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The Financial Times talk about one of the reasons for the strength of the Taliban - the salary of their fighters.
"The Taliban are supported by Pakistan and they get money from the drugs trade, so they get more pay than our soldiers," said Colonel Myuddin Ghouri of the national army's 205 Corp.
This blog is venturing into new territory with its first food product review, but the technology of the Sipahh flavouring straw caught my eye. I have a fondness for flavoured milk, so a leapt at the chance to try this new gadget when it appeared on my supermarket shelf (I purchased a packet of 10 straws for AUD$4).
I first became aware of the product when it appeared on the New Inventors, which kindly provides an online video of the Sipahh's appearance. There are further close-ups at the Unistraw web site which provide a good idea of the Sipahh concept.
The Sipahh is a clear plastic straw containing flavour beads, which impart their yumminess as you drink. I tried a choc-mint Sipahh with their recommended amount of plain milk, 250ml. The first taste was surprisingly rich. It takes a while to get used to drinking from a glass of plain milk but tasting flavoured milk. For a while the strength was very good, but over time the beads dissolve, and the flavour becomes weaker. With about a third of the beads left I still had a third of the glass of milk left, but it was too weak to drink. I suspect that voracious children would drink fast enough that this would not be a problem, but people who like to savour their drinks may need to start with less milk.
The Sipahh packaging and advertising emphasises the health aspects of the product, with statements such as:
It's easy to see why this would be popular at school canteens. They can stock a wide variety of long-lasting Sipahh straws for sale with their more perishable regular milk. Despite its high cost parents would probably appreciate the portion control that the straw brings over the venerable Nestle Nesquik products. However, as a consumer I can't recommend this product due to its use of artificial sweeteners.
I've expanded the map of Australian Football League grounds to included all grounds ever used to stage official AFL matches. Current grounds are indicated by a large red marker, and old grounds have a small yellow marker. I've also set the map to start up in hybrid mode, so you can more easily appreciate the views of the grounds from above.
An noted on the page, there are a few grounds missing. I shall add them if I become aware of their exact latitudes and longitudes, though I fear this may be difficult if some grounds have been built over.
Not unexpectedly, the Arms Trade Resource Center is a great source of data such as this chart showing where arms from the United States are sold:
More recently, Amnesty International reported on the failure of a UN conference to agree on global controls of the sale of small arms due to a small number of vociferous opponents. Reuters has more details about the "total meltdown".
Are people more scared of radiation emitted from a microwave oven than from a mobile phone? Given that most people have their heads pressed against their ovens for less time than against their phones, wouldn't common sense suggest that phones should have a lower allowable emitted radiation limit? Hmm...
I can experientially attest to the friendliness of dolphins, but rely on Brain Facts and Figures for the following chart:
Every computer on the internet has an IP address, which is a set of numbers that uniquely identify that computer. For example, google.com is 64.233.167.99. Each of the four number segments goes up to 255 (or 28-1).
The Acorn Electron let the user define characters, such as letters or sprites, using 8 numbers each up to 255, giving an 8x8 pixel square.
As an example, 56, 64, 128, 255, 255, 128, 64, 56 denotes an arrow. The most significant bit of the first number gives the bottom left pixel, the least significant bit gives the top left pixel, and the rest followed similarly. So, 56 = 0 * 128 + 0 * 64 + 1 * 32 + 1 * 16 + 1 * 8 + 0 * 4 + 0 * 2 + 0 * 1, which gives a first column of 00111000.
Combining these two facts I present the IP Visualiser, which displays a given IP address as a 4x8 pixel square. As you might suspect, this is quite limiting in artistic terms. However, there are probably some simple company logos that can be represented faithfully. I wonder if those companies would value "their" IP addresses.
An IPv6 version would give much more scope for creative pictures, as its greater range of numbers would allow for an 8x16 pixel area. I'll extend the IP Visualiser when IPv6 becomes more widespread.
When Firefox 0.9 was released in 2004 I had a quick look at the size of the downloads of Firefox and its ancestors. Two years on it's time to revisit the subject, and check whether the much dreaded bloat has arrived.
This chart comprises Phoenix, Firebird and Firefox, and where both an exe and a zip were offered the smaller of the two is used.
| 0.1 |  8.3 |
| 0.2 | 7.4 |
| 0.3 | 7.0 |
| 0.4 | 7.1 |
| 0.5 | 6.1 |
| 0.6 | 6.7 |
| 0.7 | 6.0 |
| 0.8 | 6.2 |
| 0.9 | 4.7 |
| 1.0 | 4.8 |
| 1.0.8 | 4.7 |
| 1.5 | 5.1 |
| 1.5.0.4 | 5.0 |
| 2.0 | 5.6 |
In summary, there's no sign of the middle-aged beer belly yet.
Updated 25 Oct 2006: Added Firefox 2
The amount of Australian content on Australian television has been significantly eroded over the years. Most recently it has been affected by the introduction of the Australia-USA Free Trade Agreement and the (perpetually nascent) digital television. The former was bitterly opposed by the Australian film and television industry, which feared that they'd be sidelined by cheaper American imports.
The Sydney Morning Herald touches on the importance of Australian television to the building and maintenance of a national character.
The possible demise of free television because of its failure to modernise behind a wall of protection might be greeted with a regretful shrug of the shoulders, in much the same way as we regard the demise of textile manufacturing, except that while there's no obvious difference between a Chinese shirt and an Australian one, there is a big difference between American TV shows and Australian ones.The advertising money that's channelled through the networks' programming departments into local drama helps form the national character, in which case Australia is becoming a cipher, a non-entity. According to Harold Mitchell, just 9 per cent of fiction programs on Australian TV in the past 12 months were locally produced. This compares with 86 per cent in the UK, 56 per cent in Germany, 47 per cent in Italy, 31 per cent in France and 21 per cent in Sweden.
To take an example in a slightly different area, I watch a lot of French films. That's not because French films are inherently good, but because they produce so many that some are bound to be the type that I like. In contrast, Australia currently creates so little television drama that it's not unexpected that there is nothing that I like.
The Evatt Foundation shows the great disparity in size with the USA, Australia's main source of entertainment.
Over the past 5 years Australia has produced on average 34 feature films per year worth about US$100 million, while in the same period the US has produced an average of 656 feature films per year worth about US$10.8 billion.Australia has 28 commercial free-to-air television stations affiliated with 3 networks; 2 national public broadcasters; and 5 subscription TV operators offering up to 56 channels. In the US there are more than 1,500 TV stations, most of which are affiliated with 5 major networks, and 9,000 cable TV systems.
Finally, the Screen Producers Assocation of Australia has an article about the reduction in funding and drama output of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Of 17 OECD countries surveyed about levels of public broadcasting funding, Australia came in at 16th, behind countries including Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.
I've previously noted the lack of funding for the ABC. That's just one component in the globalisation of entertainment which could lead to the situation of people going for overseas holidays and seeing the same old stuff on television everywhere they go.
After doing all the hard work in setting up the WAFL Grounds interactive map, I decided to go the whole hog and expand it to cover AFL grounds too. All of the current playing arenas for the Australian Football League are indicated, as well as a few of the recently vacated grounds.