It speaks of hope, of greed, of the changes in the world that were so prevalent in 1940 and some would indeed argue that has been present in our current generation. Some of the most amazing speeches were written so long ago – and yet humanity seems to forget our history so quickly. This is one worth watching and one worth sharing and saving for your children to see.

Here is the full text:

I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish…

Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security.

By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’ 

It was a quote from a magazine in 1974 called World Earth Magazine – you can see the original image here - which Steve Jobs highlighted in a fantastic speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005. The video is available on YouTube and I strongly recommend watching it.

So in the spirit of Steve Jobs – may he rest in peace – this is my favourite excerpt from his speech.

“Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary …  they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Download it here.

Take this video by Sophos embedded below. While what Mr. Graham Cluley is doing is admirable in trying to assist internet citizens in increasing their password strength by muddling up words, symbols and letters – the outcome is increasingly confusing.

I mean Graham starts out with – Fred and Wilma sat down for a dinner of eggs and ham - and ends up with – f+wsd4adoe&h. Frankly, the earlier is a hell of lot easier to remember than the latter in my mind. So inspired by the comic by XKCD - I wanted to highlight a fundamentally simpler way to create a strong password based on the concept of entropy.

You’re thinking – “WTF is entropy?”

Well, WikiPedia describes it as a measure of the uncertainty associated with a random variable and in the world of the Internet – this infers that it’s all related to bits – or a basic unit of information that’s typically described as a 0 or 1.

In the most ‘basic and non-complex’ form – when hackers are trying to crack your password – the less the amount of entropy in the password – the easier it is to guess your password. This is done by simply iterating through the combination of the words, numbers of symbols and trying all the numbers or combinations possible. For example, check out the picture below – which illustrates time:

You can see the total number of hack attempts that are available to any hacker [based on simple brute force combination hacking] here per year on a relatively slow computer. Now let’s throw a password into the mix:

So you can see that with a relatively basic password with a combination of letters and numbers – it’s not that difficult to process the total number of combinations available based on the passwords entropy and figure it out. However, now let’s simply use a standard combination of four relatively common words, in the random order that they first popped into my head, and see what happens:

The difference is frankly astounding and the principle is so simple – using longer phrases, which are easier to remember, allows you to substantially increase the time it takes to brute hack a password. Of course, adding in upper and lower case letters, numbers or symbols only seeks to further increase the protection of this password – however, the point is that you don’t always need to do this. Simply select a combination of words, relatively unique and unknown in their order is more than adequate, which have an entropy of more than 50 bits and it will take well over 1000 years to get close to hacking it at 1000 passwords/sec. In fact, choosing obscure words makes other hacking methods like dictionary attacks even harder – which still fundamentally struggle with high entropy passwords because of sheer volume of combinations.

Faster computers may be able to attack faster, but the times involved will still be many years – so don’t always listen to the populus and select your passwords based on entropy remembering that -

Time is a hackers worst friend. As time increases as a function spent on you – the faster the function moves onto someone else.

To calculate entropy for your password – use this handy calculator.

The internet is profoundly reshaping the manner in which we are interacting with technology in our world. It has transformed not only the way in which we share and communicate information but also how we locate, learn and explore different types of media online. Fundamental to the development of the internet is the principle of collaboration that exists between millions of different people scattered across the globe – who are able to connect, deliberate, ponder and solve complex problems which would have otherwise remained unsolvable. It is this organic and multi-lateral cooperative effort which has allowed researchers and entrepreneurs to innovate and create commercially viable applications which have not only increased the dissemination of media on the internet, but also improved the manner in which the internet is evolving.

It is apparent that in order for the continual expansion of the internet to continue there must be persistent and increased collaboration and development between all users. It was collaboration which lead to the formation of the internet during its initial development as far back as the 1950’s, and it was collaboration which became fundamentally important during the early 1980’s and 1990’s when people began to realize the increased need to find and organize file and information structures. It was also at this point that the view of software development changed radically. Software was no longer being viewed as a pure mathematical algorithm but rather as a medium that was critically important to business success, and many technology companies began to question why software was not been offered the same legal protection as other industries. Companies such as Microsoft and Intuit were pushing for increased protection of intellectual property rights on software in order to protect their commercial business strategies and facilitate innovation. During the same era, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to openly oppose this drastically changing trend. Stallman despised both the concept of proprietary software and that of intellectual property rights over software, rather proposing that all software be ‘free’ – a definition he characterized as ‘free to use, read, modify and redistribute without any legal repercussions’. Stallman’s arguments were almost entirely dismissed by many software companies at the time simply because ‘free’ was not ‘commercially viable’.

Thus, in this article I will endeavor to explore the changing attitudes between proprietary and open source software and its evolution in relation to the internet. I will seek to focus on the development of patent law in the United States primarily because it was the first legal system in the world to allow increased intellectual property rights over software and in doing so, ultimately opened the floodgates for the rest of the world to follow. I will consider the implications of open source software and discuss whether the attitudes in relation to open source software have changed since the early development of the internet. I will also attempt to explore the juxtaposition between protecting and rewarding inventors with patent protection versus unfairly restricting other innovators from developing and advancing technological processes through open source software. Finally, I hope to conclude by discussing whether a rational solution can be discovered which protects inventors while also allowing the open source community to freely evolve.

II. Patents

The fundamental purpose of a patent is an impartial grant of an exclusive set of rights which provide the patent holder with a monopoly over the related subject matter. The majority of patent law revolves around the issues of what is patentable, whether the specification provided in the original filing is adequate, whether the monopoly claimed is supported by the relevant and appropriate documentation and whether the supposed invention is in fact novel and inventive when measured against the ‘prior art’ – that which was already known in the relevant field at the time the patent was sought. While these fundamental aspects are standard features of all non-software related patents, the development and approval of software patent law has only very recently been established and the requirements differ to some extent. The precedent set by the 1981 US Supreme Court in the case of Diamond v Diehr was the first instance in which the US courts had instructed the United States Patent and Trademark Office to grant a patent for an invention in which computer software was utilized. The decision set out in this case created confusion for computer programmers because there was no clear definition provided by the court as to whether software related inventions were actually patentable. The resulting accepted interpretation at the time was that software in isolation was not patentable but innovations which used software as part of larger process were.

The US law remained stagnant with this definition for almost a decade, and it wasn’t until the mid 1990s that a clearer ruling on software patentability evolved. In 1994, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) built on the decision from Diamond v Diehr and stated in In re Alappatthat “programming creates a new machine, because a general purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from the program software”. This decision set an entirely new legislative decree for software patents and the intellectual protection of software in general. Despite the significance of this decision, it was not until 1998 that CAFC made the single most important ruling in relation to software patents today, by removing the archaic ‘business method exception’. The ‘business method exception’ was created in Hotel Security Checking Co. Vlorraine Co in 1908 and was implemented in order to prevent ‘methods of doing business’ being patentable subject matter. It was consequently invalidated by CAFC in 1998 when ruling on the State Street Bank & Trust v Signature Financial Group case. State Street attempted to have Signatures patent invalidated on the basis that it was a mathematical algorithm and was also a business method. CAFC rejected State Streets argument and invalidation claim, which it suggested was based entirely on the contention of ‘unpatentable abstract ideas’ and subsequently negated the ‘business method exception’ entirely. Following the State Street decision, it became clearly apparent that computer software and data structures were now considered patentable subject matter in the United States. The US Patent and Trademark Office attempted to outline some ‘computer related examination guidelines’ for software patents with the basis of these guidelines being that the invention must produce a ‘useful, concrete and tangible’ outcome. Unfortunately, these guidelines were, and still are, easily fulfilled during the drafting process of software patents and a flood of new software patents emerged as a result.

Although there is ample evidence available to suggest that most computer software programs are statutory in nature, the typical requirements for patentability still remain. The most important prerequisite for a software patent is that the invention defined within, or by, the software program is non-obvious – a determination made by assessing whether the invention would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill and knowledge in computer programming at the time of filing. This fundamental prerequisite of software patents is also the greatest limitation in the patentability process, as most patent examiners are unable to effectively research all of the prior art, and subsequently validate patents which should not have been certified. As a result, the continuous flow of pre-existing and recently filed ‘valid invalid software patents’ are causing serious problems and concerns for all of the free source, open source and even proprietary software communities since those accused of patent infringement must conduct their own prior art research in order to determine whether or not the patent is invalid. While it is argued by proponents of the patent system that owners of software patents are disadvantaged because of the ease at which the validity of patents can be questioned, the entire process obviously requires substantial review and improvement.

Many supporters of open source software have actually suggested that the US Patent legislation should replicate laws implemented by the European Patent System. The European system specifically states that computer related inventions are not patentable, although it does allow member states to interpret and dictate this directive. As a result, many member states have simply allowed software patents to be valid which has resulted in thousands of patents being accepted by the European system, and enraged many enterprise software companies. The European Patent Office (EPO) argues that the European Patent Convention does not ban software programs completely but rather specifically defines what is, and is not, patentable. They indicate that algorithms by themselves are definitively not patentable for example, but an algorithm contained within a computer program which solves a technical problem is. The ambiguous definition and lack of clarity in the European Patent Convention is not unlike the historical decision from Diamond v Diehr in the United States, where many European software developers are now simply confused as to what is, and what is not patentable – a suggestion the EPO discounts.

Despite these flaws, there are increasing numbers of people who are of the view that the European method of handling patents would assist the US in reducing the flow of ‘valid invalid software patents’, and reward and recognise truly novel inventions with patent protection. Members of the proprietary software industry are actively dismissing this suggestion. They claim that the US System only just provides the minimum requirements to protect innovation and anything less would severely reduce their competitive advantage in industry, and render the fundamental purpose of the patent system – the granting of a temporary monopoly – useless. While it is unclear whether the European Patent System is, or would be, more effective than the US System in reviewing software patents, it does illustrate that there are more systemic problems in the US System compared to the European one, due to common law rulings on software patents.

III. Open Source Software

Open source software is predominately a method of creating and distributing software. According to the Open Source Initiative, open source doesn’t just mean that a person has fundamental access to the code. The distribution terms of open source software can also include many different criteria ranging from free distribution initiatives to source lock down terms, where any modifications made to the source code must always be openly provided. Thus it is clear open source software is not rule-free software, but rather software in which certain restrictions are imposed on users of the code. Founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, has consistently dismissed the fundamental premise of ‘open source’ as he believes software should be entirely ‘free’. He suggests that “free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus makes our society better”, a view that hinges on the extremist end of open source collaboration and is perhaps only effective in certain development environments.

