The threat posed by ISIL to all countries

It is being debated by some members of the community that ISIL does not constitute a threat to the citizens of Australia, that we should just let them go at it in their part of the world while keeping quiet and they will leave us alone. This line of thinking is naive at best and dangerous at worst. ASIO has reported they have lost track of about 60 odd people travelling to the conflict areas, they are suspected of training and fighting with the ISIL forces, they will at some stage return to the shores of Australia if not killed in action. They are now unsure exactly who they are and where they have been.

Just recently, two police officers were stabbed by a person of interest in Melbourne as he voluntarily came into a police station for questioning, he had already had his passport cancelled. Whilst shot and killed by the officers, he had lunged at the officers wounding both, he had in his possession a longer knife, one presumes for decapitating the slain officers and an ISIL flag folded up in his pocket. It is believed he was to upload the pictures of the decapitated officers to social media draped in the ISIL flag.

The graphics posted on this page are very confronting, I make no apologies for this as these images are freely found on the internet under a basic Google isis search. For a bunch of people seeking to take the world back to the dark ages, they are amazingly proficient in the use of social media. Beheading and crucifixions are taking place in public places to encourage public viewing and one supposes to take photographs and video to upload.  

ISIL are using such images as a measure to subdue people through fear, being shot is immediate while beheading is a slow excruciating death.

The image of the James Foley beheading has been confirmed as correct, a number of other images are yet to be confirmed but are still being reported whilst a large number have the ISIL flag in the background to confirm the identity of the group. An image of a beheaded girl in a blue dress has been circulating for a number of years and is thought to be taken in Syria and committed by the Assad regime. It is though this is done to encourage western governments, chiefly being the United States to intervene in the conflict.

Do we have the wrong priorities when selecting heroes?

I was sitting on my lounge chair on Saturday watching the highly disappointing AFL grand final capitulation and the post-game medal presentation. The young boy who handed Hawthorn Luke Hodge his premiership medal told him "you are my hero" and it got me wondering, do we have the wrong priorities when selecting heroes?

Having never met the guy, I have no doubt Luke Hodge is a good guy, we all know he is a splendid captain and exceptional footballer. However, he is a footballer first and foremost; he is not a scientist, a doctor, engineer or lawyer.

He is not quietly researching bio-medical solutions, tackling the big issues of eradicating the world of preventable diseases, a civil rights activist or fighting poverty. Yes, I understand the club requires players to perform community service as part of their contracts, this is a positive outcome for the community in some respects.

There are a worthy number of worthy unheralded heroes in the professions such as science, engineering and medicine to name just a few. I only hope we change our priorities as a society placing less emphasis on the achievements of sportspeople and more on the achievements on our unsung heroes.

What happened to Netscape?

Netscape was an early innovator in the fledgling internet technology industry. Before the internet boomed and became a part of everyday life, Netscape was the first mover as an embryonic search engine providing technological services for content providers to customise web content. Now, with so much user generated content on the web, it is almost incredulous to fathom that in the early 90s, business enterprises existed purely to generate web content.

The Netscape web browser, the then dominant browser in terms of market share, lost the majority of that share to Microsoft's Internet Explorer during what was belatedly described as the first of a number of browser wars.

Following immense competitive pressures, consumer usage of Netscape fell from over 90% market share in the mid 1990s to less than 1% by the mid 2000s. A number of strategic decisions led to Netscape's rapid demise including the charging of consumers a monthly fee to use the browser.

The decision by Microsoft to load Internet Explorer for free on all new Windows powered computers pretty much rendered Netscape's business plan obsolete.

Interestingly, American and European authorities launched anti-trust action against Microsoft following massive anti-competitive competitive breaches.

The action undertaken by both American and European authorities against Microsoft saw regulatory authorities winning large settlements forcing Microsoft to reveal source codes or face further fines. The damage however had already been done to Netscape, it was a case of too little, much too late.

