TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

The argument presents itself every now and again that perhaps the government should work with Telstra.

That’s partly a valid argument, I see a positive outcome from working with Telstra, the positives are good, it gets the infrastructure built and in a quick timeframe.

But, theres a lot of disadvantages and negatives to quickly outweigh working with Telstra. (No, they can have a break from being called ‘greedy pigs’, we all know they are now).

The negatives concern competition, and the long term disadvantage competition and consumers would suffer by the government intervening with the dominant supplier in the industry.

Short term goals would be acheived, we would have faster internet access, it’d be expensive, and way overpriced, and not everyone would go onto it, but it’d raise the OECD graph to the 512k speed that is offered as the base product on the Telstra network (pretty pathetic).

Medium term would see that no further investment was continued, simply because competitors would find it expensive, they’d be forced out of the market due to Telstra’s domination, and it would also affect facilities based investment in exchanges, as it would destroy any good reason to invest in exchanges. Limiting market share so that the dominant supplier is the only supplier is all around bad.

Long term, Telstra would be the only supplier of FTTH products, which would effectively kill competition in the industry, down to simple wholesale levels, and therefore allowing Telstra to dictate all prices the market pay for access to broadband services on a fixed network.

The effects of working with Telstra are very damaging. They will hurt the country in many ways.

It is very much better to regulate the dominant supplier to levels that encourage competition, once a level has been reached where competition can survive on its own two feet (so certainly, for Telstra’s own safety as well, review it every 3 – 6 months), dump regulation, and turn it into a free market.

The free market situation we all crave cannot exist safely, while the dominant market supplier exerts so much control over pricing of services and delivery of services.

That control can only ever be controlled by either structural seperation, or regulation. It’s better to regulate now that the sale is done, and if they do a good job on regulating Telstra so competition feel safe, and find it viable to invest, we can then slowly let the tethers loose on Telstra, and give them the ability to compete effectively in the market.

It might suck if you are a shareholder, but regulation has been a fact of Telstra for years now, and until industry invests deeply (which can’t happen without regulation), they are certain to remain to create the free market that Australia needs proceeding further into the future.

A good government will identify this, and create an ultimate goal to work towards this, without obviously excessive detrimental effect to Telstra.

Perhaps the secret to regulation is ensuring Bigpond is being run as a seperate company, and its own advertising and financials stack up to that of a competitive company, maybe that might cause things to become a little more balanced, stopping Telstra spending big dollars on ads for Bigpond (a disadvantage, because other ISPs aren’t able to spend as much on advertising, as excessively).

In any event, working with Telstra has more disadvantages, more negatives surrounding it, and those negatives are so strong, that it very well should stop any government working with Telstra.

Just while I think of it. The Labor plan is costed in such a way that the network Telstra has already has to be used to be built for FTTN.

I doubt Conroy has the future in mind, because working with Telstra will cause a big problem for competition in this country.

My vote is nearly locked in on the Coalition, because I feel many of the policies made have been policies that I can see as logical and agreeable. I can assume that will remain the case in the future. Every party will make mistakes, and will certainly make choices I don’t agree with, but the one I have most agreed with has been Coalition. So, it looks like (but may not be) a Coalition vote.

Enjoy!

Best news I have seen in a fair bit on the broadband scene.

I could be getting ADSL2+ soon, although, the ISP that is the only ISP to announce it thus far to announce it, is none other than the lunatics at Netspace.

Hopefully, this isn’t a Netspace only roll out (I highly doubt it), I think it is an Optus roll out, however, attempts to obtain this information from Netspace reps have been none other than ignored.

The news is great news, simply because we can finally move away from Telstra’s wholesale greed, and get some realistic prices on internet access from the professionals.

I do however, have significant doubts as to hosting a landline service on the Optus network, mainly because of issues that have been demonstrated with Optus in general.

That’s where a mobile phone comes in handy, prepaid mobiles are nice and cheap to maintain, so just having one of those will do the trick, in the absense of an LSS based service (ULL is what I gather is required for many optus DSLAM supplied services).

What can you do with an increased upstream (no real problem with 8Mb downstream, we don’t saturate that continuously)?

A lot more. I can host websites with bandwidth prioritisation right here. I can reduce delays in lengthy file transfers to and from internet servers. I can make VoIP a lot more reliable while transferring web files to a server for example.

And moving database backup files is made more easier.

Remote Desktop, easier again.

And in general, a lot of the issues associated with the artificially limited upload imposed by Telstra, are solved.

A lot of the cost issues of ports available from Telstra are solved.

In fact, the entire situation is solved, because except for the mandated ULL price that the supplier will pay, there is no issue with services from more professional companies like Optus, when compared to the service from Telstra.

The faster downstream poses no gain for me just yet, but that’s of course not to say that we wouldn’t get advantage from a faster downstream connection in the future.

ADSL2+ according to public available information is expected to be available some time in Q1 2008, with the likely being advised on Whirlpool as being Jan 2008.

Not bad! Took them long enough, but not bad at all! :).

The proof will always be there when it is actually active and my service is supplied on it, but sure enough, I plan to follow this in detail and be one of the first that does connect. Hopefully its February, it’ll make a good birthday present, and will also make for good timing for the finish of our contract with Exetel, though I probably will end up sticking with them, for the good value services, the only flaw with Exetel is the attitude displayed by management in their own forums and public areas, and the general attitude towards users by Exetel, which suggests that if Exetel don’t like you, they’ll disconnect you- something I would be keen to see challenged.

You have to take the good with the bad sometimes, and obviously Exetel is a nice case of this. Good value plans. Good service. Bad attitude of staff and members on their own forums. For an ISP that doesn’t do much in the way of support and passes the savings back to the consumer, they do a fantastic job and that would be the reason I stick with them and recommend them!

Enjoy!

… Well, it’s not misleading is it. It’s coming. Saturday.

Who to vote for is still the unanswerable question, for I am sure, many people, simply because there’s no real distinction between each party, mainly because it is dominated with me-too.

Considering a vote for Kevin or a vote for John is going to yeild many the same result (let’s just ignore IR laws), why vote for one over the other?

Change, as Mr Howard was talking with The 7.30 Report, seemed to raise eyes for me at least.
He claims theres no such thing as a changeless change of government.

And he is right, thinking about this.

If you vote Labor, you’ll have, certainly, ex union officials placed on the Nation’s top spots.
If you vote Coalition, the status quo is potentially maintained, and the only changes are the policies that have been revealed.

The safer vote seems to be the Coalition, because for those who don’t generally sit up a politicians arse all day (I don’t), the better vote is certainly going to be the one that is going to have the least negative impact, or where both have no negative impact, the better vote is the one which has the most positive impact, or where there is no difference in general for the positive, or negative impact, then the better vote will essentially be on history, and where history is no longer relevant .. Yep, here we are, the better vote will be to simply maintain the status quo and see what eventuates.

You simply cannot gamble with a nation, one which is primarily living off debt (no, not the economy, the state governments and the people who live within the states are generally in debt).

Which moves us away from the election to some level, and to the topic of Interest Rates.
The government doesn’t generally speaking have much influence over interest rates, the general interest rates are dictated by debt. And guess what?

The nation is full of debt, except at the federal government level.

We have many, many people inside the nation living beyond thier means, simply because they were too silly to see the debt filled nation coming, and instead decided to contribute to rising interest rates.

You see, even interest rates are a supply and demand issue.

If the banks are going to be getting hard earned dollars, from you, why should they come down in price? You max the cards out, they profit. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

In the last few years, you can generally pick any bank, check its price on the stock market, and it is liking the general trend has been a strong rise. I think I wrote a while back about an imaginary portfolio I placed on MSN Money site a few years back. I checked on that a few months back and CBA was the strongest performer.