While Stallman may want all software to be free, the success of open source software from both a commercially viable and development model cannot be denied. It is often acknowledged by even proponents of open source software models, that there is immense value in the open source system, by being able to generate results and facilitate collaboration in order produce and develop software. This was illustrated clearly by the release of theHallow Documents – a set of highly confidential documents which were leaked to the press which outlined Microsoft’s plan to disrupt open-source software entirely, and also its strategy to “deny open source initiatives such as Linux entry into the market”. Other highly publicised illustrations of open source successes included the response by the Open Source Initiative foundation to AOL letter regarding the Mozilla project and its future. While these examples provide illustration that open source systems and applications are becoming increasingly viewed as a cost-effective, secure and reliable way of implementing systems in the corporate environment
, there are also a number of challenges that open source software have yet to overcome. The most obvious challenge comes from Microsoft and its so-called “FUD” tactics, or Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt strategies, which attempt to undermine the popularity of open source systems and their safety online and in corporate environments. This is particularly evident through Microsoft’s continued argument that open sourced systems allow hackers to study weaknesses in source code structure, thereby gaining valuable insight into the organization of code and consequently infiltrating companies who use the software to gain access to their data. Conversely, open source commentators argue that since the software is ‘open’, any programmer can review and fix security flaws much faster than proprietary developers, and thereby plug security holes quickly and efficiently. A strong example of open source collaboration is the internet based Mozilla browser project, which has attracted contributions from millions of software developers around the world and is now the 2nd most popular browser on the planet after Internet Explorer. Despite this example, the critical challenge to open source software is not defending its manner of operation but rather the increased threat from software patents that could potentially ruin the open source movement and halt the innovative process.

The issue of software patents has become a critical problem for the continued development and expansion of the open source software community, predominately due to the fact that open source software relies heavily only on copyright protection and licensing. The United States Patent and Trademark Office have been issuing patents for software development at unprecedented rates. A possible explanation for this substantial increase in patent applications stems from computer programmers not wanting to rely solely on copyright law as their only means of intellectual property protection, particularly because US Copyright law requires copyright owners register their works in order to litigate. Additionally, software developers are wary of the subjective nature of copyright interpretation in respect of the US lead idea-expression dichotomy contained within the US Copyright Act. The idea expression dichotomy suggests that “ideas that are the fruit of an author’s labours go into the public domain, while only the author’s particular expression remains the author’s to control”. The application of the idea-expression dichotomy is particularly prevalent in relation to open source software programs in the instance that the abstraction-filtration comparison test is applied. The “abstraction, filtration and comparison” test was developed during the Computer Associates International Inc v Altai Inc case. The US Copyright Act clearly indicates that computer programs are to be protected as literary works, and non-literal structures of computer programs are to be covered analogously in ‘other literary’ works. The test attempts to separate the expression of an idea from the idea itself, and it does this by identifying protectable elements of the expression from the unprotectable elements. Many have commented that the “the abstraction-filtration-comparison test eliminates protection for computer programs by entirely filtering out not only the individual elements of computer programs such as software objects but also the compilation of selection and arrangement expression that is the program’s structure, since both are designed with efficiency in mind”. The difficultly for software developers to rely on this test during copyright litigation is that it is difficult to interpret, and only provides protection for the literal component of the program – a potential problem in open source software development. Consequently, the outcome of this case has encouraged some software developers to seek patent protection as a more secure way of defending their underlying software programs as opposed to any reliance on copyright law, and thereby actually encouraging, perhaps unknowingly, proprietary software development.

Additionally, the other obvious problem created by the application of this law, is that any businesses attempting to develop a commercial open source application may be unknowingly infringing patents and risk consequential litigation. As many computer programmers are shying away from a reliance on copyright protection and filing patents, it makes it exceeding difficult for any commercial enterprise to effectively develop open source applications without becoming embroiled in a patent litigation suit. It has been commented numerous times in the US that the patent system is entirely too broad in its approach of issuing software patents for concepts which have existed in some prior art form. A review of the US Patent and Trademark office has suggested it has systemic internal problems and is unable to handle the sheer volume of patent pending applications being filed, the complex and technical nature of the work and the lack of experienced staff examining and validating software patents. In addition, there has also been increasing observation that Patent Attorneys are technically rewording prior art in order to achieve patentable subject matter which has already existed in some prior form. A clear illustration of the problem can be identified via U.S. Patent No. 6,330,551 issued in 2001 which was granted to protect ‘automated online dispute settlement systems’. The patent is effectively for an internet based computerized system of dispute resolution which allows each party to resolve their disputes electronically by entering in a monetary sum to settle the claim; a computer generated algorithm then automatically calculates the dispute payout to each party. The difficultly with this patent is that there is definitively obvious prior art documented by a paper written by RM Issaac on “Theories and Tests of ‘Blind-Bidding’ Dispute Resolution” which was published in 1989 in the Journal of Economics.

There are countless other examples similar to the one provided above and it is evident that the issuing of such patents, which have a broad and unqualified concept specification are definitively negative to the continual expansion of the open source software movement on the internet. The difficulty stems from the fact that the inherent nature of open source software is its intrinsic ability to facilitate collaboration and take free forms of expression from any contributor that wants to devote their time to the project. The internet has accelerated the rate at which programmers can collaborate and build software across distributed networks and decentralised development boundaries. If a patent exists for a fundamental idea behind an open source software project being created, then the collaborative process on this project is damaged. Regardless of the project owner’s legal right to the copyright of the code, the project is rendered useless without a valid licence from the patent holder. Evidently, this causes many developers to stop contributing to the project for their own indemnity purposes and the open source initiative breaks down entirely. Furthermore, while open source copyright holders could attempt to have a patent invalidated in court, such processes are generally extremely expensive and developers generally do not have the funds or resources to undertake such a process. Thus in this instance, the collaborative and collective efforts of software developers in the open source community are severely disrupted by the existence of patents.

However, while it is obvious from the previous example that patents are hindering the open source software effort, the alternative to patent legislation could be worse. Currently, many patent holders offer free licences to open source collaboration projects and provide free licensing and distribution rights in respect of their IP portfolios. Open source and free software proponents often forget that patents spur innovation forward because the invention needs to be fully disclosed to the public. The ability to review and improve upon existing technologies then further spur forward the creative process, and are positive for competition. Additionally, the removal of software patents in their entirely would result in an increased reliance on copyright law and trade secrets – both of which would be significantly worse for the software industry and open source community in general. Furthermore, if patents were eliminated entirely, it would make it extremely difficult for small businesses to gather external funding, particularly when venture capital financing look heavily to patent applications before funding small business.

IV. Where to from here

It is clear that there is a gaping divide between proponents of free and open source software and patent law. Open source commentators are of the firm belief that patent law is hindering the innovative development processes behind software applications and the internet in general. There has been extensive discussion in this paper that open source software cannot coexist with patent litigation simply because of the legal differentiation between the
protection of copyright and expression, and the monopoly rights associated with patent law over the relevant subject matter. In some regards, it is acceptable to conclude that free and open source proponents are hypocritical in their views on patents since they express their desire to preserve collaboration and freedom of expression, yet limit the abilities of an individual inventor to protect his or her idea. Equivalently, many of their arguments illustrate critical weaknesses in the US Patent and Trademark system. It is clear that the current system is not working effectively and ‘valid invalid software patents’ are consistently being approved by patent examiners. However, to suggest that the abolishment of the patent system as a whole is required to ensure that the internet is protected and innovation can continue – is not an effective solution to the problem either. Many academics have written about systemic problems associated with the US patent office and a plethora of plausible reform structures which would work. Reforms of the patent system would benefit all sections of patent law and not just software and business methods. In addition, encouraging enterprise business to licence their IP portfolios to open source initiatives are actually beneficial, since there are economic benefits if the software is used commercially.

It is important to remember that the foundations of the internet were built on the collaborative efforts of many, and it is acceptable conclusion that only with this continued cohesion can the internet continue to develop into the future. The benefits of open source software have been well documented throughout this paper, and equivalently, so have those of software patents. While it is accepted that fundamental problems exist with the continuing trend of validating ‘invalid’ patents, the system is capable of being reformed with external input, database improvement and increased information dissemination. Open source software can and will continue prosper into the future despite looming patent issues, as it has stubbornly proven that it can even in the current software patent environment. Additionally, large scale open source projects such as Mozilla and Linux only promote the efforts of open source development and future open source initiatives. Thus, while it is accepted that patent reform is necessarily in order for open source initiatives to continue to proposer, the abolishment of the patent system in it’s entirely is nonsensical and does not seek to promote, harbour or extend innovation in any form – whether it be on the desktop or the internet.

If you’re wondering where the categories are – just scroll down a bit and you’ll notice they appear on the left side of the page. I did play around a little with “left” and “right” sides for the categories – and came to the conclusion from a UI perspective – it’s easier to quickly click if they hug the left side of the page than it is moving your mouse across the right side. I might even experiment with some A/B testing to see what people prefer [feel free to let me know]. This allows categories to be accessible when you’re scrolling down and reading or if you want to quickly move to a category.

I’ve always enjoyed minimal and clean design principles – so the single column design looks much better in my opinion and the flow of content is easier to manage. I was going to implement a single frame page with infinity scrolling content, and I still might, but lack of time didn’t really allow me to do it [ok, it's done].

I also included the social media icons in the header – so they’re now faster to click and it’s even easier to get in touch with me. One click and away you go.

Love your feedback and feel free to let me know any bugs you discover.

To go from 50 megabits per second to 100 megabits per second in a residential context would be imperceptible; the user experience would be no different.

This really set me right off. I’ll post my somewhat long comments below for you to read in response to another user primarily called “Alain” – but pop on over to Delimiter to see the mammoth 300+ comment post for yourself if you’re interested.

—

@Alain
I’ll respond to your comments again but unfortunately I don’t have the time again to reply on this thread – thanks for the discussion nonetheless.

