Technology Archives - thegoodwills.com

A chatbot farewell

chatbot-goodbye-FOMM — Saying goodbye (to my horse). Image by RoyBuri, www.pixabay.com. Thanks to free image websites and friends who helped out with photos over the years.

Since this is now the way of the world, I decided to Google myself and ask ChatGPT to write a blog in the style of bobwords.com.au. The topic – ‘saying goodbye’. The following (in italics) was generated in 11 seconds.

Hey there, lovely readers of BobWords.com.au! Today, we’re delving into a topic that resonates with all of us at some point in our lives: saying goodbye. Life is an ever-changing journey filled with moments of joy, growth, and, of course, farewells. As we navigate these bittersweet moments, let’s explore how we can make goodbyes meaningful and even transformative.(Ed: making vomiting noises)

Life is like a river, constantly flowing and evolving. Just as we welcome new beginnings, we must also bid adieu to chapters that have run their course. Goodbyes mark the end of one era and the beginning of another, bringing change and growth into our lives. Embracing this natural cycle can help us move forward with grace and an open heart.

Goodbyes give us the opportunity to reflect on the beautiful moments and experiences that we’ve shared. As we bid farewell, we can take a moment to savor (sic) the memories we’ve created. These cherished moments become the threads that weave the tapestry of our lives, reminding us of the laughter, love, and connections that have enriched our journey.

Saying goodbye isn’t just about closing a chapter; it’s also about finding closure within ourselves. Every goodbye opens the door to a world of new opportunities… (I cut it off here, because I was beginning to yawn. Ed)

Now I’m starting to worry about the 7 million blogs which are published every week. I wonder how many of those writers will succumb to this techno-rubbish because it is fast, free and easy? Well, so far it is free.

As The Guardian recently discovered, Rupert Murdoch’s news empire has been publishing up to 1200 stories a week confected by ChatGPT.

A Nick Cave fan asked ChatGPT to write a song in the style of Nick Cave which he then sent to Nick who responded in his inimitable way.

For my money, nothing will ever beat Cave’s imagery: ‘my piano crouched in the corner of my room. With all its teeth bared.’ proof that technology cannot better creative genius.

I started Friday on My Mind to address what I saw at the time as one of the shortcomings of traditional media. It was more about what they were not reporting rather than the slant put on things they dId report. Unlike most bloggers, I started with an email list which grew and grew and spent little time fine-tuning the website so I’d be ‘discovered’. It was quite some time before I even realised I should be attending to SEO (search engine optimisation), shorthand for writing in such a way that Mr Google’s bots can find (and rank) your blog. Consequently, you will find that blogs written with SEO in mind will be peppered with ‘keywords,’ cynically deployed to help lift your offerings higher in the google rankings.

Social media and the 24/7 news cycle has changed the relevancy of blogs like mine. What might have been a breaking story on Tuesday (when I sometimes come up with an idea), is old hat by Friday. Much of the time I have picked random topics which may or may not be in the news cycle. Probably because I have been writing since the early 1980s, my ‘news sense’ is still intact and the random offering at times becomes accidently relevant.

There has also been an emerging coterie of media commentators who like the luxury of expanding online on a topic. As they do it for a living, you can find their utterances on most social media platforms. I noticed about a year ago the redoubtable Hugh Lunn started publishing highlights of his journalism career on Substack.

Last week I said Sayonara to Twitter/X after first downloading my data. I only opened a Twitter account because people assured me that is how people would find my blog (1200 words? TMTR (to much to read, for those born last century and/or who may not be familiar with this acronym. Ed)).

The most exciting things that happened to me on Twitter was a veteran songwriter proclaimed to his followers: “Hey people, bobwords48 is Bob Wilson, who wrote Underneath the Story Bridge.” Unlike my approach to shutting down this weekly offering, I left no trail on X (depicted on social media as a burning cross), for anyone to find me. The digital spring clean is ongoing.

My sister explained to me at our last meeting that as we age our world becomes smaller, and in many ways that is a desirable thing. Why have four email accounts when you only need one? Why have an Ebay account when you haven’t bought anything for two years?

I can hear John from Melbourne in my ear – ‘Bob, you’re waffling’.

As this is my fond farewell from this particular platform, may I thank you all for the many kind words arriving by email. I will answer them all over time. I was happily surprised to find messages from readers who have not once responded to any one column but claim to have read it every week ‘with dedication’.

As for the writing – I was helped from time to time by contributions from guests including Laurel Wilson, Norm Boniface, Phil Dickie and Lyn NuttalI. Sometimes FOMM even unearthed a real news story. In July 2017 while on a caravan trip out west, I discovered the re-emergence of prickly pear. I wrote about this infamous imported noxious weed, which we all assumed had been eradicated. Not so, and after posting this, mainstream outlets (Landline, Queensland Country Life) started picking up the story.

I was reminded about this recently when writing about the wind farm being built outside Warwick. Among the many tasks facing Acciona, the wind farm developer, 37,600 prickly pears were ‘successfully treated” as part of a weed removal project on 33,000 hectare sheep station it has leased for its 187-turbine wind farm.

“Oh yeh, it’s coming back,” my brother-in-law confirmed, on discovering several bushes/trees on his acre of land at Yangan outside Warwick.

There are some amusing pieces of writing in the FOMM archive and also a few serious ones that reflect on depression and suicide, homelessness, refugees and the climate crisis.

For those of you who received this in an email delivered by Mail Chimp, don’t forget you can revisit past FOMMs by going to the website www.bobwords.com.au and searching through nine years’ worth of archives. I have been re-reading a few, especially from our around-Australia jaunt in 2014.

I have readers in the UK, Canada, the US, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong (expat journos missing home). Among the most popular columns was an obit I wrote for Gough Whitlam and a rant about shutting down my private post box. If you are feeling bereft next Friday, go and choose one at random. The index app is very good – try the keywords Anzac, PO Box, Whitlam, Nullarbor, Killjoy and King for a Day to get started. Just a few I was pleased with for their wit and wisdom, even if WordPress kept nagging me to ‘improve your readability score’.

In closing, Narelle Chatbot would like to add:

So, dear readers, here’s to embracing life’s bittersweet moments, to cherishing the memories we’ve made, and to welcoming the unknown with open arms. Until next time, take care and keep embracing the journey! (Ed:…

LOL

In a week or two we expect to emerge from the studio with a timely song which I would like to share with FOMM readers.

And it’s ‘good night’ from him, and it’s ‘good night’ from her…

Bob and Laurel

Cashing in on the cashless society

While the world’s media was trying to get a handle on Russia and Ukraine, my counter-cyclical approach was to investigate the move towards a cashless society.

Retailers and banks have been (stealthily), moving away from having their shop assistants and tellers handle cash. Maybe it was already happening, but the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the push by retailers in particular, to insist on people using a debit card to pay for goods and services. The rational was to slow the spread of germs, although one might be aghast at the results of swabbing an ATM keypad or EFTPOS machine.

A majority of Australians (55%) now has become used to internet banking, electronic bill paying and using debit or credit cards to buy goods and services.

In 2022, the Reserve Bank issued a technical bulletin about the use of and distribution of cash in Australia. The Bank’s Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) showed that the share of total retail payments made in cash fell from 69% in 2007 to 27% in 2019. The results from the 2022 study will be published later this year.

The RBA used multiple surveys to explain the rapidly declining use of cash in Australian society. The Online Banknotes Survey (OBS), commissioned by the RBA, asked individuals about their cash use behaviour. In 2022, cash was used by 25% of respondents in their most recent transaction. Debit and credit cards remain the most popular payment method, although electronic options such as tapping with smartphones or watches are becoming more prevalent.