There’s no real need to question why that is. With interest rates on credit cards hovering between 17 – 25%, you can easily recognise where those dollars are coming from.

Debt influences interest rates. The more demand there is for dollars, the higher the interest rates go to slow that demand down. And if you don’t have an interest bearing savings account with a bank, then you are the one losing out in the long term. The debt industry is where I see a boom happening. People are seemingly spending lots of dollars (and in some cases dollars they dont have), so getting those dollars back from many, many people will cause banks to rise interest rates (and they have been, I’ve seen term deposit advertising (nah, no term deposit for me, nothing to put towards one)) to the levels they are now. ie. I’ve seen them go from what was probably 4.5% a few years back to a whopping 7% that they are now. That’s a 3% rise, probably fuelled by consumer debt.

A good goal for many is almost certainly to plug dollars into an interest bearing savings account, if not for you, then Kids, who with BankWest can get 10%!!! That’s a fair bit of dollars for a kid putting away $20 a week. It compounds, and becomes a strong move.

The more dollars in savings accounts (whilst not a big fat strong 25% share market return), are a safer investment, and will essentially give back to you in the short, medium and even over the long term – these silly consumers have no idea how to manage debt, they’ll buy anything and everything they can get hands on.

Enjoy!

News that the parents of child that starved to death now have warrants issued against them for Murder has surfaced. Which is shocking really, because the father seemed to maintain and protest his innocence.

But if they truly were responsible for that (who lets a child get to that low weight in the first place?), then they should indeed be spending time behind bars for that poor childs suffering.

In other related news, the father that decided he would drown his 3 boys on fathers day, one as young as 2 years old, has been given 3 life sentences with no minimum periods (no parole).

Which is finally doing some good justice.

He has instructed his lawyer to appeal however.

Such a shameful crime. Your own kids, something you should be ‘proud’ of, drowned due to a retaliatory fight with the mother of the children.

I get the idea he thinks they were ‘property’ rather than ‘independant human beings’, which is a shame really, because when you look at a child as property, rather than a human being, the focus is lost on being parents (drivers and pilots of children’s futures), and the focus changes to how you manage and maintain the property (or damage).
A person is never property.

In other not so closely, but near related news.

Santa should no longer address people as ‘ho’s, in an Adelaide revelation, Santa’s are being told to use the ‘ha ha ha’ version, instead of the more thoughtful, and perhaps in some areas of the world, correct version ‘ho, ho, ho’ – No, we shouldn’t resort to african amercan jokes too much.

It’s a severe change in society when people ‘might’ get offended at the use of a long known term ‘ho, ho, ho’, because recent stereotypes of ‘african american people’ suggest the term ‘ho’ is actually short for ‘whore’.

I say, we ignore the slang of those who fail to learn english to a world recognised standard, and let Santa address every woman as ‘ho, ho, ho’.

When the defamation claims come in against Santa, they’ll have to go arrest him at the north pole – if they can find him, and prove that ‘ho’ is clearly defaming.

In the mean time, I intend to wish everyone a Merry Christmas (and not Happy Holidays) and certainly address as many women as I can, with ‘ho, ho, ho’ – I’m not anti-Santa.

The bigger topic this week, which caught a lot of my attention, is the Morris Iemma announcement, he plans to crash test the cars of street racers in a much, much more hard hitting smash at their attitudes.

They seem to think that because a facility for them to practice ‘racing’ – or stupidity, is hours away, they can simply use the public road in protest?

The public road is never a race track, it’s a public road, where all sorts of objects can be found, such as pedestrians, vehicles, potholes, pets, not-so-petted-pets, animals, debris, rubbish, and to top that off, they are public, so any of those objects are quiet capable, and quiet right, to interupt the path of other road users.

They should almost certainly remove licences from those that participate in street racing, clearly they shouldn’t have got them in the first place, exceeding the speed limit is pretty much one of the key objects you are required to pay attention to, and obey to get your licence.

Exceeding it by racing (and by 120Ks+) is perfect reason to take a licence off a road user. Remove the privilege from them. The car crushing should be a good enough deterrent however.

Election news, the communications debate was on today. 4PM on Sky News.

I got an email from the Telstra Active Supporters group telling me earlier, but due to the HTML layout of the email containing images and crap, I tend not to pay attention, images in emails to me generally presents itself as marketing so I pay near 10% attention to them.

But yes, I saw that, and didn’t watch it til the very end. Good news though, I can simply download it and watch it tomorrow, with thanks to ZDNet.

Labor earnt my vote by leading the market in sorting Telstra out, fixing operational seperation. They then lost my vote for scrapping the communications fund to build a not so needed FTTN network.

Back to no one appealing to me as being the party worthy of my vote. No one has presented to me a policy that opens my ears, that speaks to me. That earns my vote over the others, overwhelmingly.

Part of me says vote Rudd, at least we can get the boots on in 3 years and kick him in the rear if he stuffs up.

Oh and in more international news, a gundog took aim on its owner and fired a shot at him. The US dog owner placed his gun on the ground, left loaded, no safety, and his dog was simply seeking revenge for the lack of a good run the day before- perhaps?

So, certainly, give that dog a run, if you don’t, you might regret it.

And another ‘smart’ American decided to loosen a stuck nut (and that wasn’t his head), by shooting at it. The pellets from his shotgun injured him severely.

Don’t ban Guns, Ban Americans best sums up those two incidents.
And the same logic can be applied to the street racing idiots. Ban the idiot behind the wheel, the car isn’t the problem. The idiot is.

That’s the lweek of the news that was most noticed by me. Not a full recount, I left Lindsay Lohan’s generous debt repayment to Society – 84 minutes of jail time out, and several other articles out. Because if you really wanted the news, you wouldn’t be reading my blog, one which claims its dedication is to Technology and Entertainment, but finds itself focused on Broadband issues, Election issues, and stupidity found in some humans.

Enjoy!

Today I took a practice test for the lead up to my visit to the RTA with the driving school I am with.

Unfortunately, the test didn’t go so well, with just four fail items, and I had no idea why on earth I made them anyway.

Fail item 1: Colliding with a vehicle, pedestrian or object.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a pedestrian.

And before you think, wow, he smashed a car, it wasn’t a vehicle.

Unfortunately, doing one of those pesky reverse parrellel parks, I came in too quick and hit the kerb JUST. It mounted the kerb. Just. But still, would be a fail in a real test so something that needs to be worked on!

The other reason for this was coming around a small roundabout, of a weird shape, I hit the side of it, just, and that was another ‘collision’.

Never hit it before in all the times I’ve been out. Dunno why I did that.

Fail Item 2: Exceeding the speed limit

Yes, it sucks. But it isn’t what you think. The speed limit in a shared zone is 10. That funny white line at the start, which is RIGHT next to 0. That’s 10. I was doing 16 in a 10 shared zone.

Interesting isn’t it. I gotta stay at that white line, but even then, its nearly impossible to keep down at 10km, when its possible you’ll hit 11 – 12 or more.

Fail still, because its speeding. I should get out and push in that area, at that point, I wouldn’t go over 10km! It’s silly.

But of course, it boils down to the fact that the RTA can still fail that, and so it’s something needed to be worked on to ensure I don’t exceed the speed limit.

Fail Item 3: Not parking to the required standard.

Reverse park here again too. Mounting the kerb was fail item 1 of this particular reverse parallel park. The second part of it that failed me was that due to the kerb issue, we didn’t get straight enough I think.

