This review of Ubuntu Gimpy Goanna, Jolly Jacaranda (or whatever they call it) is quite surprising.
Is it surprising that the author’s girlfriend has trouble installing the (closed-source and obviously evil) Flash plugin? No, not a surprise there.
How about when she had trouble when the screen resolution changed, making the screen too small to display the “change resolution” dialogue box? Nope. I can understand why an operating system changes resolutions without first asking the user if they’re sure it’s a good idea (even Windows NT does this!).
Any surprises that she had trouble with Linux’s filesystem and unhelpfully-named folders? Not really.
I wasn’t even surprised that she wasn’t tasked with installing the operating system by herself. I mean, isn’t Linux ready for mainstream desktop use? Isn’t it easy to install and upgrade?
No, for me the surprising bit was that an advocate of using Linux on the desktop has a girlfriend. Blow me down!
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
This man knows exactly what’s happening in new media today. I’ve not read anyone else who has managed to sum things up so well. He talks about points in history where big changes happen, and society’s reaction to those big changes. The most recent big change is this notion of free time – the ability to decide for oneself what to do for hours on end.
Starting around the 1960s, we mostly spent that watching TV. Taking the view from 100km up, we’re collectively getting bored with that, and trying other things – blogging, making videos on YouTube, playing World of Warcraft, making LOLcats – anything. These are all activities enabled by the Internet; collectively “new media”. New media is about enabling your audience to be creators as well – it’s about ultimately dispensing with the notion of “audience” and “creators” as separate groups of people. We can all create (for better or for worse). The tools are widely available and the barriers of entry are very low.
Not that I want to jinx it with a pre-announcement, but (pending official letter), I’ve just become a provisional Permanent Resident of this sunburnt country. This means that I’m kind of on probation for two years, following that I’ll become an actual Permanent Resident, and they’re stuck with me. I’m celebrating with a Coopers Pale Ale. Cheers!
The Age tells us about the new study – sponsored by SonyEricsson and 3 Mobile – which says that Australians steer clear of the mobile web. People aren’t liking the high cost and less-than-ideal interfaces to the Internet they get with their mobile phones.
It also found that 80 per cent would increase their mobile internet usage if the price was brought down.
Australia has its own search engine. Did you know that? It’s called Sensis and it was launched a little over a year ago, to great fanfare. At the time, one of their people said something like “In a year’s time, we’ll have caught up to and beaten Google in Australia”.
Pause. Silence. In the distance, a cricket chirps. People realise he’s serious and start laughing.
Right, so that was a year ago, and I was trying to find the exact quote to do the usual point and laugh thing, but I couldn’t find it (although I wasn’t looking terribly hard). I did find something even better though:
Also, please note the far cleaner syntax of the Google search link as compared to the Sensis one. I wonder how much playing around one can do with that URL? Hmm.
Everyone seems to agree that we need to do something, I’m just worried that the constant bickering and NIMBYing will delay this process so much that it will be committeed to death and forgotten about. I don’t think Sir Rod will have any joy in saying “I told you so” in 5 years when we’re still arguing about it.
My initial impressions are that he missed the boat on a couple of key initiatives, but I haven’t read the report yet. A colleague for whom I have a lot of respect used to work with Sir Rod, and holds him in high respect, so I’m relatively confident it will be an intelligent report.
I’m normally not one to dance on the grave of someone who’s just lost their job, but this is different. The person responsible for Melbourne’s new public transport ticketing system being about $500m over budget and 3 years late has finally been sacked from his $500k/year job.
Took bloody well long enough.
Is it just me or does it seem downright criminal to take that amount of money for doing what amounts to nothing at all? He was Australia’s most highly-paid public servant, and he made a mockery of that term. He seemed to serve no one but himself. Someone’s got to get into that job and kick some arse.
Hire me! Here’s what I’d do:
Find out why myki is taking so long. Tell everyone the truth. Balls out. Go for it.
Based on these findings, cancel the whole works (or not).
Look at spending the money on buying more parts for the existing system (or even buying the company that made them, and putting the parts back in production. I’m sure it can be had for less than a billion dollars…).
Pressing to get a single authority over the public transport system, and diverting money into buying more trains, upgrading the signalling and building more train lines.
Make it really inconvenient for people at the Ticketing Authority to drive to work. No more car allowances, no more free parking. Take public transport! Then force the other transport agencies to do the same, through making noise in the media.
As a sign of good faith, I’d ask for much less than $500k/year. Half that! I’m generous; I’d do it for $250k.
We finally have what we should have: people using public transport. Excellent. Unfortunately, the infrastructure is woefully inadequate to handle all these people. Careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