“The survey points to a permanent shift in payment behaviour for a significant proportion of the population; 39% of respondents said they have been using cash less often since the pandemic began. Those on lower incomes were more likely to have used cash for transactions and consider themselves high cash users.

On Sunday the host of Australia all Over, Ian McNamara, read out a letter from a listener who had taken a cache of cash to a bank branch. She was told the coins (in bags) could not be accepted as ‘we are a cashless bank’”.

“The world’s going to hell in a hand basket,” Macca opined, citing a phrase originating in mediaeval times.

The cashless bank issue was also canvassed by talkback radio 3AW, after a listener emailed to describe his run-in at a bank branch.

ANZ Victoria and Tasmania general manager Cameron Home confirmed in a statement to the radio station that “a small number” of branches “no longer handle cash at the counter”.

“At these branches cash and cheque deposits and cash withdrawals continue to be possible through a smart ATM and coin deposit machines.”

The ANZ spokesman did not quantity the number of branches refusing to take cash at the counter.

This trend poses a quandary for those of us who traditionally save coins. My pink piggy bank had reached the stage where there was no more room for the coins that accumulate like used tissues in the pockets of jeans and jackets. Many people have a piggy bank, an old cigar tin or biscuit barrel in which they throw their loose change. Nobody wants to keep $20 of loose change in their wallets, purses, handbags or pockets.

So, many of us have this habit, particularly if we are children of depression-era parents, of savings coins then banking them once the amount makes it worth the effort.

She Who Also Hoards Cash routinely throws $1 and $2 coins in a tin. Come Christmas she will count said cash, bank it, then use the $200 or so to buy ‘Christmas plonk’.

This week I laboriously counted and separated the cash into the correct denominations (in plastic bank bags).

All banks have scales and machines which can quickly and accurately confirm that a bag indeed contains $50 in $2 coins (or $7.80 in 20c pieces). Some branches can tip a mixed bag of cash into a machine which will automatically sort and count the cash in a matter of seconds.

I decided to spend an hour or so with a practical demonstration of how one fares trying to deposit $160 in coins at a bank branch. Our family bank (Suncorp) was closed – 9.30 – 2.00pm Monday to Friday). Did you know Suncorp had sold its banking business to ANZ Ltd? (No. Ed)

I then went to the Warwick Credit Union and the teller deposited the coins with no fuss at all. As part of the exercise, I learned that many banks now expect small business customers to deposit cash via a “Smart ATM”. I can only wonder how this will go with people who operate cash-only businesses (markets, busking, CD sales and so on).

The deep flaw in the concept of a cashless society is what happens when the technology (which relies on electricity and technology that works 24/7) fails. Almost on cue, we had an Australian banking example when some Commonwealth Bank customers were unable to log in to their accounts online.

The bank apologised to its customers after a major glitch left them unable to make purchases with their bank cards or access their accounts.

Customers received error messages when trying to use the NetBank online banking service and the CommBank mobile app.

It’s not the first example (for any bank or business for that matter) finding that their ‘smart’ apps can and do fail.

As dedicated readers may recall, we spent a week marooned in a regional town in New Zealand without mobile phones, internet or ATMs. Good thing the hire car had a full tank, eh! The town was cut off from the world in the aftermath of a catastrophic cyclone. A small supermarket near where we were staying had fired up its generator and served customers on the basis of ‘cash is king.’ EFTPOS payments were possible, but only after a long wait in a queue.Despite these occasional ‘hiccups,’ the banking industry seems determined to introduce labour-saving technology, even if it sends their customers to hell in a hand basket.

A survey by RFI global asked merchants what their future intentions were towards accepting cash. The data suggest that half of merchants that accepted cash in April 2022 planned on actively discouraging cash payments or displaying signage to that effect at some point in the future. Those merchants that plan to move away from accepting cash were more likely to have higher turnover and be in metropolitan areas. The pandemic appears to have influenced some merchants’ plans to dissuade cash use, with hygiene concerns around cash handling as the most prominent reason. The risk of theft and the cost of sourcing cash are other reasons.

Meanwhile, the traditional source of cash for so many Australians (automatic teller machines or ATMS), is in decline. Since 2016, when ATM numbers peaked at 8,000, 25% have closed. Most of these closures have been ATMs owned by authorised deposit-taking institutions. Some of these ADIs, as they are known, will charge you a fee of up to $3.00 to make a withdrawal.

The latter is yet another argument I have against the banking system in general. Banks charge fees for almost every aspect of banking, be it in person or via internet banking. Virtually all merchants charge a fee when you use a credit card to make purchases (e.g, $5.90 added to a return ticket to NZ). Many banks charge a monthly fee for maintaining business and even personal accounts. Moreover, these fees increase over time.

It could be a mistake to ascribe the tap and go trend on Millennials or Generation Z.

I was at a choir reunion last month when an elegant 70-something woman, having ordered a pizza, leaned over towards the EFTPOS machine and waved her smart watch at it. Ka-ching!

More reading: what can go wrong will go wrong

Seniors becoming savvy about digital technology

Early PC, complete with floppy disk drives source Wikipedia

During a frustrating hour or two updating our websites, I realised I am more savvy than the average 74-year-old when it comes to digital technology. Or so I thought. Later, you will read about how Covid-19 prompted many older Australians to start interacting with Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp and other communications systems.

In what has been a busy month (editing the U3A newsletter, updating three websites, updating our self managed super fund and writing a new song), I am finding time to create a short course in basic computer skills for U3A members. Most of our members are in the over-70s age group and a few do not have access to the Internet. I am hoping some will find a use for U3A’s laptops, which have been in hibernation since Covid broke out in early 2020. In preparation to run the computer course, I took these laptops home and updated them.

It wasn’t too difficult, but these laptops were a reminder of how quickly digital technology becomes obsolete. I was reminded of that last Friday when the WordPress website which hosts this weekly essay “broke”. That’s WordPress community geek-speak for not doing what it’s programmed to do. Therefore, WordPress followers who had subscribed to the blog did not get last week’s email with a link to the website. The blog was still posted to the website, but the electronic sharing didn’t happen. It turned out I’d been ignoring reminders to ‘update your PHP’, which is the software within WordPress that interacts with plugins (or apps) that make the website work efficiently.

(That sound you hear is me snoring, having fallen asleep. Ed)

I am convinced that everyone who uses a computer has a ‘blind spot’, that is, a technological advance with which they cannot cope.

My blind spot would be anything to do with coding, editing the registry, updating drivers or any one of a dozen under-the-bonnet programming tasks. In this case, I asked Craig P from Inmotion Hosting to do the hard work updating PHP (the older versions are ‘deprecated’), and I’d take care of the detail.

Computer hardware and software companies are continually updating their products, to fix glitches in the system and to improve security. They also do it to sustain cashflow. There was a time when you could buy the complete Microsoft Office programme at a retail store and use it seemingly forever at no extra cost. Now they want an annual subscription (which includes updates and support).

I’ve been using a computer at home since the mid-1990s and came into daily newspapers at a time when they were leaving the old technology behind. I learned a lot, but don’t ask me about programming.

She Who Sometimes Shouts at her Computer told me the other day she studied Base 2 in grade seven. Base 2 is a field of mathematics that is particularly germane to computers.

As Wikipedia explains, the base-2 numeral system is that in which each digit is referred to as a bit, or binary digit. Because of its straightforward implementation in digital electronic circuitry, the binary system is used by almost all modern computers and computer-based devices.

Got that? You can log back into Facebook now and carry on regardless.

While kids are learning computer science and coding at school, we of the older cohort rely on the ever-changing versions of Microsoft Windows to make it easy. There have been 11 versions of Windows since 1985. Some, like Windows ME, 2000, Vista and Windows 8, were not perfect, so Windows moved on to 7, 10 and now 11.