Netscape, credited with developing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol securing online communication with SSL technology is still widely used to secure internet communications.

JavaScript, the highly successful client-side scripting of web pages, another Netscape innovation, is still the most widely adopted programming language.

Netscape was a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ exchange; floated in 1995, the stock was publically traded an until 1999 when it was acquired by America Online (AOL) in a pooling-of-interests transaction.

The deal, ultimately worth $10 billion USD involved complex cash and script transactions ensuring Netscape technology was utilised by a dominant internet business.

Shortly before the AOL acquisition, Netscape released the source code for the browser creating the foundations of the Firefox browser with the Mozilla Corporation coordinating future future development of the browser.

Mozilla fully rewrote the entire source code with all future Netscape releases based on the rewritten code, the protocols now power the successful free-to-download Firefox browser.

One could argue that while the Netscape browser is now an almost forgotten relic of internet history, a number of innovations outlived the initial product forming the basis of contemporary online software.

The product life cycle of the information age is relatively short, the initial challenge was how to not only develop the technical aspects of the business but how to develop a sustainable business plan generating revenues to finance the research and development providing a return on investment.

Out of the ashes of Netscape rose Firefox, technically the best of the current browsers with the strongest technical protocols.

Greyhound gift fee ripoff

Greyhound is an excellent business, yet why do they have to rip off clients with an $18 gift fee? I am now a fan of Greyhound after catching numerous buses across America, unfortunately I only had four weeks, there was so much more I wanted to see.

It is amazing though, to book a ticket for another person will leave you with an $18 gift fee. I learned of this after not unchecking a box. I have to ask, under what circumstances would a gift fee be warranted? This fee discourages customers from patronising your business instead channeling potential customers to rival bus companies such as Megabus, trains such as Amtrack or even airline travel in certain circumstances.

I made a mistake booking a ticket online, I was overcharged so when I brought my concerns to Greyhound staff on the day of my departure, they obligingly organised a cash refund on-the-spot. I must say, this immediately endured me to Greyhound, my normal experience is a fight to the death for a refund. But why charge such a fee in the first place when you risk driving customers away for very little benefit?

The topography of terror

The lessons of history must be highlighted so as to not be repeated, this is an excellent display to remind us of a period of time when the world sunk to the depths of depravity. We have learned from textbooks and video the reach of the Nazi party, their organisation and objectives. 

Really, as a world community, we haven't learnt that much, the current regimes are just far less organised.

2014 South Fremantle district grand final

I was lucky to attend the Australian Rules Football junior Grand Final fought between South Coogee, regarded as overwhelming favourites and Jandakot Jets on Sunday the 21st of September 2014 at Fremantle Oval. This is the home ground of the Fremantle Football Club, better known as the Dockers, a leading AFL professional football team. 

My nephew, Samuel De Jesus was deemed fit and selected to play despite only just recovering from a severe bout of the flu. He was able to train during the week ending up winning plenty of contested ball throughout the game.

The South Coogee Football Club, undefeated throughout the season was pitted against the fast running Jandakot Jets who have shown to be very competitive and capable. During the finals series, Jandakot proved to be more than capable of causing a major upset to the red hot favourites.

Fighting to the end and never giving up, the Jandakot Jets made the most of their limited scoring opportunities kicking 4.0 (24) with South Coogee booting 9.9 (63) to remain undefeated during the 2014 season to become 2014 premiers. 

The conditions were wet and slippery, the rains started just before bounce down with the showers increasing as the game progressed. The day before, a record September day of sunshine saw the mercury hit 36 degrees Celsius, Sunday was a whole different issue.

Marking the ball was extremely difficult under such adverse conditions, moving the ball forward from every contest was slow with no team breaking the game open.

Plenty of packs developed around the ball, there was plenty of stoppages with the umpires calling play-on at every opportunity. When kicking out from goal, the old style huddle saw players breaking into space with set plays. 

