Sunday photos

In an effort to put on a few more miles after the Xmas break (in order to take off a few extra kilos), I headed west on Sunday morning for a few laps of the Olympic Park precinct. On the way, I spotted this mad bastard cycling across this rather large bridge in the car lane - sensible people like me stick to the bike track. However, with his speed, and with the next to nil traffic at that time on Sunday morning - why not?

This bloke was making a big deal of racing up this short rise, so I had to take his photo. It was accompanied by lots of huffing and puffing and throwing of the bike from side to side.

Arty, sculptury type things along the river bank. It took me a minute to work out that they're supposed to be boats.

Nice bit of tile work around the base of those poles - I could do with this in my bathroom. I'd feel very Roman Emperor then.

A bloke paddling out to his yacht in a very tiny boat - like a cockle shell. If a ferry went past, even the smallest bow wave would have swamped him.

It was definitely the time and place for lots and lots and lots and lots of cyclists - and almost no cars. I reckon I saw five cars over a few hours - during peak hour, the route I took is balls to the wall traffic. Not far from where I took this photo is an Ikea store - as soon as that opens, traffic madness descends on this whole area. It's best to be gone from here at least half an hour before Ikea opens up. Never get between a desperate weekend decorator and an Ikea store.

There are seven cyclists in this shot.

There are nine in this one. I could bore you all night with lots of photos of streams of cyclists, but I won't. Just accept my word that there were an awful lot of them about.

Tai Chi was also pretty popular in a few spots. Yes, there are only two doing it here, but there were singles and pairs and small groups dotted all over the place.

I was dying for a coffee after a while, but the only place that I could find was the Gloria Jeans at Rhodes. A few desperate cyclists were stopping for a coffee, but I decided to press on and try and find an open cafe somewhere in the area. I completely failed. There are cafes out there, but none were open when I went past them. I somehow struggled home with caffeine depleted blood.

When I got into Olympic Park, the amount of traffic made passing difficult in places. Most of the cyclists appeared to be blokes my age and older - no young whipper-snappers tearing around at that hour. I noticed later that although I saw hundreds and hundreds of cyclists that morning, not one was riding around without a helmet. I'm used to seeing at least one person a day without one, but I guess the Sunday morning demographic is older and much more risk averse that the hip young unhelmeted people I see when riding to work.

Rollerskates - I reckon this bloke was middle aged when Rollerball came out in 1975. (What a great movie that was).

As part of the housing development out that way, the developers have put this fitness thing in. I guess it was part of the development approval. There was no sign anyone had ever used any of it. I did spot an empty sauce packet, which suggests it's a nice spot to sit and eat a pie and sauce. I think what the locals want to do out here is walk, cycle and do a bit of Tai Chi. Doing pull ups and push ups and crunches is just not their cup of tea.

Willing and able - a tale of two sectors

I was having a chat with a work colleague recently, and he was raving on about the concept of "willing and able" - or if you're talking about the public sector, "unwilling and unable". For the benefit of Cav, I will now ask my "brother", the management consultant, to take over this post. (For the rest of you, just ignore the fact that I now have two voices in my head arguing with each other).

After 20 years of working in the public and private sectors, I'd have to say that the biggest difference in performance between the two is how they treat the dullards. The private sector has them, but they tend to get rid of them on a regular basis and they also tend to not allow their numbers to build up to the point where they become a risk to the company. Any operation can afford a couple of idiots - but when the number of clowns gets so large that they take over the circus, then the place turns to shit. The public sector doesn't do any regular house cleaning of staff, so over time, the number of oxygen thieves builds up to a point where they reach a critical mass, and then the performance of the whole department goes down the toilet.

As far as high performers goes, I've met plenty in both the private and public sectors. In fact I'd go so far as to say that at the top level of performance, the proportion is about the same across both sectors. There are some very bright, very hard working people in the public sector - unfortunately, they are dragged down by some absolute boat anchors.

I'm not saying that the oxygen thieves and WOFTAMs are stupid (Waste of Flipping Time and Money) - in fact many of them are exceptionally bright. Their problem is generally that their priorities are not aligned with the aims of the department. They go off on tangents and do their own thing, and sometimes work like mad to sabotage the work of anyone that isn't following their tangent. Others are manic empire builders, or serial organisational reshufflers, or followers of every management fad that ever made it into paperback. Some are lazy as hell, or spend all their time running a business on the side. I have met a few genuinely thick people in my time, but they are pretty rare. The rest are smart people doing very stupid things.

This is where we get to our "willing and able" matrix. Anyone who has ever seen a BCG matrix will recognise where I stole this idea from. Your top class performers - the "A" crowd, are willing (motivated) and able (skilled, educated, experienced) to get he job done. The "B" performers are a bit less motivated or don't have the top level skills of the "A" crowd. Those in the "C" group are just getting by - doing enough to earn their pay, and not much else. The "D" group are both unmotivated and unskilled.
I worked for one government department that looked like the above - it was quite new, so it hadn't been around long enough to accumulate any barnacles on its hull - and the CEO was also ruthless enough to sack anyone that failed to perform. That was a once-off performance; I have never seen another public sector CEO with the balls to do that (and our CEO was a woman). That department was a great place to work - it really got things done, and morale was excellent.

