CW: Australian job market gets flexible

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Flexibility is the theme of the current job market, Hays Information Technology's January Quarterly Forecast reports. With IT professionals each embarking on their own new directions for the new year and the usual influx of overseas staff to our summery shores, the recruitment agency expects there to be a rich and diverse pool of job seekers available to employers on the hunt.

Even with a healthy workforce, however, there is no shortage of IT work to be done. In continuation of 2006 trends, Hays has found that many organisations now want to invest in Web enabled applications and enterprise-wide systems, generating a demand for staff with .NET skills, C# skills, and ERP experience.

The public sector too is investing heavily in IT, Hays reports, with a strong demand for IT professionals across all technical areas, project managers, technical architects and people with Lotus Notes and Novell skills.

Impervious, overly-specific demands of employers have previously been a problem to job seekers. However, recent efforts to recruit high-demand talent have led employers to relax their requirements and offer more creative employment benefit packages, according to Peter Noblet, regional director of Hays.

"Some companies who have previously been very rigid in their candidate requirements are now far more flexible," he said. "They [some employers] might not be able to get the full skill-set that they need, but we certainly can work with them to try and find people with the relevant skills in other areas."

Noblet noted an increase in mature aged candidates employed. And while most employers have preferred to keep their intellectual property in-house by recruiting permanent staff, he said, there is still a demand for contract work.

But it's not exactly Easy Street for job seekers either. Despite the commonly touted skills shortage, candidates still need to convince potential employers of their abilities and cultural fit, and should expect to be remunerated realistically according to their experience, Noblet said.

"The candidate shortage has led many candidates to believe they will receive large salary increases from new employers to attract them to a new role or from their current employer to retain them," he said. "However, while salaries are expected to increase slightly, candidates should realistically compare their experience to their expected salary."

Noblet advises job seekers to research potential employers, and when applying for a job, outline not only their skill sets but also experiences and stand-out characteristics that demonstrate a reasonable cultural fit into the organisation, such as team leading and project management.

"Traditionally, IT people - even at a senior level - tend to list their skills and technical know-how," he said. "What they need to start looking at is how that reads to a potential prospective employer, and therefore [they] need to pull out some of their softer skills and achievements as well."

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CW: IT professionals take on consulting skills

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

There is more to successfully delivering an IT service than just technical expertise, proposes consulting manager Graeme Simsion, who believes that soft skills play an equally important role in IT businesses.

To tackle what he calls a 'shortage of consulting skills in IT professionals', Simsion will be leading a masterclass about running consultancy assignments, dealing with clients and meeting their expectations, and handling difficult people.

"I think we all know from our own experiences with professionals - be they accountants, lawyers, doctors - that the technical knowledge that the person has is only half of the deal," said Simsion, a senior fellow at the University of Melbourne who also runs his own consultancy Simsion & Associates.

From his many years of consultancy work, Simsion recalls several assignments that did not go according to plan. He attributes most of these unsuccessful assignments to a failure of consulting skills, even in professional consultants.

"I think most users would agree that when things go wrong, it's not because the person was technically incompetent," he said. "Far more often, there's been a misunderstanding of requirements from a lack of the underlying consulting skills."

Simsion has also observed, through previous consulting classes that he has run in North America and Europe, that some managers prefer to send their employees to courses that teach hard skills like new techniques or programming languages. As a consequence, many IT professionals could get a long way into their careers without having any consulting skills training at all.

However, he said, "In my experience, people who progress in IT are not always people who have the strongest technical skills; very often, the barrier to progression for people is that they don't have good soft skills."

While he admits that there are some people with a natural ability to handle people and consulting situations, Simsion argues that without the right training, even people with natural skills will often deviate from the correct methods under pressure.

The masterclass will be held in Melbourne from March 26-27 and is expected to be relevant to all IT professionals past the career stage of simply coding under the direction of a more senior technical person.

More information is available here.

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PCW: The wired, wacky and wonderful people of the Internet

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Net celebrities are making their way from the Internet to TV in VH1's search for the 40 Greatest Internet Superstars. In the lead up to the show's March 23 premier, Internet users have been asked to vote from 51 bloggers, comedians, and some very odd characters to determine who makes the celebrity A-list of the cyber world.

Just what does it take to be an Internet celebrity? Liz Tay speaks with some of VH1's nominees for an insight into the WWW - that's the wired, wacky, and wonderful - hall of fame.

The wired

Perez Hilton

Short, sharp rhetoric and clumsily edited photos make up what claims to be Hollywood's most-hated Web site, PerezHilton.com. Thanks to the antics of Britney, AnJo and the site's namesake, Paris, PerezHilton.com boasts an average of 3.5 million visitors a day, making its creator, Mario Armando Lavandeira, somewhat of a celebrity in his own right.

The blog has been popular since its inception in 2005, when Lavandeira, a self-proclaimed 'tech idiot', discovered how simple blogging can be. Daily updates, exclusive audio and video content kept viewers hooked, while Lavandeira's original stories and sharp nose for the latest gossip earned him the respect of gossip columnists in the mainstream media.

"I've always taken my blog seriously," Lavandeira said. "It was [always] updated daily, and now I update it several times an hour. When I'm blogging, I've never wanted to talk about myself, because I'm boring, and I think that's what sets me apart from other blogs."

Lavandeira's blog is 'not just a traditional blog', he said, as he sets out to actively and aggressively break stories. PerezHilton.com was there when Britney divorced ex-husband Kevin Federline and when Neil Patrick Harris was outed for his homosexual relationship with David Burtka. And when Lavandeira broke the news of Angelina Jolie's relationship with Brad Pitt, an unexpected ten-fold surge in readership brought the blog crashing down.

"Everything in my life has prepared me for what I'm doing now," he said. "I've been a journalist in the past, I've been a publicist, I've been an actor, so I know how the three groups of people think, feel, behave, what they want, what they need, and how to deal with them, and that all informs what I do now."

The wacky

Ask a Ninja

Ever had a question that only the wisdom and power of a ninja could answer?

Ask a Ninja is a series of comedic videos in which a mysterious Ninja addresses viewers' e-mails on topics like ninja training, technology, physics, and Santa. Videos are characterised by the Ninja's exaggerated hand gestures and erratic camera angle changes, which occur constantly as the Ninja battles invisible enemies (or so he says).

Created in 2005 by Los Angeles improvisational comedians Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, the site averages 30,000 visitors a day, and is on track to grossing low to mid seven figures this year through advertising and merchandise.

"Douglas is a huge fan of martial arts and kung fu movies, and Kent is a huge geek, so it was a perfect fit," Nichols told PC World. "We just wanted to help get a real ninja's perspective out into the world, and the net has really embraced that goal."

Besides material success, the popularity generated by Ask a Ninja has also earned its creators some recognition and respect in the entertainment industry. Last year, the pair made guest appearances as commentators on VH1, while Sarine, who plays the Ninja, has appeared as a guest film critic on National Public Radio, and a judge on Yahoo's talent-show contest.

Mahir Cagri: "I Kiss You"

Before Borat, there was Mahir Cagri, a Turkish accordion player-turned-Internet-celebrity in 1999. At its peak, Cagri's personal Web site, ikissyou.org, was receiving around 50,000 page views per day, resulting in it being entered into the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records for the most visits to a personal homepage with a total of 12 million hits.

Cagri describes his online success as a surprise to himself and the rest of the world, as he claims to have done nothing to promote his site. "l'm first internet star off world and my site," he told PC World, in his notorious broken English. "l have thousand fans-friends all world and famous star fans too ... many my fans invited me their country house and come me too; this is continue still."

The obligations of fame have also led Cagri to make numerous high-profile appearances, including being parodied on The Late Show with David Letterman, appearing in Forbes, and an eTour-sponsored tour to the U.S. worth a rumoured US$1 million. In 2005, Cagri produced his own music video with EMI records. The video, titled "I kiss you", features Cagri taking in the sights of London, wearing a self-promotional T-shirt and chanting, "My name is Mahir. I kiss you, I kiss you."

