on porn vs rape is based on comparing different regions of the US with different levels of Internet access. It would be more accurate if a scientific test could be performed in a controlled environment. The US has the largest number of prisoners of any country and the largest proportion of the population in prison of any first-world country and rape is common in prison. It would be easy to grant access to porn to one cell block of a prison and deny access to another and then record the incidence of reported rape (currently in the US porn is restricted in prisons and masturbation in prison is a crime). The results of such research could be used to devise government policy with the aim of protecting people from rape. Of course that would require compassion – something that’s extremely uncommon in politicians particularly the ones that claim to be Christian.

Some people are requesting the creation of Christian Porn – so Porn and Christianity don’t have to be opposed. The same site has an interesting page Masturbation: God’s Great Gift to Us. Now if all those rapists could be encouraged to watch Christian Porn and take advantage of God’s Great Gift then the world would be a better place.

A Worse Visual Migraine

July 29, 2007 | etbe

Last night I had a Visual Migraine that was significantly worse than the previous ones. It started in the usual manner (flickering lights in my central vision and an inability to read text on a computer screen in a font that is normally quite readable) but then developed a new feature. Grey clouds appeared in the periphery of my vision which left me with only central vision which was obscured by flickering lights.

About an hour later it was gone. I’m glad that I don’t drive much, such limited vision is enough to allow me to use public transport without serious problems (although crossing a road could be interesting). Spending an hour in a parked car at the side of a road waiting for a migraine to go away is not something I’m looking forward to.

A Support Guide for Xen

July 27, 2007 | etbe

Here’s a guide to supporting Xen servers for people who are not Linux experts. If your job means that you have root access to a Xen server that someone else installed for the purpose of fixing problems when they are not available then this will help you solve some common problems.

Xen is a virtualization system that is primarily used for running Linux virtual machines under a Linux host. It is mostly used as a Paravirtualization system in that the virtual machine knows that it is running in a virtual environment – this allows some performance benefits.

The host environment is known as Dom0 and root in that domain has the ability to control the other domains (which are known as DomU domains). If you perform an orderly shutdown of the Dom0 (via the shutdown or reboot commands or notification from the UPS of an impending power failure) then when the machine is booted again the DomU’s will be automatically restarted (if the on_reboot setting has the value restart – a common configuration). If you run the command shutdown in a DomU then the domain will be destroyed, and the command reboot will restart the DomU with the same settings – if you want to change the settings for a DomU you need to shut it down and create a new instance.

The main sys-admin command related to Xen is xm. Here are the main xm options that are useful in support:

xm list

xm list provides a list of running domains. For each domain it gives the name of the domain, the ID number, the memory allocated to it, the number of virtual CPUs allocated to it, the state, and the amount of CPU time used in execution. The ID numbers are allocated sequentially, if you reboot a DomU by running the command “reboot” inside it then it will get a new ID number when it re-starts. Many xm operations that may take the name of a domain will also take a Domain ID number. Generally you never use an ID number and ignore it – the only relevant thing about an ID is whether it is 0.
Here is a sample of the output of xm list:
# xm list
Name ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State Time(s)
Domain-0 0 1236 4 r----- 14116.3
wind 13 2999 3 -b---- 60114.1
wind-f7 52 519 1 -b---- 3329.9
You can see from this output that the domain named wind has 2999M of RAM, 3 virtual CPUs (out of 4 physical CPUs in the machine) and has 60,114 seconds of CPU time used (that is 114 minutes of CPU use – the equivalent of almost two hours for a single CPU). Here are the values you might see in the state field (from the man page xm(1)):

r – running
The domain is currently running on a CPU – note that Dom0 will always appear to be running because you are running the xm utility!
b – blocked
The domain is blocked, and not running or runnable. This can be caused because the domain is waiting on IO (a traditional wait state) or has gone to sleep because there was nothing else for it to do.
p – paused
The domain has been paused, usually occurring through the administrator running xm pause. When in a paused state the domain will still consume allocated resources like memory, but will not be eligible for scheduling by the Xen hypervisor.
c – crashed
The domain has crashed, which is always a violent ending. Usuâ€ ally this state can only occur if the domain has been configâ€ ured not to restart on crash. See xmdomain.cfg for more info.
d – dying
The domain is in process of dying, but hasnâ€™t completely shutâ€ down or crashed.