I've also spent a bit of time in a department like the picture below - it had been around for a long time, been through endless restructures (which always resulted in the good performers leaving) and was completely hamstrung by a huge dead weight of under performing numpties. In fact a massive amount of organisational time was spent in trying to prevent the oxygen thieves from sabotaging and destroying the entire place. Sacking them was not an option, so management spent all its time putting out the fires that the WOFTAMs deliberately lit on a regular basis. They work very hard to create a crisis, then sit back and watch the fun start. It's how they got their kicks. I suspect a fair few of them were psychopaths. Working there was the pits.

Since leaving that sinking ship, I've worked for a wide array of private companies. I spent some time with an well known entrepreneurial company - the owner deliberately employs young, enthusiastic people, and the image of the company reflects that. Unfortunately, those young staff tend to be wet behind the ears, and are not as highly skilled as older, more experienced workers tend to be. They're as motivated as hell, but sometimes they don't have a clue what they're doing. It's an interesting strategy, and it would probably work really well if the youngsters were leavened with a few older, wiser grey heads - but that wouldn't suit the hip, young image of the company, so they are left to blunder on regardless. A fun place to work, but a bit tiring after a while.
Another mob I worked for went through a takeover and about 40% of the staff were made redundant. Unlike the public sector, the redundancies were involuntary. If there was one job and two candidates, the candidate who failed got the boot. They were paid well on their way out the door, but the process had a pretty shocking impact on those that survived. Essentially, they did just about nothing for 3 months except work on ensuring they got a job. Their regular work was put aside - if they failed to get the job, they wouldn't have to worry about catching up on it, would they? Many of them ended up with jobs that they didn't really like, which upset them no end. In short, a lot of willing and able people were turned into unwilling and able - skilled, but annoyed and thus underperforming.
A company that I recently worked for laid off 10% of its workforce when I was there. They did the same a few years ago when I did another job for them. (I'm sounding like the kiss of death, aren't I?) Management worked pretty hard to ensure that they got rid of the dead wood during that process. In some cases, they had to get rid of people who were quite good - it was simply a matter of letting the bottom performers go in each team. In other cases, a team was carrying quite a bit of dead wood, but they only got rid of the worst cases, leaving a few useless ones in place. Each team had to get rid of 10% across the board. It didn't matter if one team had 5% useless and another 15% - 10% had to go. I didn't hear anyone complain too loudly - the payouts were very good, and since the object was to save money, they got rid of the most expensive people first (the CEO and a couple of other top managers).

The public sector does it all arse about though by offering voluntary redundancy. A lot of people in the "A" and "B" groups take the money and run, knowing they will get a job elsewhere very quickly. Those in the "D" group hang on like grim death - and they always seem to survive every purge. The department is then faced with recruiting more top performers (always a difficult task) and getting them up to speed in a hurry.

I'm not saying that sacking lots of useless public servants tomorrow is the answer. One challenge of being a manager is working out why people are not performing, and then trying to turn that around - either through re-training, putting an unhappy person into a different job or even moving staff around (some people just can't stand sitting next to certain personality types). If you can't fix them, then it's time they looked for a job elsewhere - they're either in the wrong industry, or the wrong company within that industry. (eg, a boat builder might be unhappy with the boss at one boat building company, but perform much better with another boat builder - that's moving between companies within the same industry. Other boat builders might just be jack of building boats - it's time they tried another industry, like running a florist or a cafe).

Here's the number one difference between the public and private sectors; in the private sector, managers are generally held accountable for the performance of their teams. That means they either motivate or improve the skills of their staff, or they sack them. If they fail, the manager gets the sack. In the public sector, managers never have to worry about losing their jobs. They really aren't under any pressure to make tough decisions - like getting rid of people.

Bah humbug revisited

I found out this morning that one of the clients that I am doing work for has donated nearly twenty grand for banana bender flood relief. They did a whip around of the staff on Friday, and the company matched the staff donations.

I won't tell you the name of the company. You won't read about this in the news - the only people that will ever know probably are the local employees of the company. This company doesn't have an office in Queensland, and doesn't really do any business up there.

It's just an example of people getting on with it without a lot of cheering and waving.

A couple of vids

Blogger's video processing engine stalled on me a few days ago - it simply refused to process the video in this post - I think it has finally emerged and is ready for viewing.

Here's the first in a series of short-short vids. This first is called "death by taxi". I wrote about it a few days ago. I was annoyed at being held up by the slow moving taxi in front of me, but I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and decided against making any potentially suicidal overtaking moves. A cyclist coming up behind me thought he could safely overtake the taxi on the outside, but he was wrong. I know from experience that when cars go around this corner, they always go wide to the right. That's what this taxi did, and the cyclist almost got squished between it and a low concrete divider.

The second one shows a mum carrying a kid stepping out in front of me without so much as a glance in my direction. You can't see her head in the video - and I couldn't see it in real life either. Her kids head was blocking her view in this direction. Instead of looking around her kid, she just stepped off the tram platform. I've seen boneheads do this in the past when a tram has been coming along instead of a bike. Luckily for both of us, I saw what she was doing and guessed that she was about to step in front of me, so I stood on the brakes before she actually departed the platform. A more aggressive and less aware cyclist would have cleaned her up - along with the kid. Headlines would then blare "mother and child run down by insane cyclist", rather than "idiot steps in front of cyclist without bothering to look".

Friday photo

I feel ripped off - I'm sure I took more than one photo yesterday! How could I go a day with taking just one photo? It's not like I dropped the camera or the battery went flat. Maybe my reactions are slowing down - I'm just not whipping the camera out quickly enough to catch the action as I zip by.

