SuperHappyDevHouse

New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development have released from documents on the ongoing ACTA negotations.
http://news.business.govt.nz/news/strategic/article/9761

Smarter people than me have read these, and found nothing new revealed.

The last round of negotiations was in Mexico - the next round of talks is right here in New Zealand.

quick recap:

ACTA (anti counterfeiting trade agreement) is a treaty currently being negotiated by the world's weathiest countries, including New Zealand. It is officially about things like stopping the fake prada handbags trade - but there's also been leaked documents showing that big media have been asked for their wishlist such as 3 strikes internet disconnection that we protested so loudly against in NZ's s92a of the Copyright act.

It would be disastrous to have stopped such New Zealand laws that give out punishment (internet termination) without trial or appeal, like the s92a did, only to have it implemented anyway via a treaty that our parliament ratifies. Now is the time to make noise.

This need to stop fake prada is so important, it's been classed as "National Security", so none of us lowly citizens are allowed to know what's actually being negotiated. This also is not standard practice for treaty negotiations to be secret.

All Official information act requests, in several countries, have been unsuccessful in finding out what they're putting into this treaty - cos, you know, national security.

The next talks are in Wellington in April - standby for more info later on citizen action.

Quotes from the MED release make it clear, this is a internet copyright treaty:

Section 4: Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in the Digital Environment

This section of the agreement addresses some of the special challenges that new technologies pose for enforcement of intellectual property rights. Elements under discussion in this section include the availability of remedies:
in cases of third party liability, without prejudice to the availablity of exceptions and limitations;
related to infringing material online, including limitations on the application of those remedies to online service providers;
related to the circumvention of technological protection measures, including the availability of exceptions and limitations;
related to the protection of right management information, including the availability of exceptions and limitations.

Some recent press
NZ trade may face closer scrutiny under ACTA - computerworld NZ
Acta talks in 'bits and pieces' - Dominion Post
NZ has no place in anti-democratic ACTA dealings - Tech Liberty

My blog post from last year on the leak of a draft version of this treaty: http://coffee.geek.nz/acta-its-bad-very-bad.html

Last year the SharePoint community in New Zealand hosted the very successful SharePoint community conference in Wellington.  This year they are doing it again. 

This is the New Zealand conference to learn about both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 with expert local and international speakers presenting on topics that will help you understand and succeed with your SharePoint implementations and add real value to your organisation and businesses.

In addition to the session content you'll have ample opportunities to network with your peers in the community and technical and industry experts including local and international Microsoft Most Valued Professionals and New Zealand's top Certified Partners.

Don’t miss out on New Zealand's biggest SharePoint event of the year
Wellington June 9 and 10!

The unique thing about this conference is that it is for both business and technical communities.  Both were very well catered for last year and many business users who attended enjoyed seeing how others were using SharePoint and talking with each other about how to do things with SharePoint that they hadn’t thought about in the past.

If you are a SharePoint expert or if you’ve used SharePoint to drive business change in your organization, there is an opportunity to share your knowledge with the rest of the community.  The convenors of the conference is looking for speakers, so get your suggestion in by emailing them at info@sharepointconference.co.nz.

The registration fee is $600 per person, group bookings are available, and they expect to sell out, so get your registration in today.

We’re looking forward to being there and sponsoring the event, so I look forward to seeing you there!

Full details including registration are available at www.sharepointconference.co.nz.

If you are in Australia, the same organizers are working with the Australian community to do the same in Australia.  Details of the Australian conference are here.

Q: why do baby clothes have pockets, but women's clothes do not?
A: bebe can carry my cellphone for me.

btw, i won again.. i wouldn't mind being defeated by Jo, but couldn't let myself lose to mauricio.

It was my first evening out on my own since Casey was born - i was mega tired, and i had no time to prepare. basically had to make it up. sadly I missed out a bunch of stuff i wanted to say about OLPC and ACTA.

my summary of the other speakers:

Miraz: apple will take over the world
Mauricio: microsoft will take over the world
Me: robots will take over the world
Jo: non-geeky people will still not take over the world
Phillip: you're all predicting the obvious

this was organised by the ppl at http://up.org.nz, who alas haven't updated their website with anysummary 2 weeks later. there was someone filming the talks, but these never seem to make it to the web either.

so, you'll have to take my word for it

In an interesting story, The Next Web is telling us about a slip in the Vodafone UK Twitter account. A Vodafone UK employee with access to the company's Twitter account posted "VodafoneUK is fed up of dirty homo's (sic) and is going after beaver". Screenshot on the right, since the tweet has since been deleted (obviously).

