This piece on the 'typical' Australian wage is very helpful in understanding some common misconceptions, and helped me to break down some of the areas I've been confused. I was particularly enlightened by the part about "equivalised household disposable income". I think looking at the amount necessary for a person to live (this should be similar to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), shouldn't it?) is a good way to go about it.
We need a way to compare the living standards of people across different household types, to get a measure of how much income a person would need to maintain the living standard of the typical (median) Australian. This is known as equivalised household disposable income. [...] A single person, living alone, would need around $36 000 in disposable income to sustain the typical Australian’s standard of living.
Well, that's a little more than I expected, but that's probably because it's across a range of types of work, cities, and lifestyles. The final point that the families in the newspaper stories earn much more than the average needed to live in Australia, seems to mix two ideas. $36 000 might be the average needed to live, but the median income (based on ATO stats) is just under $45 000. This doesn't change the fact that income per year of $100 000 and above is certainly not typical.
I recently read this article about Lord of the Files: How GitHub Tamed Free Software (And More). There's some interesting trivia about how GitHub was formed and has developed, particularly regarding the use of socialising and social coding to differentiate it from existing repositories like Sourceforge. I particularly liked this comment about the possible wider and future impacts of GitHub:
A tool like GitHub could also make it easier for constituents to track and even voice their opinions on changes to complex legal code. "When you really think about it, a bill is a branch of the law," [Ryan Blair] says. "I’m just in love with the idea of a constituent being able to send their state senator a pull request."
It's interesting that GitHub is moving closer to crowd sourcing - where volunteers fix other users' code, just because they can. It may or may not benefit the volunteer personally, but the collective improvement of easily-accessible code should improve things for everyone.
Does any one else get annoyed when an install, update, software prompt or any consumer tech of any sort - such as ATMs - says something like "Installing your updates"? Or "Installing your software"? Or even "Contacting your bank"? I'm not sure I can express it very well, but for some reason this annoys me.
By emeidi on flickr
Perhaps it's the knowledge that in fact, no, it is not "my" software, or "my" update, or "my" bank. It is only licensed to me. Perhaps this is "personalisation" gone too far. What's wrong with "Installing updates", "Installing software" or "Contacting bank"? I'm sure there's some research on this around somewhere, but unfortunately I don't seem to be able to find it. Perhaps it needs special keywords.
I'm probably being a bit over-sensitive about this. It's just a word, after all. However, it does frame - in quite a significant way - how the user feels about the software. I suppose it is positioning it as being controlled or operated by the user. I'd argue that is never the case. Most, if not all software, does things that not even the programmers understand, in part due to how big the software is. No one can understand and keep detailed knowledge of the entire application in their head.
Whatever it is, I'd much prefer the messages just tell me what I need to know, rather than attempting to connect with me. I use the software to connect with people... I'm not exactly aiming to connect with the software.
Apparently Malaysia is proposing a Computing Professionals Bill.
Here's a draft of it.
An Act to provide for the establishment of the Board of Computing
Professionals Malaysia and for the registration of computing
practitioners, computing professionals, sole proprietorships,
partnerships and bodies corporate providing Computing Services
and for purposes connected therewith.
Seems like it might be ok, but will most likely result in stifling innovation, even more government censorship (via a very sneaky means), and perhaps even reduce the number of "IT professionals".
From the MetaFilter discussion:
Sometimes I have to wonder if technology isn't really just making people stupider.
No, they've always been this stupid. Technology just makes it easier to see it happening worldwide. - Celsius1414
Time for a new maxim? "Technology isn't making people stupider, it's just making the stupid more obvious."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Any sufficiently ignorant politician in a society with advanced technology is indistinguishable from a witch-hunt participant. - Inspector.Gadget
From the Act:
Computing
is a goal-oriented activity to plan, architect, design, create, develop, implement, use and manage
information technology or information technology systems.
Computing Graduate
means a person who has completed a
computer science or equivalent degree programme of study.
Computing Practitioner
means a person who has a job
function in computing or qualification in computing.
That essentially covers sitting at a computer and typing. Which I would venture a guess that pretty much anyone might do.
Do they all need to be registered?
Another MetaFilter quote:
A lot of times these professional certification things are about protecting incumbents from new competition. [...]
Basically incumbents will setup licensing systems to create an artificial scarcity of them so that they can keep prices high. - delmoi
A scary piece of legislation. Also, is it odd that it's in English?
I've decided to migrate from a desktop to a laptop, so I'm selling my desktop PC. I've used it for work (software development) and gaming - has served me very well and should be more than enough for quite a few years yet. Here's the specs. Please note that:
Does not include hard drives, monitors, speakers or keyboard.
I bought and assembled everything in May 2010.
I'm not selling individual components separately. It's all assembled and ready to go.
You'll need to pick it up. I'll take this into account in the price I'll willing to sell it for.