This bloke was dawdling around the Bay Run. This section is rarely used by cyclists because it essentially ends in a dead end just ahead. What's the point of riding along a section of track that goes nowhere? I ride along here because I jump onto a street at the end and that takes me towards town, but for cyclists wanting to do laps of the Bay to keep fit, it's a bit of a waste of space.

I guess it is a case of "build it, and they will come" - but only if you build it properly and complete 100% of whatever you are building. Cyclists won't use a track that is only 90% complete - or in this case, about 50% complete.

From reading the local rag, I notice the missing section is going to be built soon. However, the numbskulls in charge aren't going to build properly separated bike and pedestrian paths (like you see in the above photo - pink for bikes, black for people). Instead, they're going to but in a single, 3 metre wide shared path.

That's about the stupidest thing possible - but that's what we've come to expect from our incredibly stupid Labor government. They can't get the big things right, and they can't get the small things right. They fuck everything they touch.

Thursday photos

I know today is Friday - at least it's Friday here in Sydney. Although it is getting close to Saturday. I've named this "Thursday photos" as I was busy last night and these are the photos from yesterday. As I don't have much time tonight, Friday's photos will be loaded on Saturday. So there.

I didn't do anything arty or funny with the camera to get this shot - I simply set it to auto, pointed and clicked as I rode along. It came out this way - honest. No post-processing performed either. It's actually a good reflection of how the light looked at that time and place on Thursday morning. I'm chuffed with my skill with the camera.

God knows what I did to get this effect - see how it's all blurred and twisted on the right? Camera must have slipped slightly in my glove.

Here is this bloke photographed without any pretentious arty wankiness - he seems to be dangling a few containers of Chinese take away from his handlebars, which would be a strange thing to do at 0700hrs.

What is this - blue shirt morning?

And another blue shirt! Trust me - I didn't set out to photograph only cyclists in blue shirts either.

Phew - a non-blue shirt. Don't worry mate - a few thousand more kilometres, and you'll be as sleek and lithe as me (says he who hasn't seen his navel in a decade).

Bloke doing a bit of overtaking as we go through Pyrmont.

Cyclists bunching up at the Pyrmont Bridge lights. There's a bloody traffic jam of bikes here some mornings.

When I came past here a few days ago, there were several photographers setup here with fancy equipment taking photos of the wall opposite. I figured someone was going to come along and do something special with the wall - like paint a Picasso mural on it or something.

Nope. I was wrong.

Coming home was windy as hell - a good day to fly a kite, which is what this bloke on the beach was doing (the yellow thing is a great big kite). Of course he had to reel it in just as I got my camera out to take the photo.

And that was Thursday. I'm off to bed.

Taking orders literally?

I wonder if this undercover cop was told that his mission was to "fuck the protest movement"?

Tonight, a woman came forward to add to accusations that Kennedy in his undercover role had sexual relationships with women in the protest movement. Her allegations raise important questions for his senior police handlers about his conduct while operating undercover.

Giving details about how Kennedy gained her trust and slept with her many times over the course of a year, Anna, 26, said she felt "violated" by the actions of the police officer.

She now questions whether the British police have allowed a string of undercover agents to use sex as a "tactic" to disrupt and glean information about environmental campaigns

I don't do empathy

The floods in Queensland have brought out the usual Clinton-esque "I feel your pain" comments across teh interwebs.

Sorry, that's not for me.

I can relate to the personal difficulties that friends and acquaintances are having, and I don't mind offering my sympathies or help to them. However, I just can't muster up the gall to offer a hug to all of Queensland. For starters, that would involve hugging Queenslanders, and I'm not sure that would be very pleasant. Especially if they haven't showered for a few days.

I blame Princess Diana for all this mawkish outpouring of faux-sympathy. People feel the need to say the appropriate thing - and after that, they don't have to lift a bloody finger to help. They've expunged their guilt by offering meaningless sympathetic noises.

Yes, accuse me of bah-humbug if you like, but unless you personally know people who have been badly affected or who have died, how about you just clam up and keep your "pain" to yourself. I'm much more impressed by people who give freely of their time and money, and who don't say a thing about it.

Besides, Queenslanders are a tough lot. I'm sure they can do without a lot of southern cockroaches crying over their plight.

Trams and Darwin Awards

Thought I was going to see a Darwin Award issued this week. There I am, waiting for the lights to change when I see a bloke across the road walk right in front of a tram coming towards us. I don't think he even glanced to his right before stepping in front of the tram - the tram honked at him and he had to do a little run to get out of the way.

The video flattens the perspective so it doesn't look like the tram gets that close to him - from where I was watching from, I'm surprised the tram didn't clip him on the way past.

Morons. They're everywhere.

Wednesday photos

It started as a grey and miserable day - I thought it was going to rain again - but the sun came out and it hit 31 degrees on the way home. Humidity is around 80% - I am currently leaking water from every pore. Last week, there was a bloke in a tinnie just off here having a fish. Today, it was a couple of blokes in kayaks. There were also a million runners out this morning - amazing how many people are up and about at 0700 doing stuff like this.

A very speedy older gent who came roaring out of a side street just in front of me. I don't think he expected to see a bike in the bike lane - he had a slightly surprised look on his face, as in, "Oops, maybe I should have braked and looked first".