Regarding Anonymous Commenting on Blogs

“That old furphy gets a airing again, of course you are very selective on who that ‘put down’ attempt applies to, if it applies to everyone in blogs like this Whirlpool, ZDnet etc you have eliminated 99% of all posts in one hit as having any legitimate comment.”

Legitimate commenting online IMHO should link to a real online presence – hence the reason Facebook has implemented its online commenting system as one of many. You comment differently when you attach your real profile in comparison to an “anonymous” one because you do not care what you post – knowing that no one will ever attach this back to your name. The anonymity that one hides behind tends to provide a contextual behavior that you would not have if people knew who you were. I am not selective who this “put down” applies to in any sense – I think it is clear that your legitimacy is only increased when you provide critical commentary without hiding behind some “unknown name” because you care about your identity and therefore structure your arguments accordingly. It’s not so much providing your “real” identify as it is providing a consistent one – feel free to read this.

“Oh great build FTTH nationally, spend $43 billion of taxpayer funds and they will ‘invent something’ to justify its existence – brilliant!”

You assume this a stupid thing ? In 2000, when the Internet was not even validated as a widely accepted concept in Australia – we used existing infrastructure to enable and facilitate connection. 10 years later – we are still using the same infrastructure albeit with a better facilitation mechanism. In the next 10 years, 20 years and even 30 years – the usage and consumption of the Internet will be compulsory and an inherent part of culture [if it is not already]. Perhaps you don’t believe that services in the future will continue to rely on Internet at a greater rate ? History has already shown the path that innovation has taken across the last 10 years. Do you assume that in the next 10 or 20 years – the reliance and consumption of services will not be at a faster rate than what they are currently at ?

Let’s assume we do nothing – cost only increases as a function of time. IF we decide that we need faster infrastructure for broadband services in Australia in 2020 or 2030 – then the cost will far exceed $43 billion [even though this is not the total cost]. Let’s assume we build the project in “incremental” stages across the next 5 governments – then again, the total cost will far exceed the current projected budget. So the argument you present is more likely one of – “never build” – because across the next 30 years – building either a) privately or b) through incremental stages – will ultimately yield a slower, more expensive and poorly spread broadband service which has a higher net cost to consumers. Read this paper as one of many. Australia ranks 14th – Switzerland, Japan, Greece, Korea and many other countries are already implementing FTTH nationally – of course, all these countries are “wasting their time” as well I assume ?

“Where does that argument ‘fail’, what is it about BB infrastructure in 2011 that fails to display Youtube properly?”

Because YouTube is an amorphous website that is constantly increasing it’s data demands. Youtube “works properly” now because it is unable to innovate at a faster rate because services are simply not available to justify the increase in innovation. If Australia had faster access to internet, then YouTube would innovate at a faster rate accordingly which would provide an even greater an immersive experience to the entire community.

Again, yes youtube works. But no technological innovators want their service to “just work” – they want to innovate and provide a new and immersive experience to their users. In 10 years time, youtube will challegene Television stations just as Hulu.com and NetFlix are already doing in the US. You connect to the Internet directly and consume services across these services – this will become common place and already is becoming common place in the States.

Certainly, if you want to have 1 TV – with shitty non-HD quality video’s displayed at poor resolution – existing services will work fine. DO you really think Mum and Dad who have just bought a new sony 3D television will want to continue along this line ? No. Now let’s assume there are 4 TV’s in the same house – all wanting to consume services at the same rate of consumption ? Again, existing services render this impossible without painful buffering and generally do not justify a family use case.

“Err what, that doesn’t make any sense, is that intentional?”

I’m unclear where you’re confused here. Read my first paragraph – the incremental increase of broadband infrastructure in Australia will be entirely more costly distributed over the next 20 years as opposed to upgrading the entire network as one project. Governments are responsible for pushing society forward as a whole – not providing incremental services to incremental aspects of society which promotes fracture and class separation. This is exactly what the Government is trying to avoid by upgrading the infrastructure in Australia entirely and I strongly applaud this effort.

“Australia is already ranked what?”

17th on broadband speeds and will quickly loose any status in the top 50 if we choose to avoid upgrading our infrastructure as a whole. Korea, Japan, Finland, Sweden, France are already far above Australia and are all increasing rapidly. Review this if you need evidence.

“What innovation? – or do you consider the NBN rollout is like a lottery, based on a assumption that innovation in the future can ONLY be be met by a fibre to the home taxpayer fed rollout.”

Perhaps you need a definition of innovation – I’m happy to provide one. From the Princenton dictionary – “being or producing something like nothing done or experienced or created before;”. Clear ? Evidently, existing services will not be able to handle products of innovation in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. In the last 10 years, we have grown into a culture of technological reliance and innovation. Every seemingly must be “realtime’ even now – and this will only change in the future.

Do you believe that future services in the ‘average’ home of 2 parents and 2 child with immerse entertainment, multiple computers, streaming music, multiple streaming video connections, multiple gesture based appliances, multiple home appliances and home automation are all going to run across a 2.4mb shared connection ? It’s a strange belief in my eyes if you do. Given what history has already shown us in the last 10 years – I strongly believe that all the above services will require a vastly superior experience in comparison to what we have today and innovation in all these areas will require faster and wider broadband pipes.

“Many users are happy today with HFC, ADSL and ADSL2+ BB speeds, if you gave someone FTTH today who is totally happy with ADSL2+ or HFC what are you achieving here?””

Yes, the key word again “today”. So because one is happy with services they consume “today” – is your argument that this will contine at perpetuity ? New services arrive that require increased bandwidth and consumers upgrade accordingly. All you need is for Netflix to arrive in Australia [it will in the next 12 months] and already every household which wants this service will be upgrading their internet to handle streaming movies and television. So and so forth the data usage patterns are driven. The issue you seem to miss is that multiple service offerings through multiple services and devices in the home across the next 10-20 years will require an absolute increase in bandwidth and speed. There isn’t a question that this is going to occur – it’s a fact.

“Seeing as you have not defined what the innovation is it sounds like you understand that current speeds are adequate but to help prove your case supporting the need for FTTH you have to rely on ‘stuff’ that has not been thought of yet.”

Again, look above or in any dictionary. Innovation is a fairly clearly defined word. Of course, this is the point – there are many services already invented that aren’t in Australia yet for a whole range of reasons. American’s are already screaming for faster internet and it’s the whole premise for Google’s 1gbps expansion projects and the like – people are consuming more services, through more devices at a faster rate in their homes.

In the next 10 years, the reliance on hard-drives will disappear completely and you’ll have a screen, a keyboard and connect to your OS over the internet. Look at Google Chrome OS – it’s already doing this and it’s evident that the future of online services are going in this direction. Do you honestly believe that 2 or 3 or 4 users in the same household booting and using their computers across the internet are going to be able to do this on existing broadband services ? Absolutely not and this is just their computers. Add in the swather of other services offered – music, education, home appliances, security , television, video, gesture based applications and all the rest which will require the internet – and you quickly discover existing infrastructure will render any and all such scenarios impossible.

“Reminds me of Concord the fastest commercially available aircraft in the world, where is Concord today?”

So you’re comparing an airline jet which services a single industry to the internet which services almost every application we currently use ? Nice use case comparison. The reality is – the internet is now more important and utilized by almost every service and device you use in either an indirect or direct capacity. If you don’t use it – businesses do to process basically anything you purchase or consume. I don’t understand how you can possible draw any similarities in this regard.

The concord failed primarily due to the crash in 2000 and a loss of confidence in it from this point forward [in addition to other reasons]. In comparison, Internet sites crash all the time – do you stop using them if they do ? Of course not.

“You are muddying data usage with speed need, 100 gig under FTTN or HFC is the same data usage as 100 gig under FTTH,”

Really am I ? The shortcomings of HFC are well known – including primarily limited downstream [technologies such as Docsis try to help out] and even more limited upstream [ala channel bonding etc] and fundamentally the medium itself – the signal is a less ‘transparent’ one in comparison to fiber which why the requirement of amplifiers is needed and it’s a shared access network throttling bandwidth [just like wireless]. Evidently, the weakest point of HFC is the move from linear TV to non-linear HD video in both uplink and downlink.

“We tend to overestimate the short term impact of a technology and underestimate the long term impact.” – Dr. Fancis Collins – Direct of the Human Genome Project

Yes, upgrading HFC will be a ‘short-term fix’ – no it will not be enough to compare to FTTH in the future and a migration will be required eventually anyway due to it’s shortcomings. Again, your ‘incremental’ increase plan is just a more costly one across the life of any broadband project.

“Except this one requires the existing working infrastructure to be ripped up to ensure people use the NBN, is that what you mean by ‘innovation’ perhaps?”

Again, refer to the definition of innovation. Shared connections are the failure of almost all the technologies you mention in the future of consuming digital services in our country and every other country implementing a FTTH network understands this. Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Greece and so on are all building FTTH because shared technologies do not facilitate, and will not facilitate, the required demand in the future. Again, the reason google is building FIBER 1gbps trials in many US States and hope to expand this across the country. Again, the reason Australia needs FTTH and again the reason so many other countries are adopting the same strategy.

“Oh you are serious, sorry I thought it was a joke, so why cannot we do that today?”

Simple scenario. A team of surgeons – let’s assume 5 – each require HD video in real-time, each require machinery to operate as “hands” and each is remote. You think a broadband connection of 24mbps will handle this ? Absolutely no way would it. This is the problem – the shared network is not enough to facilitate the need. All you need is one “buffering” link or one “poor image” and you have the potential to kill the patient. This not to suggest that FTTH will not have these problems – but the risk of these problems is mitigated to a higher degree.

“Yes but all of your ‘innovations’ are also missing, but that’s ok apparently.”

I’m unclear that it seems history is an unacceptable use case. Compare the year 2000 to the year 2011 and you can fairly easily create a list of “innovations”. In the next 10 years, we will consume more services, at a higher rate and demand more speed through more bandwidth. In the tens years after that, it will continue at a higher rate.

Finally …

The sooner you accept that the world is moving to one of data services without the “cynicism” of “we won’t innovate” or “why waste money on products not invented yet” – the sooner you will realize that the future of digital services in this country requires a FTTH. Other countries realize it, we shouldn’t be any different. History has already given us a glimpse to what’s achievable in realistically 5 years [2005-2010 being the real growth] – and in the next 10-20 years its only apparent that such innovation will continue.

