Archive for June, 2005

AWA, No way!

A quick shuffle into work to check things are ok, followed by an online lodgment for 1/2 days annual leave, and then it’s off to the marshalling area for the NTEU.

NTEU Victorian Division Secretary Matthew McGowan said that university and TAFE staff are at the ‘cutting edge’ of the government’s attacks on workers’ industrial rights and living standards.

“The government announced on 29 April that university staff would be singled out for special treatment, imposing a series of unwanted and unnecessary industrial relations changes that universities will have to comply with in order to obtain further government funding,” Mr McGowan said.

“Changes such as the requirement that all staff be offered an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) are designed to weaken staff’s ability to bargain collectively, and the NTEU’s capacity to defend staff rights and employment conditions.”

By 9:45am things are crowded. My goodness, what a turn out! I had expected a pretty big turnout but not this big. The atmosphere is almost festival like, with many families here as an outing. More like a Union picnic than a protest rally; but it has been promoted as a community rally rather than a Union strike.

Solidarity for ever, Solidarity for ever …
because the Union makes us strong!

I didn’t make it into Federation Square, most of the NTEU finish marching at about the Town Hall. That’s only because the road is FULL from Fed-Square to here! Latter we are told that the rally extends back to Victoria street.

Even the rain didn’t dampen too many spirits and there is still a large crowd when the rally formally finishes at midday. Although as we are walking back up Swanston St. I am sure it will take a few more hours for this many people to actually disapate. Especially givven the number off buses parked in the side street on the norther stretch of Swanston St.

 

2005-06-30-route.jpg

Tens of thousands march against IR changes
Adam Morton, June 30, 2005 [Age]

The centre of Melbourne has come to a standstill with up to 100,000 protesters filling Swanston Street to fight the Howard Government’s proposed workplace laws.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley was hugged and cheered as he waded into the crowd as it moved from Trades Hall in Lygon Street, Carlton to Flinders Street Station.

The crowd, a cross-section of blue and white-collar workers, many with children, chanted “Shame Howard, shame” and “Beazley’s our man” as the Labor leader joined his deputy, Jenny Macklin, and union chiefs at the head of the march.

Others chanted: “What do we want? Howard’s head!”

One marcher held up a large doll, wearing a fairy costume and a John Howard mask, prompting calls of “Burn, Johnny, burn” from the crowd.

Banners and purple Heath Services Union balloons bearing the slogan “Stronger together” dotted the crowd, which stretched as far as the eye could see. Union leaders estimated there were 100,000 marchers.

Mr Beazley, who was wearing several union badges, briefly told reporters the turnout would send a strong message to the Howard Government over its workplace law plans, which include changes to unfair dismissal laws for small business. AdvertisementAdvertisement

Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Brian Boyd said the march was one of the biggest trade union actions Melbourne had seen.

“John Howard is as welcome in Melbourne as a redback spider on a dunny seat,” he told the crowd.

LINKS: 

[1] Tens of thousands march against IR changes [AGE]
[2] Thousands cram city in IR protest [HERLAD-SUN]
[3] 100,000 protesting workers tipped to clog city [AGE]
[4] NEW IR LAWS ATTACK YOU! (pdf) [NTEU]

Tour de France 2005

With July almost apon us it is time to start preparing for the 92nd Tour de France : July 2nd to 24th 2005. Looks like an interesting route this year :)

The 2005 Tour kicks of on SBS on Saturday July 2nd at 9:30pm when the show “Hell on Wheels” which I saw at the NOVA cinema last month. This then follows on with “Retro Le Tour 2004″ at 11:40pm and finally at 1:15am we get to see Stage 1!

9:30 Hell on Wheels
11:40 Cycling: Retro Le Tour 2004
1:15 Cycling: Tour de France 2005. Stage 1.
3:30 Soccer …

LINKS: 

[1] http://www.letour.fr/indexus.html
[2] http://www.tdfblog.com/
[3] SIRIUS Tour de France/ Lance Armstrong Reports [PodCast]
[4] Cycling News TDF’05
[5] Outside Online TDF’05

Google maps

Google Maps now covers Australia; now what can we find

Looking into Bolton Street

Looking into Bolton Street

It is interesting to see the different levels of photo quality in the photo mosaic being used, some of the mosaic is high definition, others such as down on the Mornington Peninsular are pretty low quality. When the two collide, such as in Melbourne or at La Trobe Uni (Bundoora) the results are weird ;)

 

LINKS: 

[1] http://maps.google.com/

Capturing streaming audio

Need to capture an audio stream for future reference, or to drop it into your PodCast collection? You can capture (save) the asx as an ‘asf’, and then locally convert the asf into mp3 … cool bannanas!