Since then someone behind the VodafoneUK account has repeatedly posted "We weren't hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We're very sorry"." in response to queries from its Twitter followers.

This reminds us all that the power given to employees that face the public are much bigger than before. It's easy to see someone snapped under pressure, or after a more "demanding" customer asked one too many questions. But still is not an excuse for public displays of "affection".

The verdict is out in the case of numerous media/entertainment companies versus an ISP over in australia.

The entertainment companies wanted a ruling that an ISP is responsible for the actions of their customers - so they sued an ISP for "allowing copyright infringement to occur".

Now, we can't have that. If someone breaks copyright then they should be responsible for their own actions, not their ISP, not the mail service, not the maker of the fax machine, not the people who built a photo sharing website.

Commonsense prevailed, and the judge ruled in favour of the ISP. The entertainment companies now must pay the ISPs legal costs.

I've picked some of that commonsense from within the judge's ruling:

In summary, in this proceeding, the key question is: Did iiNet authorise copyright infringement? The Court answers such question in the negative for three reasons: first because the copyright infringements occurred as a result of the use of the BitTorrent system, not the user of the internet, and the respondent did not create and does not control the BitTorrent system; second because the respondent did not have a relevant power to prevent those infringements occurring; and third because the respondent did not sanction, approve or countenance copyright infringement.

On the incorrect use of the word "theft" to describe copyright infringment:

As an aside, the Court notes that AFACT, the organisation which the applicants use to aid in enforcement of their copyright, itself blurs the distinction between tortuous copyright infringement and criminal acts involving copyright, as seen in its name: Australian Federation Against Copyright _Theft_.

yup, copyright infringment is copyright infringement. Theft is something else. There are many illegal actions that deprive others of income, such as crashing a car into their work vehicle; blocking the entrance to their shop; slander; violence; - many actions that can cause someone to lose income, but that doesn't magically make their actions equal to theft. It's illegal, but theft is a different crime. The language we use to describe copyright infringement is important. We should not let extremist frame the debate in incorrect language. They're not thieves, they're not pirates, they're "copyright infringers".

Scenarios where I firmly believe that copyright infringement is not wrong include: Copying a movie you own on DVD to your ipod touch to view on a long plane flight later; Quoting from a text book to prove a technical point; Circumventing copying restrictions so the visually imparied can access a text/artwork; Backing up your ebook collection;

AFACT is the Australian version of NZFACT, the group who lobby for draconian laws in NZ

The judge also comments on AFACT's unwillingness to even stand behind the accuracy of their accusations in infringement notices, yet they demand ISPs act on them:

The AFACT notifications are not statutory declarations, nor do they have any statutory basis. At no point did [AFACT director Neil Gane] swear to the truth of the allegations contained in such Notices. At no point does he state that he personally had taken reasonable steps to ensure that the information and statements in the notice were true and accurate.

These folks want ISPs to cut off their customer's internet access, based on accusations that they're unwilling to even declare as accurate. This illustrates one big reasons why ISPs are uncomfortable with these "three strikes" laws. Who is liable when the accusations are wrong? The ISP can see you're downloading some data, how are they to know it is a piece of Sony music without permission, or a recording of your nephew playing violin? If they get it wrong, what next? or an even better question: since when was it okay for your ISP to spy on your internet traffic? Is someone's copyright enforcement really more important than everyone's privacy?

New Zealand's own APRA believes that "Without the content industries, the internet would be empty."
The judge in the iiNet comments on this claim:

T]he claim made throughout these proceedings that bandwidth usage or downloading is somehow necessarily, predominantly or even significantly copyright infringing, is simply not established on the evidence. The Court finds the applicants’ attempt to cast a pall over internet usage, such that it is assumed to be infringing, unless otherwise shown, is unjustified.

