What am I listening to?

For a while I have been listening to a number of podcasts.
Thought it would be worthwhile posting them up here just to share the love and hopefully hear what other people are listening to.

LUGradio was great but has since died. http://www.lugradio.org/

Best of YouTube takes some interesting videos (which are no longer meant to be from YouTube) and makes them available. I enjoy the variety and randomness of some of these videos. Sometimes they play videos that are a little dated but you have to take the good with the bad. http://bestofyoutube.mevio.com/

The Java Posse. Random java discussions including different languages that use the JVM. http://www.javaposse.com/

The Linux Action Show talks about random linux related things. They also talk about a heap of devices that get them excited. Every now and then they branch out into mac and windows discussions because they find something interesting to talk about there. http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/?cat=4

2600: The Hacker Quarterly is where I listen to random hacker related news. I always feel like I should be doing more when I'm listening to this one. http://www.2600.com/

The worst bit is that I'm probably a good 3-6 months behind on some of these podcasts and I haven't downloaded any in a month because I came close to my cap whilst downloading L4D2.

NBN and Net Filter

*edit*
Neil Creek asked to be credited for the thought provoking tweets. I originally left them off cause I just wanted to get out my opinion of the situation but am happy to link to him since it has become a two way discussion

-- Original post follows (with linking) --

I seen a tweet come up in my feed that made me want to reply.

The NBN will be a lot of money spent on today's tech. Speeds form new tech will rapidly overtake and make it redundant.

Technology is cruel. It is so expensive to start with and gets out of date quickly. My response to this tweet was:

Extremes do not work. My first computer was top of the line, $3000. My second was $1000 second hand. Then $4000. Get what fits.

Which was quickly followed by:

A good argument against NBN. Give it to those who need the speeds, not those who don't. It's one size fits all.

Which is a perfectly valid response and made me rethink why I feel the way I do about the NBN.

Backfired :( I'm for NBN and believe it should reach the many. 8 years is a long time and believe that 100mb/s is a good start.

It is at this point I realised that 140 characters is not enough (but a good start to the conversation).

I feel the Governments role is to redistribute wealth and make sure the country moves forward as a whole. Whilst it is probably fact that the majority of people wanting faster network access are city folk, people in country regions should be able to access the same sort of facilities.
ISPs are going to have a hard time justifying large costs to get the infrastructure out that far and whilst they could pass on the cost to those customers, the service would become so expensive that few would want it. The ISPs could share that cost amongst the city subscribers but then there services would be more expensive than other ISPs that just service city regions.
I feel like it is comparable to the roads. Just because they get used less out in the country, the roads should still be built to the same standards that roads in the city are built.

I'm reminded of a lecture in accounting. Monopoly isn't a bad word. Sometimes it is the best way to get something done. Power, Water, Government and Public Transport have the monopoly feel. There is basically only one way of getting them.
The only way we are going to get a major step forward in out internet connectivity to catch up with the rest of the world is if the majority of the infrastructure is treated as a monopoly. Otherwise it will be patches of improvements. I'm still waiting to get off 1.5mbs. I can't watch high def videos on Youtube because it isn't worth the wait.

Why have I lumped the Net Filter in with this post? The roads analogy. I'm torn between thing that the Net Filter is a coffee shop on the side of the road or whether they are the police that patrol the roads.

I would prefer them to be the coffee shop, because I don't like coffee, so can happily drive down the road without worry. This gives power to the driver and to the business that want to set up on the side of the road. Give you the options of Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Milkshakes etc.

It seems that the likes of Conroy would like the filter to be like police with an ever watchful eye. Being technically minded I guess I see a huge gap between physical danger and cyber danger. You can protect yourself online but it is hard for you to stop someone that has had too much to drink from driving into you.

Data encapsulation for tools

One of the nice things about java is a the abundance of additional libraries that are available.
I'm currently working on mapping software and thankfully, there is an open source library that handles most of the work.
The first task I've been given at my new job is to allow users to upload some files that puts an overlay on the map. Fortunately I just have to provide the glue between the app and the library that does the mapping.
Except...
I don't have complete control over the tools.
The tool provides an XML parser which has a private member for the handler. It is this handler that is given the contents of the file and passes around some values to construct geometries. Under some circumstances, this handler doesn't do what I would want it to do.
In the perfect DI world, I would just hand this parser the handler that I want it to use.
Because it is private, I have to use reflection to change the value of the handler in the parser after its construction.
If the member was protected, I could just extend the parser and change the value of the handler and I wouldn't feel so dirty.

I'm interested in input though, what is the value of "private" in a tool. Should the tool creator limit what can be achieved?

SVN is stupid and so am I

Just want to have a quick rant about subversion. Most places you see the SVN is the replacement to CVS and does things better but I'm not entirely sure.
I was always suspicious when branching and tagging were copying the files around on the file system. If I wanted to make those sorts of copies, I'd just do it myself.

This bit me yesterday when I wanted to change what branch a particular directory was checked out as. I couldn't just say "This folder, be this branch" I had to say check out this location of SVN to this location on my disk. The first time I tried, I almost checked out the whole alternative branch into the particular folder (not what I wanted).

I know that flexibility = power.
But sometimes I like it when design stops you making mistakes like that.

Time flies... but what was I doing?

Back on the 10th of February, my boss asked me to hang back a little later than usual. I was working 8am-4pm and loving it.
The walk to the other end of the building was interesting and all the other guys were jesting that "I was in trouble now".

I was made redundant.

Being a Wednesday I thought I would just enjoy the long weekend and start looking for a job on Monday but a couple of people had got in touch with me earlier than that (boy does the news travel quickly).

Monday I had a job interview with someone I had previously worked with and the ball got rolling Wednesday.
Working with a mapping system this time. Looking forward to the maths.

FYI: Breathalyzers

I was driving home from Coffs Harbour and got pulled over by the police.
Just a random breath test. He asked me how I was going then count to 5. This confused the hell out of me. The last time I used one of these machines was in primary school when a police officer came in and gave a speech.
Back then you had to blow in a tube for about 5 seconds so I was expecting to do the same.
But you basically just talk over this machine and it picks up your blood-alcohol level.

I don't know if these machine were just in NSW or if they have been deployed across Australia.
Just thought I'd share.