Capture: Net Transport v1.94

http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm
Net Transport is a faster, exciting and the most powerful downloading tool that you ever saw, now support the most prevalent Internet protocols, including: * HTTP / HTTPS, * FTP / through SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) / SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), * MMS (Microsoft Media Services), * RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol), * PNM (rename PNM to RTSP).
With independently developed Enhanced Multi-Threading (EMT) technology, Net Transport can make the most of the network bandwidth of various types of internet connection. As the fact is now quite apparent that more and more software sites are giving their support to resume and multi-threading downloads, you probably will find Net Transport is the right stuff you have long been seeking. If you had some experience of online downloading before, you will notice that the added support of MMS and RTSP streaming media data, powered by the EMT technology mentioned above, is almost enough to make Net Transport unique among its numerous counterparts. Besides, its built-in functionalities such as support for HTTPS streaming retrieval, powerful and flexible multi-proxy (including HTTP, SOCKS4&5 proxies) settings and the most efficient file manager, are also the hotshots that have gained Net Transport the current reputation.

Convert: Video mp3 Extractor

http://www.geovid.com/video_mp3_extractor/
Video mp3 Extractor is easy to use tool to extract audio from Video AVI, ASF, WMV files. Output audio file is mp3, and you can listen extracted audio with your mp3 player without any additional conversion or modification. Video mp3 Extractor provide simple and fast method to rip audio from video and save as MP3.
Video mp3 Extractor released for free. You can use Video mp3 Extractor without limitations, but You may not charge money for Video mp3 Extractor under any circumstance without the author’s consent.

NetTransport

Net Transport v1.94

Video mp3 Extractor

Video mp3 Extractor v1.4

Lets try an example from last weeks 774 Computer Help segment; http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne/stories/m1076815.ram has the contents of rtsp://media.abc.net.au/melbourne/m1076815.ra. (ASX files work in a similar manner pointing to the location of a mms://server/path/file.asf ). You can check the file contents by downloading the ram/asx file and opening it in a text editor.

add the URL …

add the URL …

.. download the file

.. download the file

::ASF:: Once you have a local copy of the file, you can convert it to MP3 by opening and saving via Video mp3 Extractor.

::RA:: Once you have a local copy of the file, you can convert it to MP3 by … possibly using ‘Mini-stream RM-MP3 Converter v1.20‘ (I’ll need to play with this).

Mini-stream RM-MP3 Converter v1.20

Mini-stream RM-MP3 Converter v1.20

MS discovers RSS

Too little too late, or the IE standards ambush all over again?

Microsoft Draws Cheers, Jeers over RSS in Longhorn
June 24, 2005
Matt Hicks [eWeek]

SEATTLE—Microsoft’s vision for tying RSS directly into the next release of Windows drew cheers and jeers among the syndication-feed enthusiasts gathered here Friday.

It drew accolades for its potential to smooth some of the user kinks in discovering and managing feed subscriptions, while it awakened fears that the Redmond, Wash., software maker is attempting to embrace the still-emerging market for syndication feeds in order to dictate its direction.

One reaction appeared constant among attendees at Lockergnome.com’s Gnomedex 5.0 conference being held through Saturday: By promising to make RSS more accessible across Windows applications, Microsoft is shifting the syndication-feed landscape away from just reading blogs and news.

“It’s another step toward putting RSS in the mainstream,” said Marc Strohlein, a vice president and lead analyst at Outsell Inc. “It definitely cements RSS as a content transport mechanism.”

Microsoft Corp. has had good reason to announce its major RSS push at Gnomedex. Talk about RSS and related technologies such as Weblogs and Podcasts is as common here as chatter about flight delays at the airport.

The core of Microsoft’s RSS plans is to bring feeds into Windows applications, both its own and those from developers.

Longhorn will provide a common feed list of subscriptions and a common feed store of data in Longhorn, which will be available to applications through Windows APIs, said Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager of Longhorn browsing and RSS technologies.

Microsoft also plans to let users automatically discover and then subscribe to feeds in Internet Explorer 7, a capability already in competing browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Apple Computer Inc.’s Safari browser.