Not a big issue, considering its still a safe result, but none the less, the RTA is the one who says yes or no.

Fail item 4: Frequently not making observation checks.

That’s actually not true, I check the mirrors, speed, and in front and around me regularly. I just don’t twist my head around to do it!

That’s apparently what the RTA like to see, so I have to basically move my head to look into mirrors rather than glance at it.. What’s the point in having a mirror that can be adjusted to the best possible viewing angle if you have to turn your head so the RTA believe you are actually checking it?

Why not just .. look at my eyes? They glance up that way frequently. I do check it. I notice a few things in the rear view mirror. Like tourists overtaking me in a 10k zone at a speed exceeding 30.

Or a woman on a cell phone worried and distracted and not focusing on me slowing down in front of her.

Or kids that like to jump in front of the car, to make sure they don’t (or should that be do ?) get hit by the car that was behind me..

Still an important aspect, so noticeable mirror checks is something we’ll definitely put the time into, to top that off, check all blind spots.

Believe it or not, you have to check blind spots coming off a roundabout.

Not really a easy thing to do when the flow of traffic is dictating a roundabout speed of around 30k and the roundabout certainly isn’t big enough to do anything if something is hiding in your blind spot anyway.

But of course, the RTA is the RTA. Must check those!

This was all a practice and nothing to do with the RTA, just a lead up to the RTA, and basically shows what is a one possible outcome for when I visit them soon to get my licence.

There is an assessments column, which contains 25 assessment items, they don’t name them however, so its not really easy to determine what aspect they were testing.

The columns refer to speed, positioning, decision making, hazards, responding to hazards, vehicle control.

My scores on those were something like 20+ / 25 for speed, 20+ / 25 for positioning, 17+ / 25 for decision making .. interesting – hard to tell the scoring and decisions made there though, 20+ / 25 for hazards, 25+ / 25 for responding to hazards, and 20+ / 25 for vehicle control.

So, the majority of those to me are in the high end of the scale, which tells me that my overall score was 85+%. A bit shy of that 90% that would pass me. A fair bit short of the desired 100% – I like to aim high.

Another day, we’ll get another practice in to be sure, and see what happens then!!

Hopefully, soon enough I’ll be able to celebrate having my license, after sitting on my L’s, doing little in the way of getting licensed and instead being pretty much bulked up on inventive works for a while.

2003 I got my L’s. It’s nearly 2008. I think my real motivation was realising it’s time to actually do something about that time difference.

It’s not that I’m lazy, I just didn’t get into too much demand to get my licence. I tend to just make do, and public transport isn’t that bad. Sure, its dictated by someone else as to when you leave, and when you return and the time it takes to get there, but that’s nothing too serious if you don’t really put any time pressures in place.

But, now that I’ve actually started, I really do want to get licensed. Many have said that I won’t know myself with it. They are starting to seem right. It makes a day so, so, much more interesting.

Enjoy!

This election is a close one. A remarkably close one.

Policies from both sides are both favourable and the result of gross incompetence. Unfortunately, picking the party that offers what a voter might want is TOUGH.

Just 24 hours after I had come to a good stronger (not solid) decision to perhaps give KRudd my vote, I was then reminded again by the National Farmers Federation and a poster on Whirlpool over the plan to scrap that $2 billion fund which produces $400 million in interest to fund, and keep regional Australia ahead, saving it from the situation where it will just get left behind by nearly all serious competitors, and the small carriers couldn’t survive with Telstra backhaul pricing.

Labor lost the vote. I’m back to considering the Coalition for the good policy decisions they have made, and trying to look past the flap ups they have made, such as selling Telstra in one peice.

Previously that was going to be enough for me to boot them out on their ass. But that changed, due to a few factors, but one of which is the OPEL announcement, and the Expert Taskforce to help settle and fix the problem.

Not a bad idea. Still would have been faster, better, stronger to split them at the start of it, but too late for that.

With the lack of anything better, we have no real choice but to stay with what has previously ‘worked’.

Scrapping that $2 billion fund is going to hurt Regional Australia. The interest funds investment in that area, something that is definitely required.

Why can’t we just see a quick summary of both parties and make a decision from that? Easy answered, both would be near carbon copy with only minor differences setting them apart. Of course the Regional Communications Fund is a not so minor issue, but not major. Enough to make me change my mind though.

And a few weeks back, I thought people selling votes on eBay were being stupid. Now, they were doing a smart thing. The election is so close on policies, that no matter who you vote for, you’ll get a slice of bad moves, a slap of incompetence, a poorly designed tax cut, a further lack of infrastructure investment, and 3 years to determine if you would ever vote for such a government again.

Not one of them really is speaking to me. I can see past all their targetted at the lower class population crap (ie. WorkChoices is bad mmmkay, We’ll pay for Health, we pay education costs, yah?).

Actually, just Tuesday, a good observation about the ALP.

They claim they have a plan to fix Global Warming. Let me tell you, the plan isn’t to reduce it, at least, not from my experience. On Tuesday, in my local area, I saw a bus, carrying no passengers (and not designed to carry passengers) was simply driving around displaying painted ALP branding on it.

Immediately my thoughts were. If they were so caring for the environment, why contribute to the damage by running a bus all day with no passengers and no real purpose except advertising?

That again would cost them the vote. Hypocritical policies don’t wear well with me.

Elections. Are they really worth it?

Enjoy!

It’s amazing. Out of all that Telstra do that is wrong, they actually (inadvertently) got something right. That is, the influence they tried to cause by making issues surrounding regulation political.

Since doing that, they have continually bagged the current government, in an effort to influence the voters to vote Labor.

And, they seem to all have followed that path quiet well. Telstra’s influence of shareholders might actually pay off.

The Labor party communications spokesperson made an announcement today, and whilst I still think of him as an uninformed idiot, he is actually now going to get my vote.

Why do I vote for the uninformed idiot over the proven, somewhat informed, good policy of Coonan?

Simple. He has a plan to fix one of the major problems that plague the ISP industry, Telstra, Bigpond and its extreme anti competitive behaviour.

The current government have set about trying to increase competition through regulation, but has failed, and some might say near miserably. I won’t put us there, because they have done a good enough job of getting competition happening.

Operational Seperation however, does NOT work. It doesn’t see results. It sees only artificial competition at the level of wholesale, whereby Bigpond has products marketed and launched before competitiors are even able to access a service.

It’s all very clear anti competitive behaviour which disadvantages competition.

It’s pricing, also extremely questionable.

So, the Labor party has a plan to solve the botched, ineffective operational seperation plan.

Put Bigpond and all other Telstra retail entities on equal terms as competitors by legislating that it must do business with the wholesale body.

That solves a great deal of the unfair problem and creates a field that is somewhat level.

If Bigpond can have ADSL2+ at prices only minorly higher than ADSL1 uncapped prices, so should competition. The competition can do their own ADSL2+ services cheaper.

For some reason however, the prices of the wholesaled ADSL1 service are disproportionately higher than available ADSL2+ services.

The solution is found by simply forcing Telstra’s own prices to be at the same cost levels as all other ISPs who wholesale using the Telstra network.

Bigpond will need to fund their own AGVCs. Bigpond will need to buy ADSL2+ ports from Telstra Wholesale. Bigpond will need to pay for.. well, all services from Telstra Wholesale.

Completely fair. It stops the anti competitive behaviour in its tracks at the retail level. Wholesale competition should open up more after that.

The ALP are also committing themselves to getting FTTN off the ground within 6 months of being elected. That’s good results. Better than Howard results.

