I mentioned in an earlier rant that CNN is now figuring out where you are in the world, and expressed some concern that they would eventually use this to limit or control what news you view based on where you came from.

That day arrived. If you're outside the U.S. and now go to CNN.com you are now redirected to 'edition.cnn.com', which is titled 'CNN.com international'. You see something totally different from the default U.S. page - which if you're looking for it, can now be found at 'us.cnn.com'.

...Though one could legitimately question whether either site will have newsworthy content, regardless of where you're at. 

Yesterday I was walking on the path between buildings and a lady walking nearby stopped me.

"Watch out for the spider!"

Yikes. Yes, I do want to watch out. Where is it?

"Look right there, you can see the web..."

Yes. I see a web. Thanks for letting me know. Little did I know that I was now hopelessly caught in her web.

"It's one of those Asian spiders ... jibber jabber ... they were responsible for the burning of 7 million witches in the middle ages ... jibber jabber ... of course the Catholic church knew what was really going on ... jibber jabber ... Carl Sagan warned about what would happen if the DNA sequence was leaked ... jibber jabber ... Now the aliens have our DNA and they're using it to ... jibber jabber ... Prime Minister Rudd  met secretly with the church and they're ... jibber jabber ... You're an American, aren't you? Bush has had secret meetings with the aliens ... jibber jabber ..."

Finally I could take it no more and politely told the lady that it was fascinating listening to her talk non-stop, but I really had work to be doing.

"Oh, I understand. I hope you learned something and it sunk into your sub-concious... jibber jabber ..."

No. I've really got to go. Yes, I learned something. Bush has secret meetings with aliens who stole our DNA from the catholic church and it was all because of those darn spiders and the witches.

Thanks.

"Don't mention it."

How can I not mention it? This is all fascinating. It explains a whole lot of things.   

The Australian government announced that they plan to sell off and privatize the electric grid. My American friends should find this amusing. I was in hysterical laughter listening to the talking heads talking about it.

• Privatizing the electric utilities will result in reduced costs for the consumer.
• It will lead to investment in new power generation facilities.
• It will lead to increased competition, which is good for the consumer.

Right. Let me tell you about what happened in California when they did something similar...

Prices went through the roof.

No new power generation facilities were built. This would of course increase supply, which would lower the price - which reduces profits. The primary goal of private sector companies is to maximize profits.

Existing facilities were taken offline during peak periods for 'maintenance', resulting in artificial shortages, which made rates skyrocket. At times, more than half of the generating capacity was idle when it was needed the most. As the spot-rates per kilowatt rose as a result, somebody pushed a button and allowed electricity to flow from these idle plants - at ten to thousands of times the normal cost of off-season power. 

But not before creating a shortage and widespread blackouts. This created a hostage situation where people would pay anything to turn the lights back on.   

So maybe the thing to do is invest in the stocks of the companies who buy these power generation resources?

Wrong again, although this is a good short-term play. Eventually the power companies went into receivership, but not before siphoning off all the profits and laundering them through subsidiary companies and off-shore accounts. The investors lost everything. The only folks that came out ahead were the company directors.

So you're saying there's no way for the consumer to come out ahead in this situation?

That's exactly what I'm saying.

[Though I should point out that if you're planning on buying any real estate in the near future, consider buying within two blocks of a hospital or fire station. These are the last places to lose power when the rolling blackouts occur.] 

I've been plunged headon into an absolute chaotic nightmare trying to fully understand the issues of copyright as they apply to newsfeeds.

The short answer is that in terms of the law, copyright wins. You legally cannot show an RSS feed on another website without the express permission of the content owner. There are rare exceptions. The existence of a syndication feed on a website does not grant any rights to the content it contains.

My previous post on why Google can get away with it, is simply because 'they are Google'. According to every document that I've managed to cram in the last few days, they are clearly in violation of copyright law both in letter and spirit. But if you feel infringed, your only choice is a lawsuit - and you will be going up against one of the shrewdest collections of intellectual property lawyers ever assembled. I don't believe anybody has attempted it for Google Reader, although others who have sued Google over copyright infringement have come home with their tail between their legs.