SANS Top20 Q1 2005 Update

The Most Critical New Vulnerabilities Discovered or Patched During the First Quarter of 2005
May 2, 2005
Principal Investigator: Rohit Dhamankar
Co-investigators: Gerhard Eschelbeck, Marcus Sachs, Johannes Ullrich [SANS]

The SANS Top20 Internet Security Vulnerabilities (www.sans.org/top20) is an annual consensus effort of leading information security organizations around the world. In 2004, the United Kingdom’s NISCC hosted the announcement of the 2004 Top20 with the direct support of the US White House and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.

Thousands of organizations rely on the Top20 to help set priorities for what needs to be fixed first. However, since new Internet threats are discovered daily, user organizations that rely on the Top20 as a list of high priority threats have been asking for more frequent updates.

On May 2, 2005, the sponsors of the Top20 project released the first installment in a new program of quarterly updates to the Top20. It updates the annual Top20 and provides an additional roadmap to the new vulnerabilities that must be eliminated in any Internet-connected organization.

The list below summarizes the most critical new vulnerabilities discovered during the first quarter of 2005 by vendor.

Following the brief list, the critical new vulnerabilities are grouped by the vulnerability categories employed in the 2004 Top20 announcement, and summarized with a brief assessment of the impact of exploiting the vulnerabilities and pointers to more detailed information.

LINKS:

[1] SANS Top20 Internet Security Vulnerabilities

Formula Farce!

Up at 3:20am to catch the start of the US Grand Prix at 3:30am. After the rumblings about the Mitchelin tyres back on Friday one could assume that the ‘powers that be’ in F1 would have sorted things out, but no after the parade lap all of the Michellin cars are back in the pits. GET A CLUE BERNIE!

Formula One shoots itself in foot again
Mon Jun 20, 2005 01:42 AM ET
By Alan Baldwin [REUTERS]

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) – Formula One has struggled to win over the United States since a grand prix in Phoenix 14 years ago sold fewer tickets than an ostrich race across town.

Decimated by the withdrawal of 14 cars due to tire safety concerns, Sunday’s U.S. Grand Prix did nothing to enhance its reputation.

In one stroke, the ‘race’ wiped out whatever gains had been made over the last few seasons and dealt the supposed glamour sport a major setback in a key market for sponsors and manufacturers.

After talk of expanding to Las Vegas or New York, Formula One’s future in the United States looks far less promising. It may not even have one, although Indianapolis has a year to run on its contract.

An estimated crowd of 120,000 people, one of the biggest of the year at a grand prix, paid good money to watch a motor race at the Brickyard Sunday.

What they got was just six cars, four of them the slowest in Formula One, with angry fans hurling beer cans and bottles on the track in frustration.

The fiasco could go down as the worst public relations own-goal yet in a sport that has never been shy of shooting itself in the foot.

Briton David Coulthard, one of the 14 drivers going nowhere after the seven Michelin teams pulled out before the start because of safety concerns about their tires, summed it up succinctly enough.

“Even if we do come back, half the crowd in the stands today won’t be back. That’s for sure,” the Red Bull driver said.

Minardi boss Paul Stoddart was even more stinging in his criticism.

“If you run something as badly as what we’ve done today, you wouldn’t be surprised if there was never another U.S. Grand Prix,” he said.

… continued

More on Podcasting

In todays ‘good weekend’ in the Age, Andrew Humphreys looks at Podcasting. A couple of good links are given in the article; Podcast Bunker and Podcast Alley.

But how do I use them?
A pickup from Mozilla extensions was the Sage (v. 1.3.3) RSS and Atom agregator. This fits quite well into FireFox, and the feed discovery tool is handy indeed.

 

SAGE

 SAGE

 

eAudio joins eBooks!
The New York Public Library’s website http://ebooks.nypl.org/ has added eAudio in addition to its eBook catalog. eAudio titles are built using the Microsoft® Windows Media Audio format, and need the OverDrive Media Console to be listen to. You will also require the ‘Windows Media Player Security Upgrade’, the security update identifies the copy of Windows Media Player with the computer on which the Player is being used. (!!) The digital books files are based on Microsoft copyright protection software, which automatically expire after 21 days when stored on a computer. The files stored on players or burned onto CDs do not.

 

LINKS: 

[1] Podcast Bunker
[2] Podcast Alley
[3] The New York Public Library: eBooks, eAudio

I know, let’s build a fence … Duh!