Further, the ALP have a tougher stance on Telstra. The regime will be tougher for Telstra. Which is good. They’ve had a far too easy ride on the pockets of honest consumers and honest competition for too long. They need to do things tough like every other competitor has to. The ground needs to be fair.

FTTN will almost certainly be done by Telstra. I think the legal disputes will pose too much for anyone else to do it (but that could also be untrue, and they might go in for the fight, good on them if they do). But if Telstra do build it in the ALP scenario, I see just one potential problem, the ALP has a conflict of interest in ensuring the consumers get competitive services, at the same time as the competition not being disadvantaged, at the same time, ensuring they get a return.

That all is a big mixup and I think will somewhere down the track recreate the issues we have now.

I figure however, 3 years can’t do toooo much damage, and they do seem to offer a lot of good, so with that focus, if they do push on and do well, we will have the chance in 3 years to see what the Liberals are offering then to get back in. I do see the argument that they have done little in the way of infrastructure for Australia. The time has come for them to pay, November 24. Just 10 days away. Unless of course, they counter that with another “me too” and some other sweetener promises to sway my decision again.

Enjoy!

A new idea from the man of new ideas (sometimes unrealistic), Morris Iemma.

“He who drives his car, in manner that reflects his small appendage, shall have his car taken away from him, and crashed and crushed at an RTA crash lab.”.

Brilliant thinking Morris. Very brilliant. What do you think you will acheive here? Let’s have a think.

1. Will more than likely see such activities drop to some extent, due to fear of losing expensive car.
2. May have a result of high speed pursuits involving police officers.
3. Ignores the real solution to such a problem, but, goes closer to helping realise it.

The first point is the result of a complete drop by some participants in illegal street racing (or alledged ‘hooning’) by making the stakes too high.

Many in the focus group are not financially well off, if they were, they’d be too intelligent to put their own lives and those of others in danger in the first place.

The second point is a more critical one. Should someone get chased by police, and they know they will nearly certainly have their cars crashed and destroyed, with no restitution (so, might as well as call it a $15,000+ fine), are likely to try and evade the police. This will mean a high speed pursuit endangering other members of the community.

So, a bad choice, but then, the problem has to be tackled one way or another, and unfortunately, tackling it means that there is an increased likelihood of them trying to avoid prosecution. Tougher penalties will nearly always result in trying to find loopholes out of it, or in this instance, ways to evade prosecution – ie. out race the police.

The third point, the solution, is one which requires the most focus, and thinking like this can indeed contribute to the overall solution.

The problem? Racers and speed freaks – let’s just call them braindead idiots for now – want to race their cars, and burn their dollars at a ridiculous rate.

There is no facilities available to many, that fit in with the current lifestyle of some participants. Let’s assume they are uni students (heh, hard to believe, I know), so they work to live, and have to study, etc, so time isn’t available to travel extended distances to reach a facility for this form of ‘entertainment’ – or whatever term you wish to give the sport of trying to endanger your own and others lives.

So, with no facilities available, that afford the uni students the ability to try and put the limits of gravity, the speed of light, the speed of sound, etc to the test, they are apparently left with little alternatives but to resort to the street.

Now, being in a position of decider in the issue, you really would only have to come down to two choices.

How do we work with the community to outlaw it completely.
How do we work with the community to participate in it safely.

First comes outlawing it. Once its outlawed and rage has spewed out from the smaller equipped folk, they will hopefully get enough intelligence to present their cause to a local community, and muster up enough funding to then seek council and community approval for a purpose built facility in the area for them to have some serious fun.

It’s got some commercial value though. You charge an admission fee to the drivers for maintenance of the track, you charge the bystanders who like to watch the crap admission fees for what possible entertainment they do get from it.

You profit. You maintain the track, the expansion continues to other communities.

That is a solution to the problem.

The first step to creating that solution however, is demonstrating to a high level that the penalties for such crimes are high, and the only legal way to do it is on private property – perhaps in controlled environments, but the law doesn’t state that.

Get all participants to sign waivers. If they hurt themselves, their cars, etc. So what. You were going to do that on the public road anyway, and possibly hurt others.

It’s a perfect solution, it’s feasible, as I predict the companies that sell high performance parts make dollars off the purchasers, and so a bit of sponsorship goes a long way, as does the fees from the drivers for burning up the track, and the possibility of racing in this form being more publicly accepted, and increasing revenue by simply charging those who wish to see it.

A very sound offer. Has sure fire insurance out clauses (waiver on entry). Removes the danger to the general public.

So, at this moment, we can commend Morris on his spectacular thinking and start of the bigger solution. Assuming of course, he isn’t just a dumb politician who thinks simply crushing cars will solve the problem. Because it won’t. You need to first demonstrate the high costs (and risks) of doing such crimes on the street, and then allowing alternatives to facilitate it. Otherwise you are going to be employing more police faster than you can say 000, and you’ll be wiping more egg off your face than a badly tossed omelette.

The costs of setting up such a facility seriously couldn’t be too extreme. Tyre walls, with concrete slams backing them, tar for the track, security to prevent any unauthorized access, and the long term you will profit from the entertainment that others are getting, and if a high performance parts manufacturer got in on it, increased profits from sales, due to increased demand for both, the entertainment (now legal, more interest attracted), and from sale of high performance parts for those entering.

Enjoy!

The election is just 12 days around the corner as I look at my watch and see the date is the 12th of November.

The next 12 days in my opinion should show even more campaign toughness for my vote. I’m still undecided, though still Liberal supporting when I think of Labor with Telstra (who should also be their own political party).

Just following through the thread on Whirlpool (private lounge), where Labor leads still at 58%. Earlier today however, the Greens were bringing up second place.

The other day I was talking about the election with an MSN friend, and one response I was given was funnily a similar response that I got from a few others in the days / weeks earlier.

His response was along the lines of don’t vote for the bastards, just vote for the greens, they won’t get in.

Now when you consider his response, and compare that to the SAME / SIMILAR responses I got from others, you might see a trend forming.

If everyone voted Greens, we’d end up with a Greens government, which defys the point in voting for them to throw your vote away to start with. If everyone did exactly that, throw the vote away by voting Greens, we will funnily enough, see a Greens government.

The poll on Whirlpool had Labor first, Greens second and the Coalition third.

This has changed recently, and is still close with just 1.1% between the Coalition 2nd place, and the Greens in third.

But, that poll means nothing when you look at news.com.au’s poll. The current results of it are 53% Howard, 46% KRudd.

The sample size of the news.com.au poll is significant, at 18724 votes registered.

That poll removes any certainly around a KRudd win, and so, I would recommend holding any bets, until something looks more certain.

I don’t think many can picture Kevin Rudd in the Prime Minister’s seat. You just don’t see it.

But, I do agree it is time for a change, to at least keep the parties on their toes to make sure that all promises they make they will be held to, and a change of government can happen in just one day (and several weeks of campaigning leading up to it).

Will we see a Greens government? Probably not, as many are not going to just vote Greens to throw the votes away, but, will we see a Rudd government? I’m not 100% sure. Do I want a Rudd government? I’m still not 100% sure what he will give me the others won’t.. If anything?

Enjoy!

I sometimes wonder why bother with a 50K limit if the slower speed is likely to cause people to rush to try and get places sooner.

Would people be driving a lot faster if the speed limit was removed?

Or are they feeling restricted by the speed limit and are just responding to restrictions in a typical way (ie. complain, complain, complain until they are removed?).

Personally, I find 50K too slow. I regularly find myself just above the 50 mark, or approaching 60 before I catch it during my regular scan and slow it down.

Why bother with a 50K speed limit if its just going to slow people down, and cause them to try and rush?

