Simon Rumble’s blog

Microsoft have come out as unlikely allies in the fight against DRM. It seems they're helping to educate consumers on why DRM sucks. Their new player won't work with product bought under their "Plays For Sure" DRM-promoting scheme.

If the record companies were smart, and we all know they're pigshit thick, they'd insist Microsoft provide consumers with an upgrade path, at least just this once. Then their DRM might be more palatable. Of course, they're still basking in the afterglow of all the cash they made when everyone replaced their collections in the vinyl-to-CD upgrade cycle. They think with this DRM stuff they can do that every couple of years.

I just bought a monster server machine to run as my MythTV machine. It's a dual 1.4 GHz Xeon with two gigs of RAM and 288 gigs of RAID storage. Nice!

Servers on eBay seem to be inordinately cheap. I guess for just about every business, the whole point of a server is it's important to the business. So people don't buy them second hand. Which means cheap for people like me who are willing to buy second hand.

So this is going to be my MythTV server, sitting in a cupboard somewhere, while my front-end will be a silent, no-moving-parts diskless Via EPIA machine. Should be a rather nice setup!

Registrations are open for linux.conf.au and the programme looks quite interesting. For me it looks like Wednesday and Thursday are the most worthwhile days. Thing is, I'm a contractor and going means two days without pay, on top of the fee for attending.

It's a tricky one really. Quite an expensive couple of days. I'll have to think on it...

Howard is dissembling about a new Kyoto agreement to take heat off the fact that the largest per-capita greenhouse gas emitter won't sign the existing agreement. Thing is, Kyoto was a fantastic deal for Australia. We scored an 8% increase in emissions where most of the other signatories were required to reduce their emissions. If, as he claims, a "new Kyoto" were to take off, we'd be highly unlikely to get such a good deal.

Of course all he's doing is delaying actually having to do something, because he doesn't believe climate change is happening despite overwhelming evidence. Organizing another Kyoto, and what's more including developing nations this time around, would take years and years.

Kyoto is far from the perfect solution. In fact, it's only the very first step. But you can hardly expect the world to start building on it until it's been implemented by all the people who originally agreed to it, and that includes Australia!

Good news everyone: Holly has a job! She'll be starting next week at Odyssey House, an addiction charity. It's in the city, which means we're both working centrally. That'll be nice for a change.

Spotted on the ubuntu-au list:

Does the ubuntu default installation come with a anti-virus and
spyware. I seems can not find it.

I scare apyware and vitus :P

Hold onto your hats folks (alright Jeff you can hold onto your pants if you insist)! This means we're crossing over big time. It's gonna be an interesting time.

I have a plan to stop farmers sponging off the state. Many farmers in Australia farm extremely marginal land that is regularly very badly affected by drought. Australia is a place that has droughts. Every 7-10 years.

Successive governments have dipped into the public coffers every time a drought comes around for these farmers. Now if I set up a corner shop on a backstreet nobody ever visited, would I be entitled to funds from the government when the inevitable happens and I go broke? Course not. Yet farmers, who decided to farm marginal land in a drought-prone country, get bailed out every time.

So how do we solve this? How about this: the government buys back the land, at a reasonable price given how marginal it is. We then let it go back to its pre-Whitey state, which for different areas would mean different things. Fire would probably be needed.

How do we fund this? Well, why not calculate how much CO2 this cleared land will soak up as it goes back to its natural state? Oh that's right, we would need to have a carbon market and sign Kyoto for that to be worth anything now, wouldn't we.

Back to the drawing board then.

Turns out we got the house in St Peters. Excellent stuff. We move on 18th November, so still a while to wait.

We put a deposit and application in to rent a house in St Peters on Saturday. It's a lovely little two-story semi with a bit of open space at the front and a nice little unpaved garden out the back. Two bedrooms with a sunroom out the back. We should get it given we were the only ones who turned up for the viewing.

It'll be great to have our own pad again. We've been staying with my parents for the last six weeks or so and, while I love my parents to bits, we'd like our own space. Certainly looking forward to not living in a flat as we did in London.

Ahh doncha just love estate agents? They're so honest!

Here's an ad in our target area. Let's decode the real estate-speak:

FANTASTIC LOCATION!
The house is shite, but what a great spot!

Two bedroom, two storey terrace with separate lounge and dining areas,
One bedroom and one cupboard, standard Erskineville terrace layout which means front-bedroom downstairs is the lounge, middle room with two doorways and a staircase (you try arranging any usable furniture) is the "dining" room.

bathroom with bathtub, good kitchen and sunny courtyard,
No shower, tiny outdated kitchen, concreted backyard.

smoke alarms fitted. Fantastic location close to all amenities.
We comply with the law but call it a feature. Did we mention the location? Notice we didn't put in any photos of this crumbling, damp shitbox?

Wot me, cynical?