All components work. In the interests of full disclosure, there seems to be irregular drop-outs when using the motherboard's Ethernet.
I'd like to be sure that it works for you, and if you have issues I'm willing to provide some help, within reason.
Contact me via twitter (@cofiem) or leave a comment if you're interested in buying. The total cost when I bought these was $1,840 all up (bought from Umart).
[Case] CoolerMaster RC-932-KKNI HAF Black Case (Bought for: $206.00)
There are so many government websites. I really did not know there was so much information provided, nor that it was so segmented. It's nice that there's plenty of opportunity to find information. Here are some of the websites I'll probably find most useful, or I want to mention. In no particular order.
This could be quite useful. It only has Medicare and Centrelink locations on it right now, but it could include many more, like Ombudsman locations or emergency facilities.
Financial and student information about schools around Australia. It's sites like these that make me wish I knew more about statistics. I'd love to get some raw stats and get some interesting facts and numbers. Don't get mixed up with MySchool.com.au
Now this is interesting - a map of all the GM trial sites around Aust. They're all on the east coast. A bunch in west Victoria. There's a wide range of crops involved - Banana, Barley, Canola, Cotton, Grapevines, Indian mustard, Maize, Papaya, Perennial Ryegrass, Pineapple, Sugarcane, Tall Fescue, Torenia, Wheat, White clover.
Confusingly, there are at least two sites for explaining energy ratings. Energy Rating seems much more up-to-date. Energy Star is focused on electronics. Energy ratings includes Clothes Dryers, Clothes Washers, Dishwashers, Televisions, Air Conditioners, Freezers.
There are am ass of individual websites for reviews or once-off reports. Seems a little silly to give them their own website, when it would be easier to find and search for reviews and reports in one place. Always interesting to see the submissions.
Trove is a huge repository of media - books, letters, journals, photos, newspapers, acrhived websites... it is an awesome resource for research. And it only began mid 2009.
Very useful tool. Yes, it certainly does seem like there's too much jargon and magic involved in finances. Might be useful, I haven't looked through the whole site.
Among the most frustrating (or crazily intriguing) problems are those that are almost like what is being talked about on forums or support websites, but either not close enough or do not respond to the recommended fixes. I think I fixed an issue just like this today.
Just like Grover's disease, there is no known (single) cause for why you might be logged onto a Windows computer and have a Temporary profile. You might get a popup from the task bar or an event logged in the Application Event Log. Possibly you may only notice because your desktop icons have gone, and in their place is a fresh, new profile. Most often, your settings, programs, icons and data files are still there, they just weren't loaded for you.
If you're lucky (sort of :\), you may be able to use a relatively straightforward method to resolve this. First, have a look in the Application Event Log, and see if there is a related event. Then have a look through the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles for something that seems right. Give it a go. If you get stuck on a step, or something doesn't match, don't just keep going. You could post on a forum, ask a tech-savvy friend or try out Super User Q & A.
If your issue, like mine, seems like it's not really covered, perhaps my solution will help you. Here were the symptoms:
A restricted user created solely for the purpose of running scheduled tasks did not seem to have a profile.
Every time the user "logged on" (i.e. the scheduled task ran), an new folder named TEMP was created under the C:\Users folder.
In the System Properties –> User Profiles –> Settings… profile list the user's profile was listed as Temporary status.
A warning was entered in the Application Event Log with a description similar to
Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.
When the user "logged off" (i.e. the scheduled task ended), the TEMP folder disappeared, as did the User Profile entry in the Profile list.
Looking in the registry, there were no {sid}.BAK entries in the ProfileList node.
There did not seem to be any way to stop the warning messages appear, or to create a profile for the user that lasted between logins
The way I got it working in the end was to go through a rather protracted process (for Windows 7/Vista/Server 2008).
While the user is logged in. Make a copy of the TEMP folder. Name it with the user's username.
Also while the user is logged in, use regedit to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Export the node matching the user with profile issues to a file. You can usually tell this based on the "ProfileImagePath".
In the same location in the registry, export the node of a user that matches as closely as possible the user you are trying to fix.
Edit the first file to match the second. Do not change "ProfileImagePath" or "Sid". The exact settings will depend on if the user is a domain user or local user, among other things.
Wait until the user is logged off, and ensure that the user does not log in again while you are making the remaining changes.
Merge the edited file back into the registry. Once merged, refresh the view, then open the new node. Change "ProfileImagePath" to match the path to the folder you copied from the TEMP profile folder earlier.
Check the changes, then close regedit. Go to the User Profile list from System Properties and check that the user's Profile is listed, and has a Status of Local or Roaming. As long as it is listed, and is not Temporary, it should be good.
When the user next logs on, there should be no warnings or popups, and they should be using a profile that will last between logins. The user should log out and in a couple of times to make sure.
Hope that helps, and as always with these things, no responsibility taken if things get messed up.