In any other case, posting a newsfeed on another website (in whole or in part) puts you in questionable legal status. Fair use is nebulous. You cannot code fair use into software, and it doesn't offer any protection against getting sued for infringement. It merely gives you some guidelines for a handful of possible defenses.

You can of course view a newsfeed legally on another website if you have the express permission of the copyright owner. But again, this cannot be coded into software, and even then you can't make it available for another person to read - who has not obtained similar permission. This makes Digg, Technorati, Google Reader, and del.icio.us violators in principle, if not in fact. Truncating articles (as some of these sites do) is a defense, it is not a legal standard - and they still could face legal challenges. This is not just limited to RSS/Atom and other syndication formats. It applies to any website content.

If you're a small website operator like me, and you provide any publicly accessible newsfeeds without express permission of the feed owner (or copyright holder), you're technically in violation of U.S. law (this assumes that the U.S. is somehow involved in the content and/or reproduction at issue). Even if members create their own feed sources - but in that case, the members are in violation - not you. You are guilty of facilitating their infringement.

There's only one way out of this mess. Somebody has to sue Google over this issue and lose. Then we'll have some established legal principle. Until then as one writer wrote - 'view a newsfeed, go to jail'. (Though technically copyright law is a civil violation and not a criminal violation).

We were warned not to expect much - that Halloween is an 'American' holiday that just isn't practiced here.

The numbers tell a different story.

As far as children are concerned, it was about 97% participation. We had 30-40 visitors at the door, which accounts for every kid in the neighborhood except for 1 girl across the street who didn't join in.

As far as adults are concerned, the participation rate was about half. Many folks had the TV on in the living room, but didn't come to the door. Couldn't be bothered. Of the half that participated, it was quite common of them to run out of lollies (candy). It's a new neighborhood, and they probably expected about a dozen kids, which is what we were told the youth population was a year ago.

Now I took a group of my daughter's friends around the block - six in all. Five had never done Halloween before. Upon knowing this fact, I didn't expect much, but there were kids in costume everywhere. It was quite funny that these girls were more concerned with their costumes and various wardrobe malfunctions than they were about getting to the next house. It took 45 minutes to get through one little cul-de-sac of about 10 houses, and almost an hour to get down the next side street. Obviously amateurs. We saw some teen-age boys that had it down - they came back around probably three times before we finally shooed them away at 9:30. I'm sure they covered the entire east side of town - because if I was their age, I would've been one of them.

So to say Halloween isn't really practiced here isn't entirely true. It has a solid foothold, and with such high children participation rates,  it's only a matter of time.

Tomorrow is Daylight Savings. Remember 'Spring forward, fall back'? That's right - tomorrow we move it forward, no matter how odd that may seem. It's October, but it's spring.

At least the Australian government hasn't been mucking with and tweaking DST as it did before the 2000 Olympics. The software engineers need time to code in the changes - I think that a lot of the world now has Sydney time right.

Well that would be anybody using the Olsen timezone databases. I know personally about thirty web services which just give you a choice of 'GMT+10' - and these are all going to be wrong tomorrow. On the bright side, I really don't care if they get it wrong. I'm not using any of them for anything globally time sensitive. It always makes my head hurt trying to figure out how many hours I'm going to be away from GMT with all the conversions and tweaks in effect. I suppose it'll probably be GMT+11. One hour forward. But wait, we'll then be one hour closer to Greenwhich, England as the earth spins. Not further from it. So maybe it's GMT+9. Silicon Valley will be... Uh, I give up. It's in negative GMT and the time is going back. So is it forward or backward? I'll have to figure it out on paper to work out the difference between LA (where this server is) and Sydney (close enough to where I am).  

But this will also give a good test of my own daylight savings and timezone functions (which use Olsen tables). The U.S. is going one hour back and we're going one hour forward. I might be poring over the code tomorrow if something gets askew.  

The sound studio is just about back in full operation - for the first time in several years.