I don’t rush anywhere. We leave plenty of time for any arranged appointment, such as today, I went for a nice drive to Westfield Tuggerah, as part of winning a entry into the final draw of SeaFM’s Car Bingo competition.

I didn’t win the Suziki Swift (they look small, compact, and ugly to me), but indeed came close to a win with just 2 numbers to go on 2 of the games being played.

It was a fun trip, near incident free trip there, with just a slight problem slowing down at one of the roundabouts (hit the brakes hard, didn’t slow down, my shoe was partly grabbing the accelerator I think as I was braking hard).

The trip back was pretty smooth! Wet trip back, with rain, but conditions overall were nice, and traffic was good.

Back to where I was however. Limiting traffic to 50K is only really reasonable where there is a significant recognised risk of accidents occurring.

Many of the streets (such as The Entrance Road) can easily be raised to 60K and in my opinion, not cause a problem to any other road user, assuming the driver is awake, as they should be behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.

People really don’t let a moving object under their control run off by itself, when it weighs in over 900KG, do they? Surely people have enough common sense to maintain control of such a heavy moving object?

I find 50K boring. You travel along, nice and steady, with the message that is there to go a little faster since there’s nothing that can be considered a perceived hazard. Sure, there might be a pedestrian, that might jump out on the road, but when I’m driving, I’m not looking at my car. I’m looking for the idiots out there that might hurt my fantastic car. That includes the blood of a pedestrian jay walking. And I remain confident that I can perhaps go 10 – 20K faster and still respond adequately to a pedestrian crossing the road, or another car suddenly braking.

Fatigue becomes an issue when you have speed limits. People don’t drive the conditions like they surely would if there was no speed limit, but instead, they drive to the speed limit, spending time focusing on the speedo, time which is better spent on getting from A to B, safely, at a smart speed. One can assume a licenced driver has the intelligence to slow down where vision is limited, slow down where the road might be unsafe, slow down when an unknown event is possible?

The speed limits to me, just seem like trying to patch a possible problem with accidents related to moving objects moving too fast. Perhaps the issue needs a different resolution, rather than limiting speeds for road users, limit licensing of road users to those who can demonstrate they can handle a moving object safely at any safe speed that suits the conditions at the same time as allowing for adequate responses to possible hazards..

Surely that’d work, right? – Probably wrong, but it’s not that far fetched an idea.

Enjoy!

Australia doesn’t have excessively poor broadband.

By comparison, our quotas and limits protect the networks from being run to the bone by abusive users.

Unfortunately, in the USA things during “Peak” time are known to be pretty packed out on Cable networks, that speed limits apply to services.

In the US for example, a DSL connection might be provisioned at 768k / 256k. In Australia, we get 1536 / 256k. So we certainly do better than the US. In fact, I’ve known people in the US to not get near the speed on offer during peak times due to peak time congestion, a problem ISPs all over the US will be constantly fighting to solve.

In Australia, we don’t have unlimited. Anyone who tells you they are giving you unlimited is generally lying to you. For it to be unlimited, at say, 8Mbps, they would need to have 8Mbps of bandwidth available from their Telstra AGVC, and 8Mbps of bandwidth available in their own network, and 8Mbps of bandwidth available to its connections to the internet.

Realistically, they might say its Unlimited, but, it’s basically Unlimited Dial Up. The speeds are shaped after you have enjoyed broadband speeds for about a week, and then you are on dial up for the rest of the month. Expensive Dial Up :).

Our quota system protects us from the problems that happen on REAL unlimited networks, where everyone is wanting everything, but the networks just can’t cope, and to cope, the upgrades are either add more cables, or increase capacity on existing cables. Expensive tasks for minimal gain (management of peak time).

Better ideas are to limit the usage available on a connection to manage the available bandwidth more.

I doubt we’ll see a trend to increase Unlimited plans, or even any mass marketing of a truly unlimited plan, simply due to the dangers such marketing would pose to networks.

Anyway, back to where I was, the statistics on the OECD report shows us as ranking 9th for broadband.

The result can almost certainly be attributed to higher ADSL2+ take up, and to some extent, Telstra’s release of 8Mbps ports, and to another extent, Telstra’s price drops associated with the ADSL ports.

We don’t have poor services, but they aren’t free of problems. Fixing the problems are in fixing the pricing issues that plague industry. These include to my knowledge, backhaul into and out of regional areas, and backhaul into and out of international waters. Increase COMPETITION on these so the PRICES drop, and our OECD ranking can only rise due to value pricing.

Then, worry later when we start to slide down a bit as to whether we go with FTTN, FTTH, or Laser. We can almost certainly get by with ADSL2+ and WiMAX.

So, why bother supporting Labor’s plan to give Telstra a monopoly? Better to support the Coalition’s plan to just create policies and let the market work it out for themselves (and help in regional areas where required).

No point holding the hands of those that don’t need help.

Enjoy!

Next Generation Broadband was ADSL2+ and VDSL2.
Next Next Generation Broadband will most likely be FTTN.
Next Next Next Generation Broadband will almost certainly be FTTH.

But what comes after that I hear you ask? (or do I?).

Next, Next, Next, Next Generation Broadband.

That’s right, after FTTH (if we go there), we could instead end up deciding we don’t like a high fibre diet afterall.

The future of rural connections for high speeds, will almost certainly be best working as laser.
A laser can travel great distances, and can operate in all sorts of conditions (get in the way of it and the heat will just cut straight through).

So, do we bother with expensive FTTH, when perhaps a cheaper alternative (should be cheaper, doesn’t involve cables being laid), is a laser solution.

Run a Laser transmitter on your roof, and a tower on a high peak not incredibly far away has receivers ready to accept that laser goodness, and turn it to and from data for a internet connection.

Wireless might have capabilities now, but it’s probably not going to be the longest term solution. It might have a lifespan of 30 years or so.

Laser will be the internet of the future if they can get the technology right, and consumer connections, just like houses, can be wireless in the year 2050.

Much the same way infrared works, Laser could be done similarly, and avoid the problems associated with wireless technologies guesswork (essentially it works by just screaming out, and accepting screams). Laser would be a direct phase light aimed at receiving panels, and therefore ensuring direct connectivity.

The speeds reached on Laser aren’t completely known, but what I have just discovered, thanks to a fellow whirlpool user revealing it, http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=851973&p=5#r97.
The technology is known as HSLDT (High Speed Laser Data Transmission), and obviously would kick HSDPA’s arse, and likely give WiMAX a whipping too.

I think the future might be a wireless one after all, just not the wireless that beams randomly in every direction, and instead a wireless future, with lasers.

Think of the medical uses of such a high grade internet connection. A doctor could do a lot from transfer xrays, real time monitoring of patients at home, right on through to .. fixing eye related issues using laser eye surgery. Technology that serves multiple purposes!

That’s what I would call speed to burn!

Enjoy!

Aside from the possible fines for not voting, I wanted to know the reason why people were voting for their chosen choice.

Obviously I do estimate there are many who are still yet to form a firm decision, for a few reasons, one of which for me is that the policies of both the major parties are so similar, yet so different, that finding a decision that meets me is not an easy find.

Even one that I can strongly agree with on many issues is hard to come by.

So I thought I’d put the poll out there to a large audience of voters, who seem to have had their hearts set on 50+% Labor for a while now.

The poll asked the question Which is the most important issue or policy that is influencing the vote.

And the available answers were some common ones. IR Laws, Telecommuications, Tax Cuts, Health, Education, Environmnet, and Other.

