Apparently, when George W. Bush visits Australia for the APEC conference in September, he’s going to be trailed by a Blackhawk helicopter, which will be blocking mobile phone signals.

A helicopter equipped with signal-jamming equipment will shadow Mr Bush's presidential motorcade whenever he travels on the city's streets.

It is expected the mobile phone network will be neutralised for about two minutes.

Many of the remote-controlled bombs detonated in Iraq and those used in the second Bali bombing were set off by mobile phones.

I first heard this on the radio, and even the radio DJs picked up on the obvious flaw in this plan... What if there’s another kind of emergency? Let’s say the terrorists decide to set up a sniper and start shooting the car (I assume the car will be bullet-proof, but this is just an example). How are they supposed to ask the helicopter “hey, can you guys see where that sniper is?” without a phone?

In addition to this, it’s now May. The conference is not until September. They’ve just announced to the terrorists that they won’t be able to detonate their bombs by mobile phone. The terrorists now have four months to adjust their plans and use something else.

And that’s the problem with trying to counter every possible attack individually – the terrorists know as much as you do: perhaps more. They’ve seen all the past attacks as well, so they’ll just try something else next time! Mobile phones don’t work? Try a CB radio. CB radios get blocked? Try a HAM radio. HAM radio is blocked? Try a bloody garage-door remote! Or how about a good old-fashioned timer?

You can’t predict every possible attack, the only way to stop them is with a little thing I like to call “police work.”

You can cut’n’paste files over remote desktop. ‘nuff said.

I saw this post today comparing the difference between HD-DVD and regular DVD.

I made the comment there that while the difference between a DVD and an HD-DVD might be quite obvious when looking a static image 3 feet from a computer screen, the differences are not so obvious when looking at a moving picture, sitting 12 feet from your TV.

I say this as someone who actually owns a 1080p HDTV. Now, I don’t have an HD-DVD or Bluray player (bloody hell, those things are still way too expensive) but I have played HD content via my laptop on it. And I gotta say, it really is hard to tell when you’re watching HD content vs. SD content when you’re not actually sitting right up next to the TV.

My TV is 42" (about 100cm), which is pretty darn big, especially for an apartment. To really enjoy HD, though, you’d need a truly monster TV.

However, having said that, I do believe that HD is awesome for computer games. The XBOX 360, in 1080p mode is simply breath-taking. I think there are a couple of reasons for that:

1. The 360 renders static images in quick succession. This is different to a movie, where the images are captured from a live source – the blurring that movie add to an image makes the differences harder to spot.
2. You generally sit closer to the TV when playing games than when watching a movie (at least, I do – I usually sit on a couch on the other side of a room for TV but on a chair nice and close to the screen for games).

Still, I’m not sure that for the non-enthusiast, non-gamer, that moving to HD is quite as attractive as the manufacturers would like you to believe.

This is a continuation of a discussion that was going on over on Raymond’s blog, but since it got rather off-topic, I thought I’d continue it here :)

Over on that post, Leo Davidson said:

According to this http://news.softpedia.com/news/XP-Reigns-Supreme-in-2006-43442.shtml the vast majority of (85%) PCs run Windows XP. That's 85% of all PCs, too, not just Windows PCs.

Factor in the assumption that people still using 95/98 aren't going to be interested in many types of software (if they were they wouldn't be running 95/98 anymore) and the pain of writing, maintaining and testing code which has to contain wrappers or workarounds for so many missing APIs, not to mention separate Unicode and ANSI builds, and I seriously question the assertion that "good" code should work on all Win32 versions.

To which Norman Diamond (sorry, Norman doesn’t have a blog – that I know of – to link to) said:

Factor in the assumption that there are a lot of countries where middle class people can afford to buy used PCs that are powerful enough to run 98 but aren't powerful enough to run pirated copies of XP.

Now, my assertion is that even though the number of people running Windows 98 might be fairly large, you still don’t want to be trying to sell software to them (in general). Obviously, writing software for love or fun is different, but trying to sell software is something that is simply not going to work.

Someone who can only afford to buy second-hand, low-spec hardware and pirated copies of Windows is unlikely going to want to pay for your software as well. So if you’re in the business of selling software, then it makes sense to only try selling to people who could afford your software in the first place.

Secondly, and perhaps not quite as important, is my assertion that just because you can sell software overseas, does not necessarily mean you should. Now, this is coming from someone living in Australia, where the market for software is not as big as the U.S. (say), but even I would think twice before trying to sell my software overseas. If overseas sales are important to you, then these are issues you need to consider. They are also relevant if you already live in one of those countries where 99% of software is pirated. But I would say most software developers do not need to think about international markets. You can still make a handsome living selling your software locally.

That’s going to sound like a cop-out to anyone living in a different country to you and wanting to buy your software, but the simple fact of the matter is, when you’re the supplier, you can choose who your customers are. If you only choose people living in the same country as you, that’s entirely up to you.

So, my answer to the question in the title of this post is: probably not. Unless you want to.

How’s that for a diplomatic answer? :)

I wouldn’t normally comment on something I read on Penny-Arcade, but I today I was looking at the latest strip and I thought I just had to say something.

Basically, I don’t know what everybody’s problem with Jack Thompson is. Why do people even take him seriously? The guy’s clearly got some sort of messiah complex – it’s just a shame that he’s also a lawyer and can put his complex into legal jargon.

Mr. Thompson: We don’t need you to “save us” from big, bad video games. Thank you very much!