Creative freedom have a longer transcript of these inflated sense of self that media companies have

quote from AFACT directory Neil Gane

"[W]e believe this decision was based on a technical finding centred on the court's interpretation of how infringements occur and the ISP's ability to control them."

and response from Boingboing:

Ah yes, technical findings, as in, technically, your theory that ISPs have a duty to spy on all their users and shut down anything that you don't like was technically incorrect, because it is a technically insane idea.

via:
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/story.html?id=462
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/03/awesomely-awesome-au.html
http://robertcorr.com/2010/02/afact-v-iinet/
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090720/0233385600.shtml

i was late to work today (food poisoning all night, not fun), so it was me that answered the phone at 9am.

background info: plunket is new zealand's non-government community support service for babies/infants.

them> I'm calling from plunket. we have a weekly mothers group starting up at [2 blocks from my house], for mothers with babies the same age as your Casey
me> I'm working fulltime right now, would it be at a time i'm likely to get there?
them> oh, no, it's in the middle of the afternoon. oh well, i can still add you to the mailing list.
me> well, my husband is a fulltime father, is he welcome at this group?
them> oh yes, it's for parents, even though i said mothers. we should change the name. infact i'm changing it right now. it's a parents group, not a mothers groups.

heh.

Apparently advertising standards in New Zealand wouldn't allow a company saying anything bad about a competitor's service or product - even if it's true - so a TV ad like this one wouldn't be produced here:

It won't matter anyway, because in terms of coverage, both of our largest mobile operators claim to have us covered - almost completely.

For example, Telecom New Zealand has a XT mobile network that "covers 97% of the places Kiwis work, live and play."

Vodafone New Zealand also operates a rather large network, even though the blurb on their website is quite confusing: "Our 3G Broadband (HSDPA) network currently covers areas in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Whangarei, Whangamata, Tauranga, Rotorua, Taupo, New Plymouth, Wanganui, Napier, Palmerston North, Nelson and Queenstown. If you're travelling outside 3G broadband areas, our 2G (GPRS) network will cover 97% of the places people live and work in New Zealand. Please note, however, that you will experience considerably slower speeds when connecting onto the GPRS network. We have 97% coverage of where people live, work and play in New Zealand."

I have asked Paul Brislen to clarify this, so the official short answer is "We have 3G coverage (including 3G Extend) to 97% of the population. We also have 2G coverage to 97% of the population." (actually his email provided a lot more information). So I'd say they have us covered too.

Now my question to you. If those two giants can't compete in coverage, then what features would you use as a selling point if you were in charge of the marketing for these companies? Post in the comments below (and yes, "We operate a reliable network" will probably appear in the replies).

UPDATE: At the risk. Even if you work for one the companies - or the other - your anonymous comments are welcome on this post. It's about fun and trying to find something worth in all the marketing blurb we are bombarded with.

If you follow me on twitter you might already have understood something: last week I gave my two months notice to my employer, Avanade Italy. I've been working with them since the end of 2007, and during the almost 2 years and half I learned a lot. Especially I added to my skills-set some competencies I never had the chance to practice working for a web agency and for a product company: the so called consulting skills. I also had the great opportunity to coach on the job some junior developer that just come out from university (or with little experience): some were more receptive, other less, but at the end I hope they learnt some of the principles of good coding and software design.

And also worked with many great colleagues, some which I’m really going to miss.

Avanade is a great company, so why am I leaving?

• Web Development - In Avanade one thing was really lacking: some real web development. I'm a web developer at heart, and in Italy all of the "real" web development (where with real I mean big B2C websites or big online magazine/newspaper) is developed by web agencies like the one I worked before going to NZ.
• Product expert vs software developer - It seems like all the big consulting companies are trying to sell solutions based on products that require very little to almost no development work: like SharePoint, CRM, BizTalk, Commerce Server and so on. I’m not interested in becoming an expert on customizing a specific product: I’m more interested in “custom development” and in the way people work together.
• Italy is getting worse and worse every day - Italy is a mess: it might have great natural and historical places but if you are not a tourist Italy is not a good place to live.
• No “my office” - And the last reason is that the working condition of the consulting industry are really bad: 90% of your time is spent at the customer site, working a small 15” laptops, sitting in temporary places, with just enough space to fit your laptop and move the mouse. And I really miss a place I can call “my office”.

I think you might have heard of my new employer: it’s called the European Union, and specifically I’ll be working in at the Council of the European Union.

I applied to the open competition for becoming an EU official in the field of IT when I was still in New Zealand, in summer 2007. It took one year and half to pass all the stages of the competition, and then one year for someone to pick me up from the pool of possible employees. Starting from the the 1st of April, I’ll join the IT department as Team Lead and Architect of the team that is building all the public facing web sites of the Council… and as you have probably seen yourself, there is lot of work to do.

So, after more then 3 years I’ll work on public websites again. And my first task will be moving the team away from the VSS Hell and trying to steer it to a more Agile way of developing software.