One of my contacts in information technology tells me that Windows 11 is the best operating system yet because Microsoft has looked at security first and everything else second.

I haven’t upgraded from 10 yet. I limped along with Windows 7 until it got the point where Microsoft wouldn’t support it at all. As of this month, people with Windows 7 won’t even get security updates.

I set off with this idea of teaching older people how to take control of their computer because the conventional wisdom is that older people struggle with new technology. Our reflexes have slowed and we have leathery fingers – ask anyone.

But maybe not so much in Australia. A recent study by The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) set the record straight.

While older people have trouble navigating touch screen gadgets like smart phones and tablets, in the four years from 2017 to 2020, many were on an IT learning curve and probably still are. ACMA’s report, produced in May 2021, noted changes in the way older people engage with the online world.

While most use the internet at home, they also used a mobile phone to go online when out and about. Their adoption of other digital devices like smart phones, tablets and fitbits is also on the rise.

In mid-2020, ACMA found that 93% of older people had internet access in their home, up from 68% in 2017.

In 2017, only 6% of older people used apps and digital devices to go online. In June 2020, 26% of older people used five or more types of devices to go online.

ACMA says that parallel with their uptake of digital devices, more older people are using the internet for a wider variety of activities and tasks.

“Almost all older people now use email, while banking, viewing video content, and buying goods and services online have increased substantially over the previous 4 years, to become relatively common behaviours for this age-group.”

There was also a quantum leap in the numbers of older people who use apps like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to make voice calls, video calls and send texts. In 2019 the figure was 33% – a year later it was 55%.

The Pew Research Centre, which keeps tabs on this topic in the US, also noticed growth during the pandemic but observed that 7% of Americans aged over 65 are not online at all.

The Pew Centre said there were notable differences between age groups when measuring the frequency of internet use. Some 48% of those ages 18 to 29 said they were online “almost constantly”.,compared with 22% of those 50 to 64 and 8% of those 65 and older.

Joelle Renstrom, writing in ‘Slate’, an online magazine, said computer and digital technology companies are not designing devices that older people want. Renstrom cited research by Bran Knowles who studies how older people use technology.

Knowles says tech companies don’t see older people as valid stakeholders.

“That’s evident in how they fail to consider seniors’ needs, even when manufacturing products like the Jitterbug, a phone with extra-big buttons.

“Button size doesn’t dictate seniors’ decisions about tech use, and such presumptions highlight Silicon Valley’s bias toward youth.”

The people who drive tech development “can’t imagine what it’s like to be 80”, said Knowles.

Meanwhile, big organisations and governments continue to drive their customers/clients (young and old) to online accounts and digital apps.

RACQ’s Road Ahead magazine reports in its latest edition that drivers will have access to a ‘digital licence app’ in 2023. Queensland’s Department of Transport has been conducting trials since legislation was passed in 2020 to allow development of a digital licence (which will have equal weight to a physical licence). Drivers can store their digital licence on their mobile phone and use it for ID purposes as they travel. The Road Ahead article notes that the new digital licence will be ‘opt-in’ and not compulsory. Phew, we all said.

So, WordPress readers – did you get it?

The future for record stores

future-record-stores — Image: A selection from the B’s. How many of these do you have?

While my friends in New Zealand were still at school, I was making apprentice wages, spending almost all of it on records. Our small town didn’t have a record store as such, but the local department store stocked the latest pop records. At the time, LPs were pressed at a factory in Wellington owned by His Master’s Voice (HMV). My copy of ‘Please Please Me’ (The Beatles), for example, was issued by Parlophone in Mono. It still plays OK but it sounds thin compared to the sophisticated sounds of Pink Floyd or the Moody Blues.

New Zealand’s music fans had the jump on most other countries when the latest Beatles album became a ‘must have now’ item. The masters were shipped to Wellington and the presses were set to work. Other countries usually had to wait for a shipment of imported records.

‘Please Please Me’ was rushed out by Parlophone in March 1963 (I was 14), so maybe I bought it with money from my paper run. Parlophone was eager to cash in on the title track, the group’s first No 1 hit in the UK.

Roll forward to 2023 and my LP collection is stacked neatly in two cupboards, very rarely played. I have a good quality record player hooked up to my stereo with a pre-amp, so I’m not sure why they don’t get more of a playing. Ah yes, it’s the getting up and flipping the record over to the six or seven tracks on side two.

The big change between my teenage consumption of music and now is that, for the most part, we listened to music in one room. We would typically lie on the floor (parents were out, obviously), and crank up the volume. There may have been alcohol.

By comparison, today’s music listener can stream an endless Spotify playlist from their phone to a Bluetooth speaker at home or in the car (or through earbuds). It might be inferior quality, but it’s easy.

What set me off on this tangent was reading about the imminent closure of the Sanity record chain. Our town has one of their outlets. I didn’t shop there often but bought a few CDs – Kasey Chambers, Troy Casser-Daley. Now, as stocks starts to dwindle, I’m having a look for bargains. They sell DVDs too.

Sanity is closing all 50 stores as leases expire and moving to an online business model. Sanity is not the first retail chain to retire from shopping centres, where so many retailers have found that the foot traffic doesn’t always translate to turnover to offset higher rents.

This is not an isolated development, with a couple of Brisbane record stores closing their doors and Melbourne’s iconic Basement Discs set to do the same. Co-owner Suzanne Bennett told The Age that the impact of Covid and a drop in foot traffic reduced revenue. The CBD store was established for 28 years and famous for its in-store performances by musicians including The Teskey Brothers, Paul Kelly, Billy Bragg and Justin Townes Earle. This is not to say Basement Discs is going out of business. Suzanne and partner Rod Jacobs will continue to operate online and have a dream of opening another shop in the suburbs.

As I discovered, after chatting online with former colleague Noel Mengel, there are still some funky record stores around in Brisbane. But the independents have mostly moved to the suburbs to find cheaper rents.

Noel, who was chief music writer at The Courier-Mail for 15 years, said that most shopping centres had an independent record store. In recent years most have closed or moved to the suburbs.

“Every shopping centre had one, usually as well as Sanity or HMV, for example Sounds at Chermside, Brookside Music Centre and Toombul Music. Rockaway Records is a groovy store still going at Carindale Shopping Centre. It used to be near the Paddington shops before that.

“There are lots of Indie record stores now in Brisbane, but rents are too high in shopping centres. The independents include Sonic Sherpa at Stones Corner, Stash Records at Camp Hill, Dutch Vinyl in Paddington and Jet Black Cat in West End. So that niche market, import vinyl thing is going OK.

“But those shops really used to add something to the shopping centres.”

Rockaway, established in 1992, is one of the last indie stores in Brisbane shopping centres. Long-established Rocking Horse Records and Record Exchange continue to trade in the CBD.

As music production formats and distribution began to change, famous record stores like Harlequin and Skinny’s disappeared. Even with Sanity moving out, there are still big retail chains in shopping centres like JB Hi Fi that sell CDs and vinyl albums.

We old school music listeners grew up browsing record stores, from the days of vinyl in the 1960s, through the transition to cassettes (1970s) and CDs (the 1990s) and into the brave new world of downloading and streaming music. This arguably began with Apple Itunes in 2001, although the original Napster found a way in 1999 for users to share music through peer-to-peer file sharing.

Although it was shut down in 2002 after a plethora of legal actions, you may be aware that Napster re-emerged later under new owners and is now a legitimate alternative to Spotify.

The best and most popular physical record stores are those that specialise in rare and second-hand vinyl. They are not always easy to find, as they need to find a shop in the suburbs where rents are viable.

