Teaching Kids to Program
February 15, 2009 – 9:39 pmMy OSCON talk on teaching kids to program is now available as an audio podcast on the ITC Conversations Network.
My OSCON talk on teaching kids to program is now available as an audio podcast on the ITC Conversations Network.
Radio NZ National: Transparency
February 15, 2009 – 9:20 pmI'm going to be appearing regularly on Nine to Noon on National Radio Radio New Zealand National. I'm every other week, alternating with Colin Jackson. After the show airs, I'll post my notes and a link to the audio. Here's last week's: I'm going to talk about a few groups and websites working on keeping the government honest and useful. I'll talk about: "Rouge Archivist" Carl Malamud and his website http://public.resource.org. He was featured in Wired recently. MySociety and their projects, particularly They Work For You which has a NZ version, Fix My Street and What Do They Know. TWFY aims to make parliamentary record more useful. FMS lets you report potholes, graffiti, etc. WDTK lets people who make Freedom of Information Act requests share what they learn. The Economist article about these transparency projects which specifically singles out the local government portal of Missouri and the ...
NZ Broadband
January 30, 2009 – 5:18 pmThere hasn't been a lot of action from the new Government on broadband (or anything, really, yet) but this Economist article is food for thought about spending priorities: When it comes to promoting economic activity, it is easy to see why having broadband is better than not having it, but most benefits are likely to come from wiring people up in the first place rather than making existing connections hum faster. In Japan and South Korea over 40% of households have fibre links capable of blazing speeds, but that does not seem to have resulted in more rapid economic growth, or the emergence of new applications unavailable to consumers with ordinary broadband. This argues for something like the Broadband Investment Fund, which is frozen but not dead (political cryogenics), aimed at getting broadband to places that don't already have it. I still think NZ needs faster broadband to the home (I ...
S92A: Interim Repeat Infringer Termination Policy
December 21, 2008 – 5:29 pmThe Telecommunications Carriers Forum have released a note to ISPs saying that while they're working on a policy that will comply with S92A of the Copyright Act ("An Internet Service Provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer"), it's not clear that the policy will be finished 28 days before the 28 Feb 2009 deadline when the law takes effect. As such, ISPs should formulate their own interim policy, just in case. TCF had hoped to have the policy out for wide review before Christmas (I've seen an early draft, which was good, and made comments) but the note says that it may be "mid- to late-January" before it goes out. This delay isn't bad news--we got this crappy law because of arrogant buffoons who didn't run a good consultation. ...
Submission on NZ IP law and a free trade agreement with USA
December 7, 2008 – 11:20 pmSUBMISSION ON THE TRANSPACIFIC STRATEGIC ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES To: Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade Introduction This Submission is from Nathan Torkington, an author, musician, and software professional whose address is [...]. Summary I strongly oppose any proposals to extend the term of copyright, entrench digital rights management, assign investigation or enforcement powers to rights holders beyond those already in law, or otherwise use copyright law against consumers and artists. I also strongly oppose any interference with parallel importing. Submission New Zealand technology companies and New Zealand artists are all creative professionals attempting to sell their work in the world’s marketplace. To be successful these creative industries need: Open and ready access to markets overseas. Open and ready access to the commons of production. As little regulation and interference in possible in their production and distribution activities. I support extending the P4 agreement to other nations. The more markets we can freely compete ...
NZ Healthcare
December 1, 2008 – 6:08 pmAt the New Zealand Open Source Awards, David Cunliffe (the then Minister of Health as well as of IT) literally tapped me on the shoulder and asked whether I'd be interested in serving on HISAC, the Health Information Strategy Advisory Committee. The health system in NZ, he said, might benefit from some of the open source and collaboration work that I do (he had been to Foo Camp the previous year and I think he pictures me as surrounded by a cadre of buzzing connected technophiles who do amazing things). "Sure," I said, and that's how I found myself in Wellington last week, attending the inaugural HISAC meeting. What followed was a day and a half of intensive high-speed learning. I've never worked in the healthcare industry, so I was scrambling to learn the acronyms and history. My fellow committee members are all experts in their field ...
National Library joins Flickr Commons
November 26, 2008 – 5:18 pmWay to go, National Library of New Zealand! They're the latest addition to Flickr Commons!
Good one, National Library!
November 13, 2008 – 1:46 pmMy friend Aaron Swartz writes about the increasingly-evil OCLC: Not satisfied with controlling the world's largest source of book information, it wants to take over all the smaller ones as well. It's now demanding that every library that uses WorldCat give control over all its catalog records to OCLC. It literally is asking libraries to put an OCLC policy notice on every book record in their catalog. It wants to own every library. I'm on LIAC (a commission that advises the Minister for the National Library on matters digital), so I asked the CEO of the National Library of New Zealand, Penny Carnaby about this. She replied: We signed an all of country agreement with OCLC last year with the proviso that NZ would keep its own IP, i.e. OCLC does not own the new Zealand's National Union Catalogue the NLNZ does and therefore the crown on behalf of the people of ...
Nine to Noon: 30 Oct 2008
October 30, 2008 – 12:19 amToday I was on the National Radio show Nine To Noon. It was nerve-wracking beforehand, but fun once it started. The podcast of my appearance needs some context: she'd been teasing future segments, which featured a gentleman who took casts of people's bottoms so they could see it; Kathryn said "I'm sure many people prefer to think they have no bottom" and then introduced me. So that's a long-winded way of saying that when the first words out of my mouth are "I have a bum", it's not a total non sequitur. Links follow. Current affairs: The National Library is "harvesting" the New Zealand web. That is, they're visiting every .nz web site and many other sites hosted in New Zealand (e.g., aldaily.com). They're archiving the contents for posterity. See http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/current-initiatives/web-harvest-2008 and http://librarytechnz.natlib.govt.nz/2008/10/2008-web-harvest-let-us-know-how-we-can.html. There's been some grumbling from the web site owners, some ...
Ode to Auckland
October 27, 2008 – 9:26 pmAuckland Even when I'm well stoned on a tab of LSD or Indian grass, you still look to me like an elephant's arsehole surrounded by blue-black haemorrhoids, The sound of the opening and shutting of bankbooks, The thudding of refrigerator doors, The ripsaw voices of Glen Eden mothers yelling at their children, The chugging noise of masturbation from the bedrooms of the bourgeoise, The voices of dead teachers droning in dead classrooms, The TV voice of Mr. Muldoon, The farting noise of the trucks that grind their way down Queen Street Has drowned forever the song of Tangaroa on a thousand beaches, The sound of the wind among the green volcanoes And the whisper of the human heart. Boredom is the essence of your death. --James K. Baxter (learned of it via The Road to Jerusalem, a documentary about Baxter)