Don't see many rollerbladers anymore. Boy, was that a flash in the pan.

I had a quick chat with this bloke at the lights - then he took off and left me looking at his tail light rapidly receding into the distance.

A stack waiting to happen - what this bloke doesn't realise is that cars come up the street from the right and cut the corner here as they turn right. He'd be lucky if a car only ran over his front wheel.

Cyclist about to jump the red light.

Huffing and puffing over the ANZAC bridge.

A very fit looking bloke.

It's a conspiracy, I tell you

Men in utes are out to get me. Particularly those displaying P plates. Almost got taken out by two today.

Then again, young idiot males are liable to crash into just about anyone or anything, so maybe they aren't out to get me.

Note - almost every ute that I have had a close call with has been a Holden. Just the one Ford. Fords are obviously driven by boring old people who can't find second gear.

Dams and floods

The Shadowlands starts a debate on how useful dams might have been in Queensland.

As Gavin notes, Peter Garrett knocked back a Queensland dam because it might have impacted on the habitat of some endangered frogs and things.

I'm wondering this - how would the impact of the dam compare to the impact of a fucking enormous flood? Do those habitats still exist, or are they now 30 feet under water? What sort of condition will those habitats be in when the waters subside, and will those endangered species ever come back? What if they've all been wiped out by the flood? Can we then start pouring concrete for a new dam?

Of course Garrett and the Federal environmental pubes would never consider such an outcome, as they couldn't conceive of it ever raining again in Australia thanks to climate change.

Idiots.

Finland - a snippet about its education system

Finland generally places around the top in various league tables of international educational performance. That podcast that I listened to the other day mentioned that a Finnish student will learn about an extra year's worth of stuff compared to an Australian student, even though they go to school for the same amount of time. They just better at this learning stuff.

Here is something worth knowing though - "tracking" students into academic sheep and vocational goats:

Expansion of education and changes in the structure of schooling — for instance, a shift toward later tracking — appear to have contributed to increases in intergenerational mobility in Sweden and Finland. On the other hand, in the United States and United Kingdom mobility seems to have stagnated and possibly decreased in recent decades despite educational advance.

and

It’s worth noting that both Sweden and Finland have (Finland more rigidly than Sweden) have education divided into those academic and vocational streams from 15 onwards. As we know very well, the UK abandoned this (and sure, perhaps 11 was too young to be making the distinction) and the US hasn’t really ever had it.

Here's where I start wondering.... when Finland is compared to other countries, are we comparing the entire Finnish education system (academic and vocational), or are we just looking at the academic side of things?

It would be easy for Finland to top the scores if they'd already screened out all the non-academic plumbers and gasfitters and were only putting the academic-minded kids through the Maths and English exams that make up these international tables.

Just a thought....

Tuesday photos

I eyed this yesterday and couldn't help myself - eye had to go back and get a photo - "Artificial Eye Specialist". Who knew such professions existed?

This is a newish bike shop/cafe in Lilyfield - the Bicycle Garage. The eye guy is almost next door. On the spur of the moment, I pulled in here recently just to try their coffee - it's excellent. Really top notch. They're a bit old fashioned in that they don't have a website. Who cares - what would you rather have? Great coffee or a spoofy looking website?

It's going to be grey skies all week, along with a bit of rain. Nothing like the rain the banana benders are getting. More like a spot of drizzle every now and then - just enough to get the humidity up to 99%. It's not hot down here at present, but sheesh, it's sticky and miserable. I want to have a shower every two hours.

Today must have been declared "ride on the footpath day". Everywhere I looked, there were cyclists trundling along the footpaths. None hooning or ducking and weaving in amongst the pedestrians - just people quietly strolling along at a gentle pace, taking it easy and enjoying life.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, I was doing my usual blast past the Hubbards. I've found that I just can't point the camera in the general direction of the subject when taking a photo from side on - I actually have to look at the screen in order to frame the cyclist properly. Very annoying. It's so much easier photographing people from behind.

Like these two.

One of my pet hates - tradesmen who park in the bike lane, and don't bother putting out orange cones to divert traffic around their van. There were two plumbers vans here, and a few blokes ripping up the footpath. Park next to your work site by all means - but put out the cones so that us cyclists have a safe path around your stupid van. I felt like stopping and letting down his tyres - but that would have meant he would have spent another few hours blocking the lane. Much better to just ride past and quietly fume.

A quick comment on sights and targets

Much has been written about the use of cross-hairs in various political campaigns, and whether this contributed to the Arizona shooting.

Just a small technical point - the loon who did the shooting used a Glock. The Glock does not come with a scope, so you don't see cross-hairs when aiming it. You see something more like this:

Why be picky? Because of all the ranting that the pictures of cross-hairs set this guy off. Somehow the association between the cross-hairs that you would see in an old fashioned rifle scope would make this bloke buy a pistol and shoot all and sundry.

Old fashioned rifle scope? Fancy modern sights employ a red targeting dot, like the sight picture below.

Cross-hairs are so 20th century. They're the sort of thing you find in a Norden bomb site on a B-17, not a modern weapon.

Just saying.

I hope they fry the guy by the way. Elections are the best way to remove a politician you disagree with.

A good education interview

Listened to a good Counterpoint podcast today - you can read the entire transcript here, or listen to the podcast. Driving is my favourite time to listening to stuff like this - only problem is that I can't take notes or blog about it on the road!