While I respect that you don’t believe in the NBN and I applaud that you have a evidently strong belief that it is a waste of time – I think many of your views are cynical. I don’t necessarily hold the view that you’re “irrational” – if you didn’t hold such a strongly pertinent view against the NBN – then everyone on this blog would simply “agree” :) And that’s no fun is it ? As I stated I am all for government accountability and cost scrutiny and transparency – but in view Australia needs this broadband plan to adequately take us into the future for the next 10, 20, 30 years and beyond. Innovation is already apparent from the last ten years and Australia needs to arm itself for the benefits that the Internet can bring over the next 10, 20 and 30 years. Otherwise we will be left behind – with a populas demanding increased speeds and bandwidth to consume services other countries take for granted – and digital services which will be upgrade through private organisations, at a slow rate with an incredible increasing cost burden as a function of time on consumers which will lag us far behind the rest of the world [or should I say, further behind than we already are].

Hi Everyone,

Well today …. my speech is going to be a little different. When I was asked to speak at this event – I think the spec was to focus on career choices and my current and previous employment – so I’ll get that out of the way right now.

My name is Tim Davis, I’m 28 and I run a software company called FlucMedia that has staff members based in 3 countries. I run the business and do all the design and user-interface work. I have patents-pending in the field of computer science for some of our work. I have 2 diploma’s in Financial Services and Technical Analysis, a Bachelor in Commerce, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment and 2 Masters degrees – 1 in Corporate Law and 1 as a Masters of Law (Juris Doctor) specializing in domestic and international Intellectual Property law. I’m a qualified Trademark Attorney and Certified Financial Technician. I’m not a lawyer – instead I taught myself software coding and it’s what I do now.

Now that’s out of the way – I don’t want you to remember any of it. No … for today – I want to impart the 3 best pieces of advice that I can possibly think of when looking back over the last 10 years to the moment when I was in your exact shoes.

So – 3 pieces of advice and that’s it for me.

1. Failure is great

I think we live in world today where no one fails any more – no …. now days you are “progressively improving” or you are “still developing your potential” – and this is because most people fear failure. They shun from it and they resent it. It’s seen as a “dirty” word which – through some abstract misunderstanding of the English language – automatically infers you’ll never be a success.

But this could not be further from the truth.

Personally, I love failure because without it – I wouldn’t be where I am today. For me, it all started when I was a 2nd year University student doing a Chemical Engineering and Microbiology double degree – a course which I was certain I was going to love when I was in year 12. I enjoyed chemistry and maths at school and so assumed that this would be the best career path for my life.

But it wasn’t until one day when I was called in by a University lecturer who had told me I had received a ‘near pass’ for the subject of ‘fluid mechanics’ – again, the Universities code word for ‘failure in a nice way’. It basically meant I had failed the subject and they had passed me – but I needed to sit down and speak with the lecturer ‘about my future’.

So off I went and he told me ‘Tim, you’ll never succeed in life if you don’t try hard”. With the benefit of hindsight, I honestly think it was at this exact moment that I realized to myself – actually you couldn’t be more wrong.

The fact of the matter was simple – I failed – everyone freaked out and couldn’t say it – I was honestly put under the impression that the whole world was going to stop rotating. And if I believed everyone words – I was truly doomed.

But of course I wasn’t, the world wasn’t going to stop rotating and it won’t in your life time’s either. Instead, I realized at this exact moment that failure and succeeding in life has nothing to do with trying hard – it has to do with being absolutely passionate about what you do and I wasn’t passionate about ‘fluid mechanics’ at all and nor I was passionate chemical engineering or microbiology.

So I realized at this very early age that the testament of a person is not what they do when they fail, it’s the action they take after they fail that truly counts. You can mope around or you can make change in life your and do something about it.

So what did I do ?

I took my ‘near pass’. I quit the course the next day – enrolled in a completely new one that I was more excited about and I’ve never looked back. You’ll learn that intelligence is a relative metric – I might be able to write algorithms, interpret law or manage web servers – but picking up any sort of power tool usually involves some sort of injury. So don’t constantly compare yourself to others – someone is, and will always be, better at something. Instead, follow and find your passion – don’t focus on someone else’s.

So my first lesson to you is – embrace failure, accept it, learn from it and take action on it and remember throughout your life that your greatest downfall will be not action – but rather continuing along the road of inaction.

2. Be passionate

I write a blog and I posted about this a while back so I thought I would simply paraphrase the post because it’s quite popular. So here goes:

Why do people do what they do ? I am reading a fascinating book at the moment that I encourage everyone to go out and read to really discover what they want to do with their lives. It’s a book by Carmine Gallo called The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success – and it’s a fantastic read. I suggest you definitely check it out. One of the people the book mentions is a person called Bill Strickland – who is the author of Make the Impossible Possible and who has an inspiring story of getting disadvantages kids back on track. After doing a bit more research about Bill, he has a quote that I think is amazing and something that everyone who reads this blog should paste up on their wall.

It’s amazing that the most successful people in life – and increasingly as a function of their success – are doing what they absolutely love and are passionate about it. Many people live their entire lives in a job they ‘like’ or ‘they enjoy’ but never ‘truly love’. While I completely understand that many people do this for the ‘safety’ of a job and providing for their family – unfortunately they are missing the obvious – nobody ever said that doing what you love would be easy. The truth of the matter is that doing what you love is entirely related to how much effort you are willing to put in, how much you want it to succeed and how much you are willing to do anything to ensure that your passion exceeds the odds. Every successful entrepreneur will tell you the same story – from Bill Gates, to Warren Buffet, to Steve Jobs to Bill Strickland. Money was never the end goal – simply being passionate about changing peoples lives and doing something that each of these entrepreneurs absolutely loved is consistently the message. I have read each of these entrepreneurs official and unofficial biographies and it’s always the same outcome – do what you love and you’ll always be better off in life.

Passions are infectious. If you show this passion – others will want to join you. How you communicate this passion, how you achieve this passion, the story you tell, the goals you want to achieve – this is what will draw the best people to you and around you and with you. If you want to be a musician, a professor, a teacher, a social worker, a lawyer, a doctor or any other type of career and you want this more than anything in the world – nothing will stop you. It’s been documented and shown over and over throughout time through thousands, if not millions, of people.

So the second lesson I tell you all – do what you love, hold on to it, never let it go. Follow it with all your being and if it’s really what you want – nothing will stop you achieving it now or in 20 years time.

3. Enjoy life, Celebrate everything.

Life is not easy and you’ll discover that with time. Nothing is ever handed to you on a silver platter and you have to work, struggle, scrap and fight to achieve anything you want in it. Realize this now, realize it early and accept it.

But through every struggle – you have to learn to celebrate every success. Too often people focus on the big things and miss so much that life has given to them. Learn to put things in perspective, learn to put your life in perspective and learn to celebrate your successes no matter how large or small.

For me, this includes everything from the big things – like celebrating academic and business success to getting engaged – to even the tiniest of tiny things. For example, I love coffee and not always do you get a great cup of coffee. So when I do, I like to stop and say “this is a great cup of coffee, I mean it’s really great and that’s awesome”. Or when I’m driving into nearby shopping centre car parking – and find a car park right at the front. I think to myself “wow, I could have been driving around and around – but I’m right here up the front. That’s awesome”.

And although these are funny simple examples, learn to celebrate and embrace every success – no matter how big or small – you’ll live a happier and more enjoyable life and you’ll learn the valuable lesson of perspective in everything you do.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, remember these 3 lessons –

1. Failure is great. Take action, not inaction.
2. Be passionate. Do what you love, hold on to it, never let go of it if it’s what you want. Embrace it. Let it envelope and engulf you.
3. Enjoy life, celebrate everything large and small.

So while Years 11 and 12 seem hard – don’t let them be so hard that you lose sight of life. If you don’t achieve what you want – don’t think you can’t ever do it – you can, it just depends on how much you truly want it. If you fail, learn to get up and move on because as you get older you’ll realize life waits for nobody. Take action now.

I can tell you this truthfully – because I’ve lived it, because I’ve failed and I know I will fail again, because I found what I am truly passionate about and because I love and embrace all life has to offer – no matter how large or small.

You can and should too.

Best of luck in the years ahead.

Anyway, the stats for the period of March 1st -April 30th 2011 are below with Total Members being around 1,523:

1. Period Pageviews – 9,342
2. Unique Visits – 2,464
3. Pages/Visit – 4.04
4. Avg Time on Site – 2:24
5. Avg. Signups per week- 34
6. Most Referring Site – Timdavis.com.au
7. Most Other Referring Site – Google + Facebook
8. Total Answers – 93
9. Most Popular Page – Notes page
10. Longest Time Spent – Law Clerkships – The Naked Truth

Of course, the site is and will always remain a completely free resource for students – both undergraduate and post graduate. While I don’t  have all that much time to manage the site and  the increasing load that it requires – I am happy to engage with people who want to get involved, help promote the site or become moderators and the like.

If you think this is something that you might want to get involved with – preferrably being located in Australia – just contact me at any time.

However, with the increasing reliance on social media the importance of promoting yourself, and your business, through simple measures such as a HTML email signature – I’ve decided to convert for a while to a HTML based signature and see how it goes. Of course, the question becomes one of how to do this so that it still looks professional (at least in my opinion).

I’ve gone about to create a HTML template that you can easily use inside your Gmail or whichever email provider you use – assuming they allow you to enter a HTML-based email signature.  Before we get started – I’ll show you what it looks like for me:

And of course, you can alter it a little (I’ve also done this below) so the icons are along the bottom. I’m using the totally cool icon set from Ristaumedia which is available on DeviantArt here.

Getting Started

To get started creating your kick-ass email signature you’ll need to do a few things – the most complex (which isn’t really complex) is to pull up your Facebook profile photo. This is really simple now that Facebook have allowed you (and notably, everyone else) access to your data. To grab your Facebook image – just do this:

http://graph.facebook.com/username/picture

So for example – my Facebook thumbnail photo is available via

http://graph.facebook.com/timdavis/picture

as my Facebook profile is http://www.facebook.com/timdavis.

Once you’ve completed this step – you’re basically set to go and edit one of the simple HTML templates I’ve created.