Long-time reader Franky’s Dad (aka Lyn Nuttall) is someone who has a history of browsing in such shops. These days though he confesses to preferring streaming services like Spotify.

“Platforms like this are made for me. They seem to have every track in the universe. They don’t of course, but lately my bowerbird approach is served by YouTube, where numerous collectors seem to have posted their entire collections.
“These days I can find even the most obscure or lost tracks from the 50s and 60s”.

Lyn, who hosts the website poparchives began collecting vinyl 45s via mail order in the 1980s & 1990s, mostly through record auctioneers – “I think I paid the rent of one bloke in Sydney.”
“I do miss combing through the racks for the physical object. Even at the time I used to say that half the pleasure was the hunt and the item in your hand after you’d paid for it.”

Noel Mengel, now a freelance journalist who also plays in his own band, The Trams, says Brisbane is well served by independent, suburban record stores.

As the figures below show, there has been rapid growth in demand for vinyl records. Noel welcomed the recent addition of a vinyl pressing factory in Brisbane as there were previously huge delays for those pressing vinyl.

“The community radio station 4ZZZ does a great job playing Queensland music and the independent stores sell their records.”

Figures from ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) show that vinyl album sales ($28.51 million) outsold CD albums ($23.90 million) for calendar year 2021. Vinyl sales have increased steadily since 2012 (then just $1.85 million) compared to CD sales in that year ($193.49 million).

All of which reminds me I promised my niece I would bring some of my old jazz records when we visit NZ next month. She and her husband only listen to vinyl. I reckon they are on to something.

Last week: It was Wirth’s Circus.

How we listen to music in 2022

cassettes-cds-streaming — Image: Technology exists to convert a cassette to MP3 – have we had a copyright ruling on that?

This week I decided to reflect on the many ways we can listen to music in this digital age. We’ve come a long way since the first recording etched on to a wax cylinder in 1860. In just 50 years, the mainstream way of listening to music has moved from vinyl LPs to cassettes to CDs and now to online streaming. It’s been quite an evolution.

This FOMM was inspired by a frustrating search for an album by Californian bluegrass singer AJ Lee and her band, Blue Summit. I was introduced to AJ at U3A Warwick’s Music Show, where presenters curate a list of YouTube clips and provide background on the tracks. This particular song was performed by the Brothers Comatose and AJ Lee, a splendid interpretation of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon.

On Monday I started packing for a week away in the caravan, part of it at the best music festival in Queensland, Neurum Creek Festival. This one has been running for 16 years at the Neurum Creek Bush Retreat, which is about 12 kms from Woodford. In preparing and packing, I decided to see if I could load new music on my Ipod, which is no longer supported by Apple. The problem is that as I now longer use ITunes, the music player I use can’t ‘talk’ to the Ipod. Mr Shiraz sent me a link to a piece of software that will mimic ITunes so you can ‘sync’ your music collection with an Ipod, a portable music player invented by Apple in 2001. Since Apple stopped supporting Ipods, many users have opted to put them in a drawer and move on. One alternative is to buy a cheap mobile phone, add a large storage card and use it as a personal music player.

I could tell how far CDs had dropped in popularity when looking to buy AJ Lee’s 2021 album, I’ll Come Back. I decided not to download it on Spotify, as the artists are paid a trifling amount when we listen to their music on that platform.

Subsequent searches found the album on streaming services, which was not what I wanted. I went direct to AJ Lee’s website and the only option was to purchase a physical CD and wait however many weeks or months it takes to arrive from the US. Then I tried Bandcamp (where you will find our music). Success, the album was there. I duly downloaded the album and now can listen to it on my computer, my phone and, once I get around to it, burn a CD for my ‘new’ 5-CD changer.

The CD player failed some months ago and I eventually established that the model was obsolete and a replacement laser could not be found. I opted for a refurbished model from a seller on Ebay. It’s a quality Sony deck and, so far, is working perfectly.

Before I went into hospital for a procedure in late August, I spent a day (dusting) and alphabetising our CD collection (450-plus). I told She Who Loves Order in her Life I had done this ‘so if I cark it, at least you’ll know the CDs are in A-Z and not filed according to ‘mood’.

As audiophiles will tell you, CD music is superior to cassette but inferior to vinyl, because the digital sound is compressed.

Vinyl music played on top line analogue systems always sounds better than both CDs and the alternative (playing or streaming MP3 quality tracks). The cassette, with its annoying hiss and tendency to become snarled in the player, is a long last.

Audio cassettes were invented by a Dutch company (Philips) and adopted by mainstream America in the mid-60s. My memory of cassettes is that people would borrow someone else’s tape and dub a cassette to play in the car. This practice was and still is illegal, even if retailers happily sold boxes of blank cassettes and high-end twin cassette decks on which one could dub to a blank tape. (The last piece of music technology I actually understood. Ed.)

Most of us have a couple of shoeboxes in the cupboard full of cassettes – legitimate ones bought in music stores, or bootleg copies. The difficulty now is that, for most people, their means of playing cassettes has evaporated. My tape deck worked for about 20 years. One deck stopped working and then the sound quality became so poor we decided to switch to another medium.

I did a straw poll among people of my vintage to establish how they listen to music (if they listen to music at all). Most said they no longer had a CD player (it either died or they found the business of swapping them over tedious). Most late model cars no longer come with a CD player, so that accelerated the decline in popularity.

Some people opt for a WIFI speaker through which they can stream music from YouTube or Spotify. How this works is you turn the gadget on and say in a loud, clear voice: “OK Google, play The Goodwills.” There is a pause, a whirring sound and a disembodied voice says: “OK, playing DJ Goodwill.”

Others turn on their smart TV and then search for music videos on YouTube. Depending on your cinema surround sound system (if you have one), the sound quality is OK. The database of video clips is apparently bottomless, but the quality is uneven.

According to Gizmodo’s history of the compact disc, the first commercial CDs were available in Australia in late 1982 (about 150 titles). This was a few years before we moved to Brisbane and bought a Technics stereo system for around $1,500 (it was on sale). We started a CD collection then and even today, I prefer a CD to any other format.

What is hard to stomach is knowing I paid $25 to $30 each and sometimes more for an imported disc. Today you can go to a charity shop and buy CDs for coins. It’s not about money, though. Our CD collection is special in that at least 100 CDs were given to us either as a gift or as a swap (one of ours for one of theirs) by musicians we know.

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said streaming accounted for 86% of $565.8 million music sales in Australia in 2021. Over the same period, physical music sales dropped from $100.5 million to $56.1 million. Vinyl albums led the way at $29.7 million, compared with $24.9 million for CD albums.

A Roy Morgan research report in 2020 said 12.7 million Australians were using a streaming service. Spotify is the clear market leader with 8m customers, almost double what it was in 2017. YouTube Music is next with 4.4m users in Australia.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) concurs, saying 61% of Australians used a streaming service in June 2020, up from 48% in 2019. As you’d expect, 88% of the 18-34 age group used music streaming services. Surprisingly (well, I’m surprised), the biggest growth in online music streaming was the 55-64 cohort (from 47% to 59%), 65-75 (30% to 44%) and the over-70s (17% to 26%).

I confess I’m part of that trend, although this weekend it’s all about live music, coffee and a CD shop – the way it should be.

Cyber attacks and the Faraday cage

cyber-attacks-hackers — Image: Antoine Tevaneaux, Wikipedia CC: these women are protected from the electric arc by the Faraday Cage. (Palais de la Découverte in Paris.)

Just as I was thinking about the unexpected email from the Australian Taxation Office, She Who Mocks ScoMo called me in to watch a live press conference about cyber attacks.

