Archive for the ‘IT’ Category

A sigh of relief ... for now

Almost every New Zealander who used a mobile network oversea agrees that the telco services and charges here are absolutely a disgrace. The competition between Vodafone and Telecom New Zealand never happened, they got about 50% market share each and are pretty happy to stay that way, enjoying a nice duopoly.

That's why a third player is needed.

I just browsed through 2 degrees mobile's pricing plan,  it's clear that they are targeting  low volume users just like me for now, and the pricing is very impressive in most areas, although there is still a gap to catch up with the rest of the world, but hey, somebody has to make a start.

The only downside is the expensive data charge, 50cents/mb. However, I would expect a data plan to come out pretty soon. Before that I'll keep two numbers.

I ordered the  promotional free SIM with $5, and can't wait to have it now.

BTW, The Herald has compiled an excellent table showing duopoly at work(PDF).

Section 92A is alive again

Earlier today, Ministry of Economic Development has released a Review Policy Proposal Document, highlighting recommended changes to the older version of the section.

It is significantly improved, according to many sources. A copyright tribunal is proposed to deal with the judicial and punishment issues, and alhtough the three strikes policy is still there, the details are quite different now. I've reduced it two three steps, for details, see the excellent analysis from the Creative Freedom Foundation.

Phase 1 - First Infringement and Cease and Desist Notice Procedure

Phase 2 - Obtain Copyright Tribunal Order to get infringer's details

Phase 3 - Copyright Tribunal decision

Creation of the copyright tribunal significantly improves the fairness of the whole process, however, I am still very disappointed that termination of Internet access remained as a punishment.

Access to Internet, in my opinion, is a fundamental human right in this digital age, people who lacks the full and free Internet access will be significantly disadvantaged in the society.Internet access should be regarded as part of the freedom of communication, which is a concept in many written constitutions.

Such termination is not in the spirit of a free, democratic society - This is why we are so against Internet censorship, especially the Great Firewall. The termination is even worse than that, which the citizens' right to communicate is not just being impeded, but denied in full.

The document is open for consultation, submissions are open until 5pm Friday 7 August.

Section 92a of the copyright act, update

While I was away there were some interesting development on this issue. First the latest response from the parliament, Simon Power, Minister of Commerce:

Yes; I respond by saying that I am mindful of the concerns that have been expressed by the public in relation to this provision coming into force. As the member will be aware, industry representatives are currently working on a code of practice to help implement this law, which was passed by the previous Labour Government.

For me, this means that the government is not going to delay the implementation or abolish 92A, but rather leave the job of fixing problems to the "Code of Practice".

I talked about that "Code of  Practice" before, I was quite happy on the draft version but that code is not in concrete yet. It is still open to public submission so to copyright holder submissions as well. This submission is now far more important than blackout your facebook page or write a letter to your local MP. I'm preparing my own submission.

I also checked responses from ISPs, here are the  extracts:

Orcon:

There will be a fee for rights holders lodging infringement notices to offset the work that we will have to undertake in order to process the alleged infringement.  There will be no additional fees or charges for customers.

I hope Orcon charges them a good price. ISPs shouldn't get abused by copyright terrorists as well. I also think ISPs should cut the internet of any copyright holder who have made 3 false accusations  - it's more than fair.

Telecom New Zealand (via twitter):

We recognise the importance of protecting individuals' copyright. However we don't believe #s92 in its current form is the best solution.

I certainly agree, I'm not endorsing piracy, but this society should not giving up its liberty and undermining its justice system to protect the profits of some.

Vodafone didn't got a lot to say, but they already finished the work on the format of infringement notice(PDF).

I'll keep you updated. I can't tell the full effect of s92a at the moment, but believe me, this thing is not going to work -for real and serious infringer, there are plenty of ways to get around this law  -  I removed the way to get around the S92A here as I realise that I'm attracting real infringers here.

Google: It's a dangerous world out there

I was searching stuffs for my essay this morning, and suddenly this happened. In fact, every single result was flagged by Google as a site with "malwares". The glitches lasted for about half an hour.

Google fixed and explained what was hapened quite fast. According their blog, when they were updating the blacklist, the value " / " was accidentally checked as an identifier for sites with malwares, and of course, every URL got that slash.

China declares war on "vulgar" websites

For many Chinese websites, 2009 didn't start very well. China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre, a semi-government agency, has published a list of websites which contain "vulgar and unhealthy information" that could be harmful to the country's youth.

The whole list can be found here(in Chinese).

The interesting thing about this list is that it covered majority of the most popular websites in China. Google was ranked number one "vulgar" site, followed by Baidu and Sina. I'm very confident that every Chinese netizen have visited at least one of such vulgar websites, myself included. So after being diagnosed as psychotic under the Chinese guideline because I need to work on my computer for too long,  I'm now also officially a vulgar and unhealthy person because I have visited at least 75% of the websites listed.