The handball was the key to success under such trying conditions, moving the ball out of congestion and into clear space paid dividends. Fast ball movement, run and carry and kicking long didn't work, the team that quickly adapted to the conditions was the team that was going to dominate.

The game was broken open in the final term, Jandakot was still in with a big chance halfway through the quarter with South Coogee belting through a host of unanswered goals to finally shatter the aspirations of the Jandakot players.

Snapchat - defying financial gravity

Evan Speigel, a product design major and Reggie Brown were both Stanford University students when they developed an application for a product development unit they were studying.

According to the Shapchat blog, Bobby Murphy who was studying mathematical and computational science at Stanford was brought in to write the source code for the application.

Their first project, Future Freshman failed to gain traction; however, they found they worked well together. The next project presented to the class, the mobile app that shares photographs then disappears in a matter of seconds received a less than positive response from class members.

They felt not only would people not use the app, the only ones that do would use it for sexting; as it happens, it is pretty close to the mark. A concern is the major user demographic is below the age of 16; Snapchat Inc does not condone the use of the app for pornographic use.

Speigel stated in the company blog that stories of job hunters undertaking emergency de-tagging of Facebook photographs before job interviews provided the inspiration for the development along with editing blemishes out of photographs to be uploaded to the internet.

Instead of photoshopping photographs on a personal computer, photographs taken with smartphones can be immediately edited and uploaded on Android and iOS devices. I love studying entrepreneurial ventures knowing full well that I will not be investing my own funds in such a start-up after losing plenty of money in my own eCommerce start-up.

It is of some concern that Snapchat Inc does not have a revenue stream, yet funding of $13.5 million from Benchmark Capital was confirmed in February 2013 valuing the company at $60 to $70 million.

Facebook Inc then made an offer of $3 billion that was rejected by Speigel with Google Inc making an offer of $4 billion to acquire the business, a further $50 million was required in venture capital, one supposes to keep the business solvent.

In a move resembling the Facebook fallout; co-founder Reggie Brown, sidelined from company ownership over a yet undisclosed dispute filed a lawsuit for loss of earning potential.

Further significant issues include photographs don't actually disappear and can be saved and/or retrieved, the collection of personal data and then the security of the data collected.

I don't use the app, I am however at a loss to how a business requiring significant venture capital with no revenue firstly receives acquisition offers of up to $4 billion and secondly has the audacity to decline acquisition offers by the leading tech companies in the sector.    

Is Dale Steyn a sook?

The recent media speculation surrounding the Michael Clark sledge to South African paceman Dale Steyn is not abating. We all know Steyn loves to sledge batsmen; he himself is a world class sledger initiating numerous exchanges.

Does that mean he, as a tail-end batsman, he is exempt from sledging? He feels that particular sledge was very personal and Clarke should apologise; video evidence may suggest that Clarke has already done so.

Recent ball tampering fines by South African bowlers Vernon Philander and Faf du Plessis in the past 12 months have tarnished the South African cricketing reputation to such an extent that the South African ethics committee publicly stated that "they are deeply concerned at the practice feeling that such behaviour cannot be tolerated from the national team."

Many media commentators are asking, what exactly did Michael Clarke say to Dale Steyn? Why did he take the comment so personally? Why has he taken to the media to vent his anger? Maybe, just maybe Clarke questioned why Steyn is able to gain early reverse swing in non-conducive conditions while other bowlers are unable to do so?

Brent Harvey needs to take a hard look at himself

The precedent was set earlier in the season, if Brent Harvey initiates a bump on Joel Selwood off-the-ball making head high contact and cutting him above the eye - he will be missing game time during the finals. 

Selwood was running with with his defender behind him, he was watching the play and didn't even see Harvey coming - that's not courageous. Selwood required stitches to keep playing then needed more stitches after the game to seal the wound correctly.