Template 1

The first template is simple and includes ONLY Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In details. And looks like this:

Basically, you can download the template and edit it in your text editor on your computer. You just need to update the links within the HTML code to your own links and then open it in your browser – you can then simply use “Ctrl+A” (PC) or “Command+A” (Mac) and copying the selection and then paste the template into your email signature. Download the template here with the included social media icons.

Template 2

As with the above template – you can easily just edit this via a text-editor on your computer and then open it inside a browser on your computer. Then it’s just using ”Ctrl+A” (PC) or “Command+A” (Mac) and copying the selection and pasting it within your email signature on your email client. Download the template here with the included social media icons.

Integrating it with Gmail

To integrate your new found signature with Gmail, just hit the “Settings” option in the top right hand corner of your Account and then go down to signature. You can then just hit Paste after you’ve copied and it’ll look like this:

After that, just hit “Save Changes” and you’re done. You’ve now got a shiny new email signature with all your social media links.

What does that mean ? Most of the time, when you approach a difficult problem you attempt to draw upon existing knowledge that you have in a particular field and then you apply this knowledge in a manner which enables you to solve the complexities associated with the problem. This is what everyone does – including myself – but in being the ‘standard’ solving algorithm it is also the ‘standard’ failure algorithm.

Most problems which are foreseen to be ‘difficult’ are viewed in this light simply because you aren’t using the best approach and you have narrowed your view to one particular field of view. ”Tim, it’s called Shortsightedness” – well, in some degree it is synonymous with shortsightedness but of course, how can you be shortsighted when you don’t even know all the possibilities available to solving the problem ? Short sightedness, in my mind, is knowing a set of solutions to a problem but refusing to adopt those solutions because you simply  haven’t – or refuse to – consider them. This is quite different from being “unable” to solve a problem because you perceive that you lack the knowledge.

I’ve been reading a little about an American Physicist called Richard Feynman who was for all intents and purposes a genius – although he actively refused to believe he was.  His way of solving problems was unique and was aptly termed the ‘Feynman Algorithm’ which goes something like this:

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution.

‘You’re joking right?’ Well, no. Although this was never actually created by Feynman – rather by Murray Gell-Mann, a colleague of Feynman, in a New York Times interview – it does really show you that no problem can’t be solved. I’ve often said to people that “Difficultly in problem solving is a function of how narrow you are looking at the problem” and I stand by my quote. To solve the problem – you need to look much further and wider than your particular sphere of knowledge. No problem is too hard – for every single problem the world faces, nothing is unsolvable because for each problem we create there must be a solution in turn. The solution, of course, is limited by how narrow you look at the problem and whether there are solutions which you can’t seem to perceive because they are not “directly in front of” the problem. No problem can be more complex than the human understanding – the problem appears difficult because the approach to the solution is too narrow. As Feynman suggested in his speciality of mathematics – which is true for any field:

“I don’t believe in the idea that there are a few peculiar people capable of understanding math, and the rest of the world is normal. Math is a human discovery, and it’s no more complicated than humans can understand. I had a calculus book once that said, ‘What one fool can do, another can.’ What we’ve been able to work out about nature may look abstract and threatening to someone who hasn’t studied it, but it was fools who did it, and in the next generation, all the fools will understand it. There’s a tendency to pomposity in all this, to make it deep and profound.” — Richard Feynman, 1979

Critically, to solve a problem simply don’t look at the obvious solutions unless they are ‘obviously’ apparent. While I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination, the point is that solving problems easily becomes an exercise in how wide you can extend your field of view. Look for simple solutions to complex problems and look outside your current specialty for motivation in finding solutions. Often, the most successful solutions to problems come from the simplest of beginnings and because people have thought outside their ‘normal thought pattern’. If you’re unsure, ask questions to as many people as you can and then ask again. The craziest and most outlandish solutions or applications from other spheres are most often the ones that solve the world’s most difficult problems in a way that is simplistic and beautiful. Feynman stated:

“You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.”

There are many other quotes throughout time by very famous people along the same lines – for example Daniel Boorstin stated ‘Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know’ and Roger von Oech has stated ‘Be foolish; break the rules; be impractical; get out of your box; look for ‘wrong’ answers; seek ambiguity; make mistakes … And set your creative self free’.

So the point of this post ? “Think Different” – you said it Apple.

One little trick that you can try if you are using Google Chrome, is to tweak some of the settings to gain even greater performance. To get started simply type – “about:flags” – without the quotation marks into the Chrome omnibox and you’ll be presented with a whole range of additional options to tweak the browser performance for even greater loading speeds. To get started I recommend enabling:

1. GPU Accelerated Compositing
2. GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D [only on PC for now, sorry Mac users]
3. Web Page Prerendering

and then hitting the “Restart Now” at the bottom once you’ve enabled the settings you want.

There are a whole lot of other nifty little addons that will speed up your performance but the current release I am using 9.0.597.107 is quite stable when these 3 additions are enabled. When you then visit any of your most favorite websites you’ll notice a substantial increase in your browsing speeds. There is nothing better than moving around the web at lightening speeds on a browser that loads faster, supports the latest technologies and is consistently improved every six weeks. If you don’t use Google Chrome or your Company is still stuck on Internet Explorer – I strongly urge you to update to Google Chrome.

You’ll never look back.

I’ve updated the solution and made it available for download via this link. Click to download it and you’ll get:

1. jqGrid 3.8.2
2. .NET 4.0 Updates
3. VS2010
4. jQuery 1.4.4
5. jQuery UI 1.8.7

Let me know if there are any problems with it otherwise – enjoy!

What’s truly awesome about both the book and Bill’s Story – is that in some sense it focuses entirely on KAH Conceputalization (at least in my opinion) – but perhaps most fundamentally – the message is simply one of doing what you love – that is, the concept of attraction. It’s amazing that the most successful people in life – and increasingly as a function of their success – are doing what they absolutely love and are passionate about it. Many people live their entire lives in a job they ‘like’ or ‘they enjoy’ but never ‘truly love’. While I completely understand that many people do this for the ‘safety’ of a job and providing for their family – unfortunately they are missing the obvious – nobody ever said that doing what you love would be easy. The truth of the matter is that doing what you love is entirely related to how much effort you are willing to put in, how much you want it to succeed and how much you are willing to do anything to ensure that your passion exceeds the odds. Every successful entrepreneur will tell you the same story – from Bill Gates, to Warren Buffet, to Steve Jobs to Bill Strickland. Money was never the end goal – simply being passionate about changing peoples lives and doing something that each of these entrepreneurs absolutely loved is consistently the message. I have read each of these entrepreneurs official and unofficial biographies and it’s always the same outcome – do what you love and you’ll always be better off in life.

I have absolutely no idea whether our company and startup will succeed – we’re almost ready to launch –  but it’s what our team absolutely loves and we’re committed to it and passionate about it. So we already have at least one building block in place – passion. The rest is entirely dependent on how much we are willing to give and how much we want it to succeed above other options in our lives. Reading the stories, following in the footsteps of thousands of other successful entrepreneurs always comes back to passion, drive and how much you are willing to give. Following a dream isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either. Many people complain of how hard life is – but the realistic and unfortunate truth is someone has done it harder, done more with less, been less fortunate from the ‘get-go’ and still become successful. Will Smith immortalized the tail of Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness – a true story about Chris who was homeless, lived many nights in a train substation toilet with his son and still managed to become a hugely successful stockbroker. Chris wanted it – more than anything in the world and despite all the odds – he achieved it. The same story is told over and over by many entrepreneurs around the world when everyone told them they would fail – and they may have failed, over and over – but persistence, passion, drive and love for what they were doing always came through in the end.

This leads to the obvious question – if you could do anything in the world tomorrow, what would it be ? Of course, the next step is to simply ask yourself why you cannot do it ? You’ll come up with 100x reasons as to why you can’t and frankly this is exactly why you are currently working in a job you ‘like’ but don’t ‘love’. Indeed, if you love your job – then you will be entirely satisfied and you will be ‘driven’ and ‘passionate’ about it – I congratulate you that you are really doing what you love. But to all those readers who don’t have this, I would suggest that achieving your dream is not about ‘liking’ something or being ‘comfortable’ – it’s about being uncomfortable, it’s about testing your limits but knowing that you are doing it because it’s what you love and what you want to do with your life. I’ve spent around 9 years studying and done many different courses with many different twists and turns – the end outcome ? I now know what I really want to do. Some would argue this has been a long journey (perhaps too long I am told) – but I’ve finally discovered what I want and discovering this now – is better than spending 30 years in career only to discover it later. You’re never too old, it’s never too late, it’s never too hard, it’s never the wrong time.

The point is that passion is infectious. If you show this passion – others will want to join you. How you communicate this passion, how you achieve this passion, the story you tell, the goals you want to achieve – this is what will draw the best people to you and around you and with you. If you want to be a musician, a professor, a teacher, a social worker, a lawyer, a doctor or any other type of career and you want this more than anything in the world – nothing will stop you. It’s been documented and shown over and over throughout time through thousands, if not millions, of people.

So it’s a new year – there isn’t anything stopping you from achieving a dream but yourself. The real question you need to ask yourself – how much do you want it ?

ACTA Pre-Text

The growth of technology in the modern age and its unparalleled advance has rapidly altered the transfer of technology between countries around the world. At the core of this advance is the increasing proliferation of technological innovation and the precipitous development of digital systems which have catalyzed the rate of technology distribution across global borders. Evidently, as a corollary of this rapid technology transfer stems the overarching concern from intellectual property right (‘IPR’s’) holders about the adequate level of enforcement and protection of intellectual property in the global economy. The access and value of such knowledge is particularly relevant in developing knowledge-based economies where ‘expertise, innovation, quality and creativity are the main factors for success’. In this regard and as the socioeconomic divide between the developed and developing world closes, the efficiency and effectiveness of existing judicial mechanisms has been questioned.

The majority of such criticism stemmed from the Second Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy (‘GCCC’) 2005 in Lyon, France where Japan ‘proposed for a new international treaty on counterfeiting and privacy’ which was termed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Counterfeits and Pirated Goods. Japans interest in raising the spectre of such an agreement originated from the then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who aimed to

‘[e]stablish Japan as a nation built on a platform of intellectual property … and enhance measures such as speeding up patent examinations, reform of the justice system in the area of patents, and reinforced measures against counterfeit and pirated copies.’