Most of the Chinese netizens are very familiar with such Internet Cleansing campaign as it was repeated many times in the past decade. Despite that most of the cleansing was justified under the banner of "please think of the children"(which itself is a logical fallacy) ,it's usually the adult internet users who are most affected.

Have these campaigns worked, anyway? Well, the funny thing is, thanks to the new Xinhua Search engine, an official search engine intended to censor vulgar information,  if you know the right keyword, you can find as many "vulgar" information as you can expect to find in most commercial websites. I can list you an endless list of examples of vulgar information that can be found on Chinese official news websites like the Xinhua Net: this, this, this ,or this, and the list goes on,  and yet they were never criticised by anyone.

It's a common sense that it is impossible to censor out all those "unhealthy" stuffs if somebody really wants to find them, as there is a market for it.

As a regular user of the most vulgar website (Google), I cannot recall not even once that Google returns me "unhealthy" information, unless I deliberately searched for it (I admit it, haha) - not to mention Google has a optional filter that censors images and texts, which is very effective in my opinion. Therefore it is hard for me not jump to the conclusion that the accusation of search engines means that creators of the list, themselves deliberately searched "vulgar" information in order to produce the list.

So now who's unhealthy and vulgar?

In my idea, protect the future generation probably wasn't the original purpose of all those internet cleansing campaigns, and the campaigns themselves, are kind of the ridiculous - find me another country on this planet which labels the absolutely majority of its netizen population as "internet addicted" and "vulgar"?

Most of the Chinese parents, including mine, are not as tech-savvy as their children, some don't even use the internet, TV and newspaper are still their major sources of information, which are still largely controlled by the state. Strangely, they are in fact the targeted audience of such campaign.

So it's not surprising that I have met too many Chinese parents who didn't hesitate to use corporal punishment to their children just because they logged onto the Internet without parents' knowledge, because deeply in their mind, the word "internet" means "evil". Sounds shocking but luckily, as the post 80's generation are gradually becoming parents themselves, use of such corporal punishment are now less common.

However, for the older generation, although their children are now grown up and corporal punishment won't work on them any more, but bear in mind that they are now the most powerful generation in China, in 40-50s(or even older), financially stable; and as they usually have the directorial positions in organisations or their work places, this group is also potentially a powerful political force.

Now the long demonisation of the Internet is starting to make sense to me.

off topic ...

I've been blogging serious topics for too long (especially in my Chinese blog), and the atmosphere is starting to make me choke. Not that bad, but the recent topics really made me want to keep myself away from here for a bit, nobody always "on" forever.

I think its time to go off topic a bit. What I usually do in my Chinese blog is to dig up some video clips from youtube, and introduce them here. I tend to turn my attention to the ads on TV ... for no apparent reasons.

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First one is a promo from National Geographic Channel Australia. If you watch other versions of the channel, the chance is, you have never seen the following clip before as it is for the Australian version only.

This is the most beautiful, in fact, most elegant piece of art I've ever seen on all the television channels you can get in New Zealand. But sadly, as a lot of wonderful things in New Zealand, this promo is also made in Aussie.

Second one is an ad of gorilla drumming and trying to sell you ... Cadbury Chocolate.

I understand this "gorilla campaign" débuted in the United Kingdom some time in 2007, and New Zealanders saw this ad on their tellies a year later. The ad was a huge success in the UK and it was so prominent, there is even a Wikipedia article for it. In New Zealand, the ad helped the song in the ad (Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight") re-enter the NZ singles chart and briefly reached #1.

However, I am still having difficulty of understanding how this ad is suppose to work. What's the connection between a gorilla drumming and chocolates? This ad appeared on TV many times but I still cannot recall which brand the ad is for before the brand name appears at the end.

Third one is a Kiwi classic - "we don't know how lucky we are". I doubt if there is need for me to introduce this song to New Zealand audiences.

This is a remake version as no original version is available on youtube at the moment. Sadly, again, as a lot of good things in New Zealand, they are either made in Australia, or become Australian later like John Clarke.

The last one is an example of how not to do your TV ads. It's in Chinese so I'll explain it a bit later.

If you were suspecting your computer crashed like how a video tape jams a player, you are far from alone. It's in Chinese, and there are basically three parts:

恒源祥，北京奥运会赞助商，龙龙龙！

Heng Yuan Xiang, sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, dragon dragon dragon !

First part is the brand name, second part is very self explanatory. The phrase has been repeated 12 times in the ad, and only the last part is different in every loop. Like in the example, the ad went on to read every Chinese zodiac animal three times in every 'loop". Hardly innovative, but highly annoying. When this ad first appeared on Chinese TV, most people I know got up from their couch and had a very close inspection of their TV just to make sure it is still working.

There were also people who went further and called their local TV Stations, besought the station to take off the ad. I wasn't in China at the time but I understand for the business, it was a huge campaign and the ad appeared in almost all channels.