But I’m not only changing job, I’m also changing country: I’m going to live in Brussels, Belgium.

Unlike 3 years ago, I’m not going abroad because I want to live in that specific country, but because I want to go away from Italy: I already know I’ll miss the Alps, the lakes, but, as I said before, living here is becoming very difficult. So I’ll consider myself in self-exile and I’ll come back to Italy if/when things get better.

And, if you were wondering, I’m moving with my wife Daniela, which resigned as well, and will look for a job as UX in Belgium after she learn some French.

A nice thing about Belgium is that there is a vibrant development community, both in the .NET space and in the opensource space. I already know some developers from Belgium, like Ivan which I met in New Zealand, and some other MVPs I know through blogs and twitter. And I’ll try to know more of them at the upcoming MVP Summit in two week.

And also being in the middle of Europe, it means it will be easier to go to all the conferences held in London, Amsterdam and in Scandinavia.

But I’ll also keep on working together with Emanuele and Claudio to organize the future editions of the Italian ALT.NET Conference.

PS: Since many people are asking: “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” is the title of a book from the  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series written by Douglas Adams. But also a geeky way to say goodbye with an hidden meaning.

PPS: If you know Italian, there is also a similar announcement on my Italian blog: Self-Exile.

In the last couple of weeks we have seen a series of articles in our mainstream media about "bill shock". A "bill shock" happens when you travel overseas and get a surprisingly large bill on your mobile usage.

I do not have sympathy for people who claim "bill shock" because people know there are roaming charges involved when you travel. When you arrive in another country both Vodafone and Telecom send SMS warning users of different costs for voice and data connections. You signed a contract that says you have to pay for roaming costs.

I don't like the mobile data roaming costs as anyone else. I think our telcos simply make as much as they can - it's unbelievable a mobile operator in the U.S. can give their customers 5GB of mobile data for a fixed price, but charge visitors something that (adding up the margins) comes to $10/MB. The mobile data roaming prices are a joke.

But there's something else that local companies will have worry more and more with the adoption of VoIP solutions - the old telephone fraud.

Just to give you an idea, a company has a digital PBX. For some reason it's not completely secure and some crooks find it. These people then enter their own configuration in this digital PBX and create a "company" to sell cheap calls to China, Korea, South Africa. They sell some calling cards around and publish their "access number". Callers buy these cheap services, call the access number and after the dial tone enter the number they wish to call and get connected - all using the unsuspected company's digital PBX over their VoIP lines.

Companies may find this after a month or so, when the first bills come in. But by then they suffered under a constant stream of outbound calls and have to pay for it.

This is kind of tricks work with new digital PBX systems, but also with older ones. An unsecure route to an outside line, a non-secure voice mail access and things can be done, easily.

This is being discussed on Geekzone here, and shows an interesting series of questions:

• Should the telco monitor your usage and contact you if patterns change (a la credit card companies?)
• Should the telco be responsible for a misconfigured VoIP installation that their technicians are not involved with?
• Should an insurance be required for telephony services now?
• Should insurance companies charge less from companies using VoIP installed by certified technicians?
• Should the telco "forgive" the bill and simply pay for the calls that are not their problem in first place?

What do you think?

Just a quick note in case you missed it, that SQL Server 2008 R2 will be hitting the pricelist (i.e. available for purchase) in May.

Full details here.

Microsoft has released a small update to Windows Mobile, its phone operating system. Windows Mobile 6.5.3 is a step ahead in the "facelift" of this smartphone platform, and the latest update brings the following new features:

• Capacitive touchscreen support
• Platform to enable multi-touch
• Touch controls throughout system (no need for stylus)
• Consistent Navigation
• Horizontal scroll bar replaces tabs (think settings>system>about screen)
• Magnifier brings touch support to legacy applications
• Simplified out-of-box experience with fewer steps
• Drag and drop icons on Start Screen

I am told the native browser performance has improved, with decrease in page load time,  better memory management, pan & flick gestures smoothed, and zoom & rotation speed increased.

The OS comes with updated runtime tools (.NET CF 3.5, SQL CE 3.1), and support for Arabic read/write document.

The update in itself is a small release but it should bring the venerable operating system closer to current consumer markets. The first handset with the new operating system is the Sony Ericsson Aspen, just announced.