I've been doing all the tests and configurations, and only have a few more cables and a bit more PC configuration until it's ready for use. It fell into a state of entropy about 2002 what with combining two households and trying to run a music store. Half the equipment ended up at the store, and I never quite had a dedicated PC to spare since. I've been able to use all the tools for making music in the ensuing years, but the ability to store it conveniently has been lacking.

A lot has happened since the days of Maxwell Silverthorn. My music has evolved considerably, and my life has been through some pretty radical changes.

It's time for a new CD.

A car was pulled off to the side of the pass this morning. Not in a picnic area - but in a generally inconvenient place to stop. I knew right away he was in trouble.

Little did I know... As I got closer I could see two gentlemen peering into the boot (that's a 'trunk' for my American friends) and they did not look very happy.

I've mentioned on other occasions that the MacQuarie Pass is at least as good a roller coaster ride as Disneyland's Matterhorn.  

So I edged by them, looking to see if I could ascertain what difficulty they were in. Just as I drew near, one man lifts up a flat of eggs from inside the boot (trunk). And it's dripping with sticky yucky goo. Took a turn too fast and the groceries rolled around in the boot (trunk), and the eggs got smooshed. I can only imagine the mess these two blokes (dudes) were looking at in the boot (trunk). Glad it wasn't me.

The continuing spread of equine influenza (horse flu) has resulted in the government declaring a 'buffer zone' at Bowral - about 15 minutes from us. The quarantine region has spread to Hill Top, about 30 minutes away. They are vaccinating all the horses in the buffer zone. I call it a Maginot Line. The flu can and has already jumped such small buffer areas. This is a big deal, because although horse flu has already been around the globe, Australia was isolated from it until now. Infection rates among non-vaccinated horses (as they all are here) are roughly 100%. 

In related news, we finally got our horse out of the quarantine station, where he was sitting at the beginning (aka ground zero) of the outbreak.  Except we couldn't move him anywhere close to us since he's been exposed (although vaccinated in America). So we had to move him into a 'purple zone', or somewhere the flu is already raging. You can see the pictures of his arrival here.

Imagine trying to get somebody to put up a horse that was at ground zero during the outbreak. Amanda made a lot of calls - and finally found one that would take him. It's on the other side of Sydney, about 2 1/2 hours away. But at least he's finally 'free' of the government station. He moved there over the weekend, and now we just have to wait until it's safe to bring him home finally - which could be another six months.

The government is asking us to put up roughly $90/day for the month or more that he was quarantined, plus daily vet checks. We haven't got the final bill yet, but it could be astronomical. Since he's a 'pleasure horse' (aka 'pet') and not a thoroughbred race horse, we don't qualify for all the government assistance that they provide to 'the industry'. This is a bit unfair, since they already have write-offs, and concessions, and insurance against such things. And to top it off, our horse wasn't part of the problem. He was vaccinated (as all horses coming into the country are supposed to be) and didn't get the flu even after a month around other infected horses. We're just caught in the middle of this fiasco and may have to pay through the nose for it.  

Of course if the Maginot Line doesn't hold, we'll be sitting in a purple zone in the next few weeks and might be able to bring him home once the flu hits here - which it probably will.  

The evening commute turned into chaos. Total meltdown. Everybody at a standstill.

What could've caused this catastrophe? Major smashup? Police action? Toxic spill on the road? No.

Four baby ducks. 

As an American import, the first time I actually saw a kangaroo in the wild was novel and interesting. Even the second time. Then they started showing up as roadkill. Now the novelty has begun to wear off. Just another roo. No big deal. Just like the wombats before that.

But there's a lot of novelty and interesting stuff left in this land. The weather is warming up. Time for the snakes to come out...  

Imagine my surprise when I took a little walk amongst the bramble off the beaten path and found myself surrounded by a five-pointed leafy plant that is illegal to possess. They're growing everywhere - totally uncultivated and wild. I had always heard that such places existed, but had never actually encountered one before.