You make head high contact, you are suspended - it is that easy. Harvey has to show self-discipline, something he has consistently failed to do. This is Harvey's first week back after a three week suspension - too bad. North Melbourne are trying to argue insufficient force - the blood running down Selwood's face would indicate otherwise.  

Brent Harvey, the nasty little squealer should man up, he initiated contact when the player was not looking, he split Joel Selwood's eye and then screams when he is suspended for a preliminary final - it wasn't an accident.   

Hamlin Bay 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon

Opening a 2010 bottle of Hamlin Bay Cabernet Sauvignon with my father to watch the 2nd semi final between North Melbourne and Geelong on Friday night was an interesting affair. After being introduced to Hamlin Bay through a wine club a number of years back, I always seek out a bottle whenever I am in a bottle shop.

You have to look hard at the smaller bottle shops, the large chains tend to only carry certain lines of high producing vineyards, this smaller boutique winery struggles to supply the chains with volumes. What the do serve up though is high quality at small volumes.

Looking at the tasting notes; the 2010 was described as having aromas of red fruits and cassis dusted with chocolate and cocoa on a savoury background. That got me thinking, I have no idea what cassis flavours are so a quick google search of cassis first landed me on webpage describing a commune east of Marseille in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southern France near Bouches-du-Rhône.

After redefining my search to cassis flavours; I then learned this refers to an intense blackcurrant flavour, this I actually determined for myself. I was then intent on identifying the cocoa and chocolate overtones, they were there, although not big and bold, there was hints of chocolate flavours.

The tasting notes also described the wine as having a deliberately moderate pallet, a refined line of flavour, resting on a fine grainy tannin backbone. I thought the tannins were fine, this cab sav was full bodied whilst remaining subdued and stylish. This wine has a fairly good pedigree with 14 months in French oak, 25% was new oak with the remained second hand. I like this winery, I love drinking what they produce.

Alibaba

I like to follow the tech companies as a matter of interest; much to my embarrassment, I knew very little about the upcoming float of the Chinese tech company Alibaba Group Holdings on the New York Stock Exchange, so some research was in order. 

  
Looking at what they do, I read the core business activities around an English language portal handling sales transactions between importers and exporters; basically a business-to-business portal linking Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. I view with interest eCommerce businesses with little to no revenue, no solid business plans to generate solid revenue streams that tend to generate unrealistic expectations and pricing. 

The secondary business revolves around Taobao, the consumer-to-consumer eCommerce portal that is similar in operation to eBay targeting mainly Chinese consumers with revenue exceeding Amazon.com and eBay combined. This is not a business with shaky earnings going to market seeking shareholder funds to stay afloat, it does appear to have higher price/earnings ratio than all tech companies except Facebook.   

According to the Wall Street Journal, a market capitalisation of $155 billion will place Alibaba slightly behind Amazon.com in terms of size and approximately double the size of eBay. A fairly high projected price/earnings ratio sees of 18 times compared to amazon.com's 2.1 times and eBay's conservative 4.2 times earnings. This appears to be an extremely interesting IPO that will be well worth following.   

Wellington Dam - Collie

The Wellington Dam in Collie supplies water to the south west region of Western Australia, on a recent drive through the area, we stopped at the dam before heading to Bunbury.

The dam overflowed in September 2013, the first time since 2009. The last time a Perth dam overflowed was in 1996, the level of the Wellington Dam was once again close to overflow when we visited in November - a very wet spring accounted for the exccess water.

The outlet pipe shoots a stream of water down to the overflow region where a bridge allows access.

Only a small degree of overflow is occurring, this is the water exhausted through the outlet pipe at the base of the dam. 

S97 state titles

A long weekend is a time for rejoicing, especially at the end of a long Perth summer when you have three days of sailing looming. Yachts in this class are moored at the Royal Perth Yacht Club, South of Perth Yacht Club and Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Clubs on the Swan River.

As this is a blue water weekend; the yachts have to be motored down river, dropping the mast to clear the three bridges separating Fremantle and North Fremantle before mooring on the pontoons of the Royal Perth annex.