Screenshots below - click for larger versions:

I have been using TelstraClear cable modem services for many years, in its many different "brands" - Chello, Saturn, TelstraClear - and really enjoy having a plan that provides me with consistently good speeds and reliability (but don't try calling their customer services line).

Digital media in all its different forms is now part of many families every day life. Here at home we are able to rent and buy movies from iTunes at any time and have those quickly delivered to our media center. We have two VoIP lines at home, being completely POTS free. We have 100GB+ of online backup stored at Mozy servers - including all those iTunes movies, music, family photos and short movies captured with our Flip video camera. We have six computers at home, and we work from home.

This is all possible because we subscribe to a TelstraClear 80GB cable modem plan with good download and upload speeds - and frequently go over the cap. I don't mind paying for the service when it provides me with the means to exercise my freedom - freedom of work, freedom of play.

A few years back, Dr Allan Freeth, TelstraClear CEO was quoted as saying "the main result of faster broadband links to the home may be more downloads of pornography and movies rather than improvements to productivity." This was also reported on Computerworld.

That statement made then InternetNZ Executive Director Keith Davidson jump with a release saying "Dr Freeth's view that true high-speed broadband available at home is not important for New Zealand's future is not a view we share. High speed broadband - 100mbps and more - is vital to New Zealand's future" .

So what? The Internet is for Porn (safe for work except for the word "porn"). But try watching this short movie on a TelstraClear connection - even a fast 10Mbps connection - and you might have problems. Actually since just before September last year people started reporting problems when accessing YouTube clips over a TelstraClear connection.

This problem is still going on, and while TelstraClear have very quietly admitted there's a problem, it seems the solution is not coming any time soon.

Could it be that politics of peering are involved in this? Peering is a very sensitive subject within TelstraClear. Dr Allan Freeth remarks were "Peering has become an extremely emotional issue, as noted in the recent Internet NZ report, which also noted there was no evidence of market failure. Our decision was a commercial one - we need to earn a return for the use of our assets. While some people believe the Internet is 'free', I can assure you my shareholder doesn't see it that way. Organisations that have content they want to supply to end users can buy a service from us, which is tied in with the cost of national carriage. This is still more cost effective than international bandwidth."

A lot of an ISP traffic goes to all of Google's properties. YouTube is probably the biggest one of those services and to help reduce traffic, Google does peer locally with larger ISPs. It basically comes to this: Google is clever and wants free (or low cost) distribution of its content. To this end they enter an agreement with larger ISPs and colocate cache boxes.

Of course if your ISP don't have one of these boxes then your traffic to Google's online properties needs to find the content somewhere else. In TelstraClear's case it seems this traffic goes all the way to the US and back.

There are local YouTube caches in New Zealand, with other ISPs. But the problem then is back to the peering camp. It seems TelstraClear rather have a lot of traffic going out over international connections than to have it flowing locally and pay for it to a competitor.

If this is not the case, I'd love to see an explanation from TelstraClear - something I feel they owe their customers. To me it comes down to YouTube access through TelstraClear is crippled and the way the company acts is disrespectful to their paying customers.

My contract at Innaworks ends at the end of March this year. I am planning after that to move to London, try to find a job there and hopefully find time to travel around a bit while I am at it. I will most likely leave in April or May, depending on airfares, how long it takes to get a visa, and a few other things. I have just now paid the visa application fee and filled in the first part of the form. It is quite a process.

If any of you have any advice about travelling in general, London in particular, finding work, or contacts in London or elsewhere in the UK then I would be happy to hear from you. I would also like to catch up with everyone here in New Zealand before I go, so if you want to catch up or hang out sometime let me know.

I also need to get rid of my bed, lounge suite, and possibly other furniture (chest of drawers, desk). If you might be interested in buying these off me or borrowing them while I am away, let me know and I can give you more details.

Song: Code 64 — Leaving Earth

thanks to the ninjas who migrated geekspeakr.com from Drupal5 to Drupal 6, and to a happier server during LCA2010

quote from Liz Henry, who really enjoyed the hackfest:

It was like Christmas – I hung out with kick ass open source people all day long, heard great talks, gave a talk and asked for more coding and development with other women, and then got to do that very thing with people I greatly admire!

and thanks to Catalyst for the use of their boardroom and intarwebs.

From Jerusalem:

To Nowhere:

To Middle Earth:

A great day on the Whanganui River yesterday.

