Why Aussie geeks should not support Kevin Rudd’s broadband plan

Geeks, techies, educators and innovators across Australia were excited to hear about Kevin Rudd’s plan for a high speed broadband optical fibre rollout to 98% of Australia. There is no doubt that Australia is a “broadband backwater”. The horror quotes from the Luddites of Australian politics, such as Ron Boswell’s “We’ve got adequate broadband for the people out there”, Helen Coonan’s “Internet users in most Australian capital cities should be happy with the speed of their broadband connection” and (my favourite, the biggest luddite in history), Richard Alston’s “Well for example, people will tell you that pornography is one of the major reasons why there’s been a high take-up rate in South Korea. I haven’t confirmed that at first instance but I’ve been there, I’ve looked at what’s happening.”, say it all. Our politicians don’t have a technical clue.
However, while I fully support the idea of optical fibre to 98% of Australia, it has to be funded and planned in a responsible manner. You may have read this little gem: “The Future Fund is full of money from telecommunications from the sale of Telstra, so in a way it’s not inappropriate that money is spent on telecommunications” from Democrats leader Lynn Allison. The origin of the money in the Future Fund is not the issue Lynn Allison, it’s what it’s been earmarked for. Labor cannot guarantee to cover public service superannuation liabilities, not if it’s going to be spending that money. There are no guarantees in investment. This is Superannuation money that people have been paying their whole lives. If it was my money, I would not want anyone spending it and promising they’ll pay it back by 2020. I doubt Kevin Rudd will be leaving his Superannuation in there until 2020, so he personally won’t be paying any price. This plan is a carrot dangled for the younger generation, who aren’t owed any money by the Future Fund. The Future Fund is not spending money, it’s a debt owed by the government that they have an obligation to pay. The Australian Government made a mistake a long time ago, by not putting aside money for their future superannuation obligations for retiring workers, just like General Motors. What do you think will happen if a large number of public servants don’t get the Superannuation they need for retirement? They’re going to be an additional drain on taxpayers in the welfare system. This money is not just for politicians, it’s for teachers, police, doctors, nurses and other staff working in the public sector, paid by the government. For Generations X & Y, this may mean your parents moving in with you when they’re no longer able to work, as they can’t afford housing without their Superannuation and welfare money will be limited with a reduced workforce. Don’t be fooled by this shiny offer, read the fine print. I want that dream broadband network too, I just don’t think this is the way to fund it.
We don’t just need faster broadband, we need a complete project plan for ongoing infrastructure building, maintenance and future upgrades. This is not the last time a communications network will require upgrades, how do they intend to pay for the next one?
Optical fibre is a great plan for Australia (we need Fibre To The Home (FTTH) not Fibre To The Node (FTTN), but stealing from the future to pay for the mistakes of the past doesn’t work. It’s how we built this broadband backwater in the first place, by cutting corners and hoping someone in the future will fix it. All Australian politicians need to use greater foresight in policy, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, not just planning ahead until the next election. Each side doesn’t want to do too good a job, for fear a future opposition might take the credit. Get your bloody act together Labour and Liberals. Try working together to actually solve a problem for the good of the country, instead of wasting time name calling, chest beating and buggering around instead of actually getting things done.

Scouta is on the lookout for audio and video you love

Scouta is now open to the public! Signup and invite your friends to find the best audio and video on the web, (not just the latest lame craze on YouTube). I never used to watch much video online (too much noise like PrankVote and not enough signal like The Machine Is Us) until I got Scouta. I got my mitts on a Scouta Beta invite a while ago and I’ve been a Scouta addict ever since. Scouta is a top Australian internet startup from Graeme Sutherland and Richard Giles (codename Web2Thing). If you want more than the About page, check out the Scouta Blog for the latest news. One of the coolest things about Scouta is the ability to form groups, with topics ranging from Apple to Web2 and beyond. Each group can have tags, as can individual media items. I’ve created a couple of groups, including Arcologies (a blend of architecture and ecology), Media FUD (This is the place to mark the media coverage which would be the shame of the industry, if they cared about ethics), A New Kind of Politics (seeking a better kind of politician), Perfect Presentations (mark your favourite presentations here), How To (for video/audio tutorials). Individual items can be linked to, just sign in to rate them. No complex rating system here, it’s either good or bad. This is one of my favourites – WeTube: The Future of YouTube.
Another cool item from Scouta is the output of your favourites in RSS! My favourites are here: and these items have been recommended to me, but I haven’t yet rated them:  
digg story

I love electricity… 12 hours after the blackout

After over 12 hours without power today, I’m counting my blessings at it’s return. Lighting, kettle, refrigeration, cordless phones, clock radio, computers, piezoelectric gas, oh and I guess the tv, although with power back, I no longer want to see the news to find out where the power went.