While he is unable to say how much ikissyou.org has earned him in advertising dollars, Cagri estimates that he has been seen by "about 200 millions people." He is now appearing in televised advertisements around the world, and is soon to be releasing an auto-biography that he says will also serve as a script for a Hollywood movie in the near future.

The wonderful

One Red Paperclip

At 26, salesman Kyle McDonald dreamed of owning a house. The problem was, he didn't want to pay for it.

So McDonald came up with a plan to trade his way to the dream. Starting with an ordinary red paperclip, he started a thread on online community classifieds, craigslist.org, offering to trade for anything of value.

The paperclip became a pen, pen became doorknob, doorknob became camp stove, camp stove became beer keg and so on, until McDonald found himself in front of a two-storey farmhouse in the Canadian town of Kipling Saskatchewan in July 2006 - just less than a year from when he made his first red paperclip posting on craigslist.

McDonald recorded his trades in a blog that, at its peak, received about one million unique visitors in a single day. His story appeared on CNN, ABC News, CBC Newsworld, and the BBC, the publicity eventually resulting in high-profile trades of surprising value - like an afternoon with rock star Alice Cooper.

"I heard somewhere that one red paperclip had given the town of Kipling Saskatchewan a freelance marketing push worth over 500 billion dollars," McDonald told PC World. "Yes, that's billion. The current population of Kipling is 1142 people, but town planners are expecting considerably more people to move to town this year as a result of all the because of all the publicity."

Quest completed, McDonald seems happy to be relinquishing his online fame to the town, and enjoying the "old fashioned serenity" of Kipling Sasketchewan.

"At the moment, [I'm] sitting in my parent's kitchen eating trail mix and looking at a banana. My brother is on the couch. He's Wearing glasses. My life is wild right now with all this fame going on," he jokes.

"Trust me, the high life is nuts."

Take it from the stars

If you can't be them, you can at least try to join them. Here's what the Web superstars have to say to anyone wanting to follow in their footsteps:

Mario Armando Lavandeira, Perez Hilton: "Get a gimmick, get something that will get you attention, be consistent, be good, and work it! It takes a lot of hard work - I don't think people realise that I spend, on many days, 18 to 19 hours working on my Web site a day."

Kent Nichols, Ask A Ninja: "Be open to your fans, listen to them and really try and participate with them in the creation of your website."

Mahir Cagri, I Kiss You: "l can advise them they must be trust-honest and say clear open about theirself."

Kyle McDonald, One Red Paperclip: "First you need a good outfit and a DJ-like Web persona. If I could start again I'd wear a large beanie and call myself 'Thunder Blade'. Then you need to find a successful internet project, steal the concept, and do the exact same things the original person did. But different."

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CW: Dunc-Tank: Success or failure?

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

The Dunc-Tank project has been the topic of much debate in the Debian community since it was launched in September last year. Aimed at overcoming Debian's notorious delays in meeting its scheduled releases, Dunc-Tank collected donations to test the effect of funding on open-source software development.

It has now been more than a month since the scheduled release of Debian 4.0, codenamed etch. However, even with Dunc-Tank's funding, etch is yet to be seen.

Liz Tay speaks with Debian Project Leader and Dunc-Tank mastermind Anthony Towns to find out what happened.

How did the Dunc-Tank experiment come about?

Dunc-Tank was a project to see if we could put some funding into Debian release management so that it would be more likely to come out on time.

It was originally going to be an internal thing within Debian, but there was a lot of controversy as to whether the release was a suitable thing to be funding alone, or whether it should have been a more general thing, so that anyone could apply for funding.

So rather than spend six months debating it and working out a really good way of doing it, we figured that since the release was due in just a couple of months, we'd go ahead with an external project and once we'd done that, we could have some actual results [and] some information about whether these things work and what sort of problems actually come up.

The particular thing that inspired this [Dunc-Tank experiment] was about three months before the December 4th release date -- that had kind of been bandied around a bit casually, Steve Langasek, who is one of the release managers, was basically working 18 hours a day on his day job to do PHP coding, and he wasn't having enough time after that to look into some of the release critical issues that we were having.

I thought if we could get Steve being able to spend some dedicated blocks of time, rather than having to compromise with his work and stay up late, or not getting any sleep overnight, or whatever, then that might have a good influence. So we talked to the release managers to see if that would be practical, and it turned out that it was for them.

Why has etch not yet been released?

The long term release goal was about 18 months, which was December last year. To pick a date out of the air, the release managers chose December 4th. Not everyone in Debian thought that setting a release date at all was a good idea. Not everyone had even heard of the December 4th release date; it had been in a few announcements but Debian releases have been getting longer and longer, so when you have a release announcement, no one believes it anyway, so it just doesn't get taken into account.

It's hard to say quite why the deadline was missed. There were a few issues, one of which was the kernel packaging to remove firmware that we had some general resolutions from before; that only managed to get done on January 5th this year. So about a month after we were hoping to release. That, in turn, was a requirement for the next installer release candidate, which will hopefully be the final one, and that will then require about a week or two of testing to make sure it's okay.

That supports some of the arguments that the release managers aren't the ones that need to be funded; it's the people doing some of the work that's problematic - like removing firmware and working on the installer - perhaps we should have dedicated some resources to helping them out.

On the other hand, the release managers do a lot of work on fixing up the actual release critical bug count. What we can see in the graphs tracking these problems is a real improvement from 200 to 100 release critical bugs when Steve was working full time on it, and an improvement of about 100 to 75 or 50 while Andi [Barth] was working on it.

Do you think Dunc-Tank has been successful as an experiment?

There was a definite effect [of funding] on it [etch], and there were some other indirect effects as well, such as the Dunc-Bank project, in which a group of people, mostly from France, didn't like the idea of paying people at all and set up a project that would work with Debian's guidelines and try and improve Debian, but in such a way that Dunc-Tank would fail and wouldn't release on time.

They decided to do some really thorough testing of the release and find more bugs that would then have to be fixed, because if you don't find bugs in advance you can't fix them, and so you might release on time, but with bugs.

So they found the bugs in advance, and said, 'oh, we know about these bugs, and etch can't be released till they're fixed'. This forces us to release a better product, but later, which is what the Debian community tends to focus on anyway.

So while we've had Steve fixing all these bugs, we've also had a lot more being filed, and so I think we've had a real improvement in the QA process and that's from people who specifically don't like the project so it's hard to say if that's a failing or a success, and whether it's possible to repeat that at all.

There was some debate within the Debian community about whether Open Source projects should be funded at all. Does money corrupt Open Source?

It definitely can be a corruption. One of the really great things about Debian is that people volunteer to it and then are able to work on doing things the way they think is right, rather than towards deadlines they don't believe in, or just getting a quick thing out that kind of works but you know is going to fail in the long term. That kind of makes it more fun to work on, which encourages the whole volunteer spirit which is much cheaper than trying to fund people.

There have been estimates in the past that the contributions to Debian are worth $40 million or more than that just in lines of code measurement. And if you've got a volunteer project that can generate that much work just by having people enjoy the work they're doing, then that's fabulous and you don't want to change that into a commercial arrangement where people are only doing it for the money, and you need to generate all this money just to pay them to not do as good a job.

So it [money] can corrupt, but I think in this case we've managed to avoid it by being very careful about people we've paid to do it. They were paid for a month - they still haven't actually received the money because we've had various problems getting the charity stuff set up - and they're still working just as hard right now, but they've obviously had to go back to work on their day jobs, so they have a bit less time than they did during October and November.

If money is a disincentive to doing a good job, how do you think this reflects on the Open Source community?

I think that really applies to everyone - you find a good job then suddenly it becomes a 9-to-5 thing, and you have to get up in the morning every morning to go and do it, and then you start looking at the clock and whatever else.

