Ben Balbo

Family First Senator Stephen Fielding has just returned from a study tour in America and is now undecided about the effect of carbon emissions on global warming.

While the solar flares debate, which Senator Fielding has recently cottoned on to, has been around for many years, no evidence exists to link them to the current warming, according to Graeme Pearman, former chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO. Pearman goes one to say that solar flares are not likely to be a major factor for the next 90 years or so.

Senator Fielding states he’s open-minded about the situation and will be asking Climate Change Minister Penny Wong to “explain why what they’ve put forward isn’t credible”. His main concern is, “what happens if what they’re saying is true?”.

This author’s scientific accomplishments are somewhat restricted to computer science, but few will disagree with the view that reducing carbon emissions will make matters worse.

The crux of the matter is alluded to by Phil Chapman, an Australian-born geophysicist and former NASA astronaut scientist, who warns against policies to reduce carbon emissions as “the climate has simply not been warming since 2002.”. Chapman adds “until we do know [whether warming will continue] it is really foolish to start spending money.”

The fact is they’re right! The temperature hasn’t exceeded the 1998 high and we’re experienced continuous cooling in the past 5 years, as evidenced in the following plot.

The 157-year view paints a rather different picture though.

The picture is very clear when you look at who Senator Fielding gets his information from. The Heartland Institute is an organisation that publishes articles explaining that air pollution levels far higher than any we experience in the United States are perfectly safe and proposing that cigarette taxes be reduced to zero, dismissing second-hand smoke as a non-issue.

The Heartland Institute’s Wikipedia entry identifies them as a member organization of the Cooler Heads Coalition, “an informal and ad-hoc group focused on dispelling the myths of global warming.

Further, this non-profit organisation is funded by individuals and corporations, including at least US$190,000 from Philip Morris USA and US$676,500 from ExxonMobil, according to SourceWatch.

So here we have it, a Senator espousing the ‘truths’ of a debatably independent research organisation that is a member of an organisation that openly dismisses climate change issues and takes money from those organisations who seem to benefit greatly from their publications.

I’m sold!

Other sources: ABC News.

I’ve been working with my co-workers Jon (@jpoh), Gil (@gilfer), Dimitry, Becky, Danielle and Andrew on a very exciting project for the past two days, and the first iteration has just been released!

Like so many people around the world, we have been touched by the devastating effects of the 2009 bushfires that have swept through Victoria and New South Wales and wanted to use the skills we have to provide an online resource for connecting those in need with those who are able to help.

Please be upstanding for Bushfire Housing, an online tool to facilitate the pairing of those that are homeless due to the Australian bushfires and those that have room in their house, a vacant rental, newly purchased investment property or holiday home.

We Need Your Help

This site isn’t going to work if no-one knows about it, so please tell everyone you know. The Bushfire Housing, Spread The Word page includes a short message suitable for Twitter, Identi.ca and SMSing, badges for your blog, company web sites and email signatures, and some text that you can email to your family, friends and colleagues. Why not also write a blog post, set your LinkedIn and Facebook statuses and call your local talk back radio show?

If you or anyone you know has the ability to offer a room, a holiday house or any form of emergency shelter, please register. Your generosity will directly help the victims of the worst natural disaster in Australia’s recorded history.

Have you got an idea of how to spread the word? Let me know in the comments.

Inspiration

This website was inspired by a similar concept used during the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the New Orleans. There, it achieved great success and helped thousands of people find shelter in their darkest hours. We hope Bushfire Housing can do the same here.

What’s In Store For The Site?

We wrote the whole site in about 8 hours and have spent the last 6 hours working on minor bug fixes and UI updates. Given the nature of the site, we’re working extreme agile; ideally having multiple release cycles per day.

Phase two updates include SMS notification, Google map integration and more. If you have any suggestions or feedback, leave a comment.

So, I promised to write some more on StixCamp this morning. StixCampNewstead will be the first StixCamp ever. It will be held in the sticks and they will be Victorian sticks!

So what is this StixCamp I speak of? The first ever BarCamp in Australia was BarCampMelbourne 2007, and it was held at Lake Eppalock. Given two people got lost and there were complaints that no GPS coordinates were supplied, this very definitely meets the requirements of “in the sticks”.

Last year’s BarCampMelbourne was held in the city, and very great it was too. 70+ participants who all thoroughly enjoyed themselves (or at least didn’t hate it enough to tell me).

This year, we’re returning to the sticks. StixCampNewstead will be held at a beautiful winery in Newstead, Victoria.