If you see domains that are running which normally aren’t busy then make a note of this. If you see domains that are paused, crashed, or dying then contact the sys-admin.
Also know which domains are expected to be running so that if a domain is missing then you will recognise it as a problem!

xm top

xm top is similar to the top command in Unix but displays Xen data, by default it displays the same information as xm list but also includes the amount of data read and written from network devices and disks. If your terminal is less than about 145 columns wide the lines will wrap and it will be confusing – stretch the width of your xterm before running it.

If you have multiple network interfaces then you can see the transfer counts for each of them separately by pressing the N key. If you have multiple network interfaces in DomU’s then this can help diagnose some network problems (although you may find that tcpdump is more useful).

If you have multiple disk devices in a DomU then you can see their transfer counts separately by pressing the B key. One problem that can be partially diagnosed through this is excessively poor performance. If a DomU is running extremely slowly then it may be impossible to login to diagnose and/or fix the problem (it could take tens of minutes to login), in that case seeing where the disk access is going from outside the DomU can shed some light on the problem.

VBD 768 [ 3: 0]
VBD 832 [ 3:40]
VBD 5632 [16: 0]
VBD 5696 [16:40]

Above is the identification of the virtual devices /dev/hda and /dev/hdb in a DomU. The numbers inside the brackets are the device node numbers in hexadecimal, so 16:40 means the device 22,64 as a pair of decimal numbers (22*256+64=5696).

# ls -l /dev/hd?
brw-r----- 1 root disk 3, 0 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hda
brw-r----- 1 root disk 3, 64 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hdb
brw-r----- 1 root disk 22, 0 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hdc
brw-r----- 1 root disk 22, 64 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hdd

Above is the result of a ls -l on the devices in question from inside the DomU.

When I set up a Xen DomU I generally use /dev/hda for the root filesystem and /dev/hdb for swap. So if the machine is performing poorly and /dev/hdb ([3:40]) is being accessed excessively then it indicates that the machine has some memory hungry programs running and is paging heavily.

xm list --long

xm list --long [domain] gives detailed information on all domains, or it can be run with the name of a domain such as xm list --long wind to give the detailed information on only one domain. Generally this is something that you will log to a disk file before restarting domains, in the short-term there is little use for this.

xm console

xm console <domain> gives you the console of a domain. If a domain is not working correctly and it is impossible to login via ssh (either due to a network problem or a problem with ssh) then you can access the console (equivalent to a serial-port login on physical hardware) to diagnose the problem. Often the kernel will log messages to the console, such messages will be stored by the Xen system until they are read. If you suspect that there may be many such messages then use script(1) to log the output to disk, if you are unsure then use script to make sure that you don’t miss any data. Even if you don’t understand it the sys-admin probably will!

If the system is half-working then you can login as root to investigate problems. You can escape from the console by pressing CTRL-].

xm dmesg

xm dmesg gives Xen logging data comparable to the dmesg command in Linux. If you ever have to reboot the machine (run reboot from Dom0) due to a problem with Xen then you MUST save the output of xm dmesg to a file for later review by the sys-admin.

xm destroy

xm destroy <domain> will kill a specified domain. It’s a last resort for stopping a domain that is not working correctly – it is greatly preferrable to login to the domain via ssh or xm console and give an orderly shutdown.

xm create

xm create [-c] <domain> creates a new domain. The configuration for the domain will be taken from a file of the same name in the current directory or in the /etc/xen directory – if /etc/xen is not the current directory when you run xm create then make sure that there is no file-name conflict. You can use this command after destroying a domain or to start a domain that was not previously run.

If you want to change a configuration option of a domain (such as the amount of RAM used) then the usual procedure is to edit the configuration file, run halt or shutdown from within the domain, and then create the domain again with xm create. Note that the -c option is used to attach to the console after starting the domain (you usually want to do this).