So you need to make sure you have the right incentives; it's not just about throwing money at someone and have them enjoy their work. And for the open source community, I think it's really demonstrated it's [the community] got a lot of strength, because even people who did feel that money was corrupted ended up forming the Dunc Bank project. And even in trying to oppose it, it really helped the project release a much better product.

When you can have people who are working in direct opposition to each other end up essentially working together to produce something better, that seems really amazing.

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ARN: People Telecom renews ties with Optus

As a journalist at Australian Reseller News:

ASX-listed telecoms company, People Telecom, has signed a $21 million agreement with Optus to continue to provide mobile telephone services to new and existing customers.

The 18-month deal builds on a previous five-year relationship which saw People Telecom delivering Optus services as a wholesaler as well as directly to businesses. With the new underlying rates and terms and conditions, People Telecom CEO, John Stanton, said it hoped to grow its product and feature set. This would include launching additional third-generation (3G) mobile voice and data services this year.

"This agreement allows us to offer 3G services, which typically haven't been available to resellers in the Australian market so far," he said. "There were customers who were particularly looking for 3G that we couldn't service today, so this is an exciting new development for us."

People Telecom currently boasts more than 15,000 mobile subscribers. It chalked up 16 per cent growth in its mobile telephone business last year. Stanton attributed around half of the telco's revenue to a "very strong dealer channel".

While he did not expect the renewed Optus agreement to change the way the company currently went to market, Stanton noted that People Telecom's new offerings would open up its wholesale channel. He was also interested in recruiting more partners.

"We're working hard on a number of opportunities right now to expand the range of wholesale customers that we have," he said.

The telco is currently in the process of rolling out new capped plans, business plans and retail plans with a range of discounts for bundling, email, and other services.

Besides Optus, People Telecom maintains agreements with Telstra, AAPT, PowerTel and NexGen.

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PCW: What makes video games so great?

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Why is it so hard to leave the computer or TV screen when you're in the middle of your favourite game? According to a recent scientific study, it's not just a simple desire for 'zoning out' and fun that draws us to video games, but deeper psychological factors that could be at play.

The study, which was jointly conducted by the University of Rochester and virtual environment think tank Immersyve, surveyed 1000 gamers about what motivates them to keep playing. Researchers found that the sense of fulfilment experienced during certain games may be satisfying fundamental psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness, hence promoting short-term energy and well-being in some players.

"Most people reduce the drawing power of games to 'fun'," said Richard Ryan, lead investigator and motivational psychologist at the University, "but we found that need satisfaction not only predicts 'fun', but also out predicts persistence and well being effects."

"The work suggests that what makes games fun and engaging is that they [games] can, when well designed, allow people to experience freedom, choice, achievement and connection, and this is what makes a good game so compelling," he said.

With better psychological outcomes for players comes better commercial success for games, Ryan said. And with video game revenues surpassing even the money made from Hollywood films annually, commercial benefits of understanding what makes a good computer game can be very profitable.

Player reactions to four different games were studied, including one MMO (massively multiplayer online) game that revealed players' need for relatedness as "an important satisfaction that promotes a sense of presence, game enjoyment, and an intention for future play".

Besides the fact that not all video games are created equal in their ability to satisfy basic psychological needs, Ryan points out that not all people find games satisfying. Players who don't quickly master controls or contents of a game may not have a positive experience and do not return to games, he said.

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Image: How to pimp your ride, Computerworld style

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

CW: A good year for the IT professional's salary

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Last year was certainly a good year for Australian IT job hunters, with reports of 'skills shortages' peppering headlines across the country. Sadly for recruiters, the situation will not change much in 2007, according to this month's Biannual Labour Market Update from APESMA (Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia).

APESMA has reported declines of up to 50 percent in first year tertiary IT enrolments. To make matters worse, the organisation found that almost two thirds of the country's precious few graduate scientists and engineers intend to seek better wages and conditions overseas.

From an international perspective, only 0.4 percent of Australian university students currently graduate with mathematical qualifications, compared with an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average of 1.0 percent.

Without a healthy supply of highly trained scientists and engineers, Australia runs the risk of being unable to meet existing demands, and the demands of major resource and infrastructure projects in the near future, warns Geoff Fary, Acting CEO of APESMA.

"In short, our economy will become increasingly uncompetitive," he said, highlighting a nationwide shortfall to the order of 20,000 engineers expected in the next few years.

Fary blamed the fall in demand for science courses on a failure to attract secondary students to mathematics and science, and the pedestrian image that is often held by secondary students of the technology-based professions.

Potential students tend also to be deterred from IT degrees due to outdated fears about the job market, speculates Bill Wilson, Acting Head of the University of New South Wales' school of Computer Science and Engineering.

"There were short-term employment problems immediately after the "tech-wreck" a few years ago," he said. "However, our current graduates seem to be doing well at getting jobs - and our graduates' starting salaries are rising."

Salaries may be rising, but the cost of undertaking University studies could still outweigh the long-term benefits of an IT degree in potential students' minds. Under the current HECS (Higher Education Contribution) scheme, a science degree attracts the second highest band of fees, costing just $1,200 less than Medicine and Law, and over 40 percent dearer than an Arts degree. Science students now pay $7,118 per year, compared with the $3,000 per year paid by students in 1996.

"Its [HECS fees] growth in recent years has been unchecked and it is pricing many students, particularly those from less advantaged backgrounds, out of tertiary studies," Fary said.

Wilson agrees, saying that HECS fees should ideally reflect the cost of training, which are "very high" for medicine, and "in-between" for science, ICT and engineering. Taken from that perspective, the pricing scheme currently in place does not seem fair, he said.

"The government seems to be charging HECS at whatever rate it thinks the market will bear - that might make sense for international students, but seems unfair for local students," Wilson said.

In a televised interview with ABC earlier this month, Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, outlined a plan to invest $52 billion in science in the next half decade in an effort to boost the country's perception of scientists and their contribution to society.

While she denied that current HECS fees are a deterrent for potential tertiary students, declaring the current scheme "one of the fairest systems in the world", Bishop did promise a review of the HECS banding of science in relation to other courses.

With the federal election looming later this year, however, newspaper reports are sceptical about whether science and education programs will make it into the government's tightening budget.

And so the skills shortage continues, to the woe of IT recruiters. But it's not all bad news for the IT industry. In the struggle to fill IT vacancies, employers are now offering benefits such as increased annual leave, retention payments, part-time and work from home contracts and overseas exchange.

IT professionals now net in an average salary of $85,610, with increases of up to 5 percent in the private sector, and 3.8 percent in the public sector, according to APESMA.

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CW: The gender-code divide

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

A stranger walks into a bar. All of a sudden, everything stops; conversations are put on hold as patrons turn to appraise the newcomer, and the sound of glasses being set down on their coasters seem almost deafening in the silence.

That's the scene Sulamita Garcia, president of LinuxChix Brazil, envisions when describing the situation women face in the open-source community. As relative newcomers to Free Linux and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and the IT industry in general, women are still a minority in the FLOSS community and may sometimes find it difficult to connect and contribute, she said.

LinuxChix Brazil is one of the most active chapters of LinuxChix worldwide, with 293 subscribers, of whom half are women, and a Web site that averages 5,000 visits per month. But it was an entirely different story when Garcia first became involved in the chapter in 2001, when LinuxChix Brazil was a mailing list with only 30 members and hardly any representation at FLOSS conferences.

"There were me and five or six girls in the 6,000 person conference," she said, laughingly adding, "There were other women, but they were on the commercial [advertising] stands."

Speaking at this week's linux.conf.au, Garcia highlighted recent findings that women comprise only two percent of all FLOSS developers; a staggering statistic which she says begs the question: "Is free software a macho thing?"

One of the boasts of the FLOSS community is that it is free and open to everyone, and places emphasis on good code rather than individual characteristics such as gender. According to Garcia, however, the open, gender-neutral FLOSS Utopia is a myth.