Such an aim spring-boarded Japans policy considerations in the area and a new intellectual property framework was developed which lead to the establishment of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters.[4] The aim of this Headquarters was to spearhead intellectual property development and protection in Japan and abroad given the country’s heavy reliance on the global economic benefits of it.

Read the entire paper – here.

The question I have often asked myself is – does this work and is it effective? Are charity’s truly an optimum and effective methodology of providing assistance ? Evidently, the question must be answered in the affirmative – charitable institutions are by enlarge extremely important organisations to assist those in need – not because of the wealth they generate from donor’s but rather because they are effective distributive mechanisms which have large networks that are able to dispense resources to those in need quickly. In my opinion, most large charitable institutions should idealistically therefore be modeled on concepts two primary concepts. Firstly, that of pure altruism – the selfless concern for the welfare of others by being motivated to act without any reward – and secondly, that of duty –  the evident concern for others juxtaposed against the rationalization of one’s moral being. Indeed, I write should be because while many charitable organisations are hugely reliant on these two principles - they are by no means definitive.

Most charitable organisations required large donations to survive and only the second limb mentioned above is the one capable of manipulation – the moral being. In this light, there is no question that game theory is an important element to charitable donation paradox both the perspective of the charity and from donor’s. That is, the probability of a donor providing a valuable item or service to a charitable organisation is motivated and positively correlated by the choices of others around them. For example, this is highly prevalent in the corporate donor sector – a business will become a donor only in response to another business becoming a donor with the hope that their net benefit from the donation will ultimately be more positive than the first-to-move. Similarly, one person donating because another person is donating in order to achieve some greater outcome benefit. Evidently, such notions of giving are a considerable distance from those first core principle mentioned in the prior paragraph but are none-the-less a critical facet of the charitable-donor relationship due to the corporate sector typically donating the largest sums of money. Unfortunately however, while you might think this has a positive net benefit – it can also lead to a reduction in overall donations since game theory is an entirely reactionary model. This infers that one’s intentions and strategy are modified by others – which can lead to a reduction in net benefit if the first-to-move donates considerably less than what the second-to-move would have otherwise donated.

You might be thinking ? So what – the charity now otherwise has money it didn’t have prior – net win, game over. Evidently, yes – you’re right – there is a benefit to the charity in the short-term but the negative effect to the business can affect its long term donation strategy as the reactionary model can provide a disincentive to donate at all. This can result in non-donations if a nash equilibrium is reached – that is, each player knows all of the others players moves and changes in strategy’s such that no player wins. Of course, the primary assumption is that the business wants a net benefit – an argument correlated to shareholder responsibility, profitability and countless other factors – but primarily one which is answered, again, in the affirmative. In this regard and perhaps most importantly in respect to disincentive effects of the donation process, most corporate donation scenarios result in a pareto optimilaity situation such that one company will always be better off and one will always be worst off which can often lead to non-donations. Imagine, first-to-move Company A donates $1,000 and is a hugely profitable enterprise while second-to-move Company B donates $10,000 and is only small – the net benefit to B greatly outweighs that of A leading to A to question it’s donation strategy or being forced to donate more in response – again, a win to the Charity in the short-term but a potentially negative long term affect due to the circumstantial outcome to Company A. To put this in perspective, many of you may be familiar with the age old Prisoners Dilemma question:

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

There are 4 outcomes – both silent for 6 months, A silent/B speaks – A 10 years/B free, B silent /A speaks – B 10 years/A free, A speaks/B speaks – 5 years. Evidently, the zero-sum-game presented is that neither should speak – but of course human nature is to question the strategy of the other and conclude that both are better off to speak than be silent since both are worse off if only one speaks. Such a scenario can easily be extrapolated to Company A and B above such that donations tend to be optimal if companies seek to act in equilibrium in donating – both potentially achieving net benefits without damaging the other while still positively benefiting the charity.

Of course, the common denominator in all this is the attribution to the economic value of the gift being provided and the analysis of game theory to donations. Evidently, if everyone were to follow the notion of altruism and duty then none of these such problems would occur. Indeed, while there is no doubt that large charities are needed and I donate to them - I truly do prefer the concept of Pay It Forward which is a merging of the two primary concepts mentioned above. For those that have not seen the movie of pay it forward – it is essentially a notion of altruistic signalling. That is, one temporarily reduces their value by increasing another’s with the expectation that the other will act in a similar way at some point in the future to a separate person again – this absolutely ensures that the flow of fitness travels directly from the one individual to the another. The notion of value is no way limited and can be simply measured in time or by purely economic means. Benjamin Franklin adequately framed such a notion in 1784

When you [...] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.

Of course, there are two fundamental flaws in the pay it forward model such that firstly, there must be a large and indefinite number of opportunities which exist regardless of form – and secondly, there will be those that simply do not pay it forward. I would argue that the first is not a large problem since there really are an indefinite number of problems to solve in the world while the second is highly correlated to duty. The primary reason I like the pay it forward model is that it is effective and morally gratifying – you perform a task directly for someone, and they in turn can provide a benefit to someone else. A simple example is purchasing a coffee for the person behind you and leaving a pay it forward note on the counter – the social morality and duty of the concept then falls into their hands – a moral obligation then associated to karma and the seemingly moral psychological and ‘karmic’ risk of not performing the act.

In conclusion, while this post seemingly has meddled together a number of different concepts – I think both options have their place. Large charitable organisations dispense to those who can otherwise not be reached and attack fundamental social fabric problems at a broader scale – while the pay it forward model is a direct model that provides immediate results to the donee. If more people chose to pay it forward, then I have no doubt that many more people would begin to donate to a greater number of charities purely from being a recipient of an act of random kindness for no apparent reason. It really is entirely uplifting to both grant and receive a gift – no matter how insignificant – from a total stranger. Try it yourself.

A simple example – is “weather”. Under the current Google search structure, you would type “weather” and then hit Enter or press the Search button – consequently rendering the search results. This process has required 8 keyboard strokes – 7 for the word and 1 for pressing Enter. Using Google Instant, you would type the letter ‘w’ and it would automatically show you results for the top most common searched result ‘weather’ and an additional 5 top keyword searches saving you a considerable amount of search time for common searches. Google postulate that this is going to save more than 350 million hours of search time each year – due to the time saved in typing and the faster response delivery from Google. They suggest the key benefits are “Faster Searches, Smarter Predictions, Instant Results” – at least that’s the mantra.

So after we push through the gloss of the new release – what are the potential problems.

Firstly, Google suggest this is a fundamental shift in search and as a corollary of this – it’s going to cause a fundamental shift in the way people search. This suggestion is entirely based no the premise that page 2 search results are going to become increasingly redundant. Why ? Because Google Instant – at least in the short time period I have been using it – encourages you to redefine your search queries as the results appear. The previous mantra of ‘search, press enter, browse results, enter new search, press enter’ is no longer relevant since using Google Instant – the mantra changes to ‘start typing, see results, end’ or ‘start typing, see results, redefine search, see results, redefine, see results’ etc. Despite the fact that Google promises ‘nothing has changed as you can still always hit enter’ – the change in the user interface provides a disincentive for users to hit enter and frankly I forgot totally about hitting enter during my testing.

Secondly, this presents a problem for relevant results because amazingly – content is still highly relevant which appears on pages 2+ of Google. It’s just outside Googles top 10 ranking mechanism and is ranked from 11-30. This is forcing a dependency on Google that the results seen within the first 5-6 results are always the most relevant – if they are not – users simply change their search query and expect to see 5-6 new results. This is increasingly highlighted by the fact that currently – the ‘suggested search results’ box remains – even after you have finished searching and when you click outside the search box – encouraging you to search a new query. The box should really disappear once you have finished searching – highlighting search results and not suggesting that you search again.

Thirdly, I see a big increase in bandwidth. Checking out Google PageSpeed has shown a number of increases in bandwidth – checkout the 2 pics below. The first presents the search results using the current Google Search – searching ‘weather’ and the second presents the results under Google Instant searching ‘weather’. There is one proviso in this test – I typed the full keyword in both searches – so naturally Google Instant is going to return a greater bandwidth load. If I was just searching for ‘weather’ – then typing ‘w’ would have been enough.

However, any other search result which doesn’t relate to the top 5 searches is going to pull significantly more bandwidth – correlated, as a computational function, to the number of letters pressed. That is, longer searches “what is the capital of america?” – are going to pull results for each and every letter – significantly increasingly bandwidth. Notably, this didn’t bring up a “suggested search result” and so it means that I was required to type each and every letter. To show you just how much more bandwidth is eaten up, check out the results using ‘old google’ at the top and ‘Google Instant’ at the bottom for this test. That’s a 23.9KB increase in the old and new bandwidth requirements for Google Instant or a 122.5% increase in bandwidth – a significant amount.

Evidently, this becomes a much bigger issue on mobile. So far, I have not read any material from Google about the increase that Google Instant is going to have on mobile phones. Evidently, delivering results on the fly constantly is going to increase the level of bandwidth on mobile devices – and from seeing the results above – it’s pretty clear that this is going to be significant. How this effects users mobile plans, data flow and overall network bandwidth is questionable and so far hasn’t been addressed.

So it seems while some queries are faster – ‘weather’ – this is offset by the large proportion that are going to suck down a lot more bandwidth – “what is the capital of america?”. The question for Google is – while time is saved, how much extra bandwidth is consumed on the Internet ?

Some food for thought.

Time Utilization you say ? Yes, Time utilization and the rationalization of a time within a week. I sat down the other day to try and figure out where my greatest “time sinks” were in any one week and came to the conclusion that appropriate planning of time can really change the manner in which you work and which you relax. For the last few months, I have been working pretty crazy time schedules which has lead to ridiculously inconsistent sleeping patterns and very little sleep indeed. This isn’t necessarily a long term endeavour and is a facet of building a start-up – but I wanted to try and normalise my time within any particularly week and figure out what exactly I was doing.