A couple of key points stood out.

First is that Australia's education standing is pretty good by world standards. There are a few exceptional countries out in front (like Finland), but we are not far behind. We're not a basket case like the UK. Although we like to moan and complain about it, and Gillard feels the need to inflict a national curriculum and other crap on us, things are not that bad.

Second, real expenditure on education went up 41% between 1995 and 2006. I've blogged before about where that money is going - or not going - in NSW. A great deal of the money went into reducing class sizes, but to date, educational outcomes have not improved.

Third, we'd be at the top of the international league tables if we could improve "teacher effectiveness" by 10%. I have no idea what "teacher effectiveness" is, or how you measure it, or how you improve it by 10%. I guess if the experts knew what it was and how to improve it, we'd be at the top of the league tables.

Fourth, a top teacher can teach a year's worth of curriculum in six months, whilst a pretty ordinary teacher takes the entire year. I've experienced a top teacher like that - in years 11 and 12, he not only taught us the high school Economics course - he also taught us the first year Uni Economics course. That allowed me to booze my way through my first year of Uni, which gave me a lot of bad habits that I never managed to shake for the following years. Still, that wasn't his fault.

Anyway, have a listen. You might learn something.

The SMH is full of crap

Nasty little story in the paper today about Vodafone - unfortunately, someone at the SMH has decided to juice up the story to make it sound much worse than it really is.

THE personal details of millions of Vodafone customers, including their names, home addresses, driver's licence numbers and credit card details, have been publicly available on the internet in what is being described as an ''unbelievable'' lapse in security by the mobile phone giant.

No you twit, they are not "publicly available". You need a username and password to access them. If they were publicly availably, I'd be looking up some people I don't like right now.

The Sun-Herald is aware of criminal groups paying for the private information of some Vodafone customers to stand over them.

Which criminal groups and when? How many times has this happened. Once? Twice? Provide some proof, not idle gossip.

Other people have apparently obtained logins to check their spouses' communications.

"Apparently" - which means it's gossip. No proof offered.

Personal details, accessible from any computer because they are kept on an internet site rather than on Vodafone's internal system, include which numbers a person has dialled or texted, plus from where and when.

They're only accessible from any computer if you have a username and password.

The full extent of the privacy breach is unknown but The Sun-Herald has learnt that possibly thousands of people have logins that can be passed around and used by anyone to gain full access to the accounts of about 4 million Vodafone customers.

This is really beating it up - "the full extent of the privacy breach is unknown" - makes it sound really bad. Plus the bit about "possibly thousands of people have logins" - of course thousands of people have logins; they've got thousands of employees and agents and call centre staff.

Professor Michael Fraser, the head of the Australian Communications Law Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, said that it appeared to be a major breach of the company's privacy obligations and ''unbelievably slack security''.

Whenever a story needs a bit of credibility, always ask a professor.

''The fact you can look up anybody as easily as that seems to be a gross breach of privacy and resulting in an almost negligent exposure to criminal activity,'' said Professor Fraser, who also heads the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

''Customer information is accessed through a secure web portal, accessible to authorised employees and dealers via a secure login and password,'' he said.

The revelations come as Vodafone is facing potential lawsuits and widespread customer dissatisfaction with network access.

Irrelevant. If your story doesn't have enough heft, add in some bad news from elsewhere.

More than 9000 customers have joined a class action and the company has set up a number of taskforces to try to fix the problems.

In this new saga for Vodafone, dealers have revealed that they are frequently asked to do ''favours'' and to pass on their login details.

Ok, so dealers are frequently asked to do favours. The point is, do they actually provide the favours, or do they knock them back? Cops are also asked all the time to do favours like this on the police system - but as they know all access is monitored, they knock them back (the stupid ones don't, get caught and are sacked and charged).

Because the customer database is not an intranet (internal company system) and instead on the internet, users with a password can log in to the portal from anywhere, then access any customer's information.

So what? That's the whole idea.

Vodafone retailers have said each store has a user name and password for the system. That access is shared by staff and every three months it is changed. Other mobile dealers who sell Vodafone products also get full access to the database.

I'd imagine so. How are you supposed to connect new customers and help existing customers if you don't have access to the database? Duh.

Anyone with full access can look up a customer's bills and make changes to accounts. Limited access allows searching by name, which takes much longer and is more involved but can be just as effective when done correctly. ''It's scary stuff in the wrong hands,'' one dealer told The Sun-Herald.

Ooh, it's "scary stuff in the wrong hands". Sounds like the sort of quote you'd make up on a slow news day. Is it really scary stuff that I can walk into a store and ask the dealer to make changes to my account? I would have thought that is good stuff.

Disclaimer - I don't use Vodafone as their country coverage is not as good as Telstra. I don't particularly like or dislike them - I just hate media beatups.

Why should taxpayers pay for this?

Thanks to Andrew Bolt, we get this story about a couple aborting twin boys conceived via IVF because they want a girl:

A COUPLE who terminated twin boys conceived through IVF are fighting to choose the sex of their next child - because they want a girl.

In a case that raises the ethical question of sex selection, the couple have taken their fight to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. They already have three sons and said they now want to have a girl after their baby daughter died.

An independent panel, known as the Patient Review Panel, rejected the couple's bid to choose the gender of their next child using IVF. They now want that decision overturned. The tribunal, which ruled it has the power to review the earlier decision, will hear the case in March.