So, in addition to letting people know about this upcoming event, we’re also looking for sponsors. The event will cost around $50 per head, and there’s space for 60, so $3,000 we need. We already have one sponsor, but need plenty more. We’re looking for a number of sponsors for smaller amounts, rather than one for the whole lump. If you’re interested in supporting this awesome grass-roots event, please get in touch with the organisers. We’re also happy to take sponsorship in kind by way of prizes to give away, providing the catering or any other in kindness you can think of.

In return for supporting this event, you’ll have your logo and link on the StixCamp Victoria, Australia web site and the BarCampMelbourne web site, receive verbal thanks and recognition during the opening and closing speeches, and in any communication with reporters and be welcome to advertise your support in any way you like (we will assist wherever possible). You can also offer schwag/literature/etc for dissemination and signage for display at the event. See the Sponsor StixCamp Victoria, Australia page for full details.

I’ve just realised I haven’t written anything here for almost 3 months, and yet I don’t feel I’ve been out of touch or not been updating “followers” with my activities and news. The number of phone calls and emails I’ve made hasn’t increased dramatically, so what’s happened?

Could it be that more frequent microblogs on Identica and Twitter are to blame for the drop in frequency on this site? Or was it just a busy time of year? I’m not sure.

So what’s been happening with me in the last three months? Sandrine and I moved house for the third (and final?) time in one year, and are now finally living in Portarlington on the Belarine Peninsula, 8 minutes from the beach. I still live and work in Melbourne, but I also get a holiday every weekend now!

Sandrine and I also went to Strathbogie; as some of you know, we used to own a bush block up there. We helped them develop a requirements document for a new community web site and portal, and after a few teething issues, they finally went live in November. The Strathbogie Tableland web site describes itself as a new way for residents and landholders to stay in touch and communicate with each other, and has really taken off with residents and others alike. Their community message board is possibly the most used area of the site.

In other news, I went to both RUXCON and the 5th Open Source Developers’ Conference, presenting at the latter on mobile streaming solutions for the open source community.

I’ve also been trying to fit in work on a new community driven web site that I started in October, but have had little time to spend on lately. Hopefully I’ll have more about that soon. Then, of course, there’s the work on the next BarCampMelbourne, which will actually be a StixCamp - more on that in a soon-to-follow post.

I think that’s about it. Of course there have been other things, but perhaps to minor to mention. You could always follow me on Identica or Twitter to hear the day-to-day stuff. If you like. No pressure!

There is devilry afoot in the Redmond offices. That tautology became stronger on the 5th of November with this press release:

SAN FRANCISCO, November 5

Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Microsoft BizSpark, a global program designed to help accelerate the success of entrepreneurs and early-stage startups. BizSpark provides startups and entrepreneurs with fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and production licenses of server products with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. BizSpark also provides technical support and market visibility. BizSpark is structured to take advantage of the resources and support of a global network of hundreds of organizations such as economic development agencies, university incubators, hosters and investors, including The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). These BizSpark Network Partners provide guidance, mentorship and resources to help drive startup success.

See full press release here.

You might consider this as a sign that Microsoft wants to support small and enterprising startups, but what’s the real story behind this?

The pessimist (or realist?) in me looks back at other Microsoft campaigns to build their customer base and assumed this is yet another attempt to lock people in to their proprietary formats and systems.

As someone who runs his own company based largely on only open source software, I find it hard to understand why people and organisations would opt for systems that lock you in even if it is cost-free. The problem here is the time-limit part of the deal. After the three years of cost-free access, you will be required to pay for the services you use, or migrate to another system.

Migrating is often an arduous task and most organisations will opt for lower short-term costs in licence fees over the cost of porting their systems to new infrastructure. The long term financial costs will keep adding up though, and over time the migration process will become more complex and less attractive. You will be heading down a spiral towards total dependence on Microsoft products!

Consider now a business such as mine that is not reliant on any proprietary software or services. I’ve been using these systems for well over three years now and have paid nothing and will continue to pay nothing. Sure, there are costs such as hardware, power, Internet access; but these are common across all businesses. I might also have spent a little more time in setting up my infrastructure initially, but having been a Windows administrator in a previous life I can attest to the fact that maintaining my infrastructure after deployment is less intensive and demanding than the Microsoft alternatives.

I’m also freer than any business that runs Microsoft products. If I want to change the way OpenOffice.org works for me, I can change it, or pay someone to change it for me. You cannot change the way Microsoft Word works. If I want to recompile the Linux kernel to increase performance or hardware compatibility, I can do that. You cannot run Windows on any hardware you like. If I buy a new computer, I can copy all of my applications over and run them on both machines at the same time. You can also do this, but that would contravene the end user licence agreement you agreed to when installing the software.

So tell me now, why would you take up Microsoft’s BizSpark offer if the open source world can offer your business the same service with no lock-in, no cost and more freedom?