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March 29, 2005

And you thought New Zealand 'broadband' had issues?

Thought that, whatever you might call New Zealand's 'broadband' market, that it's having problems? Well, they're having broadly similar problems with the broadband market in the United States. However, the biggest problem seems to be whether one should have to pay for a phone line with one's DSL.

I suppose on first quick impressions, over in the United States, there's more of a problem due to the apparent popularity of cell phones and Internet telephony over the broadband lines that's a problem. I imagine it's quite possible this sort of thing might become an issue in New Zealand in the future, with cellphones starting to replace landlines.

Fibre to the front door of your home, anyone? There's probably still room on them electricity poles outside, unless the TelstraClear cables have taken all the room. Which is likely. The Telecom poles look decidedly sparse, though.

March 26, 2005

There is a social emergency!

Yes, that does sound like something out of a speech during a moral panic, perhaps.

Anyway, thanks to a kind someone who scanned it especially for PG's DP site, Social Emergency (1914), edited by some William Trufant Foster, is now available. It's a book published in the US, so it could be interesting for academic study in terms of sexual health issues in that country during the decade in which it was written. The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals (that's its full title) is also available in the usual Gallery interface.

I still haven't described the unrelated books I uploaded the other day. I may do so shortly once I evaluate whether Beatrix Potter books are fun enough to add. :)

Anyway, enjoy studying the new book.

March 25, 2005

Eat more fruit and keep fit!

After all, it's the fruits of perfect health.

Usually it's the other way around

What about sneaking paintings into a museum?

March 24, 2005

Happy Easter!

Assignment handed in. Sleep is now on the agenda. Happy Easter!

Oh yeah, and so is some work on helping write some Jabber client documentation, and another assignment. Once the sleep thing (and thus that annoying tiredness thing) is out of the way.

March 22, 2005

New experiment: some new books uploaded

To cut a long story short, I've uploaded some books that I've been assured are public domain. I'll describe them in a couple of days when I have time to do so.

March 16, 2005

I want a tank!

Why don't I ever get an ex-army tank in my back garden?

March 14, 2005

Restored, but not from a backup!

There are days when you wished you'd kept more recent tarballs. Today was one of them, after being alerted by someone (thanks!) that Safe Marriage had disappeared from the Section 27 and Public Domain Books Gallery. Oops. At first I thought someone must have tried to put on a copyright infringement claim, but of course the book was a pre-1923 book, so was definitely covered under the expiry provisions of US copyright legislation as I understand it. It is also way out of copyright in the NZ legislation, so I should have been covered both ways. Anyway, it's been so good to have some cool people from DP helping me fix this.

But, whatever the case, I now have a tarball copy of a new known good copy of all the books, so we can all rest easily. For now.

Well, you too can now, once again, enjoy Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity! Or, if you'd prefer, just one page at a time.

At this point, I should probably suggest some discretion is advised reading the book, as it talks about sexual issues. But, that said, it was a best seller in England, and was popular in Australia, even if the New Zealand authorities banned a book by a New Zealander...

In any case, there's no lurid interest in putting these books online. It's all good academic interest, and I hope other people can find some use for these books, such as the person above (who e-mailed me about the missing book problem) appears to possibly have.

Which, by the way, if anyone needs a tarball or other archive of some or all of the books, please tell me. Attribution would be useful, by the way, thanks. :)

Back to the original topic, yes, I've learnt my lesson with backups. Naughty Jonathan!

[Listening to: We Don't Know How Lucky We Are -- Frederick Dagg -- Fred Dagg: Anthology (02:49)]

March 13, 2005

New document requested

I've had a couple suggestions for new documents to scan. These may take precedence over scanning stuff currently in progress due to size problems with those. In particular, I've had a suggestion of a 1925 document that appears to be a ministerial inquiry's report.

More details will follow once I clarify what will actually be available to me -- including a good scanner.

[Listening to: Laugh and Half-Draft -- Irish Jigs & Reels (02:59)]

March 6, 2005

Signs malware and spyware are both getting out of hand

Here's another sign (courtesy of Slashdot) that malware is getting out of hand: at least 23 megabytes of bandwidth used up without asking. Not to mention in the same story someone discovering that they've been had for no less than 65 megabytes for a .NET Framework installation they never asked for, excluding the adware, malware and advertisements that came with it.

I wonder if Microsoft AntiSpyware and Norton AntiVirus will come out with definitions against the web page markup that does this, if not already... as someone on a byte cap, this is not only below the belt, in a very uncomfortable spot, but quite probably unethical.

I guess I have to be very careful what websites I visit, now. Grumble. Not that I wasn't already, however.

March 5, 2005

Horses

In the interests of road safety, LTNZ have bought the naming rights to a horse.

[Listening to: Pacific Symphony Orchestra -- Appalachian Spring Suite (27:02)]

March 4, 2005

Another InternetNZ council meeting

At another InternetNZ council meeting. The agenda's fairly tightly packed this afternoon.