The results were more predictable than the Melbourne Cup (Efficient was unexpected), the lead started and maintained with IR Laws, currently at 35.4%, which suggests to me that the likely isn’t in favour of WorkChoices, due to the scare campaign, and people believe the scare campaign from the unions that workers as a whole will be disadvantaged under WorkChoices.

This demonstrates at least, that many are being influenced by the scare campaign to me. I don’t see the real harm to many people being done, because of course, they will never be SIGNIFICANTLY disadvantaged, if at all. If anything, WorkChoices is the beginning of promoting a smarter Australia, because to get more $$$, the employees might be encouraged to take up skills courses.

The second was the topic of Environment, following the Global Warming issue mainly, but also would include Nuclear Power, and spending on Solar, and Water problems, etc. The environment wasn’t considered as important, with just 14.7% of the vote.

The third is Other, and that basically contained responses from people with a few other select issues as important issues (apparently, a government controls the economy directly, NOT), and a few other select minor issues, and some indicated that no real issue was best affecting their decision.

The fourth is a bit of a tie, Education and Health rate not so highly to the sample of 178, with just 11.3% for each of them as being the most influential issue for their vote.

Amazingly, Tax Cuts rated very lowly, confirming my post a few weeks back, the government shouldn’t be giving a tax cut, but rather, investing those dollars in infrastructure and doing what it can to ensure our future success. Or perhaps they can spend that $34 billion in tax money in sorting out the miserable state of Child Protection systems?

Telecommunications (this was afterall a Broadband community forum), rated lowest of all, with just 6.8% of voters stating it was a prime issue (not me).

Personally, at the moment, I consider Education an important issue. If we want to be leaders on this planet, we need smarter Australians, we need to stop with the lower levels of education and put a lot of what we can into education, well educated Australians should become good productive members of society, and this has flow on effects through all different chains, such as Crime. A well educated person might not need to resort to petty theft.
Jobs. A well educated person might not be unemployed.
Infrastructure. A well educated person can be used to develop, innovate or implement infrastructure.
Health. A well educated person can become a highly educated medical professional and save lives, and start to lead the world in saving lives.
Environment. A well educated person might solve our power thirst and environmental issues, in an innovative manner.
Education. A well educated person can be reused to educate more people.

Overall, we would be a smarter nation, and overall, we would see a positive lift, in many, many areas, which could indeed change several parts of our nation.

Naturally, that might be radical investment to get that acheivement, but sure enough, putting the dollars into education solves many issues long term. Without educated members of society, you spend a lot of your dollars basically helping them do what the higher educated can do anyway.

The future is in a smarter nation, not in one which focuses majorly on the environment, not one which focuses majorly on IR laws and unions, not one which tries to give back a tax cut, and not one which invests majorly in telecommunications.

Put your dollars into education, and ensure those dollars see a result of highly educated Australians as output.

You really only get out what you put in, so put in educated Australians, and you will get back a smarter nation nearly capable of solving many of the issues that would have required big spending to start with.

I still have no idea what both major parties expect to acheive by giving $30 billion back to taxpayers. They need that money. If not directly now, indirectly in the future. Put it away and get some interest off it to help pay for some of the promises. Help fund innovation. Help fund infrastructure improvement. Help fund research and development.

What are the people going to do with it? Not a lot of good from what I can gather. I don’t see much examples of Australians living a life of poverty either.

Anyway, as for me, still undecided, but by far I think Education is where the dollars need to go and remain for the long term.

Enjoy!

Sorry for the relatively harsh title, but nothing can really accurately reflect the news stories that have been seen over the last few weeks over what can only be described as negligence on multiple levels towards the care and safety of Australian Children.

Let me just get some links here so you can get some relative idea:

Nov 6 2007: Woman and baby fell from former residence
Nov 6 2007: Revealed: Girl police say starved to death
Nov 6 2007: Accused baby-killer ‘lost it’, court told
Nov 6 2007: Bindeez toy recalled over drug fears
Oct 29 2007: Man pleads not guilty to killing baby son
Oct 24 2007: Woman denied bail over toddler son’s death
Oct 24 2007: Carol Louise Matthey has charges against her dropped
Oct 21 2007: Body in suitcase: police charge toddler’s mother
Oct 18 2007: Mother finds intruder in 5yo’s bedroom

The above is just from a few short weeks, and they all demonstrate cases where children have been placed in clear harms way either deliberate, or otherwise by parents, and government departments responsible for their safety.

The recent is the revelation of a 7 year old who weighed 9KG! That’s alarming levels, when you consider my young one gets up around 14KG, and he is by no means obese, yet is years younger!

That was at the very least a clear cut case for monitoring the child, and the story reveals DOCS had a previous involvement with the family! Why wasn’t the childs nutrition considered??

Then we have the careless, and well, I still can’t find words to describe the actions taken by the 2 year old’s mother in Sydney dumping the child in a lake. There’s no word for that. Wait. I have one. Shoot her.

It’s cases like the above (except the toy recall, and the obvious ones above where the parents aren’t involved), that give me reason to give 100% support to a licenced based parenting system.

Are these idiots having kids for money and then when they all get too much, … neglecting them (for want of a better word?)..

There really needs to be strong reform here. If the trend keeps continuing, any inherent growth that should have resulted from programs like the Baby Bonus might not be effectively realised.

Our kids are our future. Some of the individuals listed in the above (and there’s more if you really wanted to have a dig, that was just a quick search of links that I had lying around), don’t really seem capable of having children.

Or, when the individual might be capable of having children, we have sick shits breaking into their rooms for good knows what reason.

Or, toy testing failing to detect critical drugs in Hong Kong imports.

There’s also two stories not in the above list that just crossed my mind:
1. The werribee incident. They didn’t get jail terms. They got what can only be described as minor punishment.
2. The incident involving a father on fathers day dumping the kids in the car in the lake.
3. A 14 year old recently set alight a younger neighbour, after splashing him with petrol (what’s a kid got petrol for anyway?!!), and chasing him down the street screaming I’m going to kill you, I’m going to set you on fire.
4. The pumpkin abandoning.

What the F*@k is wrong with people? The kids listed above are innocent people, who have every right to a full chance at life, even if the parents who bring them in this world attempt to deny them that.

Take a good look at what SOME members of the nation are doing to their children, harmless, innocent, defenceless children, being harmed or killed by either negligent parents, harmful parents, negligent government controls, etc.

This is not the Australia I want my child to be in. I want him to see the world from at least the angle that parents aren’t going to kill their own kids, or neglect them.

I’m forgetting a link to one that was revealed Monday, which stated a mother bashed the baby, threw the baby on the bed, it bounced and suffered brain damage from a hit to a change table. Forensics found evidence of a twisted / broken arm, and several beatings to the child.

The child was only 6 months old. 6 MONTHS old.

There’s also another one. 16 week old baby. Bashed by father. Died 2 days after due to brain damage.

Parenting licences. Nearly a requirement for what can only be described as the high resolution of these incidents in the media is revealed, highlights that Australian children seem to be near endangered, due to careless, or stupid, murderous acts by the childs trusted peers, the parents.

So, thinking of the above, why are they having kids? Not ready for the challenge? Psychological disorder? Or – Money. Which do you think? They don’t seem to send out the message they love and care for the kids they give birth to.

If they DID, they wouldn’t set about causing them dangerous levels of harm through neglect, assault and murder.

Shameful people, disgrace of our society.

I’m in my early 20’s for those who don’t know me. My young child was a result of a birth that was a result of a decision we made, that determined we wanted to have a child. We wanted a child. We love him heaps. He is really everything to me. I adore him more than anything. Some might argue he gets more care and attention than the other love of my life, my fiance. It’s debatable.

