The Australian Federal Government has announced a $43 billion, 8 year plan to roll out fiber optic broadband to 90% of Australians, offering speeds up to 100Mbps to the homes and business of those within reach of the roll out.

I think by any measure this is a significant event and one that will benefit Australia’s economy, it’s environment and social fabric.  The plan however, has its detractors, and to my mind, some of the criticism borders on the bizzare.

Here are some of the arguments I’ve heard in the past 48 hours:

1. Australia is too large for it to be economically viable.

Australia is undoubtably a vast country, but when you consider we seem to have been successful in rolling out and sustaining roads, plumbing, power cables and copper phone networks over similar distances one wonders why there is a perceived difference with a few centimeters width of fibre optic cable..  I view fiber to the home as pretty much the same kind of basic utility - and compared to running railway track cross 2000KM of rivers, desert and mountains it should be significantly less impact, cost and effort.

2. It will be too expensive for people to use.

Prices quoted are in the order of $80/$90 per month - and yes, for many people, that’s alot of money, but I think it needs to be put into context, most users of home telephony pay similar amounts for line rental and very basic ADSL (and this network would supplant both).  Additionally, a mere 10 years ago I paid up to $5 an hour for internet access!  Finally, $80 a month is approximate to the charges levied for NextG wireless net from Telstra - the main alternative suggested to rolling out fiber.

3. Wireless is cheaper / faster option

Not for mere mortals.  Additionally wireless may be theoretically fast, but my experience with wireless broadband is highly variable - and members of my family regularly have to roam their house looking for a good reception spot.  Speeds rarely reach the theoretical maximums quoted in press releases.  It may get faster, but 5x faster and with always on, trust with your life reliability?  I remain unconvinced.

4. We don’t need it.

This is the category I least understand.  This one seems to be from people who email once a week or who think the Internet is solely for Facebook.  Maybe its hard for people to imagine the kind of things this kind of bandwidth enables, but off the top of my head, here are some of the things the network would support:

• Widespread telecommuting.  100Mbps is LAN speeds, this will make telecommuting a viable occurrence for not just the few, but any kind of information worker.  This could have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions and the centralized nature of our cities.
• High Definition video communication (and crystal clear voice).  No more distorted telephone calls, less travel and fewer flights, closer connections with distant work mates, business partners, family and friends.
• Pervasive Tele-medicine, Real time, high resolution medical imaging and remote diagnosis.
• Video on Demand, The availability of subscriber specific IP TV will blow open digital media consumption.
• The end of physical delivery of electronic goods (and subsequent transport, packaging, storage and cost).

It must be recognized that most of these  things can be done now (and are being done), but often with specialized equipment and sometimes at great expense. What this network makes possible is that these services will become utterly pervasive - and it is this pervasiveness where the impact lies.  When everybody is connected it will change the way Australia work, plays and communicates - and this will be as significant to our economy, our cities, our lives and our society as the advent of electricity.

I wrote this for a colleague, but here it is for the world.  (At least I think I wrote it - it was a long time ago!)

Why the Wiki?

Typical challenges

It has always been a significant issue for large groups of people to successfully handle the creation, classification and discoverable storage of information.

The barriers for to creating information are many:

• Getting staff to spontaneously document day to day procedures and outcomes is often difficult.
• Staff are often frustrated by overly ornate requirements when creating information and feel efforts are wasted because their work cannot later be found by their peers.
• Most people don’t have the time or the confidence to repeatedly publicize their work to peers or to distribute the information outside of their organisational area.
• What is created is often hidden in directories which are not widely known or frequently accessed.
  Information creation can be compelled by procedure and regulated by process and thus it can become more likely to be created and managed.
  However, as organisational structure and personnel change over time, large quantities of valuable formal documentation are lost in forgotten locations and the organisation is condemned to re-learn, or re-document.

Typical response

The classic method of organising documentation is to use a hierarchical structure based on a shared location using common office productivity tools such as MS Word or MS Excel.
Hierarchical structures provide a mechanism by which large quantities of information can be structured into categories, with each branch offers a greater specialisation of its parent.

It can be argued that this structure however is more a function of the tools at hand since nested directory structures are a fundamental component of personal computing data management. It is no surprise then that this mechanism has become the dominant method for information storage.

The weakness of this approach is thus:

• Not all information fits solely within a single category,
• Categories require the development of an ontology, and its communication and training.
• The same category names are rarely shared by many parties

An alternative response

In contrast to hierarchical directory structures is the concept of hyper linking, a method popularised in the World Wide Web.

The value of hyperlinking, when combined with a co-operative web creation environment results in a Wiki. A Wiki, (meaning Hawaiian for ‘Quickly’) has been described as:

“A solution that values information creation and cooperation over control and categorisation”

Wiki’s offer several advantages over traditional methods of creating and managing information.