In reality, she said, women in FLOSS are faced with what can sometimes be insulting assumptions, as male colleagues approach them for romantic relationships involving "weekends playing tuxracer", constantly express surprise in seeing "a woman in FLOSS", or expect that a woman in an FLOSS situation "must be here with her brother or boyfriend".

Garcia attributed the gender disparity to historical, educational and social reasons that dissuade women from entering into a technical career. In Brazil, she explained, women are not encouraged to go to school, but to focus on household chores instead. And even after overcoming all obstacles and entering into a professional career, Brazillian women can expect to be paid up to 27 percent less than their male counterparts.

"Women are seen to be worth less in the workforce," she said. "We all know we have to work twice as hard in half the time to get half the returns."

As a result of poor education and the absence of careers for women, women comprise 70 percent of the world's poor, Garcia said. The situation may be improved via the principles of FLOSS, she said, which promote professional development, personal development and creativity.

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CW: School turns to open source to cut cost, foster student thinking

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

When existing computing facilities were not meeting the growing need of students and teachers at the Lorien Novalis school in Dural, NSW, students suggested that the school investigate open source software as a cost effective way of improving its computing power.

Now, Lorien Novalis has a network of more than 30 1.6GHz Pentium desktops between some 160 users. Most of the work in setting up the network, including laying down CAT 5 cable, crimping wires, and installing software, was done by the school's ICT manager, Stuart Rushton, and students.

The school's workstations operate on the Mandriva 2006 Operating System, and run free and open source software options including: Open Office for office applications; Mozilla Firefox for Web browsing; GIMP for image editing; and Evolution mail for sending and receiving e-mail.

At the core of the network is a simple HP ProLiant ML 110 server running Mandrake 10.1, NIS and NFS, and that connects to the Internet via a 1.5Mbps broadband connection.

Besides reducing costs for the school, Rushton expects Lorien Novalis' use of Open Source software to also have educational benefits for students, as students are able to look up the source code of any application that sparks their interest.

"We want the students to be able so see a computer as a wonderful piece of technology made by people, and not a sort of mystical, God-like thing," he said, speaking at linux.conf.au on Monday. "Kids are the most prolific producers of creative work, and open source offers opportunities for that."

Lorien Novalis' widespread use of Linux on desktops is unusual for an Australian school, Rushton said, attributing the ease with which the school migrated to Linux from its previous Macintosh systems to its status as an independent school.

"We are a non-systemic school, so when we decided to change to Linux, we just did it," he said.

But the decision may not be so easy for government-funded schools operating bureaucratically, according to Donna Benjamin, a member of Open Source Industry Australia and another speaker at linux.conf.au. Benjamin highlighted a bureaucratic reluctance in considering open source options, ascribing this to what she called Microsoft's "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" (FUD) marketing strategy that, she said, creates lock-ins and dependencies.

According to Linux Australia member Janet Hawtin, the reliance of schools on proprietary software and the rules that govern them could be sending a message that is incongruent with learning and curiosity.

"The message that students and teachers are being taught is that sharing is bad and evil, and inquisitiveness is not encouraged either," she said. "That is not appropriate in an educational context."

Despite the success of Linux at Lorien Novalis, Rushton notes that there is no single solution that can satisfy an entire organisation. In addition to its Linux desktops, the school also uses 14 Macs for administration and video editing, and two Windows machines for a library catalogue application.

"Every teacher is an influential end-user," he said. "As educators, we shouldn't be able to say, 'Linux good, everything else bad', any more than other people say 'Microsoft good, everything else bad'."

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PCW: A betting man

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Reluctantly, he awakes to a stray beam of sunlight peeking through the heavy curtains of his bedroom. It must be late morning - or is it early afternoon? Michael Wilczynska runs a pale hand through his dark, floppy hair as he wanders to the kitchen for breakfast. Then it's time to get to work. Still dressed in the clothes he went to bed in, Wilczynska rouses his business partner, a state-of-the-art computer sporting dual 20.1" LCD monitors, and another day begins.

Wilczynska, alias 'pokermike', is a professional online poker player - and he is very good at what he does. His usual two hours a day on high-stakes limit hold 'em tables yield an easy US$300 per hour on sites like PartyPoker.com, a pay rate 15 times that of the average Australian. That's not bad for a 23-year-old undergraduate physicist and philosopher from South Sydney High.

"It's pretty surreal," he laughs. "I'm still pinching myself."

Wilczynska's poker career began just under two years ago. His best mate of three years, James Cox, alias 'Zero', remembers the day well:

"We were playing cards and we saw an ad for poker on the net," he recounted. "Mike said that there was no chance and that it was a scam. But I decided to give it a go."

Online poker worked out well for Cox, a 21-year-old law student from Sydney University. Six months later, Wilczynska decided that he would have a go too.

"I did a search on Google and then that was it," Wilczynska said. "I just started reading and learning and I thought, alright I'll give it a shot...I said I'd put 50 dollars into it and if I lose that 50 bucks then I'd never play again."

Wilczynska's poker career took off like a rocket. Over the past year, he has played online against Ben Affleck, poker celebrity Erik Sangstrom and a Manchester United soccer player who goes by the alias "Steve". When he was in Vegas last December, Wilczynska was having beers with World Poker Tournament champion Joseph Hachem and pitting himself against the authors of the very books that taught him the tricks of handling the flop, turn and river.

So how does gambling get so rewarding? According to Cox, it's not about gambling, but about "exploiting an edge" over other players.

"Most people that try to play are really bad at it because they don't take the time to study," said Wilczynska, explaining that poker is "just plain maths".

"Expected value calculations basically tell you what to do in a certain situation," he said. "What you do is you go over certain hands and certain situations when you're not playing and when that situation comes up, you remember what to do cause you've done it before. Anyone with above average intelligence - not even much - can do really well. If they focus."

But for there to be winners, there also have to be losers. The key factor separating a good player from a bad one is discipline, and controlling one's emotions is not always easy.

Fellow online poker shark, 24-year-old Jim McEvoy, alias 'HotPants', said: "some players are addicts who don't realize they suck; they actually think they are good players just getting unlucky.

"It makes me feel bad when I think I am potentially ruining lives of gambling addicts."

Wilczynska agrees: "When you're playing with someone who you think can't afford to lose their money, you feel a bit sad.

"But when you gamble you go into a contract where you're saying I'm responsible for my own money and this is what I choose to do with it, so I think all obligation is relegated to them."

When Wilczynska's family first heard about his chancy new hobby, they were understandably apprehensive.

"When I first started playing, they were a little bit concerned," he admitted, but his mathematical approach and obvious success soon put their worries at ease.

"I bought my mum a new car a few weeks ago and now she's loving it!" he laughed.

Wilczynska's success has bought him an emancipated, jet-setting lifestyle, but despite the rewards of professional gambling, he is determined to aspire for something more. Although he is uncertain of what he will do after graduating from the University of New South Wales, he refuses to be "just a poker player".

"It's not enough. You need more than that in life, I think.

"I mean, it's got depth...but at the same time, it's just a stupid card game," he said.

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PCW: Robotic crawler performs check-up of power lines

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

U.S. researchers have developed an autonomous robotic crawler that scans power lines for weak points in an electrical grid. By monitoring and precisely locating problematic sections of cable, the robot is expected to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs involved in power line maintenance.

The maintenance of power lines has traditionally been an expensive process based on estimates. With no means of accurately measuring the wear of cables, power companies tend to either discard entire lengths of cable after a predetermined amount of time, or allow the cable to age until they fail.

"Removing an entire length of cable can be very expensive and costly, so removing an entire length of fully functioning cable after a set time period can be unnecessary," said Luke Kearney, undergraduate researcher and project coordinator at the University of Washington (UW). "[On the other hand,] allowing the cable to fail can cause widespread blackouts and can also be very expensive for the power companies to deal with."

UW's robot scans cables for internal damage by using sensors to track heat dissipation, partial electrical discharge, and any filaments of water that could have seeped into the insulation. Engineers can monitor the robot via wireless connection and watch the robot's surroundings through a front-mounted video camera.