What is certain however, is we love our child, and we plan to eventually have more children. We do never plan to treat them the way the above parents have been exposed to have treated their children. We care for ours. We love ours.

The government who has tax payer funded departments to determine the safety of children, need to determine if the staff they employ in those departments are worthy of keeping their jobs.

They shouldn’t rush in to take children, but they should almost certainly assess the risks to a child very carefully. If a complaint is made to the department, it’s either a retalitatory action by other people, who seem to want to ‘get back at’, or, what seems likely, a genuine concern for the safety of a child.

I’ve named plenty of recent cases of children being put in clear danger. What failed those children? Why were those children, who were innocent, defenceless people, so wrongly failed?

What will be done to fix this so the failures to the young, helpless kids are kept safe through their own right to a full life?

I know its a harsh post, with a harsh title, but try to…

Enjoy!

I think that in the light of the lack of alternative investment in backhaul from Telstra exchanges, and providers naming many exchanges as ‘too expensive’ to invest into, as a result of Telstra’s backhaul being unfairly priced.

So to me, there is a lack of investment in backhaul, and the reason for that would at least seem to evolve around two likely reasons.

1. Lack of demand for alternative backhaul.

It’s unclear whether the current ADSL2+ providers are looking to invest in regional areas, whether they are after alternative backhaul to do that.

It looks to me that they aren’t, as I am sure that if they were serious, they would at least group together and put a grouped tender out for the provision of backhaul to certain high demand exchanges.

The backhaul Telstra charges is expensive, and so the demand for it is simply not put forward by them grouping together and determining where the common goal posts are for them in exchanges.

There’s no doubt to me that multiple provider rollouts in the regional areas aren’t viable for more than 2 real providers, this is due to lack of demand for higher speed broadband services (and the fact that the ignorant will always be just that, the ignorant).

The other reason that comes to mind..

2. Fear of lack of return on investment.

I think this is also a possibility. Investing in alternative backhaul to a Telstra exchange only really has a source of return on investment, that source is ADSL2+ providers, and perhaps near by business demand for backhaul.

Perhaps they are fearful of the outcome of FTTN, which might see that backhaul quickly underutilised and made useless, because the customers serviced would be by node and therefore not attracting the sufficient business.

We do need it, sooner or later, competition in backhaul to regional areas, just like we need competition in infrastructure.

Telstra’s got a stranglehold on the market, and it’s too tight for infrastructure investment to take place.

If the business case for investment in backhaul doesn’t exist, then the backhaul that does exist needs to be regulated tightly by the ACCC until a business case finds its way into the industry.

The lack of regulation on backhaul (to prices metro comparable) is hurting investment into regional areas. Numerous ISPs have confirmed that. The fix is either get cables out there, or regulate a bit more until the situation where investment can take place, and be feasible appears.

Enjoy!

Wednesday last week, a news story made its way to news.com.au, and that article described a situation, where two drivers, one male, the other female, were involved in an incident involving a lane charge.

The situation got flared up, after the female chose to “flash her lights, stick her finger up”, which apparently was not offensive at all to the male driver.

However, the woman driver went ‘too far’ when she followed on with an RTA ad campaign gesture, using her pinky finger to describe his, well some might say brain, but of cause, the description is of his downstairs equipment.

He apparently got very offended by her referring to him as having little downstairs, and he resorted to throwing a bottle at her.

It’s not clearly known what part of the lane change sparked the argument, but one might assume he simply wasn’t looking at his blind spot, or he pulled in front of her.

What is certain however, is that the RTA ad has seen a negative impact on the reaction to it.

Anyway, this follows on, with a recent Today Tonight article (no, I don’t want Today Tonight often, the online news is great :)), which demonstrated targetting of elderly drivers.

They make up a very, very small number of the crash statistics on our roads.

Ask the insurance companies, they’ll tell you what has the highest proportion of costs. They’ll tell you its the 17 to 25 year age group.

What they can’t tell you in detail however, is how many of those accidents in the 17 to 25 group happen as a result of stupid behaviour, compared to the amount that happens as a result of inexperience.

My personal guess is that the majority (> 50%) are a result of idiots being given licences, and allowed to behave stupidly on the road.

A car is safe. A car is as safe as its driver. If the driver is driving safely, and every other car around it is also moving safely, all exists in harmony. Naturally, the safety line is there, but not all cars are safe, and not all drivers are safe drivers.

The line on safe driving needs to be drawn however, between safe, unsafe, and stupid. Unfortunately for those who have to pay for greenslips and insurance, there are a lot of idiots who are falling into the stupid category.

It wouldn’t be so much of a concern in the “unsafe” category. It is an issue for the stupid idiots who habitually speed, irregularly be idiots, and get involved in what can only be seen as dangerous and stupid moves.

That is what I suspect would be revealed in an accident by accident investigation of the largest age group involved in accidents.

I know that the elderly group make up a larger than normal (normal being in the 30 – 60 age group) percentage, but thats only due to the obvious, they are older, and the age issue sort of strikes their driving abilities.

The move to have the elderly tested every year however, is a stupid move. It will do little to fix the dominant cause of accidents, unfortunately, reflected in statistics as 17 – 25 year old drivers.

The real truth is the dominant cause of accidents in that age group, and this is my guess, and I am nearly sure this is right, is the direct result of stupid behaviour.

For some reason, there are a lot more idiots in that age group, who are convinced that they can do what they like in a car, and likely come out good at the other end.

Trouble with the logic they use (if they do use any at all) is that the statistics say otherwise. You be an idiot around other moving ‘idiots’ and an accident becomes unavoidable.

The RTA can only do what they do, which is screen for driving ability. They unfortunately don’t screen for common sense or intelligence either, if they did, I suspect the highest level of crashes would indeed be the older age category that are the target of yearly testing.

There really should be a way to implement a testing measure to determine if the person being given a licence is likely to be an idiot, a danger on the road to other road users.

The RTA “Finger” ad claims to target speeding, but does nothing of the sort.

We see an idiot doing a burnout, sure, he is an idiot, but he isn’t speeding.
We see another idiot drifting around a turn, again, a clear braindead idiot, but he isn’t speeding.
We see a final idiot, failing to stop at a crossing, appearing proud of his action, braindead, stupid, but not speeding.

Yet, the message ends with “Speeding. No one thinks big of you.”.

My thoughts are the RTA might have wasted money on the ad, because they aren’t targetting speeding, they are targetting mental health issues.

Perhaps the final line of the ad should be “Be An Idiot, and no one will think big of you.”.

That would be an accurate representation of the problem. It’s not speeding that is the problem (in fact, slowing traffic down might make it safer, but certainly adds fatigue).

The result should almost certainly be attacking the braindead morons who have licences. Don’t give them out in the first place, or alternatively, find a way of fixing the problem with a powerful message that speaks to the stupid.

The issue with crash statistics being represented I believe, is not speeding, I doubt many of the younger drivers are involved in speeding, I believe many are getting in accidents due to being stupid. Simple. Be stupid, become a crash statistic, and end up leaving your family wondering why they ever let the kid out behind the wheel.

The idiots involved in the target of that campaign, don’t have the balls to speed, they need a real approach, one which sends the exact message to them, if you be stupid, you’ll end up mushed up severely. Now, you might get lucky several times, and that might continue for months, but ONE point, you won’t get lucky. A truck, car, bus, bike, might find its way in the path of your stupidity, and you will find your parents wondering how they ever let you get mushed into a power pole, windscreen, truck trailer, train track, or if you get real lucky, how you ended up in jail.

Clearly, the idiots being targetted don’t consider their actions, and the consequences of them, again, the problem. Target it. Taxpayer dollars better spent on inserting brains into the idiots.

