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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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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Weight: 109.1kg
Breakfast: Weet Bix & OJ
Lunch: Vegemite Sandwich x 2
Dinner: Fillet Steak with Potatoes and Peas
Snacks: None
Total Calories: 1221
Exercise: Cycling, 20 mins
Ladder: na

Via Washington Monthly is this unbelievably strange story in the Guardian:

Britain and France talked about a “union” in the 1950s, even discussing the possibility of the Queen becoming the French head of state, it was reported today.

[...]

When Mr Mollet’s request for a union failed, he quickly responded with another plan - that France be allowed to join the British commonwealth - which was said to have been met more warmly by Sir Anthony.

What the hell? Strangest thing I’ve seen in months.

Went out tonight to try and find Comet C/2006 P1 McNaught with no luck so far - too much haze, and Canberra is just too bright.

This continues my near perfect record of not being able to see astronomical phenomena from Canberra, having also missed a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse, and I could never really see Halley’s Comet either.

Last night I very nearly posted a long rant about how it’s ‘Macworld’, and not ‘iPodworld’ or ‘iPhoneworld’.

Good thing I didn’t…

Apple only announced two big new products at the Macworld keynote, neither of which are computer hardware: the Apple TV and the iPhone. The phone looks very, very nice, but there’s no word about when it will be out in Australia yet.

Oh, and Apple changed its name to ‘Apple’ rather than ‘Apple Computer’.

Oh well, at least I can buy a shiny new toy a little more quickly…

From ABC News is this brain dead bit of policy:

Australian Young Labor is calling on the ALP to adopt a policy of not taxing people under 18.

Young Labor president Sam Crosby says it is unfair that those aged under 18 have to pay tax even though they cannot vote.

OK, let’s ignore the ‘taxing people under 18′ bit. Let’s just think about the ‘cannot vote’ thing and what that implies:

• only citizens have to pay taxes;
• people who don’t pay tax can’t vote; and
• people who don’t live in Australia don’t have to pay tax.

Stupid, stupid justification for the policy. If you’re going to advocate new policy (and it’s an idea interesting enough to debate), please don’t try to justify it using this fairness argument that a 3-year-old could see through.

Weight: 110.4kg

2007 will be, almost certainly, the year we see the next Federal Election.

According to the timetable published by the AEC the election has to occur between 4 August 2007 and 19 January 2008. A double dissolution can occur any time, but those are the only dates that avoid a half-senate election too, something we can be pretty certain no one wants to see¹.

There’s never been an election in January, so we can safely rule it out. Since 1950 there’ve been none in August or September, 4 in October, 4 in November and 5 in December (none later than 13 December). So we’re now down to 10 possible dates. My guess would be that the PM might call an election shortly after APEC ends on September 9. The minimum time between issue of writs and the election is 33 days, which would put the election on October 13 or 20, probably more likely the 20th, which would require the PM to call the election by Monday 17 September.

Despite half going for the UK in this round of the Ashes (the other half knowing that they’re completely hopeless), I still have to laugh at some of the stuff from the BBC Online Commentary:

1439: WICKET - Cook ct Gilchrist b Lee 4, Eng 4-1 Oh no

11627: WICKET - Bell ct Gilchrist b Lee 28, Eng 64-3 That’s what pressure does to you - Bell swipes horribly at a wide one from Lee and snicks it into Gilchrist’s grateful gloves. Lee strikes in his first over back, and England slump again. Hey, at least we can all find something else to do on Saturday…

Maiden from McGrath, and England’s constipation is reaching chronic levels. Thing is, you don’t get any prunes from this attack.

Joy unconfined - a whole run!

Crunch - Warne leans back and drives Anderson high over cover for four, and that’s his half-century. The SCG crowd rise to him, laughing as they do so - it’s not been a classic knock, and he should have been out at least twice, but Warne being Warne, he’s still there. Hey - only two and half more days to go, and he can never hurt England again. Until he moves into coaching.

Lots of fun.

Following the 500 words lost incident earlier today I’ve upgraded the tools that I use for posting to this weblog a little. I now use TextMate, a fabulous text editor that I use for all my coding. I found out it had a blogging interface, and away I went…

To make that work a little better, I’ve also installed Markdown support. Markdown is a very nice way of putting codes like links and italic and bold into the posts¹.

All in all this makes posting a lot easier, and it also handles pictures much more quickly, so I have fewer excuses for my lack of posts than ever!

1976 isn’t just the year of my birth (epoch making an event that may be). It was also the year of a fairly interesting economic policy showdown in Australia. This has been prompted by the release of the 1976 Cabinet Papers as well as some recent commentary by John Stone. This is going to be a fairly long post, so it’ll be continued over the page, to keep the important musings about movies and Lego where they belong.

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Weight: 110.3kg

That of those 16 movies I fully expect that Helen will want to see about 6…

A few of the films that I want to see coming out this year (in release date order):

• For Your Consideration. From the makers of Looking for Guffman and Best in Show (and A Mighty Wind, which I haven’t seen yet). Should be fun, but uneven like the rest.
• The Fountain. Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, promises to be spectacular, difficult to understand and fun. Been looking forward to this for a while.
• Stranger Than Fiction. An IRS agent begins to suspect that he’s the character in a novel. Whee! I love modern surrealism.
• Last King of Scotland. A lot of Oscar buzz around Forrest Whittaker’s performance as Idi Amin. Definitely worth a look see.
• The Illusionist. Well, I liked the last movie about a magician… (Actually, this one came out first in the US, it’s taking forever to get here).
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It looks intriguing, a return to the style of original underground comic book.
• Spider-Man 3. Loved the first two.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. Loved the first two.
• Transformers. Oh please oh please let this not be a complete piece of rubbish.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Although I’m looking forward to book 7 more.
• The Simpsons Movie. Maybe this is where all the jokes they took out of the main series went?
• License to Wed. Movie about marriage prep courses.
• Ratatouille. It has a rat in it, how can I resist. And it’s from Pixar.
• Stardust. Magical Fantasy based on a story by Neil Gaiman.
• Beowulf. Adult fantasy made using the same technology used in The Polar Express. Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary are writing the script.
• Bee Movie. Don’t know much about it, but the early ads are smart and funny.

Only 16 that I have to see, I must be slowing down…

I just typed about 500 words (which was only about halfway into the post) and then a ‘user malfunction’ caused it all to disappear. I wish this program had autosave!

(I’ll try and get back to my fascinating post about mid-1970s exchange rate policy soon, but I don’t think I can stand doing it today…)