Besides autonomously locating damaged sections of cable, the robot can also scan cable in areas which may be dangerous or difficult for humans to access. "In future years, it is our hope that the robot can be used in nuclear power plants to gather data in areas that may be dangerous to people," Kearney said.

The robot has only recently undergone its first field test at Lockheed Martin's Michoud NASA Assembly Facility in New Orleans, U.S., returning with the surprising finding that conditions in New Orleans are still unsafe even now, more than a year after the disastrous Hurricane Katrina struck.

Future prototypes can be designed to fit different cable configurations, including those used outside of the U.S., Kearney said.

More information is available from the project's Web site.

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Image: Bluetooth cracking tools released

Created for Computerworld Australia's Mobility and Wireless section:

CW: Rasterman on the path to Enlightenment

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Carsten Haitzler, who is perhaps better known by his alias, Rasterman, has been the lead developer for the open source desktop shell Enlightenment for the past 10 years. Since attaining a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of New South Wales in 1997, Haitzler has built a career around his interest in graphics software, and has worked as a core developer at Red Hat and an engineer at VA Linux Systems in the U.S. and Japan.

Now an independent open source developer based in Tokyo, Haitzler will be returning to Sydney next week to speak about the bulking up and slowing down of open source desktops at linux.conf.au. Before the conference, Haitzler speaks with Liz Tay about operating systems, his career, and his decidedly non-political approach to open source.

How did you get involved in open source programming? What aspects of programming and open source software interest you most?

Unlike some, I didn't get involved for its politics or its ideals. It was there and appealed to my sense of convenience. If I have code I depend on - I like to be able to see it, poke it and fiddle with it if need be. I release my own code under a very liberal license (BSD) because I don't much care what happens to it. I only ever started releasing code as source because it was the only sane way to distribute it for UNIX systems, and I had enough people ask for it.

In the brief on your linux.conf.au 2007 presentation, "Desktops on a diet", you raise the issue of having operating system components that consume too many resources to compete with Windows and Mac OS. What are the risks of sacrificing efficiency for popularity?

You alienate users because many people simply cannot (sanely) or will not use the software because they can't afford a system capable enough to run it. It also is environmentally unfriendly as more cumulative electricity, components and faster "buy then throw out the old PC" cycling needs to happen just to run a desktop system that could be better. It's not about popularity - it's about bothering to do something efficiently and planning ahead as to what you will do and not assuming everyone has a big beefy machine like you, the developer, does.

What, in your opinion, are the main functions of an operating system?

To get you to a point where you can store and retrieve data (files), install (and un-install) more software, these days communicate over a network, and launch and manage programs. In my opinion Web browsers, email applications, pain programs, etc. are not part of an OS - they are add-on applications. The OS should just get you to the stage where you can install and choose such applications.

Are you accusing GNOME and KDE of selling out by giving up on open source ideals and conforming to a business model, and if so, why?

I never accused them of anything to do with giving up open source ideals. I am pointing out that in the race to try and mimic as much functionality as possible they forgot to "do it right" and pay attention to efficiency in both design and implementation. They have done a great job of implementing code - but it can be done better.

What is your opinion on the Open Source community as it is? Do you think that Linux businesses are focussing too much on business? What is the problem with this?

I don't really hold much of an opinion on the 'open source community'. I keep out of politics.

What were your reasons for leaving RedHat in 1999, and where did you go from there?

I left for several reasons. One was location of the company; another was the attitude of people I worked with towards the 'community' who ultimately ended up becoming their bread and butter.

After Red Hat I went to what was at the time VA Research, and then became VA Linux Systems then VA Software. I worked for that 'VA' for about 2.5 years until they basically decided to cease being in the Linux business; they became a Web properties business and SourceForge.

I worked at a small embedded software maker in Sydney (FST) for about 2.5 years then worked for a separate company that was the result of a partnership of VA Linux Systems in the USA and investors in Japan - VA Japan. VA Japan happened to continue doing some of what VA in the USA did, but are essentially an entirely different company simply inheriting the name from the initial partnership, that is divorced of the business of VA USA, beyond being a reseller of SourceForge and OSDN in Japan. I was there for about 2.5 years and have since moved on to another unrelated firm in Japan.

VA in the USA were offering a much more friendly view towards open source and its user base than Red Hat had [and] in a much better location with a salary that was better. Do not confuse me leaving Red Hat with some major political move. It ended up much more political and personal with the way they treated me on my departure, which was to say, not very nice.

What are you currently working on?

E17 [Enlightenment version 0.17] mostly - and of course on the libraries under that. That's enough for me. I don't have time to do any more than that as it's just a part-time hobby and not something anyone pays me to do.

Can you tell us a little about Enlightenment?

Oh dear. I'll keep it short and the details can all be gotten from Enlightenment.org. It's a window manager for X. It runs on Linux, BSD and Solaris, and the next release (when it comes out) will be heading towards the domain of XFCE - i.e. a very light-weight desktop environment (desktop shell) where it provides all the basics you need to run your apps, find and manage your files, and otherwise manage your system.

It is focused on efficiency, speed, beauty, extensibility and delivers in all departments with extremely modest CPU requirements. Under that hood is a set of libraries that can be used to create multimedia applications such as media centres and more, with ease and speed.

What do you think the future looks like for open source operating systems?

I still think Linux is strong on the server - but on the desktop it's weak, and remains so. Do you see Linux desktop adoption by the boatful anywhere? Beyond niche markets it has yet to gain any traction with OEM's and it's a vicious cycle - if users don't want it, OEM's won't ship it. Users won't want it until OEM's ship it.

There are parts of the world where Linux is making inroads on the desktop - but year after year, 'this is the year of the Linux desktop', and it basically hasn't happened. I would love it to - don't get me wrong, but it isn't about how many people use Linux on a desktop, it's about how much money uses Linux on the desktop.

The more purchasing power uses it, the more power Linux has in that domain. It has that on the server. It has made massive gains in the embedded market and it staking over parts of "specific purpose devices and software" by storm.

What does open source mean to you?

If I need the code for what I use, code on/with, it's there for me to poke at and see how it twitches without having to always infer it simply by its behaviour or documentation (which is almost always inadequate for any piece of software from any source, be it open, or closed).

How do you feel about returning to the University of New South Wales to speak at linux.conf.au, having graduated from the same university 10 years ago?

I'm wondering what new buildings they have erected and/or torn down since I last saw it :)

For more information on LCA 2007, go to http://lca2007.linux.org.au/

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LW: Ubuntu guru on power management hacks

As a journalist at LinuxWorld Australia:

It was while watching fellow Linux users having to shutdown their laptops in between talks at open source conferences some years ago that Matthew Garrett, now head of the Ubuntu laptop team, was initially alerted to power management issues in Linux systems.

After almost 15 years of hacking, Garrett will attend next week's linux.conf.au, to give a presentation on power management in an effort to fix suspend "for fun and profit".

Aside from working on improving hardware driver issues, Cambridge, U.K.-based Garrett has also worked extensively in Linux development, and was, until his resignation last August, one of the Debian project's most active developers.

Garrett speaks with Liz Tay about working in the open source community, Debian, Ubuntu, and linux.conf.au.

What interests you most about power management? For how long have you been working on power management and what are some experiences you've had?

I started looking at power management in 2002, after discovering that my laptop didn't work too well with the traditional APM support in Linux. At the time, Linux's ACPI support was pretty minimal. By 2004, things were starting to work better. I'd upgraded my laptop, and then spent a couple of weeks working on the kernel. By that summer, I'd worked out most of the kinks and suspend and resume worked reliably for me.

Later on that year, I got invited to the first Ubuntu development meeting. It gave me an opportunity to test how well this worked on other people's laptops. Sadly, it turned out that I was pretty much alone; almost everyone else there who had working power management had the same laptop as me! It was an opportunity though, and by the end of the week we had several more machines working.

