In my role as guru of all things with buttons and wires, I’m frequently called upon to demystify certain technologies and buzzwords. Today, for your edification, gentle reader, I present a concise and simple definition of Voice Over IP.

It’s when you’re at a urinal and you’re having a chat with a mate.

If your mate stops peeing before you, a different protocol needs to be activated, called Voice Over You Pee. Generally, the handover between these two protocols is seamless, except if one or both of the pee’ers is drunk, in which case, there may be a damp leg or two involved.

For all those times you’re caught with your pants down, enjoying yourself a little too much while riding a ferris wheel with two guys and a video camera, just remember this handy little excuse:

[We’re] engaged in a sociological experiment to measure public responses to unexpected behaviour.

Write it on the back of your hand or something.

Mark Latham was on the ABC’s Enough Rope last night. The ABC, God bless it, transcribes bloody well everything so the entire interview is transcribed.

There was good give-and-take between Andrew Denton and Mark Latham, with Denton expressing at the end what many people think about Latham’s throwing in the towel:

ANDREW DENTON: What happened to you Mark?
MARK LATHAM: Well if you want a…
ANDREW DENTON: What happened to you?
MARK LATHAM: Glossy, ha, a fairy tale ending…
ANDREW DENTON: ...No, no, no…
MARK LATHAM: ...Well you know that wouldn’t be…
ANDREW DENTON: I find this profoundly sad putting aside any political view whatsoever, profoundly sad that somebody of your intellect and your capacity who spent so much time and energy and invested so much of your heart into attempting to correct society’s ills. And now, you know if people wanted to put it in a tabloid way, spitting the dummy or whatever, just going no too hard, can do nothing, I find that profoundly sad. What happened?

Latham said that he’s retired, simple as that. Denton reminds him that he’s 44. Latham squirms.

One bit that I found particularly psychopathic was Latham’s lack of moral justification for his lobbing of a “dirty bomb” (Denton’s words) at the Labour party. In their words:

ANDREW DENTON: I think a lot of people when they read this book are going to find it hard to vote Labor again based on the way you gut the party. Is that what you wanted?
MARK LATHAM: No, not at all. I don’t think they should vote Coalition.
LAUGHTER
ANDREW DENTON: Should they vote Labor? You’re talking about a party that is dysfunctional beyond repair. With a leader who stands for nothing. _[actual quotes from the book -jurgen]_
MARK LATHAM: Well, you know I think Labor would have a good chance at the next election if they had Julia Gillard as the Labor leader.
ANDREW DENTON: That’s not the question.
MARK LATHAM: I’m not well Andrew, I’m not look… I’m happily a home dad. I retired from politics in January.
ANDREW DENTON: You can’t say this, Mark. You just dropped a dirty bomb on the Labor party. You can’t say: “I didn’t do nothing”.
MARK LATHAM: I’m not here, I’m not here handing out how to votes some polling booth on ENOUGH ROPE.
ANDREW DENTON: You have absolutely disembowelled the Labor party in this book.
MARK LATHAM: Well, I’ve put down a frank record of how I saw things and I don’t think there’s a problem with that.

I’m not saying he shouldn’t have written some of the things that he has written, but I don’t think he’s being entirely honest with us (or perhaps even with himself) about his motives. He’s thrown a political bomb, and is walking away into the sunset whistling, and perhaps giggling a bit to himself. Telling your own story and blowing the lid off old lies is great. It’s fun, and personally cleansing, and if everyone did it, no one would need to do it – especially in politics. But dodging the question by saying things like “I’ve put down a frank record of how I saw things” is not enough moral justification, in my opinion.

The last quote I want to put here happens as Denton wraps up talking about how Latham skewered the Labour party in his new book:

ANDREW DENTON: You’ve given people a lot of reason to feel cynical. You haven’t offered any way forward?
MARK LATHAM: No well I couldn’t find any, that’s why I got out you see.

No way forward. What are we to do?

PS: Unlike the political party, I spell “Labour” correctly.

So there’s this politician named Latham. He was the opposition leader here in Australia for a number of years. He recently retired, and went absolutely mad.

How else can you explain his new tell-all book of political memoirs, and interviews like this? I mean, you’ve got book publicity, and you’ve got book publicity.

Here’s a very interesting and insightful quote from Mr Latham:

If the Americans continue with Bush’s policies they’ll never win the war against terror. They’re bogged down in this for the rest of our lifetime, and if Iraq’s an example of how they’re going about their work, they’re never going to win that, they’re just going to maximise dissent and aggression against them.

From a US government standpoint, who says that winning the war on terror is a good thing? Prolonging it works very well: the government gets sweeping new powers; their friends get lots of tasty government contracts; the current regime keeps getting re-elected because they’re “the only ones who know how to deal with evil-doers”; the economy does relatively well; and woe-is-us news dominates the global newsmedia, leading to increased cultural imperialism. As long as they don’t get angry, a scared populace is a docile populace.

University of New South Wales mathematician Norman Wildberger has devised a new, better, faster, and easier way to do trigonometry. Wildberger’s method has to do with concepts called “quadrance” and “spread”, but the news article doesn’t really get much into defining what those mean. However, there will be a book published soon and it ought to shed a little more light on things.

According to their new “blog” site, Microsoft has been incubating little applications for a long time.

Okay, so these Widgets Gadgets are the hottest new thing, and Microsoft wants them. That’s fine. Thing is, they’re pretending that the idea was started in Microsoftland. Hah. They’re copying Apple, who is copying Konfabulator, who is copying Apple, who probably stole the idea from Xerox, or themselves, or Amiga, or someone. At least when Apple stole it (the second time), they didn’t start going on about how innovative they are and all that. Microsoft is saying things like:

The concept behind Microsoft’s interpretation of Gadgets for the Windows Desktop has a long history, dating back to Microsoft research projects and prior.

Blah blah blah… Come on guys. You can’t fertilise astroturf with bullshit.

The Guardian is running a very rare and far-too-short interview with one of the best film directors ever to walk the planet. Hayao Miyazaki, director of My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, plus the new Howl’s Moving Castle and many others, sat down for a very quick interview – allegedly the first in ten years. He talks about New Orleans, computer graphics, and the end of the world.

Attention all Warrnamboolian-... er, Warrnamburger- ... um … Warrnambooler- ... aw … Attention everyone from Warrnambool! There’s a dangerous jacket in your town! Run for your lives! This jacket, made out of 100% synthetic fibres, has been proven to release large amounts of static electricity, according to a recent story in the intercontinental jacket-watching journal The Register.

(With a bonus quote from Dr Karl!)

This was sent to me from a good friend (who shall remain nameless for his own protection).

Q: What is Bush’s position on Roe vs Wade ?
A: He really doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.

From the “what, they’re still around?” department comes a dispatch from the small corner of the world that Quark still inhabits.

I learned desktop publishing on an old Mac IIcx running a very early version of QuarkXPress. I kept with it through all kinds of weird twists and turns, all kinds of terrible bugs and incompatibilities, forgave them for taking three years to support MacOS X, even forgave them for buying and killing mTropolis. A couple of years ago, I said “enough is enough”, held my nose and went to Adobe’s InBloatware. Sigh.

So, after ignoring Quark for years, I’m surprised to realise that they’re still alive. In a brilliant publicity stunt, they rebranded themselves, stealing the logo from the Scottish Arts Council – a move sure to get the attention of, well, the Scottish Arts Council and readers of The Register.