Beware of State-based actors with sophisticated means to hack Australian infrastructure, began the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (ScoMo).

“He’s dog-whistling,” interjected SWMS. This of course sent me off to google what ‘dog-whistling’ meant. After discounting a video of a wizened old Kiwi farmer in gumboots and a Swanndri using two-fingered whistling to direct his sheep dogs, I alighted upon this:

dog–whistle: a type of doublespeak used in political messaging. Dog whistles work by employing language that has normal meanings to the majority, but can be implied or loaded to mean very specific things to intended recipients.

In this context, there were several observations to be made – what was the government seeking to do by causing fear and trembling in a community already alarmed about the coronavirus? What news did the government not want to get out, hiding behind the ‘cyber-attack’ smokescreen?

I asked a couple of IT gurus I know what they made of it all.

“Whatever it is, just sandbox it,” said one (which means isolating the malicious email/code and testing it in a non-network environment).

“Well if Scotty from marketing says there are more state actors right now. you gotta believe him,” said our resident geek boy.

“I might even quit my day job and go after my real dream as a state actor. Hopefully they do the Scottish play. .. I know that one well.”

Chin up Scotty, they’re not taking you seriously – should they?

After analysing the press conference on Friday morning, I tend to agree with ScoMo’s “it hasn’t just started” caveat. The controversy over Russia’s involvement in social media manipulation of the 2016 US election is one example alone. CSO Australia recently listed the top 15 cyber security breaches of the last 20 years, ranked by the number of people whose personal data was stolen. Data belonging to 3.5 billion people was compromised in the top two alone (Adobe and Adult Friend Finder). Well-known names on the list include LinkedIn, Yahoo, eBay and Marriott International.

The PM refused to be drawn on which ‘State-based actor’ was the villain of the piece but journalists have, of course, made much of the role of China as the state power with the ability and the motive.

If there is anything useful to be drawn from ScoMo’s cyber attacks warning, it is perhaps to remind computer and smart phone users to do a regular Wi-Fi security audit.

The growing popularity of smart devices (Wi-Fi speakers, smart TVs, household appliances that take verbal orders and Bluetooth-enabled devices has just added new vulnerabilities to the wired household.

I use Bluetooth to hook up my phone in the car but I also to stream music to wireless speakers. No problem, you’d think.

Technology writer Dave Johnson says, rather colourfully in this article for howtogeek.com, that “Bluetooth is about as secure as a padlock sculpted from fusilli pasta.”

Johnson recently attended the Def Con 27 security conference where the first order of business was to ask delegates to disable Bluetooth while attending the conference.

Tyler Moffitt, a senior threat research analyst at Webroot, says there are “zero regulations or guidelines” as to how Bluetooth vendors should implement security. He also warned that smart phone users might not know that using Bluetooth with earbuds disables the smart lock, leaving the phone open to abuse.

Moving right along, the other security threat which bothers experts is the proportion of social media users who do not use or understand privacy settings. Password manager LastPass revealed in a recent blog how careless people are with their private information. A survey showed that 52% of respondents set their social media profiles to ‘public’ (open to FB’s 1.7 billion account holders!) The survey showed that 51% of social media users had shared vacation photos, an open invitation to burglars who troll social media. About 20% shared pictures of their house or neighbourhood and 25% shared pictures of their pets or kids).

The government’s over-kill way of bringing cyber security to ‘front of mind’ was timely, in that June and July are the peak scam months.

Our end of financial year reminder from the ATO did seem genuine, given it was addressed to the recipient by name. We became suspicious in that the email encouraged clicking on links to ‘learn more’ – something the ATO says it never does.

That is an example of the common email scam known as ‘phishing’, an attempt by someone posing as a legitimate institution to trick individuals into providing sensitive data. An article from The Conversation, titled “Don’t be phish food!” cited below, summarises why you should be suspicious of bogus emails. Phishing scammers are not afraid to impersonate government agencies, banks or large institutions – even your own ISP!

If it looks real but you were not expecting it – be wary.

The very least you can do to avoid cyber attacks is change your computer logon passwords. This was one of the key messages from The Australian Cyber Security Centre. ACSC’s website advisory says the attackers are primarily using “remote code execution vulnerability” to target Australian networks and systems. That is, the attacker attempts to insert their own software codes into a vulnerable system such as a server or database, thus taking control. That, folks, is why Windows 10 keeps updating your operating system.

While you are at it, change all of the passwords you use for social media, web-based email and any website which holds your financial information. Make them complex passwords of at least 8 and preferably 10 characters. Check your social media settings and ensure that you are set to private and friends only (or at worst, friends of friends). If you are on the Facebook app Messenger, don’t open videos, even if they are sent by your lover or maiden aunt. Much-circulated ‘joke’ videos containing malicious code are often used to hack someone’s Facebook account. (What – you didn’t know that?)

If all else fails, you could purchase a Faraday Cage, invented in the late 1800s by an English scientist (Faraday). The cage is an enclosed space made of conductive material that blocks electromagnetic signals. Wi-Fi and cellular signals are rendered useless inside the cage.Any spy worth his 2020 clearances would have mini-Faraday cages at home and work in which to keep smart phones and other hackable devices safe from cyber attacks.

Coincidentally, this week we just started watching season five of the quality French spy thriller, The Bureau*, where the Faraday Cage got a mention in episode one or two. This up to the minute drama, while fictional, nonetheless references present day political pariahs including Trump, Putin and Assad.

In the early episodes we see one of the protagonists in a Russian troll factory – a vast air conditioned room where drones fly a circuit to make sure the worker bees are not eating baklava at their keyboards.

If you are really concerned about cyber attacks, you could get an engineer, an architect and a builder to collaborate on the hacker-proof house, modelled on the Faraday Cage.

Shouldn’t cost that much.

(By all means, watch ‘The Bureau’, but only if you don’t mind numerous gratuitous sex scenes. It is French, after all. And you can improve your French language skills too, if you don’t look at the sub-titles. Ed.)

Not everyone has Internet access

I visited my local library last week for the first time in months and noticed that public internet access (computers, desks and chairs), had been removed. Desks, tables and chairs had also been removed from the reading room, where one could sit for hours browsing newspapers and magazines or working on jigsaw puzzles.

“That’s not very fair on people who don’t have a computer or access to WIFI,” said She Who Believes in Equality.

A survey published in March this year, citing Australian Bureau of Statistics data, showed that 2.5 million Australians are not online. Reasons given by respondents included affordability issues, location (poor signal or no signal), or that they lacked the 21^st century skill called ‘digital literacy’.

The Centre for Social Inclusion (CSI) produces the National Digital inclusion Index, based on data from Roy Morgan Research.

Since data was first collected in 2014, Australia’s overall digital inclusion score has risen by 7.9 points, from 54.0 to 61.9. Improvements have been evident across all three categories: Access, Affordability and Digital Ability. CSI notes in its 2019 report that those with the lowest ADII score are in the lowest socio-economic demographic (income under $35,000), with a score of 43.3 points. The Northern Territory is excluded from the research (sample too small), but indigenous Australians living elsewhere scored 55.1.

The digital divide is an obvious social strata marker, with a 30.5 point difference between the lowest income demographic (43.3) and the highest (73.8).

The 2019 survey shows that all segments of the digital access market improved on their 2018 score. Scores are allocated to particular geographic regions and socio-demographic groups, over a six-year period from 2014 to 2019. People aged 65 and over are the least digitally included age group, with a score of 48 (13.9 points below the national average).

I know a few elders who, for one reason or another, refuse to engage with the digital world, clinging on to old analogue TV sets and VCRs, eschewing mobile phones and in some cases, not even having an answering machine. The NBN is relentlessly catching up with this cohort. Moreover, financial institutions are forcing these older customers to abandon time-honoured way of paying bills (by cheque and in person).