Visiting conferences made me realise just how important power management was. Linux users all seemed to assume that they were doomed to spend the rest of their lives turning their laptops off between talks, and, to be honest, it was kind of embarrassing. I was in a position to help do something about it, and so since then I've spent time doing so.

What's the problem with suspend on current Linux systems? How can this be fixed?

Sadly, there's more than one problem. In many cases, the issue is with hardware drivers. Many Linux drivers were written without worrying about power management support, and so machines using these drivers are likely to have problems. In other cases, it's because hardware has only been tested against Windows. Windows and Linux have entirely separate implementations of the ACPI specification, and unsurprisingly the interpretations of the specification vary to some extent.

Finally, the ACPI spec doesn't cover video hardware - it's up to the operating system to reprogram the video card, and Linux often doesn't know how to.

The driver problem is likely to solve itself as more people start expecting power management to work. As bugs get filed, they'll get fixed. In terms of compatibility with Windows, two approaches have been taken.

Firstly, the Linux code has been altered to be more compatible with the Windows implementation - there's no point in being correct if nothing works. Secondly, Intel have released a toolkit that allows vendors to test whether their hardware conforms to the specification or not. With luck, this will become widely used.

The video problem is probably the hardest. There are various workarounds using the video BIOS, but they're not guaranteed to work. The only long-term solution is for X to gain support for reprogramming video cards from scratch, and sadly that's something that may require support from the video hardware manufacturers.

Why did you resign from Debian in August 2006?

The short answer is simply that I wasn't enjoying it any more. The longer answer is that I found that too much of my time in Debian was spent in petty inter-personal conflicts. I could have ignored those and just carried on working on my own, but being an active member of a community is part of what makes open source development so interesting.

In the end, I decided that my time could be better spent elsewhere. I'm generally more relaxed and happy now, so I've no doubts about whether or not it was the right decision.

What is your take on Dunc-Tank? Many Debian users were quite vocal about it. Were their criticisms founded?

I think Dunc-Tank was a worthwhile experiment. Based on the degree of disruption it's caused, I've no idea whether it'll be considered a success. I think many of the people who objected about it had an idealistic interpretation of what Debian was, and felt that the introduction of money would spoil things. In reality, people have been paid to work on Debian almost since the project began - Ian Murdock spent time being paid by the FSF.

I think some of the criticisms were somewhat more reasonable. People were concerned about the project leadership choosing who to spend money on, and I can understand how people might feel slighted about not receiving money when they've put in a comparable amount of effort to those who do.

You're now head of the Ubuntu laptop team - can you tell us a bit more about where you're working, and what you're currently working on?

My Ubuntu involvement is still a spare-time thing. During the day, I'm working on trying to finish off my PhD in genetics. As a result, most of my laptop work gets done at my home in Cambridge. Most of what I work on is trying to get things to "just work" - that is, allowing people to install Ubuntu on their laptops and have everything work properly without any extra configuration or editing arcane files or anything like that.

It's a surprisingly complicated thing to do. In order to get hardware to work, you need to make sure that the kernel supports it. Then you need to make sure that the user applications can access that hardware correctly, and finally they need to present it to the user in a useful way. Having a working card slot is no use unless an icon pops up when you put a card in. I work on all these levels, which means that whatever goes wrong, it's probably my fault!

What is your opinion on Ubuntu's reliance on Debian?

It's pretty clear that Ubuntu couldn't survive without Debian and the huge amount of effort that Debian's developers put in. Whatever I might think about Debian's social dynamics, I have no criticism at all of Debian's level of technical excellence. I can't think of another distribution that matches that.

What has working in the open source community been like for you?

It's given me the opportunity to meet a variety of fascinating and fun people, visit places I'd never otherwise have been to, and learn huge amounts of technical detail despite not having any formal computer training. Even when I did work on open source full time, it's never been anything other than fun.

It continues to amaze me that so many people around the world with so little in common can still somehow manage to work together to produce excellent software. Plus, they generally seem to know how to throw good parties.

What first sparked your interest in open source? Do you still believe in any open source ideals?

I first installed NetBSD in 1995 or so, but only really started using open source properly when I moved to Debian in 1998. The idea that I could see how stuff worked was fascinating - the idea that I could fix bugs I found rather than having to wait for someone else to was a revelation. The fact that people would thank me for doing so is a continuing source of vague bemusement, since to a large extent I do this because it's fun rather than to make other people happy.

I absolutely still believe in the open source (or free software) ideals, but to a large extent out of pragmatism rather than on any philosophical basis. A large number of the bugs I get are due to non-free code, and the fact that I can't do anything about them is intensely frustrating. If the author of some free software doesn't want me to do something I want to do, I can do it anyway. Non-free software can make it almost impossible to do things that users want to do, and nobody can do anything about it.

I think Vista's DRM is going to result in more people asking questions, and I think they're going to be receptive to the answers that open source can provide.

What is your opinion on the Novel-Microsoft deal?

I'm in two minds about it. I'm not convinced that it's in the best interests of the Linux community, but then I think pretty much every commercial Linux distribution has made decisions that are in their interests rather than the community's. I don't see it causing significant long-term harm to Linux, and I'm certainly unhappy with the way that some people have tried to use it to further their own political goals.

Have you any professional role models in the IT industry?

Professional role models? Not really. I've got huge amounts of respect for everyone who's contributed to an open source project in any way, and I think I'm immensely lucky to have met so many of them. But I can't say that I was really aware of any IT figures while I was growing up, and I've ended up doing what I do because I find it fun rather than because someone else inspired me to. But I wouldn't be here without the hundreds (if not thousands) of people who have offered me advice and help over the years, whether they're professionals or not.

How many linux.conf.au's have you attended, and how many have you presented at? How do you feel about presenting again this year?

I've been to the previous two LCAs (2005 and 2006), presenting at 2006. LCA is an absolutely wonderful conference to visit, but the reception to my presentation amazed me - the audience is wonderful, with an excellent mixture of experience levels, and everyone made me feel very welcome. As a result, I'm hugely looking forward to being there again this year.

For more information on LCA 2007, go to http://lca2007.linux.org.au/

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PCW: Study finds reality in virtual environments

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Ethical issues to do with psychological experimentation may be avoided by conducting experiments in a virtual environment, claims a study by psychologists at the University College London (UCL). The finding opens doors to further research into human behaviour under extreme social situations.

The study, led by Professor Mel Slater of the UCL Department of Computer Science, revisited Stanley Milgram's infamous 1960s psychological experiment on obedience to authority, that found that participants would knowingly harm a stranger at the behest of an authority figure.

Milgram's experiment has been criticized for the extreme emotional stress it put on participants as they were led to believe that they were harming a real person. Participants were treated very firmly, even to the extent of being told that they had no choice but to go on with the experiment.

Slater expects to overcome these issues with the use of a cartoonish humanoid victim, which has been programmed with movements and facial expressions.

In Slater's study, participants were instructed to harm the virtual human while being fully aware that the situation was only a simulation, and that they could withdraw from the study at any time without giving reasons.

Surprisingly, Slater's human subjects responded to the virtual situation with physiological responses that indicated that they were treating the situation as real. Furthermore, Slater expects that experiments conducted in virtual environments might more closely model human behaviour than real-world laboratory experiments.

"The fact that they still had some feelings and physiological symptoms as if it were real makes it [the simulation] a valuable tool for study," he said. "In virtual reality we get closer to people's actual behaviour as it might be in reality, than simply by asking them how they think that they would behave."

Similar to how people empathise with on-screen characters in movies, Slater's virtual world was able to fool the human brain experiencing some of the same sensations, thoughts, responses, feelings, as they would in a similar situation in reality.

This is due to what scientists call the phenomenon of "presence", he explained, which is useful in psychotherapy to help people with phobias, in emergency situation training and as a distracter in normally uncomfortable situations.

The virtual reality need not be realistic for the phenomenon of presence to occur, Slater said. In fact, should virtual reality become so real that it is indistinguishable from reality, ethical issues may indeed rise again.