Hopefully it’s not another three years before we get out again! :-)

Microsoft will start pushing this promotion tomorrow (1st February), but it is already available so if you would like to be in to win an all paid trip to Los Angeles to attend the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference then read on:

"Microsoft would like to get to know NZ developers better so that we can better cater resources, training and events in the near future. We would like NZ developers to fill in a brief survey. Every completed response will go into a draw for a chance to win an all expense paid trip to the next Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Terms and conditions apply."

The T&C and survey are here.

I’ve been a little remiss not posting an update to the ignite training earlier.  The Ignite training originally scheduled for January (as detailed in my last post) has been rescheduled for the following dates.

• March 8-12 – Ignite Developer – Wellington
• March 15-19 – Ignite Infrastructure – Auckland

With Ian Morrish changing roles, we’ve needed to get another infrastructure trainer, so we have got Patrick Harkin from Intergen who will be doing the training.  Patrick has plenty of experience and credentials in SharePoint having passed the SharePoint Elite Infrastructure exam on the first attempt back in August (the first person to pass this exam).  He has also been working with SharePoint 2010 for some time and has recently been to Singapore to go through the Ignite training there.

We’ve managed to retain Wayne Ewington from Microsoft Consulting to do the Development training in Wellington.  Wayne has been working on SharePoint for some time and was in India recently doing the SharePoint Ignite Training.

The pricing remains at $1650.  There are limited seats, so get in quick.

SharePoint 2010 offers enhancements to drive productivity, a scalable unified infrastructure, and flexible deployment. We are enabling partners to get trained early on SharePoint 2010 and learn about these new features and enhancements through SharePoint 2010 Ignite.

SharePoint 2010 Ignite is technical training for SharePoint 2007 professionals who are looking to upgrade their skills to SharePoint 2010.

There are two Ignite offerings, Ignite for the IT Pro and Ignite for the Developer. Each track will cover 5 days/40 hours of technical training and content:

SharePoint 2010 Ignite for Developers

For developers: SharePoint 2010 provides the business collaboration platform to rapidly build solutions and respond to business needs. The training will show partners how to build custom applications with SharePoint 2010.

Trainer: Wayne Ewington (Microsoft Consulting)
Dates: March 8-12 (Auldhouse, Wellington)

SharePoint 2010 Ignite for IT Professionals

For IT professionals: SharePoint 2010 offers enhancements to drive productivity, a scalable unified infrastructure, and flexible deployment. The audience for the SharePoint Ignite IT Pro includes SharePoint 2007 professionals who are experienced in deploying and supporting SharePoint 2007 implementations. This training is designed to assist SharePoint 2007 professionals in their preparation to implement SharePoint 2010 projects.

Trainer: Patrick Harkin (Microsoft Consulting)
Dates: March 15-19 (Cliftons, Auckland)

Cost: $1650 ex GST per person

Register by calling Avenues on 0800 832 433 or emailing microsoftevents@avenues.co.nz or register online.

I'm back at work now, and the "breastfeeding" continues - i'm pumping the boobies 3 times a day, including all the sterilizing everything in the work kitchen. This has resulted in many conversations in the kitchen, with various working fathers and mothers, on the political world of formula versus breastmilk, and some awful first hand stories of how ashamed they were of not doing 100% breastmilk.

I think it would be good to have more public statements from mothers who did less than 100% breastmilk - you do the best you can, and formula is not the evil some people think it is.

Some people can't, because of milk supply, or they have to work to pay the rent, and I'd like to see more support of those that don't achieve 100% breastfeeding.

If you post a question or statement online (like this blog post) on formula you attract comments/replies, including some reasonable and helpful ones, but also including the "you can tell my kids are breastfed because they didn't die from cot death" statements, and other loveliness. Being a new parent is full of worry, so these eat away at anyone's confidence and selfworth.

We've chosen to do as much breastmilk as possible, but there's a choice we've made to use formula. There are government funded campaigns to ensure that any mother who does that feels as much guilt as can be instilled via national advert campaign on multiple media.

For example, it's safer for Casey's dad to take sterialized warm water and a packet of powder with him out of the house, than to take a bottle of breastmilk that will slowly warm up and bacteria multiply.

I also very sure that the statistics on breastfeeding (and studies based on those statistics) are getting it wrong. The midwife, plunket and a GP all recorded Casey as 100% breastfed, and she's not. They are very quick to write that down without asking too much - that coupled with the shame and guilt instilled in parents who use formula means they're less likely to be corrected.

