http://etbe.coker.com.au Linux, politics, and other interesting things Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:24:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Some time ago I spoke to Craig Keating about his plans for a new secondary school in the center of Melbourne. His plan was to focus on the core academic areas and cater to academically gifted students. He had some interesting ideas for his business, one of which ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/18/keating-college/ Currently there is a debate about censoring the Internet in Australia. Although debate might not be the correct word for a dispute where one party provides no facts and refuses to talk to any experts (Senator Conroy persistently refuses all requests to talk to anyone who knows anything about ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/18/other-reasons-for-not-censoring/ Australia has slow Internet access when compared to other first-world countries. The costs of hosting servers are larger and the cost of residential access is greater with smaller limits. I read news reports with people in other countries complaining about having their home net connection restricted after they ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/17/national-cost-slow-net-access/ Last week I gave a talk for the Linux Users of Victoria about Cloud Computing and Amazon EC2 [1]. I was a little nervous as I was still frantically typing the notes a matter of minutes before my talk was due to start (which isn't ideal). But it ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/09/luv-talk-about-cloud-computing/ One of the exciting things about having a cloud computing service is how to talk to the rest of the world. It's all very well to have a varying number of machines in various locations, but you need constant DNS names at least (and sometimes constant IP addresses) to ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/06/ec2-and-ip-addresses/ A common idea among the less educated people who call themselves "conservative" seems to be that they should oppose tax cuts for themselves and support tax cuts for the rich because they might become rich and they want to prepare for that possibility. The US census data [1] shows that less ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/05/support-gay-marriage-in-case-you-become-gay/ I have previously written about my work packaging the tools to manage Amazon EC2 [1]. First you need to login and create a certificate (you can upload your own certificate - but this is probably only beneficial if you have two EC2 accounts and want to use the same certificate for ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/04/basics-of-ec2/ The National Council of Churches in the US [1] has produced some advice for Christian voters titled Christian Principles in an Election Year [2]. It starts by saying "Your church, your communion, and the National Council of Churches USA do not endorse any political party or any candidate" (which ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/04/christian-principles-in-an-election-year/ The term Cloud Computing seems to be poorly defined at the moment, as an example the Wikipedia page about it is rather incoherent [1]. The one area in which all definitions of the term agree is that a service is provided by a varying number of servers of which the details ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/03/types-of-cloud-computing/ One significant dividing factor between mailing lists is the difference between summary lists (where the person who asks a question receives replies off-list and then sends a summary to the list) and the majority of mailing lists which are discussion lists (where every reply goes to the list by default). I ... http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/11/02/integrity-mailing-lists/