I just hope they aren't claiming the Medicare rebates for the IVF treatment, which runs at $4,500 - $5,000.

Apart from the moral issue of aborting kids because you don't like their sex (which I think is attrocious - I'd sterilise the pair of them), why the hell should the taxpayer be funding any of this? I just hope we aren't picking up any of the tab. If they have, we should not only cut the balls off the father - he should be made to eat them too.

I've actually done a fibre cost-benefit analysis

You may not know this, but most state governments are sitting on big fibre networks. Quite a few government utilities have rolled out fibre on their own over the last few decades to support their own operations.

For instance, the electricity transmission companies have strung it along their pylons. The RTA has run it along motorways. I'm sure the water mob have laid fibre alongside their pipes. Same with gas. The railways have run it alongside every bit of track in the metro area (not worth it out in the country - surprise, surprise). The railway signalling network used to run over a copper network; most of it is now run over fibre. Not that signalling needs a lot of bandwidth - I remember being told once that it needs 9600kb at most.

Back in my public service days, I worked with a government agency on a cost benefit analysis for hooking up to one of these fibre networks. The fibre was already in place - it ran past most of the larger offices for this agency, which had premises all over the metro area. It was just a matter of tapping into the fibre and putting in the right sort of network kit.

Doing the costing was easy - we needed so many switches at such and such a cost. eg - 50 sites, two switches per site, $10k per switch. Pretty simple maths.

We brought in a cabling company to estimate the hauling of the last mile fibre tails - we needed to bore under roads and pipes and so forth, and that costed up to $80,000 (depending on the difficulty and length of the bore). We also needed to cost in the professional services required to install and configure all that stuff, along with additional power outlets in some places and all sorts of trivial bits and pieces.

Many of the benefits were also easy to quantify. Every office had a small server room. That server room had its own air conditioning and an uninterrupted power supply (and both needed maintenance and had finite lives, and the air con units had to run 24x7). Depending on the location, it would have anywhere from 2 to 10 servers, and all were life expired (ie, old and crap). We added up the cost of centralising hundreds of servers into a single data centre, where a trivial number of servers would be required, versus replacing the whole damned lot (which had to be done anyway as they were cactus). The cost of the existing backup system was incredible - each site required a set of daily, weekly and monthly backup tapes, and backup tapes and tape drives aren't cheap. I think the saving in backup tapes alone was well over $100,000.

Then there was the saving in operating system and application licences - they went from dozens of email servers to just a few. The number of backup software licences was also cut dramatically - they were over $1,000 a pop.

The costing started getting squishy when we got to the technical support aspects - how much would we save on having engineers driving all over the countryside supporting all this kit? That was hard to pin a number on, but we did our best.

In the end, I think we calculated that the project would pay for itself in about 9 months - it was a complete no-brainer.

In typical public service fashion though, the manager of the server team vociferously opposed the project as it would cut into his empire. He preferred to spend millions of dollars of our money on replacing all that kit out in the field because it would make him look more important.

Thankfully, it went ahead. I came back later to see what benefits had been realised, and how the costs had gone. Funnily enough, for a government project, the costs actually came in almost smack on the money. The benefits were realised, along with a couple of unexpected ones that we hadn't thought about - they managed to get rid of two vehicles and some satellite support offices because they didn't need so many people out in the field anymore. They could work from a desk and support stuff remotely, which meant instead of doing 3 hours of driving and 4 hours of work, they could actually do 7 hours of work per day.

We tried to quantify the productivity improvements that the users would get from a faster network - what impact would going from a 2Mb WAN link to 1Gb have? Yes, it was now possible to move large files around quickly (which was actually vital for a couple of projects that generated massive files, including lots of video), but putting numbers on it was next to impossible. You can fudge some stuff up - we did - but you end up with very questionable numbers that fall apart when anyone starts poking them with a sharp intellect.

So it is possible to do a cost-benefit analysis on this sort of thing. It actually didn't take that long - a week at most, with input from half a dozen people. If the costs and benefits are staring you in the face, it's just a matter of crunching the numbers.

That's the problem with the NBN - the benefits aren't staring us in the face. With the Snowy Mountains scheme, I think most people could grasp the benefits of generating cheap hydro power and supplying irrigation water to farmers. With the Harbour Bridge, people could grasp the improvement over catching a ferry to North Sydney and the opening up of land to the north for housing. I'm still trying to grapple with what the NBN is going to deliver.

And before people start going on about health and education, after we finished that fibre rollout for that government agency, we had a look at doing all the hospitals and schools that were within easy reach of that fibre network. It was a no-brainer as well - we were raring to do it. However, it all fell over thanks to inter-agency bickering. We could have had most public hospitals in the metro area and lots of public schools on a 1Gb network 6 or 7 years ago, but the political will wasn't there to ram it through.

NBN cost benefit analysis blah blah blah

Last time I wrote something about the NBN, I got this comment:

How many nation building projects would not be started if they had cost-benefit analysis done against them? Sydney Harbour Bridge? At what point is or should vast nation building projects be less subjected to being forced to turn a profit or not exist? Public parks are wasted real estate oh very high value in some cases, they don't make a profit, why do we allow these spaces to exist then? Where was the cost-benefit analysis of these places?

It's been a few years since I have been involved in producing a cost-benefit analysis for a major project; my last one was the Sydney Airport Rail Link. I was only a junior flunky at the time - my main role was to proof read the research, prepare presentations for Cabinet etc and ask a lot of dumb questions (something I am good at).

