Archive for September, 2010

Date: September 28th, 2010
Cate: Blogs, ICT, Politics

A Passing Note on Grog’s Gamut

Until a few days ago, I’d seen ‘Grog’s Gamut‘ appear in my twitter feed from time to time as someone I follow retweeted him, but never really paid attention.

Of course since then James Massola has revealed the identity of Grog’s Gamut and the interwebs have spewed forth huge volumes of work on the man and his anonymity. This is hardly surprising given that it is an issues that just about everyone that blogs or tweets has put some thought into from time to time.

For the record, I don’t think it was unethical to out Grog’s Gamut. However, I do think it’s quite boring and I question to value in doing so. There is probably a little public interest, not because he’s a public servant, but because it is gossip. I don’t see how traditional media expects to be taken seriously when it prints boring rubbish like this.

To make matters worse, the boringness of this sort of reporting is further punctuated by the fact that the only reason anyone is interested in Grog’s Gamut is because he’s quite good at what he does and is yet another example of new media are out performing traditional media.

But for me the more interesting question the issue raises is on of trust and legitimacy. In traditional media, what is written falls under the banner of the once respected masthead of the paper they are writing for. New Media practitioners have to actually earn the trust of their audience and that is even harder to do if you are anonymous.

Grog’s Gamut was clearly a good read – so good he managed to influence the ABC’s the managing director Mark Scott. By all accounts he was insightful and that cut through the cacophony of other blogs that are less insightful (like this one). To have your writing noticed, acknowledged and trusted* when no one knows who you are or what your credentials are is quite remarkable.

*The same issue presents itself to wikileaks and I think it’s fair to say that there is currently a concerted effort to undermine the trust that the organisation enjoys that legitimacy by a range of people.

Date: September 16th, 2010
Cate: ICT

NBN and Market Failure

Criticism of Labor’s National Broadband Network all seems to be pointed fairly squarely at the economic viability of the scheme. Or perhaps more specifically, is it necessary to provide fibre to the home for 93% of the population when those in more remote areas could simply use wireless while the major population centres get fibre to the premises?

In yesterday’s Crikey Peter J.Cox of Cox Media (who could really do with a new website) said:

My concern is not with the need for national broadband but with the arguments for delivering a 100 MB, or 1 GB fibre, system to nearly every home in the country at an extraordinary cost.

… and Malcolm Turnbull took a similar line in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

The real question is about the government spending $43 billion on an infrastructure project and asserting, but not demonstrating, that it will deliver value for money.

Now, just to be clear, $43 billion is a huge amount of money. But I think it is money well spent. Of course I don’t know the details of the way it will be spent but I’m happy for our Government to spend $43 billion on providing 93% of the population which up to 1Gb internet connects, both up and down. Providing these speeds both up and down is a very important point as well and enables a wide range of things that ADSL wireless do not and cannot have the capacity for.

Better still, the technology is as future proof as you can get. We’re talking about approaching the speed of light which is generally the upper limit of human endeavours for now. Moreover, it’s capacity is astounding, far exceeding anything wireless or satellite could even begin to imagine.

By and large, the market system is pretty good at determining prices for most things. However it clearly fails in some key areas. Health and education are the obvious two but there are others. In a country the size of Australia, market forces will not be able to provide rural and regional Australia (ie those most isolated and reliant on telecommunications) with an internet service of the likes of the NBN. Therefore it is necessary for the government to step in, spend up and deliver a service to 93% of the population that will put us on par with countries like South Korea. Imagine that, Broken Hill having the same sorts of internet speeds as Japan.

The Rudd Government had two good ideas, their stimulus package (thank you for my $900) and their NBN policy. If there is a problem with the NBN, it is that the Government intends to sell it at some stage in the future. I say we should keep it in public hands.

Date: September 9th, 2010
Cate: Politics

Wanna know what I reckon (about the election result)

I’ve avoided commentary on the Federal Election result because there has certainly been no shortage of it both online and in print (as one would expect). But I got a call from ABC Newcastle yesterday asking me to discuss the democratic implications of the election result in my capacity as a Director of the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice.

Unfortunately ACDJ is starting to wind down now (more about that later) so I didn’t think it would be appropriate to comment in that capacity, but I do have some thoughts on the matter that I thought I’d share here.

I think this election is the best thing that has happened to Australia’s Democratic for some time and am extremely frustrated by comments in the media about the three ‘country independents’ holding the country to ransom when they only represent a small pocket of Australia. I’m also frustrated by the focus on two party preferred votes (which at the last count I heard, the ALP was in front by under 100 votes).

So let’s be clear, what matters is the number of seats you win. In the 1998 election, the Labor Opposition lead by Kim Beasley, won the popular vote but not enough electorates to form government. That’s the way our electoral system was constructed at the time of federation and it is a democratic check and balance. It is a way of ensuring that the geographic diversity of Australia is represented.

Anonymous Lefty makes a similar point in this post.

To say you need the popular vote to have a mandate is ridiculous. If you think that then we should move to a single multi-member electorate with 150 spots up for grabs and a proportional voting system. It’s actually a pretty good idea and would mean the Greens have a lot more seats (over 15 on the current count) but I’m pretty sure that’s not what these commentators are after. So let’s just keep that one in check.