Rigging the yacht in the marina pre-race; the Royal Perth Yacht Club Fremantle annex requires yachts to be tied together, it makes rigging a little cluttered but very sociable.

The advantage of the S97 is the inboard diesel engine; no need to sail out of the pens, marina or onto the course. The downside was we snagged so much weed on the prop, we were slowed down on certain legs and paid dearly over the weekend.

Starting down the pin end, we believed a clear advantage could be gained by heading to the port side of the course, we sought clear air but got locked in position leaving us with limited maneuverability.

A great duel between yachts ensured close racing over the weekend, the difference between first and last was very narrow, any advantage required careful planning and positioning.

As the fleet splits heading towards the windward mark, we felt the advantage to the port side would give us a distinct advantage, however, we got buried at the windward mark on port tack.

Heading past the windward mark, setting the spinnaker pole and hoisting the spinnaker is where superior crew work pays dividends. Only a couple of weeks later, our forward hand was contacted by a radio station in regards to her being the oldest forward hand competing on the Perth waterways.

Spinnaker set and heading downwind, the light winds over the weekend suited a number of boats, unfortunately for us, heavy breezes didn't eventuate - this just wasn't our regatta.

What is wrong with TAFE?

I have been a lecturer for going on a decade now, for those of you who don't know what TAFE stands for, it is Technical and Further Education, but the real question is, what does TAFE really stand for?

As a technical college, vocational training in trades based skills drives industry and the economy, there is little doubt a highly literate and skilled workforce drives economic development - the Technical of TAFE. The equity side of the equation sees similarities to the community college model - the Further Education; community access and lifelong learning.

The vocational education and training (VET) sector sits between the high schools and higher education providers, their lower level qualifications are eroded by the high schools system whilst their higher level qualifications are regularly poached by the university sector. The real strength of the TAFE sector is technical training in the form of apprenticeships and community access.

But what does it really take to become a TAFE lecturer? Well, you need vocational competencies, a lecturer needs extensive experience in the industry, you also need to maintain such competencies and you then need training qualifications.

The Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is a totally worthless qualification, even deemed an at risk qualification by the auditing body. Making practitioners update to the latest qualification as the old ones were handed out in their droves in a race to the bottom does not improve quality.

Because, guess what? The low quality colleges churning out weekend Certificate IVs just do the same with the new qualification - they churn them out en masse.

The qualification should take close to six months fulltime study, a standard Certificate IV qualification aligned to the Australian Qualifications Framework is basically a supervisor's qualification.

Yet this qualification is often completed in just a weekend. I had to upgrade from the older qualification to updated qualification as required by the college, it took me just four hours to complete. Now while I held the older qualification, it doesn't seem much effort, I did, after all know the material well. 

You can imagine my surprise when some experienced staff, that is ten plus years employment, were unable to complete the upgrade themselves. As you can well imagine, the benefit to a practitioner of a four hour upgrade is highly questionable, it is purely a paper shuffling exercise, everyone knows it.

Then the department can say, we have a highly qualified workforce, that may be true, they have met their KPIs. The question remains, do we have a highly skilled and technically competent workforce? I would say no.

What TAFE and the vocational education and training sector needs is suitability qualified and experienced practitioners. That is dual skills, vocation skills qualified to the level they are instructing to and teaching level skills.

The problem then arises, to maintain top notch vocational knowledge and skills, the practitioner needs industry currency, that is, to remain working in the industry they teach.

To take three years to complete a university level teaching qualification usually requires three years fulltime study, to take this time out of industry seriously undermines vocational skills and currency, by the time the practitioner is ready to begin teaching, their vocational currency has already eroded.

The real troubles with TAFE stem from their middle management, that is, at the strategic business unit level. From what I have seen, upper management has shown the ability to strategically position the organisation in a heavily regulated environment.