In any week, you have approximately 168 hours at your disposal (TT = total time = 168hrs). That is – for those that can’t be bothered to do the maths – simply 7×24 hrs which arrives at this magic number. Now let’s assume that each day you sleep around 7 hrs – that means your total time (TT) is now reduced by 49hrs to give you an available time period of approximately 119 hrs (AT=119) or around 17 hrs per day. Frankly, when you think about it – that’s a lot of hours available to be doing stuff. For the “average 40 hr week worker” – this would break down to be something like

1. 2 hrs for work-related travel
2. 8 hrs of work
3. 1 Hour for lunch
4. 1 hrs of personal time [waking up/shower/cleaning etc]
5. 5 hrs of relaxation time

On this basis of a typical working week, then approximately 17 hours of time are available on weekends or a total of 34 available hours. Such a break down infers that the total relaxation time per week available to any “average” worker is around 25 + 34 or approximately 59 hrs of disposal time (FT = free time) to do stuff – or around 35.11% of Total Time (TT) or 49.5% of Available Time (AT). In my mind – this is quite of a bit of time to do anything you like. I often listen to people complain “I never have enough time” – and after breaking the week down – I think as an average proportion of the population – you actually have 49.5% of your Available Time per week to do what you want – evidently, you are either the % proportion of people outside the above proposed structure and therefore have different Total Time variables – or you really have a lot of time but you aren’t utilizing it correctly.

Of course, in my view at least, I think the key differentiators to the above model are:

1. People sleep for greater than 7 hrs per day – inferring that they are losing a higher proportion of their available time (AT) and therefore eating into their Free Time. But – I would argue that is a choice – and therefore it should eat into Free Time – since you’re choosing to sleep more than 7hrs and therefore [in my mind] this IS leisure time.
2. People work longer – thereby increasing the level of working time and reducing the level of Free Time. Arguably, not a Free Time choice and therefore the question here is one of effectiveness and efficiency.

For those whose time “melds together” [ala me] – the key is that a lot of the relaxation time is “mixed” with the working time. That is, as a function of the working week – the time I utilize for work mixes with the relaxation time – but it is all related to work. This is perhaps a key problem (although I enjoy it) – because it means that the differentiation between the above 1-5 segments is broken and creates the inevitable “I never have enough time” scenario. Again, however, a specific choice of mine.

So how can one fix all this ? What I’ve proposed to do is to significantly proportion and timetable my week – I want to see how effectively I am using the time I have allocated for specific tasks and see whether – within the time allocations – I am actually performing the tasks I have actually allocated to try and form an optimal structure. For example, if you’ve allocated 4 hour block of working time – but you find yourself drifting to News sites or writing blog posts – you’re eating into allocated working time and this has to be redistributed to leisure time. Importantly, this is suggesting that a 4hr block of time isn’t working – so perhaps reduce the length of the blocks and reallocate them to more short blocks to ensure that you using this time effectively. For example, 5×2 hrs blocks or 3×3 hr blocks and 1 “miscellaneous working” block (email/planning etc). This would give a 50hr working week and still ensure that you have 49 hrs of FT per week (way more than I am getting at the moment).

Of course, you might be thinking “Um, this sounds quite ridiculous” – but I think that most people have a lot more time available to them each week but they just aren’t using it correctly. If you really think about it and you fall into the above structure – you’ve got 59 hours per week at your disposal to do with what you want – 49.5% of the time you are awake. The key question is – what are you doing with this time and are you using it effectively. Equivalently, if you’re finding yourself working way more than the above structure – or the variables are completely wrong – I question the effectiveness of the time you’ve allocated to working and whether the change you need to make is working more effectively as opposed to working longer. Propose & make changes to your working structure (if its possible) and this will enable you’re free time to “truly” be allocated free time.

That’s what I’m thinking anyway. Thoughts?

The following is simply my thoughts on Clerkships and Law generally. You may agree – or disagree – with these general thoughts and feel free to open a discussion thread on All Things Law in this regard.

Clerkships – The Naked Truth

Law Firm clerkships are an inherent part of becoming a lawyer and they are also perhaps the most stressful.

Clerkships are typically viewed as a nightmare – they are ultra competitive, there are only so many firms, and there are only so many positions on offer.  Most of the larger firms typically receive more than 1,000 applications for seasonal clerkships and usually have only 60-75 seasonal positions on the table. This means to even start, your chances are narrowed to around a 6% or 7.5% of even getting a seasonal place. This is then reduced even further for the now so called ‘Professional Legal Trainee’ program where the pool of 60-75 seasonal graduates is reduced to 30 who actually receive graduate offers.

The outcome? A 3% chance of getting a graduate place from the moment you click that ‘Submit’ button when you are applying at firms in comparison to your peers. Picture this as you stare around the lecture theater, only 3 out of every 100 people around you will end up working at a big firm. This is, of course, based on the assumption that you want to go to a big firm. There are positives and negatives to the entire process and in my experience it’s critical that you allow yourself the best opportunity to work in a big firm and in a smaller or mid-tiered firm.

Back when I first started the JD, I sat down with a very senior legal friend who was General Counsel at one of the largest financial organizations in Australia. His key advice in a nutshell was essentially that:

1. Decide whether law is really for you – 100 hour weeks, 2,000 hours of billing a year – it takes commitment.
2. Try large and small firms – there are huge differences in the scale of work, career advancement opportunities and networks.
3. Choose something that you love – don’t get stuck in one practice group area and never leave. Rotate, rotate, rotate.
4. Be comfortable to leave to progress your career – don’t feel “trapped” in any one firm – or even staying in law.

This advice – couldn’t be closer to the truth.

I clerked at both large and mid tiered firms – on the basis of my friends advice – and the differences were profound. Primarily, the scope work was different – more individualized in the later as opposed to larger teams in the former. The level of resources available is almost incomparable particularly in relation to electronic resources and databases that are taken for granted while at university – at mid-tiered firms, the number of licenses are restricted due to the inherent cost base of having so many while at larger firms – everyone gets a license. I also found that at mid-tiered firms – Friday night drinks on the firm are sacrosanct and an integral part of the culture. In juxtapositioning this against larger firms who rejected the notion of Friday night drinks every week as “wasteful”. Of course, this didn’t mean that you still didn’t go out for Friday night drinks – you just don’t do it on the firm – rather, you went out in smaller groups on your own.

This infers that there are conflicting issues at play – the larger the firm, the greater the value of work, the greater the work resources, the larger the team sizes and the longer the career progression. Conversely, the smaller the firm, the greater the mid-range-to-small level of work, the less amount of work resources, the smaller the teams and the faster the career progression. In the later, it is not unheard of to make partner in 3 to 5 years while in the former – you will only be sitting on Senior Associate level – if even that.

All this is relative to who you are and what you want to do – whether you get an offer to a larger firm, whether you want to work at a large firm and whether you want to even be a lawyer. I am merely attempting to rationalize both sides of the argument so that you enter the legal world with a balanced view. Don’t go to a big firm with the attitude of – “I want to earn a shit load of money” – sure, you can and very much will – but don’t be so ignorant to believe that money in law can appreciate on its own. It’s quite the opposite – money in law is correlated to human capital and law is not a scalable industry in any sense. This infers that you will work – and you will work very long hours – to achieve the acceptable billing level to move up the law firm hierarchal structure.

The Cynics View

The Naked Truth sounds all very depressing doesn’t it? I would answer this as both Yes and No.

The people who end up at the big firms are the so-called “well-rounded” students. They have travelled to Africa and saved endangered animals from extinction by wrestling native Africans and beating them in spear throwing competitions in order to gain access to their land. They have taken a year off to contemplate life in a remote Chinese village at the top of some mountain in some place that you can’t pronounce. They have worked at community legal centers, they have joined every committee under the sun – on both earth and extraterrestrial planets – and have a raft of HD’s to complement all this. Typically, in order to sort out such student – I have formed the aptly named ‘Awesomeness Equation’.

The ‘Awesomeness Equation’ is composed of ‘Humbleness + Social Character – Wankertude + Counter-Wank’. Many people who draw with a low score in this equation love to tell you about themselves – primarily because they have a high ‘wankertude’ – the part of the equation you want to sidestep. A high ‘wankertude’ is attained through key examples such as telling you they are doing judicial clerkships under justice so-and-so, or by simply stating mid-conversation “Did you hear? I just got 102% for property law – first person to exceed 100%” or letting you know that they have clerkship offers at every firm including firms that aren’t law firms yet or who aren’t in existence but will be some day.

Some firms love a low – or even negative – score in my ‘Awesomeness Equation’ and these are the firms you do not want to work for in my opinion. The reality is that it primarily depends on the firm and what they are looking for. If you ascertain that most of the clerks, partners or employees are scoring low in the ‘Awesomeness Equation’ then you have already made up your mind that you don’t want to work there.

Evidently, while I say this with some jest & humor, I am attempting to be be frank by suggesting that you don’t need to be a wanker or mix with wankers. Nobody likes a wanker – being humble suits everyone and makes those that didn’t get a whole raft of offers feel more at place in the conversation with other clerks. In comparison, those that let everyone know just how good they are often brings an awkwardness to the conversion which leads to the dreaded conversation silence, window watching, star gazing and ultimately “how’s the weather?” type conversations. You’ll be able to easily identify such people because as soon as senior members of the firm come over for a chat, they are the ones to introduce such topics off the bat – this ultimately leads to the circular responses from around the group in answering the “how many offers did you get?” question in front of partners and they get to bask in responding to them like eager narcissistic children. Sure, if you meet a wanker – you can attempt to “counter-wank” the wanker – thereby offsetting any attempt you are making to exert ‘wankertude’ yourself – but this should idealistically be done to make others feel better rather than sooth your own egotistical nuances.

I’ll say it again – be humble. My grandfather has always said to me ‘God, gave you two ears and one mouth. Use them in proportion’. How is this relevant? It means - listen more, talk less. Of course, you are going to have to talk about yourself – I am not saying that you shouldn’t. Rather, just don’t be the first person to bring up just how good you are orwhy you are so good. Such topics should be part of the conversion not the conversion. If they are the conversion – congratulations, you’re a wanker.

Unfortunately, law is often branded as an industry full of “wankers” and while many of us would kindly refute that association – it is the stigma attached. Relevantly, it falls upon the current group of “Generation Y’ers” to change this general perceived sentiment for the betterment of the industry. Indeed, I have met many of the “wanker” variety who are Generation Y’ers – but then I have met a whole range of really great people and this is what has primarily influenced my decision-making process in relation to what firms would be great places to work and what firms would be simply unbearable.

