Saving streaming video

Sick of waiting to re-download that video you want to show someone? You can grab Flash Layer Videos (ie. the type of content that youtube sends you) from your temp directory, on a PC, using Video Cache Viewer
worked for me anyways =)

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iPod to PC copy

Want to get your music tracks onto the computer (after reinstalling your OS) ..
I found CopyTrans did the job nicely enough.

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Political jousting

Well I wonder who's gonna be top dog next with things seemingly so close between Labor and Liberal for the 2010 election.

I just wish they would stop whining about all the things they each do wrong and start doing things RIGHT. All the time just worried about their jobs rather than actually doing things to look after the people they -supposedly- have a mandate from to do things.

But really we're pretty screwed with this current system. Because no one, on average seems to want to consider the population problem. Which is why I was impressed to see Dick Smith take on the subject with his "Population Puzzle" show. I believe he has a $1 million prize for the (young grr) person who comes up with a population reducing planet saving idea!

For example, let's take the Fishing Party and it's desire to see the Greens and Labor put last on the roll.

I totally support the concept of a person going out in the "tinnie" to throw a line over the side. In fact all [human] life supported itself in a similar method - ie. hunter gathering - in the past. We then got agricultural and horticultural and we then got population.

So what if the entire population of Sydney wanted to go down to the harbour, load the tinnie down the boat ramp and throw a line over the side? Fine back around the time of the "first landing" but now that there's 21+ million it's a different story. But folk don't want to discuss that story. They want to discuss their right to live as their forefathers did.

They want to live that life and, as their forefathers did, bugger the future.

To paint a more simplistic picture than the fishing one (is that possible?) how about straight family numbers. I have the right (currently, in Australia) to have as many children as I and my partner wish to bear. So let's say that's going to be 10 children. Each on of them has the same right, seeing as we are never going to change our policies based on rising population, so the next generation will be about 4 times larger. (yes this is a guess, I'm considering that half my children are females/half males and that all of them meet a person they are able to then have 10 children with, so that's 5 children per person .. blah blah)

Now if those people live in a land of finite size then obviously, at the very least, they are going to run out of living space eventually.

Oh they will live closer together, build on top of each other, defoliate forests in order to find land to grow food or raise cattle on, but time will tell. Without changing their habit they will, as most parasites that get out of control do, kill their host and/or themselves.

I found this Why doesn't a parasite kill it's host?

Far as I can see, we don't have a new host (planet) so we should probably be keeping this one alive and healthy.

And that's the problem with defoliating the forests for farmland and living areas. It's that natural acreage that's actually providing clean water/air/fertiliser(s) and filtering of our waste.

Not sure if you noticed but [manmade] sewerage treatment plants have only been around recently. Somehow the planet managed to treat the waste products and deceased bodies of all the planets animals insects etc without manmade treatment plants. Amazing! But at that time the planet didn't have cities with millions of people living together producing tons of waste daily, including many toxic chemicals, and then pumping all of that into convenient places like the ocean. Wow, guess we should mark that one up to ingenuity. What a great plan. Let's take all the things we want out of the ocean, food etc, and pump all the shit we don't want into it. See how many years we can keep that up. And to top it off we'll put so much mechanical shipping into the sea that all the creatures that communicate aurally to each other will suffer from the noise level(s).

'Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change'Contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green technologies, according to research by the London School of Economics.

James Quinn's Instablog

Save the Planet - Wear a condom.



So this is why I think the colour we should ALL be painting our conversations is GREEN. When I mentioned this to a fellow worker (truck driver) he got upset and said that the Greens policies will practically stop us all from driving! But if driving is what's killing us (something we choose to not look at or at least never in the mainstream media) then we SHOULD STOP DRIVING! Or we should be figuring out how to build a world that we can live in. Stop the population growing and rebuild our cities and transport so that life is good. Not a rat race.

If modifying our population growth because it's a DOOMED practise means our building industry will suffer then perhaps we need to find something else to do? STOP BUILDING. How about improving our houses? Our energy costs are obviously less when houses are well insulated, when people know how to design orient and build a house .. why leave such "knowledge" just with the over charging architects. It should be everyday knowledge. All people should know what the sun does for warming, what thermal mass is, how a healthy garden STAYS healthy.