I will probably update this post when I get some feedback. I may write more posts of a similar nature if there are requests.

Tevion MP4 Player Model M6 – a Review

July 15, 2007 | etbe

On Thursday I bought a $99 (discounted from $199) MP4 player from Aldi (a German supermarket chain that has recently opened up here). The player is a Tevion model M6.

By a long way it’s the cheapest and nastiest piece of consumer electronics that I have ever owned. It has very flimsy construction (feels like it will crumple in my pocket – not like a solid iRiver) and poor design all around. The viewing angle of the LCD screen is very small, so if I hold it close to my face then the viewing angle will be wrong for at least one eye. There are two power switches, an electronic one on the top (which is also sometimes used as an escape key for menus that don’t recognise the key labelled as ESC) and a slide switch at the side. When I use the electronic switch to turn the power off the back-light will usually flicker – I guess that they wanted to have an electronic switch and then put a mechanical switch in the design when they couldn’t get it working.

The menus are strange, they have a game menu that only has Tetris – why not have a Tetris menu instead?

The FM radio function doesn’t seem to work and the option to select a European frequency range is lost when the power is cut, along with all saved station frequencies.

I never got around to testing the voice-recording function (one of the reasons for purchasing the device) as it failed in too many other ways.

The device has an AVI of Barbie Girl by Aqua and also a MP3 with a text file that has the lyrics for Karaoke, this is probably the only good feature of the device. Unfortunately it appears to have some sort of DRM as it gave a padlock icon and stopped working after I played it a few times (fortunately it’s unable to store settings so a power cycle solved that problem).

When I connected it to my PC via USB it showed two devices, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. /dev/sdb gave an IO error (apparently due to not having an SD memory card installed) and and /dev/sda was not in any format recognised by file -s /dev/sda.

I’m going to have to return this, even $99 is too much for a device of such quality. Maybe I’ll buy an iRiver to do this if they sell one without DRM.

Buying a Laptop from Another Country

July 9, 2007 | etbe

Mary Gardiner has written a lazyweb post asking about how to solve the problem of laptops being more expensive in Australia than in some other countries. She didn’t post contact details or enable comments on her blog, but that’s OK as this information may be useful to other people.

Some years ago I was living in The Netherlands and discovered that the cheapest Thinkpads were available by US mail-order (which didn’t support shipping to other countries). As I was attending a US conference (the Colorado Software Summit) anyway I decided to get a Thinkpad at that time. So I found an friend in the US who was attending the same conference who was willing to receive the Thinkpad for me. I arranged to have the Thinkpad delivered to his doorstep (he assured me that he lived in a safe neighbourhood) and a couple of weeks afterwards I met him at the conference and received my nice new Thinkpad!

I’m sure that most people who are active on the net can find someone in the US who they would trust to deliver them a package costing >$1000 and finding such a person who attends the same conference as you shouldn’t be too difficult (I’ve done it).

Another way I bought a Thinkpad was that I arranged to have a holiday in London at the same time as the wife of an American who ran a computer store. I met his wife at Heathrow airport and made the final cash payment for the Thinkpad that she delivered. I was worried about a police reaction to seeing a cash sale of a parcel in an airport, but there weren’t any problems…

In terms of warranties on laptops, the Thinkpad warrantee is world-wide. You can quote a serial number of a Thinkpad when arranging the warranty repair and they will tell you which country it was purchased in, but they always cover you. I’ve had many Thinkpad repairs, I wear out keyboards regularly through constant use, and due to the extensive travel and hard wear often other parts wear out too. It’s been pretty rare for me to have a warranty repair in the country where my Thinkpad was purchased and I’ve never had a receipt available. It’s never been a problem, they know from the serial number whether the warranty is valid and take care of everything.

Thinkpad repair (both under IBM and now under Lenovo) also operates when there is no hard drive in the machine. They don’t even ask a question about the lack of a drive, just note that it doesn’t have one.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that importing a laptop without paying tax on it is illegal in most places. But of course if you pay the tax then the total cost will probably be about the same as buying it locally.

etbe – Russell Coker

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