"It is the very gap between reality and virtual reality that makes this study both possible and potentially valuable," he said.

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LW: Sierra: A brain that thinks about thinking

As a journalist at LinuxWorld Australia:

Game developer turned author Kathy Sierra is the brain behind best-sellers "Head First Java" and "Head First EJB". During her 17 years in the IT industry, Sierra has worked as a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, founded javaranch.com, and now specialises in metacognition, which is the science of thinking about thinking.

Currently based in Colorado, U.S., Sierra will be visiting Australia this month to speak at linux.conf.au about "Creating Passionate Users". She will be the first ever female speaker to keynote at the conference, which has this year also attracted more female registrants than ever before.

Liz Tay speaks with Sierra for a sneak preview of her presentation, her experiences in the industry, and the future of learning.

How would you describe your role in the IT industry?

Currently I have two roles: to help people learn tough technical topics with the least amount of pain; [and] to help developers create passionate users regardless of the type of product (or service).

What are some of the most significant conclusions you've arrived at from thinking about thinking?

We (humans) have legacy brains - our brains think we're still living in caves watching for tigers, while our minds know we're living in the 21st century. That gap between what the brain "believes" and what the mind knows consciously is the source of so many problems we all have with attention, learning, memory, engagement, focus, etc. I think the biggest place to make a difference is learning to create more brain-friendly materials including products and user manuals. In other words, things that support the legacy brain instead of fight it.

For example, the brain cares about tigers, but could not care less about, say, Ruby code. So, I try to answer the question, 'how can we make the brain treat code as though it were as important as a tiger?' And the answer is associate that code with things the brain pays attention to using provocative visuals, unusual or novel presentation of the code, stories that make you curious (humans have always learned primarily through stories), things like that - things the brain is tuned to care about.

The problem is, the way we usually try to teach students (including our users/learners) is by presenting things in the least compelling way from the brain's perspective. When the brain sees pages of text or a dry lecture, it says, 'This is so not life-threatening, so I'll just keep scanning for something that's more interesting.' We've all been there when we're trying to study and can't stay focused on the page of our textbook no matter how motivated we are.

In what areas can metacognition be practically applied?

Everything. Product usability, marketing, user documentation and training, user communities, building user loyalty and evangelism, everything. Every place where a human is using their brain in some way, we can apply what we know about the brain to enhance the experience.

What first sparked your interest in metacognition?

I have a seizure disorder, so ever since I was young I was fascinated with the brain. But it wasn't until I started teaching programming (10 years ago) that I got more serious about it, and began digging into the research in cognitive science and learning.

From where do you derive your passion for programming?

I've been programming for about 17 years. I got into it accidentally, when I needed an 'expert system' for a medical fitness facility - a software application that would help prescribe wellness programs to executives, based on the knowledge of experts - and it turned out we didn't have the budget.

I thought, 'well, how hard can it be?' Pretty damn hard I found out, but fortunately I found that out only after I'd gotten in deep, or I'd never have tried. So I became fascinated with artificial intelligence (this was when expert systems were a big deal and AI was the hot thing), and the idea of representing knowledge in software. And then I was hooked.

How did you get from being a game developer to being a writer?

When the bubble burst and I finally got laid off, well, I figured I might as well use that opportunity to apply the research and principles I'd been studying for so long and write a brain-friendly Java book - the book I had wanted when I was trying to learn Java.

What prompted you to start the Head First series of books?

My partner Bert Bates and I were daydreaming-turned-brainstorming about what it would be like if we could design a brain-friendly user-experience with absolutely no concern for publishing templates, style-guides, etc. We said, 'If our only constraint is that the experience must be delivered in a flat, 2D printed book, what could we do?'

Head First was one possible implementation, and we presented it to two other major publishers before taking it to Tim O'Reilly. Today, Tim likes to thank those other two publishers for making a poor decision. Nearly everyone but Tim O'Reilly and our original editor at O'Reilly thought it was the most horrible thing they'd ever seen.

Even the bookstores were very reluctant to stock them at first.

Fortunately, we had a great Java community who embraced the book and began talking about it almost immediately, and to nearly everyone's shock - it became the #1 bestselling Java book, and still is.

What do you hope the books will achieve?

Four things:

1) We want reader/learners to have a better learning experience - one where they aren't made to feel stupid, but where nothing is dumbed down. I want readers to feel like we care about the quality of their time, by making it more enjoyable.

2) We want teachers to begin to see that there are other ways to teach technical topics that can be more engaging and interesting and fun and more effective (actually, more effective BECAUSE it is more engaging, interesting, and fun - all things that keep the brain paying attention to give the learning a better chance of happening).

3) We want to raise awareness about brain-friendly principles, and hope to see more people starting to care about it - and do something about it - whether in product manuals, books, or anything else where we want to communicate a message.

4) We want people to understand more about how they learn and remember, so that they can improve their own learning experience even in the face of very brain-UNfriendly materials.

Most of us try to communicate by talking to the person's mind, when we really need to be talking to their brain.

You have been quite an active advocate of Java, having written "Head First Java" and founded javaranch.com. Why do you focus on Java instead of other languages?

I just fell in love with Java - probably because I hated C++, and Java was more fun. I thought it would be a great language for people to learn programming and especially object-oriented programming. And later I went to work for Sun, so I was just very involved with it. Also, as it became so popular, there was a much greater opportunity for teaching it than with virtually any other language. But the longer I'm out of Sun, the more I'm starting to look at other languages, especially Ruby. :)

The Wickedly Smart Web site describes a scene from The Matrix where a character learns to fly a helicopter by downloading the lesson directly to her brain. How far are we from developing this technology?

Very, very far. But the way most learning happens today is SO inefficient, that we can make a dramatic improvement - orders of magnitude improvement - with the technology we DO have, simply by applying a set of principles that have come from cognitive science, neurobiology, game design, psychology, entertainment, and learning theory.

What hurdles do we have to overcome to achieve this?

For the direct-to-brain download, the hurdle is time. Depending on who you talk to, that time could be 50 years minimum, most likely far more. But for an order of magnitude jump in learning efficiency, all we need is for more people to acknowledge that the way we've been expecting people to learn technical topics is horribly obsolete.

We're using techniques for communicating knowledge that are no different than what people were using thousands of years ago - we 'talk' at the learner either in written text or lectures. It worked in the past only because people had plenty of time for learning the one skill they'd use the rest of their life.

Today, that's absurd. If you're in the technology field, more than half of your technical knowledge becomes outdated within 18 months (or so the estimates say).

We are all constantly in a state of learning and unlearning, but we're using centuries-old methods for communicating it. The Internet doesn't help, since it's still delivering things in the same old way (mostly words pushed at you which you're supposed to passively absorb), only in far, far greater quantities.

What will you be speaking about at linux.conf.au 2007?

How to Create Passionate Users. :)

How to take what we've learned from those other domains I mentioned (game design, cognitive science, neurobiology, entertainment, etc.) and apply them to everything from product design and user documentation to building a community of users and developing t-shirts and other 'tribe items'.

What are your thoughts on Free and Open Source Software, and how does the concept of FOSS relate to your work in cognition?

The majority of FOSS efforts aren't doing a good job in two crucial areas: getting more people involved in the project (other than code contributors) and getting more end-users for the non-developer applications. Look at OpenOffice, for example - they've done a terrible job of helping their target audience - all those people working in offices using Word - learn to use the program. There are only a few people who are out there trying to hold people's hands and help them make the transition to OpenOffice, when this should have been a huge priority. When I used to go to the OpenOffice.org site (haven't been there in a while, so I hope it's improved), it felt like a place for developers, not end-users who wanted to use a non-Microsoft word processing tool!