My friend has the most offensive smelling garbage I've ever had the misfortune to go near. Simply because all the animal waste gets bagged and dropped in it. There's no yard space to compost it. Not that it's a small yard but for 'maintenance' or 'aesthetic' reasons the yard's been entirely concreted! But there's 5~6 animals! What a chore, .

So many people I talk to seem unaware of how easy it is to compost food and human waste. And take a note while we're on this subject, Australians are wasting $5.2 billion worth of food each year. So for all those people whining about a few boat people I reckon we could feed them pretty easy if we weren't turning into the fattest people on the planet . Note, it takes 500 litres of water to grow 1 kilo of potatoes. Last I heard Australia was a drought plagued country. It's practically a sin to throw out any food grown here (or anywhere for that matter when you consider how rare fresh water really is on this planet).

So the choice, as usual, is with the people.

Have 10 kids.. throw out half your food.. turn a blind eye to the REASONS behind Green policies.

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Death by Patent

Our attempt to put a price on intellectual property is choking us, here's an article about software patents and why the programmers asked to write them consider them a joke. And why we ALL pay the price of this legal jungle.

via @_pablo

Unfortunately, the joke is on all of us. It’s on our economy, as we let patents choke down innovation and increase fear, uncertainty, and doubt in an already uncertain time. It’s on our bottom lines, as we make busy-work for our expensive lawyers with their sparkling eyes instead of investing for the future. And it’s on our collective consciousness, as we force good and decent people to act against the better angels of their nature.

http://lru.jp/mljz
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Why you want Labor's National Broadband Network

First you could listen to the ABC Radio National Program Background Briefing and figure it out, or read below:



* 40% of Australians live outside the big 5 cities. This means that private sector companies (which now includes our lost Telstra) can't be bothered to build infrastructure there as there's not enough return on investment. This is why there's a subsidy for installing satellite internet connectivity.

Therefor one company (NBN Co - the governments co.) putting in ALL the infrastructure means they can make money on the big 5 cities to help offset the price of supporting the 'rural' sector.

* being owned by the government means we break the monopoly that Telstra has as our main telco. What a great move that was of the Howard Gov' to sell OUR telco to the private sector. Where the profits (3.7 BILLION! in 2008) from our telco usage pay the guy running the co. fees like 13 million. Money that could have been spent on funding the NBN or improving our network in other ways.


proof of how great a move it was to sell Telstra - well now they're being taken to court for monopolistic behaviour


* our health sector is Australia's BIGGEST employer, and I would figure many people feel or know of the pressure that system is already under. 70% of the health budget goes to treating people with chronic illness - as our population ages we need smarter methods for consulting with patients who be widespread and obviously part of that 40% of Australians who live outside the big 5 cities and therefor not handy to more expert consultation services.

It's true, this project IS expensive but Australia has a unique problem.
Compare countries like Japan & Korea where [south] Korea has a population density of 500 people per square kilometer to Australia where we have 2.8 people per sq. kilometer.

It's obvious that the cost of infrastructure just on a per capita (person) basis is going to be expensive. If we allow it to be stratified into those in the [big 5] cities getting the creme de la creme of internet connectivity whilst the rural dwellers get left behind we've been more than simply neglectful.

Not only is it simply some left behind family and farmers out there, it's nearly HALF of all Australians. It's elderly people needing health services, it's children needing/deserving access to education services.

The neglect of the farming sector is sad enough as it is, the kind of time and energy that should (could) be devoted to rural issues like water quality/supply, forest and habitat conservation, research into plant and animal production techniques / development / requirements and the afore mentioned health and education all demand that this area of Australia should actually be catered to FIRST not last! THese people feed us and it's the children that leave the farm and move to the cities that then vote about these issues when they are adults. So regardless of their living location they're still IN Australia and still dealing with *national* Australian problems.

The lucky country will fall apart because luck isn't enough. Luck runs out!
If we don't get smart we'll get bought out, over run, run down and most definitely left behind or if we're lucky become the hired help for the countries that OWN our farming land and hi rise buildings.

Get smart and support the National Broadband Network. Information is power and we need the empowerment of that information distribution technology.