As an aside, when I first tried to source the CSI report, I was ironically greeted with the message, “bandwidth exceeded, try later”.

We’re all getting a lot of messages like that with the weight of people using Facebook, Twitter and their affiliates 24/7, not to mention streaming movies, TV series and engaging in bandwidth-using virtual performances and community catch ups.

Last time I wrote about this subject, 90,000 Australians were still using dial-up modems to surf the Internet. That annoying yet welcoming modem squeal is heard no longer, at least not by Telstra customers. Telstra retired its dial-up service In December 2015, citing a sharp drop off in the numbers of people still using dial-up in favour of a variety of connectivity options.

When I last worked for the now mostly digital regional news services, when we went to public meetings in rural areas, we’d take a portable modem. The mid-1980s version was a device you clamped to the handset of a (dial up) phone and then transmitted your news report from the laptop. News organisations spent a fortune equipping field reporters with clunky laptops which weighed at least 10kg and cost thousands. When the technology inevitably did not work, reporters simply called a ‘copy-taker’ at HQ and dictated the story.

Copy-takers are long gone, and the rest of the old school cohort who had not already taken a redundancy package will most likely be swept out the door in the latest media shakeout.

But getting back to the 2.5 million Australians who told survey takers they do not have access to the Internet.

A group of 30 community organisations has called for urgent efforts to help Australians not connected to the internet. The group told the Sydney Morning Herald that the pre-existing problem was heightened during the pandemic, hindering access to government services; for example, children trying to undertake online education and people needing access to telehealth services.

The group asked Communications Minister Paul Fletcher to consider ‘targeted low-cost broadband’ connections for eligible households, a relief package of basic telecommunications equipment and a telephone service for people with low digital literacy.

Of those Australians who do have Internet access, more than four million use mobile only to ‘gain access to the internet’ (note how I refuse to verb a noun). This means they have a mobile phone or mobile broadband device with a data allowance, but no fixed connection. This cohort rated a low ADII score of 43.7, some 18.2 points below the national average (61.9). Mobile data costs substantially more per gigabyte than fixed broadband, which means mobile-only users are unlikely to be binge-watching Narcos, House of Cards or Killing Eve.

Mobile-only use is linked with socio-economic factors, with up to a third of people in low-income households, those with low levels of education and the unemployed more likely to be using mobile-only.

Now here’s what at first sight seems to be an anomaly. You would know the oft-quoted homeless numbers in Australia – around 116,000 at the last Census. However, as the survey found, homeless people find phones essential for survival and safety, job prospects and for moving out of homelessness.

Consumer advocate The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), cited a Sydney University study that found 92% of Australians who identify as homeless (95% in Sydney and Melbourne), own a mobile phone. The homeless favour smart phones (77% of those surveyed had a pre-paid plan for a smart phone). They typically use free WIFI and public access (libraries) to keep costs down.

You might well ask, “How can a homeless person afford a smart phone?”

Well, I bought one last week for $29! It is destined to replace an unreliable IPod as a portable music player. But it also has all of the apps anyone needing a survival tool could ever use. And you can use it to call someone or send a text!

Apps take up most of the memory in this bargain phone. But even so, a minimum $10 a month would make this a handy ‘Where am I sleeping tonight?’ tool.

The annual Deloitte Australia Mobile Use Survey’s key finding is that mobile penetration in Australia has maxed out at 91% (about 20 million users), and accordingly, sales are slowing. The main reason for this is that Australians are holding on to their phones longer (three years on average).

If you are at all interested in how mobile technology is developing, this report (you need to sign up to download it), is illuminating.

For example, did you know that mobile is starting to lose ground to voice-assisted speakers (a 51% increase since 2018), as the preferred user method of ‘gaining access to’ home services and entertainment?

(“OK, Google, play ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen” – but you have to train the thing to recognise your accent…Ed)

As an observation on the recent move by News Ltd to shut down many print titles and move most of the survivors online, mobile remains our preferred device to consume news. Having said that, Australians are less interested in tuning in at all, with only 39% reading the news weekly, compared to 48% last year.

And, as if we did not already know, 27% of Australia’s 17.9 million smart phone owners use their device at least once a week to watch a TV series or movies, up from just 5% in 2015! I relate to this statistic, as I covertly watch Killing Eve on my smart phone, as She Who Believes in Equality chooses not to watch.

Bandwidth exceeded – try later.

FOMM back pages: https://bobwords.com.au/friday-on-my-mind/ Hold the phones 2014

Holding out for a Holden (or a Subaru)

holden-subaru-general motors — (Holden Premier Image Jenny Scott, www.flickr.com)

I never owned a Holden motor car but I did drive one in the late 1970s. It was a 1971 HQ Holden Premier , owned by a woman I’d just met. She displayed her political colours early on, telling me she named the car Elizabeth because Joh (Bjelke-Petersen) was Queensland’s Premier at the time.

As she said, you wouldn’t want to name your car after a man who said indefensible things like (apropos industrial relations): “The 40-hour week has given the opportunity to many to while away their time in hotels.”

I don’t remember much about Elizabeth apart from the fantastic lamb’s wool steering wheel cover. Elizabeth (at the time running on five cylinders), went to an apprentice mechanic as a fixer-upper. She was replaced by a green XB Ford Fairmont station wagon, with a two-way tailgate (like a hearse). The Fairmont had two bucket seats in the back with seatbelts, which made it a handy car for larger families.

Rising fuel prices lured us to economical cars; a Toyota Corona and a Mitsubishi Magna wagon (with an awful turning circle). Later, we opted for a 4 litre, BA Ford Falcon wagon for its storage and towing capacity. We drove the Falcon on several long trips and still got $3,000 for it in 2002, when it had 285,000 kms on the clock.

Prior to the Ford craze, She Who Also Once Owned an EK Holden Ute With A Women’s Lib Symbol On The Tailgate, bought Elizabeth in 1976.

Holden produced the Premier between 1960 and 1982, so an original model would today be 60 years old and qualify as a vintage vehicle. The Southern Downs is a good place to spot vintage cars – in particular ‘muscle’ cars with big engines and twin exhausts. I spotted a few Holden models among the vintage Ford, Vauxhall and Buick cars at the Allora Heritage Day, all lovingly restored.

I didn’t spend my formative years here, so missed out on Australia’s love affair with the Holden. US auto giant General Motors infiltrated Australia in the 1920s, but the legend proper did not start until GM purchased South Australian car body manufacturer Holden in 1931.

La Trobe University PhD candidate Jack Fahey explored the history of GM/Holden in The Conversation. He explained how the American company brought then-uncommon PR and marketing strategies to Australia. GM set about selling Australians a car made for local conditions, successfully creating the symbolic myth of the Holden as the people’s car.

Prime Minister Ben Chifley unveiled the first Holden in 1948, which became affectionately known as the “FX”. Holden had previously been manufacturing car bodies for Buick, Chevrolet, Vauxhall and other GM brands. The FX (priced at £733) was such a success Holden could not keep up with demand, with 18,000 people paying their deposit sight unseen.

Holden’s exit in 2021 is an inevitable outcome for a company whose sales had been in sharp decline. At its peak (2002- 2005), Holden sold more than 170,000 vehicles a year. By 2019, sales dwindled to fewer than 40,000, all made somewhere else.

After import tariffs were scrapped, Australians readily switched allegiance to imported 4WD and SUV vehicles and smaller, economical cars. Brands like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Hyundai, Mazda, Honda and Kia prevailed.