Unlike our elder generations – most of us now travel the world, have a greater sense of freedom and comprehend a broader range of issues at a younger age. This is simply a by-product of opportunities past from elder generations and which is in part why many Generation Y’ers yearn to have greater workplace flexibility. In my mind, technology has – and indeed should do so on a greater scale – allowed communication to reach an unparalleled advance. Yet, everyone must still work from offices when they could easily work from home. It would seem that such encouragement needs to be pushed into modern law firms to facilitate a growing younger generation who desires flexibility as an inherent facet of their new found sense of liberation.

But I digress – the point is that you need to determine what’s right for you. In order to me to ascertain what was right – I utilized the age old “beer test”.

The Beer Test

I have completed a few clerkships in my time and my thinking is this – everyone is at the firm because they got through the interview process and deserve to be there. This means you don’t need to psychologically profile every person you meet in order to ascertain some arbitrary ranking system in your head to stroke your own ego. The truth is – while marks matter, people matter more. If you can sit, slosh down a beer and have a decent conversation with your fellow clerks, partners and other staff – then you are heading the right direction. These are the people that you will be working with and these are the people that you really need to get on well with. If, in the alternative, you sit down and discover that everyone is drinking water and using words such as “jolly” or “merry” or “grand” – then I would think, you have hit another road block and you really need to think about whether you are in the right place.

I cannot stress enough – you have to love the people you work with and you have to love the practice area you work in. If you are lucky enough to get a seasonal clerkship offer – or even multiple ones – then be yourself. If you feel like you are walking on egg shells during your time at a particular firm – I can guarantee you that this firm is not for you. Forget whether it’s the perceived best, the highest paying, the most perks, the grandest library or the free city hotels – working there everyday will become a nightmare. Perks wear off, people do not. The point of the employment discovery process, in my mind, is to employ people who are enjoyable, courteous, passionate and who are generally great people to be around – this later point being the most critical. Now, I would hope that most people you will meet will possess such attributes, but the reality is – many will slot smoothly into the “wanker” category.

The lesson to learn in the entire clerkship process is “who not to be” rather than to model yourself off “who to be”. If you see a partner yelling at someone – or in fact any person yelling at someone – you have immediately learnt the valuable lesson of “who not to be”. This should also really extrapolated into everyday life and perhaps already is through the age old axiom of “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before you pass judgment in your own”.

Law clerkships are no different – in learning “who not to be” – you are equally learning “where not to be” and “who not to be with”. Life is full of choices and you have the choice to not associate with such people. Many “old school partners” mostly take the attitude of “well, I did it this way so this means that you have too” – I would actually argue that we are now in the year 2010 and this no longer applies. You spend your life writing about changes to the law yet law firms seemingly don’t embrace such change – it’s hypocrisy at it’s best.

Cultural differences between generations are becoming undoubtedly wider. If you would like to sit and listen to your iPod while pumping out legal work – which I certainly do – should you be allowed? Should you be allowed to check Facebook or Twitter or CNN or TheAge or SMH or any of the multitude of websites you would otherwise check daily? Of course you should if it helps and ultimately assists your concentration and workflow process. Yet, some firms don’t like this either – or rather “frown upon it”. Again, at least in my mind, this is another sign that this firm may not be for you. If this is frowned upon – imagine what else will be in the future.

The Sobering Reality

Unfortunately, the sobering reality of law firms is that you need to secure a seasonal clerkship to really have any hope of ascertaining a position as a ‘Graduate Legal Trainee’. I say this simply because the law firms take the attitude that “Why would we employ someone we don’t know, who hasn’t worked for us against someone we do know, who has and who ‘just’ missed out on a priority offer?”. Evidently, whether such logic is right or wrong, the truth is that law firms will always offer priority positions to a select group of graduates and then make up the remainder from a pool of ‘overflow’ seasonal graduates. This may be a bit confusing – so let me explain.

Let’s assume ABC firm offers 70 seasonal graduate places across June-July 2010, December 2010 and January 2011 with the intention to employ 30 as ‘Legal Trainee’s’ in 2012. The priority offer system requires that ABC firm must put their offer on the table around Mid-February 2011 to these 30 students. Of course, many of these students have already mostly determined which firm they like best and out of the 30 priority offers that are made – only 22 students accept within the stipulated 24-hour time period and the other remaining 8 students head off to different firms. This means that there is now a pool of 8 students remaining who can receive offers. The remainder can then be sourced in mid-march from anywhere.

The “from anywhere” can mean ABC firm can assess all the applications it received for graduate recruitment and determine who they want to give these remaining 8 offers too. Relevantly, the premise is ostensibly that the firm is not going to hire people who haven’t already worked at the firm and rather direct their attention to those seasonal recruits who “just missed the priority offer cut”. Logically, ABC firm has ranked the 70 seasonal graduates from 1 to 70 in order of their preference, so the offers are most likely to sent to the remaining students who haven’t received a priority offer from ABC firm. Many of students 30-70 in turn may have already accepted offers at other firms – and it’s my understanding that firms know of this before the mid-march date so they are able to basically “cross-off” from the list those who are already employed under the priority offer system at different firms – providing them, and all other firms, with a ‘remainder list’. This basically means that unless all 70 seasonal graduates received and accepted offers under the priority system – they are going to preference the 8 remaining places to those seasonal clerks who ‘just’ missed out ahead of any “outside” person who the firm has never met.

Does this mean I am screwed if I don’t get a clerkship?

Of course not – but is does mean that you are going to have to reassess your plans. You can do the Leo Cussen program and get admitted within 6 months or so – the only catch being that you have to hand over the cash to do it yourself. On the flip side, if you don’t get any clerkship offer or want to do the Leo Cussen program – you can quite easily find a small firm and work under a smaller firm until you are admitted and then look upwards from there. Another route to explore is that of becoming a barrister but you basically have to be admitted first – which means if you don’t get into any firm – you must work in a small firm or do the Leo Cussen and then go down the barristerial road from there.

In my mind, the best alternative is simply to go and work in-house at any business – large or small – that is willing to absorb you into their legal department and pay your training fee’s. This is really great option for you if you don’t get an offer to join a legal firm or simply would rather work in-house instead. Relevantly, it’s even more useful in some regards if you like a particular area of law and the whole ‘client-servicing’ aspect of law isn’t for you. Find a business in an industry you really love – finance, technology, fashion, engineering, mining … the list goes on – and send them a letter asking for clerkship opportunities. The results are often surprising fantastic and very rarely explored by legal students.

The ‘reality’ aspect of clerkships – putting aside pure academic merit and a side dish of ‘wanker’ – is that if you know people who do law, or know people who know people who do law – either through family connections or through networking – you need to start having lunches with these people. In some regard, law has an inherent degree of nepotism in its veins which always rears its head [ugly or not] through clerkships and graduate applications. Why is this so? Simple. It’s directly correlated to the fact that law firms are businesses, who are very much in the business of making money. They can only do this by employing graduates who have large networks that ultimately bring new business to the firm and generate new income. Income generation is the lifeblood of any business and the larger your network, the more clients you bring, the more favorable you appear in the firms eyes. Basically, your marks can be average – but if you are best friends with the top 200 rich list – ‘welcome to the firm’.

Surely, new business is not expected from a graduate? No, it’s not. But if you hope to stay in law your entire life, then you better start making more friends – because networking and new business generation is going to quickly shoot you up the law firm structure tree.

Ultimately, the question to ask is “Who Are You?”

Yeah, queue the Lion King. The reality is – what matters to you ? If you are happy to take what is served and enjoy the law so much that social life means nothing – then you will quickly discover that some firms will absolutely love you. If on the other hand, you love life so much that you really don’t like working – then perhaps law isn’t for you at all and I would think this would be reflective of your genuine nature. Do what you want to do – not what you think you should be doing. I have spoken to enough people who discover this far too late in life.

Follow what makes sense to you really – the law provides a great base to go and do anything – whether a law firm fits into this equation is up to you. In the alternative, go and work at a firm for a period of time and then leave for greener pastures if this is really what you want. Start a business, go travelling, work overseas – but don’t start a legal career for the sake of it.

Clerkships matter – but people and life in general matter more. If law is for you – then if this article has attempted to guide you in any regard realize early in life that people matter most – not the firm, or the bragging rights, or associating with “wankers” or the other multitude of aspects which come with being a lawyer. Pick people over any aspect of working at a firm – people drive your working environment, the culture and ultimately satisfaction in employment. After all, how many people with terrible bosses or co-workers do you hear say “I love my job so much!”. I think you’ll find the answer is none.

Saying you work at “ABC” – the best firm in the world – is great if it makes you happy and you accept you have a large amount of ‘wankertude’. Conversely, saying that you work at a firm with great people, do great work and have a great work-life balance is going to attract smart, passionate and like-minded people to you. Armed with such people, you can only go but one direction – up.

Best of luck :)

Feel free to contact me if you have questions – I’m a pretty nice bloke :P

Example Cover Letter – Here

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmark
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
4. Update your settings and then delete the bookmarklet.

When you do this, you will see something like this menu pop-up above your profile which will give you a rating of your relevant privacy settings:

You can then click on each of the relevant links highlighted in blue to get taken to the relevant privacy page to update your privacy settings. Alternatively, you can simply click on the relevant options to Prevent Data Sharing and the bookmarklet will automatically update your settings. I am recommending this bookmarklet because the site clearly states that they

• never see your Facebook data
• never share your personal information

And most importantly – the code is open source so you can actually see where the data is being sent (which is absolutely nowhere when I checked the source code). This gave me a reassurance in using it and I would strongly recommend you follow the steps above and then simply delete the bookmarklet from your browser bar.

Of course, if you aren’t concerned about anything – then you don’t need to bother. But to just highlight how ignorant people are – check out OpenBook. This site is devoted to exposing users status updates who have not updated their privacy settings on Facebook using the new Open Graph APIs. If you enter a search term, things can get pretty rough in terms of exposing users who don’t actually realise that their Status Updates and Profile is entirely public and available to everyone.

Either way, ReclaimPrivacy is a great little tool to quickly check all your Facebook Privacy Settings and update them appropriately.