A 90km per hour wind took it. Three cheers for the sparkies who spent 12 hours restoring the power, restringing cables, raising power poles, testing lines and doing it all with a wave and a smile.

Maybe it’s time Australia had a good long think about underground power. Is there any real reason we still have above ground power lines?

Two’s Company, Three’s a Mesh Network – Logs are pulsing with OLPC searches

From the numbers of hits I’m currently receiving, I’ve gathered that one of the most important issues in Australian education has finally hit the Main Stream Media (MSM). Good job MSM, you’re only four months behind.

However they did cover some good stuff (despite the misleading, attention-grabbing headline – news please MSM, not misinformation) “Dr Tim Aubrey, Dr David Davis and Mr Alex Gibson, part of UTS’ engineering department, said they would be incorporating OLPC projects into their undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and even working on developing the software themselves.”

This is a welcome development, as implementations in Australia will need local knowledge, as well as technical expertise with OLPC systems.

“Dr Davis, a senior lecturer, said he was drawn to the OLPC project because it would allow his students to take part in a challenging engineering problem that is also “socially useful”.”

“another challenge faced by Australian governments looking to deploy the laptops is the need to order large quantities, said Srikhanta…. In order to produce them for $US150 – the goal is to bring this price down to $US85 by 2010 – countries would need to order the laptops in one million unit batches. This poses difficulties for countries with smaller population sizes, such as Australia.”

This is where smaller nations need to band together and order them as a group, or as a sub-order through a larger size nation. Most of these kinds of problems are not unique to any government, yet they shy away from collaboration, seeming to prefer wastage, duplication and inefficiency.

Another primary need, not just in Australia, is for a decent emulator for the OLPC interface, so open-source developers can start contributing to local software now. Then volunteers can create and test code to run on the OLPC laptops, without having a unit themselves. This is also important when bug-free software is a requirement. Yes, bug-free software is possible, it just requires a severe raising of the bar from current (and slacker) development/testing standards. Not only will tight development control be required, but some kind of integrated support WILL be required. Support is never just of a technical nature, it’s also a natural learning process, applying technology to solve local problems.

There also needs to be heavy penalties for people selling these items for profit, including the item being confiscated. Without heavy penalties, these are going to become a black market item of novelty value, weakening the position of the manufacturers who don’t want this available to members of the general public, as well as weakening the program itself.

People need to understand the purpose of this project, it is NOT to bring cheap laptops to people living normal lives. The Queensland Education Department obviously doesn’t get it, as they have described the machines as “far below the requirements” of students in developed countries. Yes, they are, and that’s exactly what they are supposed to be, they are not for students in developed countries! However, these would be of great assistance in Australian communities without any access to education, medical care, electricity, telephones and financial assistance. Basic literacy! Basic medical knowledge! These are greatly needed in some areas.

For all those people searching for information (a shout out to the hard working teachers and public servants who do give a shit), here are some links that may help you out. If you’re looking for something else, comment here and I’ll see if I can find it for you.
One Laptop Per Child – Wikipedia entry
One Laptop Per Indigenous Australian Child? – OLPC News
OLPC Demo

If you believe that Australia needs the OLPC right here and right now, contact your local member of Parliament (and your local paper) and ask them what they personally are doing about this issue. It’s time for them to pull their fingers out.

Wikipedia alive and kicking for six years – Happy Birthday Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is a fantastic example of world-wide volunteer collaboration. Over six million articles, over 250 different language versions, Wikipedia is global knowledge at it’s best. While it has it’s critics, Wikipedia‘s biggest strength is not that it has been free of criticism and scandal (it hasn’t), but that it has used every downside to improve, evolve and expand. Even the people who leave Wikipedia and move on to other similar projects are all in “Wikipedia mode”, publishing, improving and sharing.

Wikipedia provides a better public service than many governments. That’s something to think about.

via Touchstone Blog