Watching the last of the four major car firms disappear from the landscape ought to remind us that other manufacturers have gone down the same road. Brands no longer made in Australia include Pacific Brands Clothing, Goodyear and Bridgestone tyres, Electrolux ovens and refrigerators, Golden Circle’s canned fruit operations (sold to Heinz), other fruit and produce processing plants and a long list of car manufacturers including Mitsubishi, Toyota and Nissan.

Manufacturing in general has slumped from a peak the 1960s when it represented 25% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The figure was 5.77% in 2018.

FOMM reader Gary Shepherd took to his Facebook account this week to lament the dilution of local manufacturing, laying most of the blame on “that idiot team of Hawke and Keating – floating the dollar and removing import tariffs.” (The latter was known as The Button Plan, after former Industry and Commerce Minister John Button)

Cars were not the only victims of the level playing field theory, Gary said. Australia also once made great white goods.

“There are still countless Aussie homes with old ‘Roundy’ Westinghouse and GE Fridges being used under the house as beer fridges, despite being fifty years old,” Gary wrote.

Some of Gary’s friends reminded him of the role played by belligerent unions in the collapse of Australian industries.

Jack Fahey observed in The Conversation that production and sales of the Holden boomed in the 1950s, helped along by full employment for white men, high tariff protection, State-sponsored migration and amicable relations with trade unions. But he also reminded us that Holden’s history included large-scale industrial disputes.

In 1963, 18,500 men went on strike at Holden plants in Adelaide and Melbourne, asking for a wage increase of three pounds a week; about 12% of the average wage at the time.

Although Holden was already in trouble in the mid-1990s, that didn’t stop Prime Minister Paul Keating choosing the factory floor in South Australia to launch the ‘Working Nation’ white paper, in which he ironically argued for Holden’s place at the forefront of Australian nation building.

Economist Dennis Glover devoted a chapter of his book ‘An Economy is not a Society’ to the H.J Heinz factory in Dandenong, Victoria. Glover, who worked there during university holidays, described the idyllic life of an unskilled factory worker in the 1970s, in sharp contrast to the brutal downsizing and final shock closure in 2000, with a loss of 200 jobs.

The World today recalled the moment when Heinz/Watties announced it was centralising bean and soup canning production in New Zealand and closing the Dandenong factory after 45 years. Heinz said, from its Philadelphia headquarters, that it was cheaper to move production to another country than to re-invest in the existing plant.

Glover wrote that the Heinz subsidised cafeteria epitomised the extent to which companies would go to impress unskilled factory hands.

“We must remember that factories like these were built in an era when capitalists knew they had to be nice to working-class people if they wanted them to work for them.”

I had a few factory jobs in my youth and must admit I was hopeless at most of them. Production line work requires people who are good with their hands, quick and co-ordinated.

I feel for the 600 or so people who depended on Holden for a job, but they should have seen it coming. There will be more of this, as automation and global competition reduce opportunities for jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Manufacturing, which still employs one million Australians, obviously can no longer rely on the type of Federal Government financial support Holden was given. In 2012, $270 million was provided, in return for a promise to invest more than $1 billion into car manufacturing in Australia.

Paradoxically, the Australian government chooses to support and subsidise mining, while turning its back on our traditional manufacturers, even though most of our commodities are exported, with the value added in other countries. But I guess the government knows that.

Return of The Wastemakers

wastemakers-computers — Image: INESby, pixabay.com

I had a Vance Packard moment this week, thwarting the concept of planned obsolescence, which he wrote about in his 1960 best-seller, The Wastemakers.

My triumph was no big deal, but they were hard-won as I finally, after four weeks, got my 32-year-old Technics stereo system working again.

Before we get into that, and on a similar theme, I would like to have a rant about the complexities and nonsense of Windows 10. Microsoft’s latest operating system deserves inclusion in my seldom-heard song, ‘Windows F*****g 8’, which I wrote in honour of the man who warned me to stick with Windows 7 (…”It isn’t fair, but they don’t care, that I can’t find F*****g Solitaire”….)

When we moved, my 2015 laptop, running on Windows 7, was labouring, crashing, not responding to commands, giving me blue screens and multiple hard drive error messages. My new Lenovo has a lot going for it – extremely light, fast and not too expensive at all. But it came with Windows 10 pre-installed and an infuriating voice-activated robot called Cortana, who offers to solve any problem but more often will say “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.”

So Mr Microsoft, why did you dump Windows 7 (which, after this month will no longer be supported). in favour of an operating system that tried to look like Apple Mac and failed? Just like Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1, it has so many bugs you do so yearn for good old Windows XP. IT companies constantly upgrade and invent new software and gadgets. The manufacturers of computers, smart phones, mobile entertainment and all their peripherals have no choice, if they want to stay in business, but to continue selling us flawed ‘upgrades’. In the case of Windows 10, Microsoft forced us into it by withdrawing support for Windows 7.

Windows forums have a lot to say about 10, its dodgy updates and other shortcomings. The most irritating thing is the assumption (by Microsoft) that you will take up the expensive annual subscriptions to pre-installed software trials and store all your personal data in the cloud, at a cost, of course. After some reading, I managed to install Office 2010, which I bought and paid for once already.

The good news is there are plenty of ‘fixes’ out there for Windows 10 glitches. I found one key piece of advice (not from Microsoft). In Windows 7 I used the ‘recent documents’ link constantly. It was easily found under documents/folders. Windows 10 has done away with this useful tool.

Solution: use the keystroke Windows key/e. Thank me later.

She Who Also Has Windows 10 is now regretting asking me to upgrade her laptop. The worst part of upgrading was that (initially) we could not get the printer to work, or the network sharing we previously employed.

There is now a security feature called Network Credentials which requires you to enter your Microsoft outlook name and password if indeed you succumb to that malware-type exhortation. That only took me three hours to fix – to whom should I send the invoice?

Nevertheless, if you still have Windows 7 and it decides to stop working, you will be in trouble. The good news, if you are game, is that Microsoft’s free upgrade is still available (rather than buying it for $169). Not that I recommend it, but here is the link I used to download and install Windows F*****g 10 on SWAHWT’s laptop.

Vance Packard saw all that coming, three decades before personal and business computers became a mainstream, multi-billion dollar industry. Packard was well ahead of his time, writing a number of thoughtful books about consumerism and the stealthy way the industrial-military complex manipulates people to its own greedy ends.

The thesis Packard pursued in The Wastemakers is deftly summarised in an article found on Trove.

The author of The Hidden Persuaders and The Status Seekers analysed over-production and the planned obsolescence of so-called consumer durables.

“The average American family throws away about 750 metal cans each year,” he began. “In the Orient, a family lucky enough to gain possession of a metal can treasures it and puts it to work in some way, if only as a flower pot.”

Packard claimed that in 1960s America “each individual man, woman and child was using up to an average of eighteen tons of materials a year”.

The concept of eternal growth which developed after WWII required “insidious promotion and worship of ‘consumerism’ the encouragement of waste, the temptations of encouragement of waste and the temptations of limitless H.P (hire purchase).”

Sixty years after Packard published his book, consumerism and the advertising that encourages it is no less insidious. Rampant and shameless consumerism suggests that anything “used” is shaming to its owner.

“The escalation of self-indulgence and the planned chaos leaves the buyer bewildered and helpless amid that shambles of phoney price-cuts, sales prices, special discounts etc.”

As people often do when moving, we purchased some new consumer ‘durables’, well aware that the generic 12-month warranties suggested a limited life span.

Meanwhile, the Technics stereo system, bought from one of Brisbane’s Brashes stores in 1986, was still sitting in carefully packed boxes in the garage. Sure, I was listening to MP3s on my Bluetooth speaker, but it is so not the same.