• The wiki allows arbitrary relationships between information.
  • A wiki page can be linked to any other wiki page, website or file system resource, allowing associates to be made between topics.
• All content on the the Wiki is version controlled.
  • All wiki content, both wiki pages and attachments are version controlled, allowing you to see the when, who and what of change. Version control also allows the roll back of unwanted change and the recovery of deleted information
• All content on the wiki is time-stamped
  • All changes to the wiki are time-stamped, so the exact time of change is known.
• All content is associated with specific authors.
  • If configured to do so, all content is associated with an authenticated owner.
• The wiki is searchable
  • All content, including attachments, is regularly indexed by the wiki’s inbuilt search engine, allowing relevant content to be discovered by search.
• The wiki can be restricted
  • The creation and viewing of information can be restricted down to the page label specific groups or individuals and by the categories of creation, editing and deletion
• The wiki can store any arbitrary file as an attachment
  • Some content is not suitable to be transcribed into something as basic as Wiki page, such data can be attached to the page by file upload
• The wiki is web accessible
  • The wiki is accessible in a web browser and does not require (nor have) a desktop client.
• The wiki can be reorganised.
  • Because of the nature of the wiki, barrier to re-organisation is low, with pages able to be relocated when needs and structure change.
• The wiki notifies its users of change.
  • The wiki publicizes change, allowing users visiting to see new and changed information
• The wiki allows you to monitor your content
  • The wiki allows you to establish a watch on content and receive email notification if it changes.
• The wiki can assess the frequency of use
  • The wiki has basic inbuilt statistics that allow you to gauge the frequency of use of information.
    With all these benefits in mind, Wiki’s do have some advantages.
    Limitations of the wiki
• The wiki does not offer complex word processing functionality
  • The Wiki is not an appropriate choice for longer (> 1 page) or complex, formal documents.
• A successful Wiki’s is as much a point of view as a tool.
  • Successful use of a Wiki is associated with staff understanding the point of view of ‘impulsive’ documentation creation.
• Wiki’s can appear alarming to those unfamiliar with the concept.
  • Most organisational approaches to information emphasis control and restriction over freedom of action, it can be confronting to some that the Wiki’s default point of view is to allow anyone to create or edit (and this often causes the audit and version control capabilities to be overlooked)

So, the WSJ is reporting that IBM is in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems for 6.5 billion (a considerable premium on its market valuation).

Some analysis of the news labeled this story red herring, put out there by Sun to get the scare on the real buyer, I tend to agree.

Besides securing Java I don’t understand what IBM gets out of buying Sun.

IBM would be buying a company who’s stack of software/hardware goes head to head with most of IBM’s existing and well established brands. I can’t see this gives IBM anything but a headache and could confuse IBM customers.

For IBM, it would be come an issue of ‘How can you push your high end enterprise hardware/software and its pricing structure against a FOSS stack from your new subsidiary’.  Any FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) they could spread about Sun’s viability and software capability is immediately compromised and they run the real risk of cannibalizing their own sales across a lot of areas.

The second possibility it that its an acquisition focussed on killing off Sun for competitive reasons.  Assuming the regulator has no issue with that (which seems unlikely), then its tacit acknowledgement that Sun strategy is working.  If its working well enough that IBM is wanting to spend $6.5 billion to stop it, why would Sun sell out?

Finally, IBM could be moving to secure Java.  This may only sound practical to Java development community, but with its own JVM and the JDK open sourced most of what I see IBM can bring is their checkbook.  In general spirit, the community is walking, if not running away, from the kind of software ecosystem IBM represents (Eclipse not withstanding) - and surely they could provide that influence a lot cheaper than the cost of acquiring Sun.

What about Dell?

A commenter on one article noted that the real buyer could be Dell and on first glance this seems like a more plausible idea.

Dell is one of the only big names in the desktop/server business which doesn’t have a high end enterprise arm or a software infrastructure stack (the only one I can think of is Lenovo, who I assume still partners strongly with IBM).

Dell is likely already have a presence in the data centers and offices of Sun’s customers via their Laptop/Desktop/Intel servers.

Dell gets the opportunity to sell services across the whole of the data center rack with an enterprise server line + processor architecture, a storage array business, an operating system that can take an organization from the desktop to the cloud and a software stack running the gamut from Operating System to Word Processing (And perhaps in emerging markets like China, this matters).

Sun gets access to a volume sales channel and commodity Intel hardware - something that their software stack could thrive on.

Does that seem more logical to you?

Then you might want to speak to Melissa Maimann who is a fully qualified midwife specialising in home birth in the Sydney, Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Wollongong and Southern Highlands but also supporting those seeking a hospital birth in the same area.

You can visit her website at http://www.essentialbirthconsulting.com.au/

I made a comment on Twitter a moment ago about how every time I pass judgment on Confluence I collect a follower from Atlassian - and if I collected the full set, did I win something?

This got me thinking about relationship there seemed to be about commenting on a product and suddenly being followed by the product on Twitter.

It doesn’t bother me, in fact with some companies I’ve found it very useful to stay in the loop with their product releases and announcements.