In California forests, if you encounter said plants, you're advised to quickly depart and not make any noise. People have been killed for stumbling onto somebody's private plantation. In this case, they're just weeds - growing on the side of the road.

This had me pulling my hair out yesterday, so I thought I'd share the experience with enough key terms that the next person pulling their hair out will find it.

I was installing my CMS software on a work machine. I'll likely be doing additional development on it, and the university is the best place to do this. But that's neither here nor there. My software is designed around 'clean URLs'; which means what you see in the URL bar isn't (usually) littered with code and operating system artifacts. So for instance to post to my weblog, I go to the URL /post/weblog, not something like post.php?op=weblog.

To accomplish this, I use an Apache webserver module called 'mod_rewrite', which takes care of the nitty details of this process. Mod_rewrite is not without its faults, but that's the subject of another article. It does the job. The biggest thing it does is let you leave out the '.php', except I'm letting it do a whole lot more.

Anyway I'll cut to the chase. My software was horribly broken after installing it yesterday. It took hours to figure out why. Something else was trying to provide clean URLs and strip '.php' from places where I actually needed to have it in order for things to work. Well that's not technically correct either. It was actually executing PHP files by URL without the extension. Except that these were 'include files'. They weren't meant to be executed directly. They were meant to be included in something else, and the something else was managed by mod_rewrite. The something else was never getting called. 

This was inconceivable. Nothing in any of the system release notes said anything about some magic new clean URL ability. This was on Debian (edge). Apache, PHP, MySQL. I tried all the sites. I googled for everything I could think of. Clean URL debian. Clean url apache. '.php not needed'. mod_rewrite. strip file extension. ForceType. (ForceType also lets you execute files without providing a filename extension). I scoured the last several months of Apache release notes, to no avail.

Finally after several hours I happened upon a little gem of a snippet on an obscure website. 'Turn on Multiviews instead of ForceType'. Debian has multiviews turned on by default, but this is the first I'd heard of it. I had assumed (never do this of course) that it was yet another fancy mod_dir option or something I didn't care about.

No. Multiviews is a slick trick for Apache that takes any pathname, and if it thinks it can find a page to return, it returns it. It uses the basename of the file in the URL and if there's no file, it looks for the filename with an extension. Any extension. Then it sends the file back. So it gives you a clean URL. You type in 'index' and it will send back 'index.htm' or 'index.html' or 'index.php' or 'index.pl' or 'index.shtml'. You get the idea. You can test this on any site that has multiviews turned on by asking for 'index' and see if you actually get a page. Normally you wouldn't. 

If the URL is 'post' and there's a file in the directory called 'post.php' it will send that file back even if you don't want it to. So I'll let you research it further if multiviews is what you want. It's actually pretty cool. In my case I had to disable it.

Options -Multiviews in the .htaccess did the trick and made everything work again.  

My daily drive to work takes me down (and back up) the MacQuarie Pass. That's pronounced 'McQuarry', not 'Mackerie'.

This takes you down the edge of the Illawarra Escarpment, through the rain forest, and finally opens into pasture land at the bottom - about 15km further. You're literally driving down the side of a cliff. At the top it's about 1.5 lanes wide with only an occasional metal post between you and a plunge straight over the edge - full of blind curves and hairpin loopbacks like the one shown above.  It's a wild roller coaster ride, and always full of surprises. This morning there was a tree in the middle of the road. Not a branch, a tree. Last night on the way home, there was a kangaroo in the middle of the road. Couple weeks back there was an 18-wheeler truck straddling the dirt spot where the red car is in the above picture. Stuck. Last week it was fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. I was about where the truck is on the left of the picture going uphill, and there was some maniac going downhill about where the white car is on the left. Doing about 80km/h (~50MPH) in a 15km (~9MPH) zone. Passing another car. Next to a cliff. On a blind curve, next to a hairpin loop. In zero visibility fog. There's barely enough room to pass oncoming traffic here without scraping each other's mirrors.

It starts to be entertaining to try and predict what will be thrown at me on the next time up/down the road. But that's the fun of the MacQuarie. It's always unpredictable.

Just another day.