Simon Rumble’s blog

Things are hotting up with the FTTN (fibre to the node, a technology that puts a fibre to the end of your street and uses high-speed copper for the rest) debate in Australia. It's quite worrying because Telstra's spin is all aimed at forcing the government to make a rash decision before the election. Such a decision would almost certainly re-entrench Telstra's monopoly.

Some are asking why we need FTTN. It promises amazingly fast speeds, and is a stepping stone to full FTTH (fibre to the home). That's all well and good, but there's nothing to say we really need it right now. In fact, a relic from the early 90s battle between Optus and Telstra could be used to demonstrate why we need FTTN speeds.

Running past my house are two cables for cable TV and data. The latest standards allow up to 160Mbit/s downstream and up to 120Mbit/s upstream on these cables. The architecture of this cable is that as bandwidth demands increase, they can add more capacity by running fibre closer and closer to homes.

So if Telstra really wants to push this agenda, why are the maximum speeds available through their cable only capable of 17Mbit/s down and 256kbit/s upstream? As always Telstra are huffing and puffing, but they could deliver FTTN and faster speeds to a fair number of consumers today!

Where on this page does it say that you can't get 3G internet access with this company's pre-pay SIM cards? That's right, it doesn't.

I churned over because $5/month for 50 megs would be much cheaper than Vodafone's extortionate $1 minimum per use of the Internet, and $1/minute (despite the fact it's a packet-switched service). But if it becomes $20/month plus the $5/month, which would be the minimum to go on a post-pay plan, that suddenly becomes bloody expensive!

I shall be getting my $20 for the SIM card refunded once I've churned somewhere else. Anyone got any suggestions for pre-pay phone providers who don't rape you for modest data requirements? All I want is to be able to sync my calendar and occasionally do some light browsing while waiting for a bus or whatever.

Just tried to transfer some money from one of my bank accounts to the other using St George and got this message:
Your transaction may have been unsuccessful.
Please logout of Internet Banking and login again. Before making this transaction again, please view your transaction history to check if this payment or transfer was processed.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

That does not inspire confidence. Your transaction may have been unsuccessful. What kind of computer system can't be sure?

61.238.244.86 - - [30/May/2007:06:55:35 +0100] "POST /blog/index.cgi/me/Comment_less_Blogs.html HTTP/1.1" 200 7516 "-" "-"

This is someone randomly trying to post spam to a post I wrote ages ago about why I don't have comments on my blog. Yet more reason, you ask me. You'll fight a losing battle with the spammers, especially if you use off-the-shelf software with >5 other users. Even with something you write yourself, like my my crappy script you need something non-standard to keep the spammers away.

Last night on the news the Japanese delegation to the International Whaling Commission proposed a compromise that would see commercial whaling start up again. They want to allow coastal whaling in Japanese waters.

Now I'm actually all for traditional whaling communities continuing to hunt whales. But there's a catch: they have to use traditional methods. None of these steel-hulled, diesel powered boats. How about a canoe? None of these explosive harpoons. Try a hand-held one. This way we can be sure the people are doing it because of their link with tradition, and the numbers taken will be kept low.

I think this is a compromise we should push, if Japan is in the mood for compromise. My money's on the whales!

Just spotted while riding through Sydney Uni: a big bearded bloke wandering along Western Avenue carrying a stuffed and mounted chicken. Hmmm...

Today's DailyWTF is The Great Pyramid of Agile which is really an attack on crappy analogies rather than agile methodologies. I don't have a lot of experience with agile development. I have a lot of experience with places that claim to use agile methodologies.

Just this week I turned down a second interview at a company that claimed to use agile. The thing that sent alarm bells ringing for me was that the only aspect of agile offered was "we do two week sprints". So what they're saying is they expect me to work 24 hours a day two weeks out of four, and still end up with a pile of crap.

The horror stories that are giving agile a bad name are all due to companies like this. They pick and choose the elements of agile that sound good: no documentation, no (up front, but they miss that bit too) design. All sounds good from a business perspective, and with the promise of it being a better end result and faster! Except that losing those bits needs to be balanced by other features: close iteration, self-documenting code, up-front tests, pair programming, actually doing testing.

So I'd love to see some agile programming where people are actually doing the whole process. XP sounds great, this new "lean" that's all the rage sounds nice, though once again the name is sucky and misleading.

What's really interesting about all this discussion on software methodologies is that we're talking about the meta of development. Realising that 90% of the problem is actually understanding what we're solving, getting a handle on what the customer is aiming to do. The take-home is that if you interview a programmer who shows no interest whatsoever in methodology, don't hire that programmer! Even if you use a crappy method of development, and most places too, having someone who's passionate about improvement can only be good!

I might go and talk to ThoughtWorks. Simon seems to enjoy working there and I've now met some of the people in the Sydney office. Might need to brush up on UML though.

There's been a lot of criticism of Richard Dawkins and his anti-theist, with him being compared to fundamentalists and proselytizers. Yes, he can be a bit abrasive and he can certainly offend people, but all he's doing is analyzing people's beliefs through the best tool we have: science. Probably the best critique was the hilarious South Park episode that featured him.

The thing is, we atheists don't want to convert you. All we want is to not have your religion forced down our throats. Stop assuming that believing in fairies is the default position, or that it doesn't need to be defended like any other idea.

In particular, there's a couple of things that really get up my nose:

• Religion should be taxed like any other business. Genuine charitable activity, and this doesn't include business expansion ("evangelism") costs, can be tax free just like secular non-profits.
• Don't go saying your morality is better than my morality just because your morality comes from your imaginary friend.

Hope you all caught The Root of All Evil? on ABC last Sunday. The second part is on this Sunday.

We went to Matthew and Marion's wedding last weekend. Loads of fun. After the reception, lots of people ended up at our place for the after party, including the bride and groom. Much fun had by all.

Photos here.

Last night I made fajita for dinner. Apparently it's supposed to be the diaphragm muscle of a cow, but we had some rump steak in the freezer that needed using, which I cut into strips. I marinated the meat for an hour or so in lime juice, sugar, Susan's chilli jam, ground cumin, soy sauce and a little salt. I fried up some sliced onions, mushrooms and capsicum (sweet pepper) and reserved, then cooked the beef strips over high heat.

Served as a serve-yourself dish with tortillas, lettuce, cheese, sour cream and avocado. We didn't have any tomatoes, but a spicy salsa would do well with it.

Very very yummy! Next time I'll do it on the BBQ to reduce washing up and because there's more space than our fry pan.