It seems some companies are like a fire-hose, burying your tweets(@sun), some like over eager puppies, gushing breathless about their product(@evernote), and some are mostly factual (@atlassian)

So I thought I’d invent a game (I assume I’ve invented it, I haven’t googled, apologies if I’m the last know).

I’m going to call it Twitter Bingo.

We’re going to take a list of companies, first Twitter user to be followed by all the companies on the list wins… well… my undying respect and adoration ( which is, my friends, priceless (or worthless, depending on your world view)).

The rules - you may not directly ask to be followed :o)

The initial companies I know who follows are:

Atlassian @atlassian
JBoss  @jbossnews
Evernote @evernote
Livescribe @livescribe
GroovyMag  @groovymag

Further company nominations gratefully accepted.

Happy hunting.

So its been a week since we brought home Herbert (or Wall-E, or ‘the robot’) - our 530 series iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner.

In that time he’s been used daily, both out of need and novelty, and in that time we’ve been impressed with the results we’ve been getting.

For me, the biggest surprise about the Roomba is that its actually a quite effective vacuum cleaner - that may sounds a bit odd, but I’ve been living my life with the expectation that a vacuum cleaner needs to be big, loud and have thousands of watts of screaming power - by comparison the Roomba seems to have the suction of a asthmatic sparrow.   Roomba’s secret seems to be that it mainly uses its brushes to pull material off the floor.  Suction occurs simply to pull the material off the brushes, not off the carpet.

Watching him (yes, we’ve given it a gender identity) move around the floor, following walls, stopping before stairs, swirling on dirty patches, gives you an appreciation for the ingenuity of iRobot - we’ve only had to rescue him twice, once when he choked on a dropped sock (he shutdown, beeped and then told us to ‘check brushes’) and once when he got himself tangled in some curtain cords.

The robot probably requires the kind of care you might provide to your coffee machine, a 2 minute clean at the end of each job, with a longer clean after a few days to get hair off the brushes and bearings.   All the parts that can be removed are helpfully color coded yellow.

Roomba cleans best room by room (don’t let him loose in your entire house) and of course, the floor needs to be clear of socks, clothing, paper and the like.

Roomba is cheaper than you might think, ours being about $AU500 with a 4 year warranty - half the price of the most expensive Dyson upright cleaner.

I’d recommend Roomba to any time poor family who likes gadgets and hates vacuuming, and I wish it had been around when I was single - letting it loose in my apartment when I went to work would have been fantastic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roomba

http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp

WebStart should take care of the upgrade automatically, but, as always, you can install it from http://herod.net/twitterfx/TwitterFX.jnlp

Bugs can be raised here:  http://kenai.com/jira/browse/TWITTERFX

Here are the changes:

Release Notes - twitterfx - Version 0.15

Bug

• [TWITTERFX-5] - Scroll bar on right hand side is obscured by OS window chrome
• [TWITTERFX-8] - Unneeded request is made to twitter on closing the ‘User detailed’ window.
• [TWITTERFX-22] - Character count doesn’t update correctly when the tweet is submitted
• [TWITTERFX-28] - Text entry box does not resize when you resize the window.
• [TWITTERFX-29] - Mouse over highlight on tweet does not rescale when resizing window
• [TWITTERFX-30] - Tweet shows hand cursor and hightlight even when there is no hyperlink in the tweet.
• [TWITTERFX-31] - Tooltip on right hand side of screen starts too far to the left.
• [TWITTERFX-32] - TinyURL and TwitPic URLs should be suffixed, not prefixed.

Improvement

• [TWITTERFX-21] - Provide error feedback on network issues
• [TWITTERFX-23] - Include retweeting feature

Okay

Now I’m pissed off.

So, I go to make my payment and the Optus account portal craps out twice during the payment process,

What happens? I get a blank page with the loading icon for several minutes.

So, I try again, and again, third time lucky, then I discover I’ve paid both bill three times.

So, then I try to do an online feedback to get my money refunded and after filling in my details and describing the whole process, I get this:

I mean, seriously. WTF? Does Optus specifically aim to frustrate and confuse its customers?

This is on top of the 3 day 3G outage that Optus had in North Sydney last week.

.. of “This ain’t your Dad’s Java”

I found the passion and information content about the direction of Java very, very encouraging.

JavaFX release is on December 2. Looking forward to taking the final release for a spin!

After watching alot of kids TV over the last few months, I have a few things I wonder about

1. Where is Harry’s Dad in “Harry and his bucket full of Dinosaurs?”
2. Why is the Island of Sodor in “Thomas the Tank Engine” so dangerous with such poorly maintained railways?
3. Why in “Lazytown” does a 30+ year old man (called Sporticus) hover over the town watching the kids?
4. Does Shadow in “Bear in the Big Blue House” suffer from some form of manic mental illness?
5. Why is Dora the Explorer so dumb?
6. Why is ‘Big Plane’, the villain in “Little Einsteins” obviously a Soviet era SU-27 Flanker?