Democracy is about ensuring that the widest possible cross section of the country has a voice. In this case, that is done geographically – something that is probably a little dated in this digital age but as fair a distinction as class, ethnicity, gender and so on. Democracy is better judged by its ability to give a voice to minority views, the disempowered in our society, than it is by representing the ‘majority’.

For this reason, I think the country independents are doing exactly what they should be doing – representing their electorate. If the numbers fall in a particular way and that gives them more leverage, then good on them for seeing it as an opportunity to look after their lot. You’ll notice that it is no coincidence that they are probably the MPs most connected to their local electorate.

I’ve always been a fan of minority governments. For years now I’ve been looking forward to the days when the ALP needs Green votes in the Lower House. Minority governments mean a lot more compromise and a lot less party influence. You can’t just automatically assume that a Bill will pass the lower house and then be amended until it passes the Upper House. Instead you need to work towards getting approval from MPs who aren’t part of the party machine and therefore beholden to the dreaded focus group. And the result is usually some pretty big initiatives. The NBN will now continue unabated and it looks like a price on Carbon will happen a lot earlier than initially expected. These are all big ticket items and not characteristic of a ‘timid’ government which many in the mainstream media are saying this government will be. So let’s cut that chatter out too.

I think the party machines of both major political parties are rotten to the core. The Liberal Party essentially has no base these days, very few people identify with the Liberal Party and the Labor Party is losing it’s base very quickly. The ALP Union affiliation is a major cause of the rot but also probably the last connection it has to its grass roots.

(and by-the-way this faceless men business is a little ingenious as well. The ALP is, at least in theory, the political arm of the Union movement, of course the unions are heavily involved)

In his press conference announcing that he would back the ALP to form government, Tony Windsor said “Philosophy, in terms of both these parties, died about a decade ago or probably longer.” He’s spot on. The only way we have left to ensure that Australia has a robust democracy where a wide range of voices are represented is to ensure that there are other MPs outside the traditional two party system that have a strong influence in Australia.

I hope that’s what this minority Labor Government will give us.

Date: September 6th, 2010
Cate: Entertainment, Me
1 msg

15 Albums in 15 Minutes

A dear friend sent me the following in facebook (edited for relevance):

15 Albums in 15 Minutes, the rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Only one album per artist. Fifteen albums you’ve heard that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes! No real order.

This is what came out for me. It was not easy:

  1. Fresh Fruit for rotting Vegetables – Dead Kennedys
  2. Kinda Blue – Miles Davis
  3. Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine
  4. Tougher Than Leather – Run DMC
  5. Entroducing – DJ Shadow
  6. Cold Cut – Let Us Play
  7. Dave Brubeck – Time Out
  8. Angel Dust – Faith No More
  9. Demon Days – Gorillaz
  10. Kristen Hersh – Hips and Makers
  11. PJ Harvey – Rid of Me
  12. Primus – Pork Soda
  13. Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet
  14. Roni Size – In the Mode (although possibly Replica)
  15. Sonic Youth – Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

I know that there will be albums I will regret having left off. Also, I tried to make sure that each areas of my musical tastes were represented.

Date: September 2nd, 2010
Cate: ICT

CakePHP and the SSL connection

So, I’m currently doing a job (well Spire Software is but more on that later) where I’m building a registration form and payment gateway.

It has been a while since I’d done any payment gateways and I was looking forward to using the CakePHP frame work and it’s Security Component. But I’ve had a bit of a * forehead slap* moment which I thought might be worth sharing.

So basically the Security component protects against a range of of things like Cross Site Scripting (XSS – where someone tries to submit data to your site from another) and SQL injection. Being a payment gateway, I also wanted to use SSL.

So I found the Techno Geeks post which contains a very clever way of ensuring that all requests are forced to use SSL.

So I set up my beforeFilter method like this:

function beforeFilter() {
$this->Auth->allow('*');
$this->Security->blackHoleCallback = 'forceSSL';
$this->Security->requireSecure('confirmation', 'processing');
}
function forceSSL() {
$this->redirect('https://' . env('SERVER_NAME') . $this->here);
}

When I implemented it for the two pages that I wanted to use the Security Component I was getting my page, only with several undefined indexes.

Fundamentally, what I wasn’t understanding is what a ‘black hole’ was. Essentially what is meant by ‘Black Holed’ is the site kills the request and gives a 404 Error Page (or Page Not Found). This prevents any nastiness happening and gets rid of any annoying bots out there who just think the page doesn’t exist. So unless you meet the requirements of the Security Component (ie you’re not using SSL) you get black holed.

For the Security component to ‘ok’ a form submission it needs to meet a range of criteria, not least of which is that the request uses a Secure Server Licences (SSL – in other words the web address needs to start with https).

So what was happening is the form was being submitted from a page that was not using SSL and therefore did not meet the security requirements. Instead of just showing a 404 error as the Security Component would usually, it was calling the forceSSL() method which was redirecting me to the same page, only with a https URL. Instead of submitting a form to that page, I was now being redirected to it instead and all the form data that was submitted was being lost.

So to fix it I just changed the parameters I passed to the ‘requireSecure’ methor to an ‘*’ (so that all pages required it). So that line is changed to:

$this->Security->requireSecure('*');

By doing so, I ensure that the form is submitted from a page with SSL enabled (as it automatically redirects me) and the security component is happy, the redirection doesn’t happen and therefore our data is intact.

And we’re done.