I want actual scientific method studies to reach my own decision. I'm still doing research on what the actual difference is. There are a few studies that show no statistically significant difference between those full breastfed, and those only partically. There are studies that show all manner of advantages to breastmilk, heralding it as the cure all of everything, and then attempts to independant verify those studies have never happened, or show different results. The only thing that appears scientifically proven is easier digestion. Please note i'm still looking for more info, and my primary source is studies published online.

The most commonly repeated claim, is that breastfeeding results in a higher IQ. A study in 2005 in the USA tried to verify these claims using siblings to try and remove other factors that influence the results. Here's a quote from that study

Despite an enormous literature demonstrating better health and cognitive outcomes among breastfed children, the effects of breastfeeding are uncertain. This is because the vast majority of studies share a common weakness: they are nonexperimental. Their Achilles heel is selection bias. If a variable influences both the decision to breastfeed and the child outcome being studied, then omitting it produces a spurious correlation between breastfeeding and the outcome. For example, worse outcomes among children of younger, less educated, lower-income, and African-American mothers may correlate with their lower breastfeeding rates but be owed partly to disadvantages that cannot be captured in the regressions.

In other words: Those mothers that don't breastfeed have many other things in common, such as low income and less education. These factors can correlate with the child's ability to perform well in an IQ test or not. (i'm unconvinced that IQ tests are good measure of intelligence, but i'll save that for another post).

There is the UN/World Health Organisation statement that "breast is best", and New Zealand has signed up to this.

There was a time, long long ago (aka before the 1980s) when breastfeeding in public was not a right, and breastfeeding in the workplace was never tolerated. It became a feminist issue to regain the right to breastfeed. That battle continues and I wholeheartedly support this, especially for those that breastfeed way beyond 6months. We need to not make mothers feel ashamed breastfeeding a 2 year old in a cafe. It's their choice so either support or butt out.

It's also important to remember this is a political and cultural campaign - at some stage it turned into pseudo-science, in which any study that shows a slight benefit in breastmilk was heralded loudly, and any study that was inconclusive or disagreed was left quiet. These selective studies are used well to lobby for the right to breastfeed - but at the cost of shame for those that don't.

We live in New Zealand, and have a some of the cleanest watersupply in the world. This is important as many studies compare breastmilk with formula made from contaminated water - or prepared with less than enough powder because of the high costs of formula.

I am not a medical professional, but i do understand both statistics and the importance of scientific method.

My own conclusion: Breast milk, according to the statistics, is probably better, but not by much.

Please note: comments on this post will be heavily moderated.

Tonight i defend my claim to a sparkly pink tiara at Bloggers Predict 2010
Thursday 28 January 2010
5:30pm - 8:00pm
Where: Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce, level 28, The Majestic Centre, 100 Willis Street

The 2010 lineup
Brenda Wallace (@br3nda) Current tiara-holder, Brenda was UP Visionary of the year for 2009, can she defend her title in 2010? The Capital City’s geek girl extraordinaire and queen bee of the software community, Brenda is to mobile technology and open source what honey is to brown bread, she makes it taste better! Brenda blogs on Coffee.geek.nz about coffee, gadgets, opensource, wellington, new zealand, music, and above all things: freedom.
Philip Fierlinger (@skyrize) From Silicon Valley to Silicon Welly, Philip’s web design expertise and has been eagerly sought after by online businesses and conference-goers alike. Currently design chief at Xero, blogger at Turntable Media Philip’s passion for web usability also led him to establish his own consultancy.
Mauricio Freitas (@freitasm) Geekzone head honcho and microblogging enthusiast. If there’s a new gadget being launched you can be sure Mauricio has an opinion about it. Been renovating his kitchen for last 6 months and has forgotten how to cook, however is on first name basis with all the (good) cafe owners in town. Possibly Wellington’s most avid “Tweeter”.
Miraz Jordan (@miraz) From MacTips to community I.T. and other “Oddities”, Miraz must surely be one of Wellington’s most prolific tech bloggers and professional web content authors. From Bach to Buying a Car to Battlestar Galactica Miraz shares the full gamut of cultural experiences.
Joanna McLeod (@JoannaTMcLeod) Editor of Wellintonista, THE blog about Wellington, Joanna has started calling herself the Empress of the Internet because she can. Other parts of her media empire include her beauty blog Pretty Pretty Pretty and her guide to partying You Are So Entertaining.

I'll be posting my predictions up on the blog, just as soon as i finish writing them :-)