The system recruits outside the system on many occasions, this has the ability to bring new ideas to the organisation, this has to be balanced with enough internal recruitment allowing managers with specific knowledge of the VET system to prosper.

At the strategic business unit level, program managers lack the skills to lead a team mainly due to the fact many colleges will not place program managers in their area of expertise. In an engineering discipline, the college would place a manager from aged care, child care or horticulture.

The program manager has to negotiate with business enterprises having a sole engineering purpose, if they don't know the industry, the sector or the organisations, then problems occur. The program managers do not have the skill to overcome such hurdles, generally holding no management qualifications or experience.

As a state government body, the ability to attract and retain suitable personnel is a burning issue, all too often, a strategic business unit is burdened by non-performing staff.

Not only is there no real performance management systems in place, management fails to follow such procedures. Yes, there is a policy document, that is what it is, a document saved in a computer somewhere.

In nine years, I have received only one performance review, apparently, according to colleagues in other business units, that is one more than they have received. I welcome a performance review, not only do I perform, I like many others exceed my job description.

I review the manager critiquing him on his ability to provide an environment conducive to perform my duties. In my one performance review, my name was correct on the cover sheet but different in the review, did he not know who I am or does copy/paste work all too well?

The real issue arises from investment in resources, every time I deal with industry representatives, colleagues and myself beg for old components and equipment for our students to disassemble and inspect during practical projects.

What this does is ensure management does not invest in the portfolio adding to a mish/mash of learning activities instead of a standardised professional approach. The strategic portfolio is not only profitable, it is highly profitable.

At the divisional directors level, they are able to siphon off revenue to prop up non-performing portfolio areas. They do not invest in the successful portfolio area, marginal areas not driving the state's productivity are targeted - madness.

The real issue is the design and implementation of learning programs, my specialty. As lecturers are employed with mainly industry backgrounds; the college does not set aside suitably qualified and experienced staff to develop high quality learning programs.

All too often, a program manager seeks a good worker with plenty of enthusiasm lacking in program design skills to throw together programs. 

A whole professional field exists in program design, instead all too often, embarrassing and unprofessional materials are whacked together not meeting industry training outcomes or learning objectives.

Indeed, most times, contemporary learning practices are largely ignored because the designer (that term is used freely) is unfamiliar with adult learning practices, learning models and facilitation methodology.

So, who are the losers here? The students learn material unrelated to their field, they are assessed against unrelated information and ultimately, when they fail, they are considered stupid. They have to remember inconsequential facts and memorise procedures for exams unrelated to their employment.

The employers are losers too, they send their apprentices for training, returning to work failing to meet their workplace needs resenting time consuming low quality training that they are required to fulfill. 

So, how is this quandary solved? Facilitators are not course design specialists, they instead need to concentrate on program delivery developed by suitably qualified and experienced staff.

Mid-level managers must employ course design specialists or purchase professionally designed materials contextualised for their clients.

Instead of shuffling funds around spreadsheets, they need to free up suitably trained and experienced course designers and offer a more professional service to their clients.

Program managers require the communication skills to negotiate with team members, the use of performance management techniques to identify possessed skills and knowledge whilst also identifying skills gaps to properly identify the correct person for the task.

Utilising incompetent people to undertake high-level tasks purely because of enthusiasm in an attempt to force more competent people to work harder is not management, all this does is diminish the capability of the organisation.

An engineering workshop manager does not ask the trades assistant to undertake intricate diagnosis and testing merely because the trades assistant works hard. A competent workshop manager knows the abilities of their team members utilising the most technically competent tradesperson.

The trades assistant may be asked to provide support to complete the job by removing covers, operating the machine, cleaning components and other task related duties.

The manager with no knowledge of engineering workshop management should be running the strategic portfolio like an engineering workshop. The problem is, they do not know how an engineering workshop runs apart from the occasional on-site visit that are nothing more than a photo opportunity.

Sure, they have budgets to maintain but really need to leave the bean counting to accounting and finance.