Exasperated Calculator

As I mentioned below, I just got a new laptop. Despite the fact that it cost twice as much as a desktop. Why?

Section 58X(2)(h) of the Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act 1986, which says:

each of the following is an eligible work related item : [...] a notebook computer, a laptop computer or a similar portable computer;

Which sounds fair enough, but compare it to 58X(3):

A mobile phone or a car phone is only an eligible work related item if the phone is primarily for use in the employee’s employment.

Yup, that’s right – laptops count as a eligible work item (and are FBT exempt) even if there’s no business use at all. But desktops aren’t covered at all. So what’s the result? Well, my very expensive laptop is going to cost me less than the desktop that costs half as much retail.

On related ‘strange policy impacts’ news, Apple will be charging $5 to enable a chip already in their computers. Why?

The reason for the fee, Jeremy Horwitz reports for iLounge is that “the Core 2 Duo Macs weren’t advertised as 802.11n-ready, and a little law called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature for one of its products. Hence, said the Apple rep, the company’s not distributing new features in Software Update any more, just bug fixes. Because of Sarbanes-Oxley… It’s about accounting. Because of the Act, the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn’t finished delivering the product at that point.”

So far it isn’t clear whether or not this is really true (or just) a convenient excuse for Apple. But if it’s true then it’s a prime example of the unintended consequences of policy. They wanted to make sure that companies recorded their revenue properly, but obviously the wording (either in the act or the regulations of the SEC) just isn’t tight enough.

Weight: 109.0kg
Breakfast: Weet Bix & OJ
Lunch: Vegemite Sandwich x 2
Dinner: Chilli with Cous Cous
Snacks: Beer after work
Total Calories: 1,326 cal
Exercise: None (raining )
Ladder: na

That someone made a film about the Helvetica font?

Or the fact that I really want to see it now…

(Via Daring Fireball).

Shortly before Christmas my old Powerbook laptop started doing two distressing things. Firstly, it started getting really, really hot and was working really slowly. Secondly, and even more worryingly, the hard drive was making funny noises every time it got used.

So I very quickly stopped using it, which is the other excuse that I have for not posting very much lately. But this left me without a laptop, and my desktop Mac (a G4 iMac) just isn’t up to a lot of the applications I want to run. So a new computer was in order.

For funny reasons relating to tax policy (which I’ll discuss in another post soon), a laptop is a much better thing to buy than a desktop. So, after relatively little shopping around and a lot of work to fit it into the budget, last week I got myself my shiny new toy:

It’s a MacBook Pro 17″. It’s a simply lovely computer. Really fast, runs windows right next to Mac applications. Lots of memory, and a huge pretty screen.

On the downside, that’s the last big gadget purchase I get to make for a while…

In the rest of this entry are the pictures from when I got my shiny new Wii back in December. I didn’t post the pictures at the time due to my laptop explosion. Warning: only geeks will care.

For the rest of you: the Wii is great fun, and I wish I had some more time to play it. It’s a large part of the reason that I haven’t been posting to the blog as much lately. And the Zelda game is just fantastic fun.

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One of my christmas presents this year was this a papercraft penguin. This weekend just past I found the couple of hours to make the thing, and here it is, looming from the bookshelf in my home office.

Some more pictures after the cut. This thing is huge: 53cm tall.

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