The Technics system was top of its class in 1986 and still performs well. It has seven individual components all interlinked by a maze of cables and power cords (one feeds the other until finally, one goes to AC power).

The problem this time with installation was (a) delving through the five manuals to remember how to reconnect everything and (b) the speaker leads were too short. They were always too short, but in our previous home it was never a problem.

I am not, as you’d know, not the world’s most practical chap. But I’m stubborn (and cheap). I turned to YouTube’s host of geeky how-to videos. What I wanted to do was work out how to extend the stereos leads, which is hard to do when said speakers are sealed boxes which offer no easy way to replace leads.

The first video I found (1:47) when searching ‘how to open sealed speaker cabinets’ is a classic example of why you can sometimes find helpful hints, and sometimes not!

After I stopped laughing and explored some other more useful options, I went into town and bought a 6m roll of 14 gauge speaker cable and some electrical tape. I used a box cutter and a pair of pliers to hand-cut the cable into two lengths, stripped 1cm of plastic off both ends of each cable and then used electrical tape to connect the longer leads to the short speaker cables. As such jobs go, it is not pretty. But it works.

I finished setting up the system about 11pm and rewarded myself with a cup of tea, listening to Homeless, a vinyl album by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. As you may recall, the acapella African choir’s music formed the basis of Paul Simon’s amazing 1986 album, Graceland. Simon’s song Homeless is track 1, side one. Of course I fell asleep listening to side two and never got to flip the album over.

The really good news is there are a few hundred more vinyl albums in boxes in the garage. (Ed: Not that we have anywhere to store them).

Misheard lyrics and a sentimental playlist

Last Sunday, as we performed my only country song, Crossroads of Love, I allowed myself a sly inward chuckle at the misheard lyric (well, I mishear it): “So I look for directions in the stars high above’’.

It’s the kind of misheard line you’d expect of a 70-year-old bloke, but I’m not about to elaborate. This is a family show.

My songwriter friend Kelly Cork likes the song; he thinks it is a sin of omission that is has not caught the attention of a Kasey Chambers or a Garth Brooks. I always thought it was a bit corny, but it seems you can get away with corny in the country genre.

You will have to permit me a sentimental wallow this week, as I sit here at a bare desk with the laptop (and the dog) – literally the last things to be packed away. I dismantled all of my music-playing technology weeks ago, so now all I have is a tiny IPod with 1700 songs plugged into the car.

Music was uppermost on our minds last Sunday when, against common sense, we held a full-house farewell house concert with just two days remaining to finish packing.

We invited hinterland musician friends to perform: Jevan Cole, Karen and Murray Law, Tommy Leonard, Noel Gardner and Alex Bridge and Kelly Cork. A sumptuous afternoon tea was provided by the audience (Laurel had packed away her baking trays).

The Goodwills Trio ended the day with a set culminating in a medley of well-known travel songs. Not a dry eye in the house! Thanks to Helen Rowe for going the extra mile to get to rehearsals. Thanks also to Woodfordia Inc for sponsoring our concerts over the years.

In the fullness of time, we’ll be producing a history of our house concert series – the first one in Brisbane in 1996, when Margret RoadKnight agreed to be our guest. We held 40 or 50 concerts at Fairfield when we lived there and another 90 or so from the first one in Maleny in 2003 (Margret RoadKnight featured once again).

If you missed out leaving a comment in the guest book that was passed around, you could join the many people who have emailed us with comments about our house concerts. The plan is to print them out and paste them into the book.

This week, I decided to answer the question I get asked a lot about my (songwriting) influences. They are too many to count, although most will be appalled by the omission of Dylan, Springsteen and other mainstream songwriters from this top 20 Spotify list.

Bob’s Spotify Playlist (courtesy of Frankie’s Dad) There are Spotify instructions below, but if you’d rather, FD has also compiled a YouTube playlist

1/ White Winos – LWIII (Last Man on Earth)

Loudon Wainwright’s ever-so slightly wrong tribute to his mother with the last line of every verse left hanging;

2/ Disembodied Voices – Neil and Tim Finn (Everybody’s Here)

New Zealand’s best songwriters reminisce about their childhood growing up in a musical household.

3/ Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner – Warren Zevon (Genius), the title of the song says it all, the ultimate ballad about mercenaries.

4/ A Case of You– (k.d. lang’s version of Joni’s classic song), from Hymns of the 49th Parallel, a magnificently produced album of contemporary Canadian songs;

5/ Clare to Here (Ralph McTell) – poignant tale from Ralph’s early days as a builder’s labourer, as told here in this 2007 live performance;

6/ It’s Raining – Stephen Cummings – from the album Spiritual Bum, a beautiful album of songs from the former lead singer of The Sports (and hopefully an omen);

7/ They Thought I Was Asleep – Paul Kelly – classic story song from Australia’s best – and we’ll never know what happened!

8/ Our Sunshine – Paul Kelly – included here for its brilliant first line ‘So there came a man on a stolen horse and he rode right onto the page.’

(Ed: And as what I think is an interesting aside, Ned Kelly’s horse was named ‘Mirth’.)

9/ Who Know Where the Time Goes – Sandy Denny.

The story is that a young Sandy Denny had the words to this beautiful ballad in her guitar case and it had to be prised from her by Fairport Convention band members who immediately saw its potential;

10 Cold Kisses – Richard Thompson.

This sly story about an insecure man in a new relationship is only bettered by a guitar hook no-one I know has ever been able to reproduce;

11 Took the Children Away – Archie Roach

Seriously, this should be taught at schools;

12 Cry you a Waterfall – Kristina Olsen

Kristina Olsen typically tells a hilarious story before she sings this tribute to a friend taken in an automobile accident. It’s a fine performance technique when you catch people at their most vulnerable;

13/ Say a Prayer – Fred Smith

A tragic love story woven into a snippet of Australian history of war in the Pacific;

14/ Cat’s in the Cradle – Harry Chapin

My song Watching as You Sleep has a similar theme to Harry’s lament about not having enough time for your kids when they are growing up and then the worm turns (‘he turned out a lot like me’)

15/ Lives in the Balance – Jackson Brown

It was always a wonder to me how this stinging critique of American interference in other countries’ politics is not better-known.

16/ The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – The Band

Robbie Robertson’s well-researched story about the American Civil War, told from a Southern family’s point of view. It has a peculiar but effective rhythmic structure, as explained in the link below.

17/ Hello in There – John Prine

The master of brevity and nuance tells a Cat’s in the Cradle type story about a lonely old couple: ‘We had an apartment in the city – me and Loretta liked living there.’

18/ Sailing to Philadelphia – Mark Knopfler and James Taylor

The story behind the Mason Dixon line, splendidly rendered by two of the world’s best songwriters;

19/ Soldiers’ Things – Tom Waits – the growling poet of life on skid row at his best here: ‘Everything’s a dollar, in this box.’

20/ Paradise – John Prine

Prine’s anti-fossil fuel anthem from a childhood in western Kentucky.

Here’s an extra song, but it’s not on Spotify. It fits well with Paradise – “If you’ve got money in your pocket and a switch on the wall, we’ll keep your dirty lights on.”. Watch and listen here:

Keep your dirty lights on – Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott.

The refrains of both songs deserve to be sung out loud at next Friday’s Strike 4 Climate rallies.

So, while the homeless Goodwills wander off to the south-western plains, let it be known that you will never find our music on Spotify. Not until they lift the streaming royalties by a respectable margin. Despite its reputation as a music distributer that short-changes musicians, Spotify is an incredibly user-friendly, massive musical database. No wonder at last count they had 217 million subscribers (including the free accounts).

Next week: Expect FOMM late next Friday as I will be attending the Strike 4 Climate rally in Brisbane – an eyewitness report!