Proving once again that classic comedy is created when ever policians meet, Senator Campbell has decided that we need to have a few electric fences in the Alpine National Park. Just how many kilometers of fencing will we need Senator?

‘No’ to cattle compromise
June 17, 2005 – 3:13PM [AGE]

Victoria has rejected a federal government plan to settle the row over a ban on alpine grazing with a compromise aimed at averting a costly legal battle.

Instead of banning cattle from the State’s Alpine National Park and destroying the livelihood of mountain cattlemen, federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell has suggested using electric fencing to keep cattle out of more sensitive areas.

But Victoria’s Environment Minister John Thwaites today bluntly declined the offer of a compromise that could keep the row out of the High Court, saying: “It’s time for the federal Environment Minister to butt out.

“He does not have a legal leg to stand on.”

The Victorian Upper House has passed controversial legislation banning cattle grazing from the park.

Last week, Senator Campbell issued an emergency heritage listing to protect the mountain cattlemen’s 170-year-old alpine tradition in a bid to overrule the ban.

The listing – if it became permanent – would put the two governments on a collision course, with Victoria insisting Canberra has no power to force it to renew the 63 grazing licences.

The state government initiated the ban over concerns cattle are causing irreparable damage to the alpine ecosystem, especially fragile peat beds which are the origin of many high country streams.

Mountain cattlemen say the ban will destroy their livelihood and their way of life and that the continuing right to run their herds in state forest outside the park is inadequate.

Senator Campbell is due to receive an assessment from the Australian Heritage Council within 30 days after which he must decide whether or not to issue a permanent listing to protect the traditional summer musters.

“My appeal to the Victorian government is let’s not keep feeding lawyers and paying lawyers bills, let’s sit down and work out a compromise on this,” he told reporters today.

“You can have environmental protection using modern science and you can have the retention of Australia’s 170-year-old alpine grazing going side by side.”

Senator Campbell said one solution could be the use of fencing to keep cattle out of sensitive highland bog areas.

“It’s very simple, you just have to put a transportable electric fence around it, that’s one idea,” he said.

“There are a whole range of scientifically proven methods of protecting bits of biodiversity and we do it right across Australia.

“It shouldn’t be beyond the wit and wisdom of the Victorian government to sit down with the cattleman, with scientists, with environmentalists and the federal government to reach a compromise.”

Mr Thwaites dismissed the electric fence idea as silly.

“This just shows that the federal minister admits that cattle do damage,” he said.

“You don’t have electric fences through a national park. That’s the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve ever heard.”

- AAP

My vote for this months Oxygen Thief Award goes to Senator Campbell for this ludicrous concept.

Meanwhile things became a tad heated in the AGE’s letters section;

Face up to the real effects of cattle grazing
June 17, 2005 [AGE]

Ralph Barraclough (“There’s little ’science’ in the anti-grazing debate”, Letters 15/6) suggests that the recent scientific debate supporting the removal of cattle grazing has been appalling. In fact, the scientific debate was resolved more than 50 years ago and was the main reason cattle were removed from the Kosciuszko National Park. Despite decades of scientific research, there are still those who ignore – or refuse to accept – findings that contradict cherished beliefs.

Nevertheless, recent debate has largely been political and social, as it should be. Mr Barraclough, however, suggests that the science behind the decision to ban cattle grazing from the Alpine National Park is poor, supporting his argument by misusing my comments on a Parks Victoria draft report on post-fire monitoring following the 1998 Caledonia fire. My remarks on the report were a response to bad writing, naive use of data and seeing a lot of money spent on research that was already being done.

Sensibly, the decision to ban cattle from some areas burnt by the Caledonia fire was based partly on the Parks Victoria report, together with results from other studies and the support of a large body of scientific evidence on the effects of cattle grazing in the high country. Mr Barraclough also suggests that cattle grazing reduces both the risk and intensity of fire in the Alpine National Park: the specious “alpine grazing reduces blazing” argument. Following the 2003 fires, scientists had the rare opportunity to test this hypothesis on the Bogong High Plains. The clear result: cattle grazing did not affect either the distribution of the fires or their severity. Of course, such findings will not persuade those with an unshakeable faith to the contrary.