The rail link was never expected to be profitable for the government by itself. Most of the financial benefits to the government were to come from the following areas:

• increased land values (and land taxes and stamp duty) from converting light industrial land along the route to high density housing
• avoidance of having to pay for lots of new roads, water lines, sewerage, power lines etc on the urban fringe by redeveloping an area that already had them

The other benefits that we looked at had to do with lowering the cost of congestion and the avoidance of a lot of new air pollution that would be created by housing people out on the fringe (where they'd drive a lot).

All these benefits added up to more than the cost of building the line. Estimating them was a lot of fun though - glad I didn't have to do that. However, the thing was, experts were able to come up with rough estimates for all of them, and they were able to justify their estimates using various economic and financial models etc.

I don't get why this can't be done for the NBN - it really isn't that hard once you have identified the benefits.

The thing is, if you can't identify any benefits, then you're in a bit of a pickle.

Thursday photos

I hereby declare 2011 to be the year of photographing cyclists from side on. That should disarm my critics who think I am only interested in photographing women's bums. Check out the high elbows on this cyclist - I only look like that when I'm trying to unscrew the cap off a beer bottle.

I obviously still have some way to go in developing my photography from side on skills.

If this bike looks like it has 4 legs, it's because the bloke standing up is getting a dink. Don't see much of that anymore.

There were a horde of photographers with fancy equipment waiting for me at this spot - I smiled graciously as I went past. Those big black screens are some sort of photographic lighting kit. It looked like they were photographing the blank wall of the pub. As there were also a few blokes there with paint tins, I presume they are going to be taking lots of snaps of something interesting being painted on the wall. I'll grab more photos tomorrow.

Wednesday photos

The unseasonal cool spell has been great for riding - not too hot, not too cold. It was about 20 degrees when I rode to work, and 24 when I came home. Given that the silly season is still in operation, I slept in this morning and didn't get going until about 8am. There were a lot of other cyclists out and about - either that it the time when they normally ride to work (making me a very early starter), or lots of people have decided that the combination of the sleepy holiday period and the nice weather makes for a good time to ride to work.

One reason I gave up the backpack - the larger models never sit in the middle of your back when you are hunched over. They always fall over to one side or the other - very uncomfortable. There are two bikes way off in the distance in this photo - no matter where I rode this morning, there were a couple of other bikes in sight.

This was not a good place to take one hand off the brakes to take a photo - I need all the braking power I can get on steep descents like this one, and when the bloke in front started to brake hard, I was in a spot of bother. This should be the only photo you'll ever see of this location.

Although it's supposed to be the season of good cheer etc, two idiots did their best to run me off the road today. Both were in a screaming hurry to be somewhere else. I'm seasoned enough to recognise when a driver is in a manic rush, and I do my best to get the hell out of their way, contenting myself with giving them the finger once they have gone past. I also had to yell at a pedestrian who ambled out into the bike lane right in front of me without looking - she was fiddling with her iPod of course. Gave her a nasty fright, and I didn't even have to swear. Hopefully, she will have enough sense not to do that again.

Starting the clock on the odometer

I've never done this before - taken a reading on the bike computer at the start of the year. I really have no idea how many kilometres I do per year - I know I've been through 3 bike computers (they die of drowning after a while, thanks to riding in the rain) and each bike computer had at least one battery change. At each changeover, I have never bothered to keep track of the distance at that point.

This is not a new year's resolution - it's simply that I thought about it before getting on the bike this morning. I start the year at 8341km - let's see where it finishes.

How long does it take to demolish a jar of Vegemite?

We seem to eat an awful lot of Vegemite in this household, so for my American readers, I am going to time how long it takes to demolish this 400gm jar - that's 14 ounces. This one will be opened tomorrow at the latest - I don't give it more than 2 months.

Given that we work our way through at least 6 jars of this size per year, that means we're consuming about 5 pounds of the black stuff per year.

Ponder that, next time an Aussie tries to feed you some on a slice of bread.

Depleted uranium - when the numbers just don't add up

Thanks to JF Beck and Gavin Atkins, we have a lurid insight into the wild fantasies of the Left.

Apart from the Grauniad failing to understand that DU rounds are fired from tank cannons rather than rifles or field artillery, the numbers behind the story just don't add up.

There are lots of wild stories about depleted uranium zooming around teh interweb. Here is a good one from a bloke tellingly named "greenerblog"

It was estimated that during that assault over 10,000 tons of depleted uranium, DU, was used in the bombardment of the city of 300,000 people. Both the Pentagon and the British governments insist that the use of DU is not illegal. Source

This 10,000 tonne figure is doubtful. It may relate to the amount used in Iraq as a whole - see below.

At least he has the sense to say that the 10,000 tonne figure is doubtful. It's more than doubtful - it's probably incredibly bloody stupid.

This is what a DU round for a 120mm tank cannon looks like. The spike in the middle is made of DU and titanium. If you want to read more about this round, go here.

"It's primary function is the destruction of threat tanks and armor fighting vehicles. Target penetration is affected strictly by the high kinetic energy of the DU core when it impacts. Like other DU munitions, these are identifiable by their black color with white markings on the projectile (pointed) end. M829 series ammunition is loaded and fired in the normal manner. This ammunition will not be fired over the heads of friendly troops unless troops are protected by adequate cover as they may be struck by the discarded sabot."