So, I think FOSS is an area that could use some help in creating passionate users, and to me - one of the most exciting things about the approach we take is that it doesn't require a big marketing budget (or really ANY marketing budget). Anyone can apply many of these principles and make a dramatic difference. In fact, it's an advantage to not have a marketing/ad budget, because that just distracts you from what matters... all that matters is the ways in which you can help your users kick ass. We always say that a company should take the marketing staff and have them help make the user manuals more beautiful.

Are you a Linux user?

In the past I was, but for the last couple of years I've been exclusively on OSX, and I can do everything I need to. I'm doing a lot of experimenting with media lately -- audio and video editing especially -- and I love the Mac tools.

What is one piece of advice you'd like to get across to IT managers?

It's absurd to think of having passionate users if you don't have passionate employees. And when employees are too far removed from those most affected by their work - the end users - it's easy to not have to think about users as Real People.

At Sun, when they instituted Six Sigma, 'users/customers' became line items on a report, and user problems were DPMOs (defects per million opportunities). When people become numbers and stats instead of breathing human beings, it's no wonder we build products and documentation and support that's frustrating for people.

So here's my one piece of advice: do whatever it takes to make sure everyone has regular exposure to users. One 100-person software company I know makes every single person - including upper managers - do time on tech support or customer training.

Think about the effect that has when you're building something that you will eventually have to help someone use. But even if you can't have real customers come in or have all of your employees visit customers, a fairly inexpensive and practical tool is to videotape customers talking about their work and life, and how the product fits into their world. I've done this a lot, and employees are often shocked to learn even just the every day details about an end user's life. It stops them from seeing users as DPMO numbers.

What's one piece of advice you'd like to get across to IT staff?

Learn everything you can about 'Flow' - a required book when I first worked at Virgin - and think about ways to make it happen both in your own job, and as part of the end user's experience. Flow is considered one of the best 'states' a person can be in, and essential to having a healthy life, and as developers we are often responsible for creating - or preventing - users from spending more time in the flow state.

What are your experiences as a woman in IT?

I haven't had any negative experiences at all. Some people along the way would seem mildly surprised, but it was never anything but good for me, and that's across many jobs in two different states. Perhaps if I'd been working in enterprise IT I would have found a different environment, but the worst problem I've had is not enough female programmers to talk to on the job. But there are always women in other roles, so it's not like I couldn't find another woman to have lunch with at work, for example.

Why do you think women are still a minority in the industry, and do you think the gender imbalance will ever even out?

This is just my opinion - not based on anything else - but I believe it's that most women simply aren't interested. Period. Yes, in earlier days - even as recently as 10 years ago - computers were still seen as a "boy's thing", in school computer labs and in homes, but that's changed so dramatically. Whenever I hear someone trot out old research about how "girls are told that computers aren't for them", I ask if they've tried to pry the mouse out of a teenage girl's hand while she's on MySpace. No, there's nothing stopping girls from thinking they can do anything they choose with computers - including hack their javascript if they choose - it's starting to be a skill not that different from the way programming a VCR was in the 90's, or getting custom ringtones on their cell phone.

I think there will be less and less of a Women In Computing/IT idea, and more and more a shift to computers (and sometimes programming) as an essential skill that people will need in a wide range of fields, and women will come into it through these other side doors, and a formal "Comp Sci" degree will be more specialized and more an academic or engineering science rather than the place where programmers are trained.

I do not think the gender imbalance will even out, but it may not make so much of a difference once more people in other domains are doing work that would have traditionally been only for the computer science folks.

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CW: The 'inevitable' next step towards HSPA

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Mobile technology is moving steadily towards richer applications that require higher speeds, and according to several cellular vendors, service providers and industry analysts, the only way to its future is through a combination of HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) and HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access), together known as HSPA (High Speed Packet Access).

In October last year Telstra spurred on the Australian uptake of the 3.5G standard by launching its Next G network based on HSDPA. Telstra's 3.6 Mbps Next G network is currently expected to offer download speeds of up to five times faster than other 3GSM networks, and may soon hit speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps as it is upgraded to HSUPA.

Vodafone was not far behind, launching its own 1.8Mbps HSDPA network a fortnight later. Meanwhile, Optus is currently trialing HSDPA technology over its Sydney and Canberra networks, and Hutchison is expected to soon follow with a 3.6Mbps network by March.

A cellular inevitability

HSPA is a fairly simple data-centric upgrade that will consolidate GSM- and CDMA-based networks, explains Jerson Yau, IDC Australia Research Analyst for Wireless and Mobility. And besides being faster than current 3G technologies, HSPA providers will be able to boost their networks from 1.8 Mbps to the 3.6, 14.4, 40, and 100Mbps standards via simple software upgrades.

Due to the ease of management and the speeds it offers, Yau expects the move towards HSPA to be an inevitable next step for cellular networks. "It's a necessary stepping stone," he said. "It's so easy to manage, and the gains and benefits are something to brag about."

In fact, as many as 80 percent of mobile subscribers worldwide are expected to be part of the GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA path by 2007, according to Kursten Leins, Strategic Marketing Manager for Mobility Solutions of Ericsson Australia.

"Eventually all WCDMA networks are expected to be upgraded to HSPA," he said. "WCDMA/HSPA networks are key components in offering users richer mobile services.

"HSPA delivers true mobile broadband services over existing WCDMA infrastructure, providing mobile operators with a new revenue stream based on existing user behavior and demand."

4G alternatives

But while HSPA provides significantly higher speeds than its 3G cellular predecessors, there are those who claim that "true" wireless broadband speeds are yet to come.

"3G doesn't give us true broadband," said Peter Newcombe, president of Nortel Networks' carrier networks division for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at the Broadband World Forum held in Paris late last year.

Newcombe defined true broadband as speeds at which users can't tell whether the content and applications they're using are stored locally in their device or on a far-off server. These speeds will be provided by technologies such as WiMax, LTE (long-term evolution), and a flavour of CDMA known as Ref C, he said.

Newcombe's views were echoed by Eric Hamilton, CTO of Sydney-based WiMax provider, Unwired, who said that while cellular carriers may attempt to match the price and performance of wireless broadband Internet using voice-based technology, the reality is, there are limitations.

"The uplink capability in HSDPA is no different to 3G, so while the carriers can talk about high speed downloads, uploads are shackled," he explained. "A true broadband customer uploads approximately about one half of the bytes that he/she downloads, and the total traffic is in the region of 1.5GBs per month. An HSDPA solution will not cope with any reasonable number of customers acting this way."

A neck-and-neck call

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Leins, of cellular hardware vendor Ericsson, disagrees, being of the viewpoint that WiMax and HSPA can exist harmoniously since they each have different functions.

"Ericsson sees WiMax [the 802.16e standard] primarily as an open standard for fixed broadband wireless access, which can make up a natural part of an operator's Ethernet broadband offering," he said. "WiMax is optimized for fixed or portable 'nomadic' broadband wireless access and targets a different segment from 3G, which combines mobile telephony and mobile broadband access."

IDC's Yau used the analogy of petrol and diesel to explain the differences between WiMax and HSPA. "Your car only does one or the other," he said, "so you either drive a car or a truck.

"It's a neck-and-neck call, because I mean, at one stage, everyone wants to drive a car, but on the other hand, we definitely need trucks on the road. They each have their users."

But the comparison of HSPA and WiMax may not be so simple, Yau said. While the incumbent mobile carriers in Australia may be turning to HSPA on the way to their 4G platforms, carriers such as Nextel in the United States and WiBro in South Korea have chosen the WiMax route instead.

"It is a very hazy battle to go through," he said. "We all thought 4G would be a cellular evolution, but [some carriers are] supplanting cellular technology at the Fourth Generation with mobile WiMax."

From the current state of the Australian wireless industry, the 4G technologies, to be expected in about four to five years' time, would have evolved from HSPA, Yau said.

"I don't think we'd go to be utilizing the WiMAX standard," he said, adding that when it comes down to it, it would be up to service and equipment providers to "drive the vision" towards 4G.

Howard Dahdah, Rodney Gedda and James Niccolai contributed to this story.

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