Yet, after more than 60 years of scientific research, with monotonously repetitive findings showing the detrimental effects of cattle grazing on the water catchment, biodiversity and conservation values of the Alpine National Park, we finally got a government brave enough to do the right thing. Well done!

- Dr Henrik Wahren,
Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology, La Trobe University, Bundoora

Little ’science’ in the anti-grazing debate
June 15, 2005 [AGE]

As a long-time resident of the Licola area, a landholder and a fire brigade captain with landholders adjacent, and surrounded by the Alpine National Park to look after, I am appalled at the level of “scientific debate” supporting the removal of cattle grazing in the park.

After the Caledonia fire of 1998, plots were fenced off around rocky outcrops, dead limbs, fallen bark and places where little grass ever grew that were then monitored to see how they would grow. Botanists placed transect lines beside active wombat and rabbit burrows and on areas last burnt out decades ago as there was so much grass on the areas under study. “Expertise” was bought in from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Decisions on grazing in burnt areas were made with vegetation surveys consisting of two drafts and a summary, all unsigned. A “draft internal working paper” was passed off as “scientifically credible information needed to determine management options for the area”. This had no finding or conclusion, no indication of who did the work or their qualifications, and no references from text books on the methodology.

The science was so bad even people on the expert panel to recommend on the return of grazing were critical. “Is the PV draft proposal a joke? It’s appalling! I have read both drafts . . . in their current state, neither would pass as first-year biology assignments” (in an email from Dr Henrik Wahren, Research Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology, La Trobe University, to Sally Troy, convener of the Alpine Ecology Scientific Review Panel, obtained under FoI).

Grass fuel on areas burnt in 1998 is now at dangerous levels around sphagnum bogs, ancient single-trunk snow gums and private landholdings. The risks from snow grass on places such as the Wellington Plains can only be measured in how many times it is off the fire-intensity scale over the extreme category.

Much of this country that did not burn in 1998 because of grazing would now carry a frightful fire from four to 16 times the intensity. This is on areas where grazing was not allowed to continue because of claims there had not been enough regeneration.

A few years ago we were told by alpine ecologists that fires were not part of the ecology. With the 2003 fires, we were told fires are a one-in-100-year event. If this is the best we are getting out of our universities, they should concentrate on turning out engineers, chemists and bushfire scientists where they have an impressive record.

- Ralph Barraclough, Licola

Philip Maguire, from [Bundarrah Days] joins in the dumbing down of the evidence, many more examples of poor evidencial interpretation;

Fight For The Australian High Country
Analysis by Philip Maguire [BNN]

“The green lobby has lied consistently on the issue of alpine grazing. Science is against the cattlemen, they say. Cattle are trampling moss beds, causing erosion at the heads of streams and endangering rare botanic species. Facts don’t matter to the opponents of alpine grazing.”

My response;
6/17/2005 3:00:19 AM
As someone who has worked in the Victorian Alpine Natinonal Park, I am concerned that Philip Maguire must not have visited the contentious area. Surely a cattleman would be able to regonise the severely pugged landscape around the Niggerheads? He must be able to see the difference between the apline herbfields in the protected Kosciuszko National Park, and the sad remnants in the grazed Victorian National Park? How about the direct relationship with English Broom transportation from the Mitta valley via cattle?

As Philip says, “Facts don’t matter to the opponents of alpine grazing”, it seems they don’t for his side of the argument.

Once again we see a desperate grab for “The Man from Snowy River” heritage, it is a pity that the area refered to in the poem is actually in NSW and has been free from cattle graazing from 1969!

Visit “Alpine National Park … or cow Paddock?” at http://www.cowpaddock.com/ and make up your own mind about the science. Anyone who visits Maisie’s plots would have no doubts of the damage caused by the cattle … it is only when these protected areas are view that you can appreciate the degarded status of the rest of the park.

 

2005 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey

2005 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey
Date: 24 May 2005 [AUSCERT]

All of Australia’s law enforcement agencies – the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, the Australian Federal Police, Queensland Police, NSW Police, Victoria Police, Tasmania Police, South Australia Police, Northern Territory Police and Western Australia Police – and AusCERT produced the 2005 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey.

The survey provides the most up to date and authoritative analysis of computer network attack and computer misuse trends in Australia over the last 12 months. The survey aims to raise awareness of the complex nature of computer security issues, identify areas of concern and, where appropriate, to motivate organisations to take a more active role in protecting their systems.

LINKS:

[1] AUSCERT

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