Depending on which model of ammunition is used, a DU round weighs between 41 and 56 pounds in total. That's 19 to 25kg. That's the entire round - the DU penetrator, the sabot, the casing and the propellant.

From this site, we get an estimate of how much DU there is in each round - 10 pounds per round, or 4.5kg:

"How much DU was used in the Gulf War? A 1991 report in The Independent said of the rounds fired by tanks and aircraft: "The best estimates were that the US tanks fired 5000 rounds, US aircraft many thousands of rounds, and British tanks 'a small number.' The tank ammunition alone would contain more than 50,000 pounds of DU, enough radioactive material, the International Committee of Radiological Protection estimates, to cause 500,000 potential deaths, if it were inhaled." How much was used in other DU-containing weapons is not known outside the Pentagon. The LAKA Foundation estimates that the total amount of DU used in Iraq exceeds 800 tons."

At the other end of the spectrum, if you search Google for "Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tons of DU in Iraq", you'll get 408,000 hits. Nowhere can I find a link to the original story that quotes anyone from the Pentagon, or the US Military. If you find it, let me know.

Assuming that 1,200 tons of DU was fired from Abrahms tanks, at 4.5kg per round, that comes to an amazing 266,666 rounds of 120mm ammunition.

That's just not credible. 5,000 rounds were fired in all of Gulf War I, presumably to kill Saddam's tanks. The video below shows HEAT and SABOT (DU) ammunition being used to kill tanks on the firing range.

The only thing that SABOT, or DU rounds are good for is killing thick skinned tanks. They are a waste of time on buildings of personnel. If you see troops in the open, you use a canister round. If you want to kill troops in a bunker or a building, you can use something like a high explosive obstacle clearing round or a good old high explosive multi purpose round.

In case you are wondering why I think the figure of over 250,000 rounds of DU being fired in Iraq is stupid, here's a photo of some pallets of 120mm ammunition being unloaded in readiness for loading up some tanks. There are 30 rounds per pallet, and the HEMTT (truck) that's being unloaded can carry about 10 tons. As each pallet weighs about a ton, let's assume 10 pallets or 300 rounds per truck.

At the start of this blog, I noted the wild claim of "10,000 tons" of DU being fired into Fallujah alone. If we assume they mean that 10,000 tons includes the total weight of ammunition, then we are talking about needing 1,000 truckloads like the one above. If we are talking about just the weight of the DU at 4.5kg per round, then you're talking about an impossible 2.2 million rounds of 120mm tank ammunition - all that to kill around 6,000 insurgents.

An Abrahms can carry 55 rounds of main gun ammunition, and can fire at 6 rounds per minute. You can't maintain that rate of fire for ever, as the gun tube would quickly overheat.

The battle of Fallujah lasted about six weeks - for about 60,000 minutes. Tanks would need to be firing 37 rounds per minute for that entire 6 weeks in order to fire 2.2 million rounds. 7400 truckloads of ammunition would need to be brought forward in order to fire off that many rounds.

It just doesn't add up.

There are of course other possible sources of radioactive contamination in Fallujah - such as the leftovers from Saddam's nuclear program.

"U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre (9,300-hectare) site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns."

Drinking out of yellowcake storage barrels - that can't be good for you.

I got that link from this guy:

"Then, in 1991, the US Army and Marines faced five Iraqi Republican Guard divisions ladened with Soviet tanks. A-10 aircraft and M1 tanks killed hundreds of Iraqi tanks with DU and SABOT rounds.

In 2003, we faced Iraqi armored divisions again, so A-10s roamed the skies ahead of the American invasion and M1 Abrams tanks probably carried some SABOT rounds (although, I have no personal data describing tank ammunition loads during the initial invasion). The 2003 invasion force stayed far away from Fallujah. Baghdad and Tikrit were the targets.

I spent three years researching the battles for Fallujah. I have spoken to tankers, Light Armored Vehicle Marines and Bradley commanders and I have obtained logistic reports. Nowhere, in all my extensive research, have I found a single piece of data to indicate that SABOT or DU rounds were even carried in the armored vehicles that were used in Fallujah. Furthermore, no A-10s were ever used in Fallujah.

My research not withstanding, it makes no military sense to employ DU munitions in an urban environment. They are tank-killing weapons and the enemy had no armored vehicles in Fallujah. A DU projectile would travel through wall-after-wall, leaving a golf cup size hole. They wouldn’t do much damage and would do little more than scare the enemy. The benefits of using DU would not justify the expense.

So, lets all drop the discussion of DU causing all the birth defects in Fallujah. It is fantasy."

Interestingly enough, the mob that pushed the initial idea about DU being used in Fallujah are a neo-Nazi news organisation - America Free Press. They're likely to be a really credible source - not.

"The same mum?"

I have returned, refreshed and with a few stories to tell.

There I was, standing in front of the cheese section in a country supermarket. Standing next to me was a ratty looking bloke holding a young baby. Blue singlet, unwashed, smelly. He looked like he was no older than 25, and had about 5 teeth in his head. In a few months, his baby will have more teeth.

An older bloke walked up and asked about the baby. From the conversation they were having, I concluded he had fathered a number before this one. The last question I heard before wandering off to the milk section was, "Is it from the same mum?"

Happy new year - welcome to another year of working hard in order to pay taxes to keep the ferals in a life of ease and comfort.