Categories
Places

Speaking of Affordability

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Speaking of affordable living, did you know that the American dollar is worth 1.92 Australian dollars at today’s exchange rate? So, if you have an income from the US and lived in Australia, you could indulge in mighty high living.

What do you think, Australia — would you like more yanks in your neighborhood?

Of course, there’s a few hitches along the way. First, Australia has one of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. If you read the Sydney Morning Herald, it frequently has stories about the refuge problem in Australia, including this one about refuge children in today’s edition.

For some reason, technology people are particularly interested in moving to Australia. I know I was seriously considering it – until I found out how difficult it is for people to move there, especially in these troubled financial times. If you’re interested, I’ll point you to web sites with information on the topic.

I wonder if techies want to go to Australia because we have this impression that the country is the last frontier, the land of the truly free, where any Joey or Jenny can carve their own niche without government intervention. Wake up, Babees! As you’ll read at Jonathon’s weblog as well as this opinion piece about South Australia’s censorship bill and the impact on P2P technologies I did for O’Reilly Network, Australian has some of the most restrictive laws on acceptable Internet content.

Still, there are all those people with them sexy Australian accents…. growrrrrr!

Update: Thanks to Zem for clarification and additional information on censorship, and to Jonathon on the issue of immigration not being the same as a difficult boat people situation.

Categories
Places

Home Affordability

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The National Association of Housebuilders released their Housing Affordability rankings.

I’ve been seeing a lot of bragging among the weblogs about how affordable certain webloggers home towns are. Opine Bovine points out that Kansas City is second in the larger cities, and 16th overall. Sharon (who has been sick, send her get well wishes) mentions that her town, Greenville, has an affordability rate of 75.9%, meaning that 75 percent of the people making the average income can afford to buy homes in the area.

Look waaaaaaay down at the bottom, boys and girls, and you’ll see my home, San Francisco. Right down there with all the other cities in this area. According to the statistics, only about 8% of people who work here can afford to live here.

My question then is: if people who work here can’t afford to live here, then where are they living? Secondly, if the people who live here don’t work here, then who are they, why are they here, and what have they done with the workers?

San Francisco also has the highest number of homeless in the country per capita. Hmm. Do you think there’s a connection?

(Hey, that guy living under that box — I think he makes my coffee at Starbucks in the morning.)

Categories
Just Shelley Writing

Sleepless Night

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The Bay’s remarkably clear tonight. The lights on the other side sparkle like wadded up gum tinfoil on the ground.

I was thinking tonight that writers are either abysmally insecure or abominably arrogant —we don’t fall in-between. And I think the arrogant ones among us are nothing more than insecure writers that got so tired of being insecure that they got mad and then remained in that state.

Go to a bookstore and stand between any two bookshelves. If you close your ears and open your mind, you’ll be deafened by the sound of a thousand authors whispering their insecurities into the night. What will people say? Will they like it? Why did that critic hate it so much? Why did that jackass give me only one star at Amazon? What if no one reads it?

Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re a weblogger. If so, then you know what I’m saying. Close your eyes now, and in your mind you’ll hear a thousand webloggers whispering their insecurities into the threaded void of the Internet. Will they like it? Will I get any hits? Will I get flamed? What’s my Blogdex index? Why is no one linking to me?

Categories
Just Shelley Writing

Sleepless Night

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The Bay’s remarkably clear tonight. The lights on the other side sparkle like wadded up gum tinfoil on the ground.

I was thinking tonight that writers are either abysmally insecure or abominably arrogant —we don’t fall in-between. And I think the arrogant ones among us are nothing more than insecure writers that got so tired of being insecure that they got mad and then remained in that state.

Go to a bookstore and stand between any two bookshelves. If you close your ears and open your mind, you’ll be deafened by the sound of a thousand authors whispering their insecurities into the night. What will people say? Will they like it? Why did that critic hate it so much? Why did that jackass give me only one star at Amazon? What if no one reads it?

Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re a weblogger. If so, then you know what I’m saying. Close your eyes now, and in your mind you’ll hear a thousand webloggers whispering their insecurities into the threaded void of the Internet. Will they like it? Will I get any hits? Will I get flamed? What’s my Blogdex index? Why is no one linking to me?

Categories
Technology

Full Peer

Dave’s looking for a definition for a full peer. I’ve never heard of the term “full peer”, and the qualification about being connected 24 hours doesn’t necessarily fit within a P2P (peer-to-peer) environment.

In P2P, a peer both provides and consumes services. A group of peers can then provide and consume services to and from each other without dependence on any one server. With this understanding, there’s an assumption that this consumption and distribution occurs when the peer is connected.

Within some P2P enabled applications, the communication may be cached or queued when the peer is not connected. I know this the way Groove works.

Within Freenet, any one of the nodes within the network can consume or supply files. But if a peer is not connected, it’s not part of the network, it isn’t a participant and files are consumed and supplied through other participants. Either you’re a peer, or you’re not. Again, the assumption of 24 hour access is not a factor.

Some systems support a hybrid cloud whereby service requests are cached at a remote location (usually hidden from the peer), waiting for the other peer to connect. When the other peer connects, the communication is concluded. The results of the service call can then be communicated back to the originating peer, or cached itself if the originating peer is offline.

In a true P2P system, any one of the peers within the network could act as a cloud (intermediary) for other peers. Within a hybrid system, such as Groove, the system itself might provide these types of intermediary services.

As for firewall issues, most P2P tools can work from within firewalls, or be made to work within firewalls.

Dave, an interesting definition – but I don’t necessarily see it within a truly distributed system. What’s your context for the term? That would help.