Enjoy!

Bigpond have advertisements that they run, and marketing campaigns that they run to attract customers.

Unfortunately, they are generally misleading to consumers on many details.

Some of these are:

1. 200Mb, failing to disclose just what exactly 200Mb is. Many users don’t know this, and besides, to be a fair comparison with the market, it should be 0.2GB. That’s what you are getting, afterall, right?

2. Counting of uploads. Many of the advertisements claim 200Mb DOWNLOADS. This is misleading, as you can’t download something without first sending a request to download it, those requests are uploads. So, if you focus on 10% of your traffic being upload traffic, you are actually getting 0.1GB of download traffic, because 0.02GB of that traffic is upload traffic (and counted).

A recent scenario presented on Whirlpool outlines what someone went through with Bigpond, after being told that his plan would include 25GB of downloads. It’s physically impossible to download 25GB without uploading a single MB, and therefore, misleading.

The thread tells the tale of how a customer was mislead into a CONtract by a marketing representative of BigPond, and demonstrates that no matter what you hear from the phone from the scum staff that claim you get “200Mb of downloads” that Telstra employ, they should never, ever, be relied on for any accurate information. In fact, if they call you, find your younger child, dog, cat, senior citizen, and get them to waste the time.

I do that when I get calls asking for anything other than me personally, and we’ve had some funny ones.

In fact, a fair while back, I was taking calls for someone else, and the phone rang, the remote party asked for the Marketing Manager.

Sweet, I’ll just put him on for you, and the phone shortly later got a lot of dial tones and some cheeky laughs from my little one.

Let me know if your pitch to the marketing manager was successful. I doubt you’ll be getting a sale though.

Anyway, back to it, Bigpond call me, they’ll get similar treatment. They want to mislead customers, that’s fine, I’ll do whatever I can to delay and reduce the results of that misleading.

You know, the reason Australia has such low ratings on OECD, etc, for Broadband speeds? One guess?
The obvious. Many of the signed up customers have been scammed by Bigpond into a 2 year contract with 256k speed.

That’s why we have “disgraceful” broadband services.

It’s not due to a required upgrade to the network.
It’s not due to any other issues, except for one key issue. Telstra’s misleading marketing. They need to come clean. You don’t get, and cannot get 200Mb downloads on the plan. They count uploads, so you simply cannot get 200Mb downloads with 0Mb uploads. To say that you can receive that is deliberate deception of customers. To describe 200Mb as a lot of data to customers is also a deliberate deception.

To try and pass the blame instead of accepting your own misleading marketing as the reason broadband services when compared internationally as a disgrace, is also disgraceful.

Telstra is the disgrace here.

When Murdoch claimed Australian Broadband is a disgrace, the attack should have been clearly targetted at Telstra, the responsible party for it reaching disgraceful levels.

Enjoy!

EDIT: Updated to clarify intended meaning of “the scum” – These are the sales staff who tell those that they call, that the plans include “X amount of downloads” – when clearly they don’t as they count upload data.

EFnet has announced today plans to begin a rollout of VDSL2, to 70 national exchanges in a partnership with PIPE networks.

This is great news for anyone within 1.6KM of a exchange getting enabled, as they will have faster access to the internet (around 50-100Mbps, so you can nearly setup an ethernet suburb).

I think however, they are moving too fast for VDSL2, considering that any advantage delivered is quickly taken by the fact that we have expensive international access.

The real issue for Australia still remains, and that is cheap international access (well, fair priced is a better word).

PIPE is also behind a goal to get international access cheaper, by deploying its own cable to Guam, which will almost certainly help those get full advantage of VDSL2 when it starts its rollout in the first or second quarter of 2008.

VDSL2 is a great move, as it shows that innovation still does exist in the industry, despite only a smaller number of exchanges will see it.

It would be fantastic if the smaller players all decided to move nationally, and put pressure on the cherry picking that happens.

It’s almost like each ISP follows each other into an exchange.

Optus enters one, and if iiNet don’t have one, but can get backhaul, they’ll follow, Internode follows, TPG follows, and so on.

Optus probably doesn’t enter first however, but indeed they all follow each other.

This news could be a little on the bad side for iiNet, who just rolled out a lot of ADSL2+ DSLAMs and will no doubt be facing competitive threat in the 70 exchanges that they plan to install VDSL2 into.

They plan to deploy using MSANs, which was on the iiNet agenda a while ago, and taken off, seemingly due to financials not stacking up in ii’s favour.

I think iiNet are still in the process of realising returns on its ADSL2+ deployment, and won’t be finished paying back the funds used to deploy that for a little while, which means this could put pricing pressure on ii’s ADSL2+ to try and retain customers, but I could be wrong about most of that as well (I’m not 100% sure on iiNet funding).

A national player certainly would be a welcome change to the landscape, so that no one gets left behind due to issues such as backhaul.

PIPE rep, Bevan Slattery, indicated that the backhaul into regional areas was on hold due to FTTN uncertainty.

Which makes me question, why deploy VDSL2 if FTTN shows uncertain grounds?

Enjoy!

I think a real question the broadband / telco industry should be asking itself right now is “Do we need FTTN” ?

The implications of FTTN are favoured by both sides, you can imagine being in Optus at the moment, with the G9 project possibly coming ahead, and all that fat profit that they’ll get from having the monopoly on fixed line services moved to them!

FTTN has many good and bad points. With FTTN, we’ll be ready for future speeds, and a future deployment of FTTH. It NEARLY guarantees our FTTH future.

The problem is, it’s not being done for those reasons by anyone.

If done, it’s done out of a misconception that speeds Australians have access to in metro areas are ‘slow’ and ‘a disgrace’.
This is fuelled by a OECD reports, which show the takeup of services, and many users are taking up the crap 256/64 service Bigpond market through the nose as broadband.

If we legislate that an Australian defines broadband as 1.5Mbit and higher, our OECD rating would skyrocket, because Bigpond would be forced to stop marketing crap as broadband.

The other issue is Bigpond’s advertising budget.

No ISP spends that much on advertising, simply because the spend would be greater than 30% + of the yearly profit, and neither would Bigpond, if it didn’t have the greed of Telstra behind it.

Do we need FTTN? Yes, but not under the current excuses to implement it.
They are just that, excuses to get a monopoly. Telstra’s reasoning for this is to cut off all ADSL2+ DSLAMs at exchanges (Telstra is responding to competition), G9 are responding to the threat introduced, which is that Telstra plan to cut off their customers with FTTN.

So the strategy immediately came to light, we could say we don’t need faster speeds, or we can one up Telstra and show them up, offer FTTN, offer it cheaper.

And now we have where we are now. Investment stalled due to FTTN, PIPE networks deciding not to invest into regional areas until they can find out if there will be DSLAMs to connect or not, and providers not investing due to lack of backhaul and complete uncertainty.

The solution is part in OPEL, but completely by focusing our efforts on what we need, which is the stop of Telstra and Bigpond marketing CRAP as BROADBAND.

It’s not broadband, its crap. That’s why our OECD ranking is low, because Australian’s are being sold crap from an Australian monopoly giant, who seems to not see that advertising budgets should not exceed a large percentage of the profits made. If they cut Bigpond right away from Telstra, right from the beginning, they’d not survive!

Enjoy!

Image Article is here

Sol Trujillo, Telstra CEO above, seems to be sizing something up, using his fingers.

Some thoughts on what it could be (and no, I don’t think I’ll take the cheap shot that is blindingly obvious):

Sizing up future profit forecast?
Perhaps Sol has started to realise that his role in Telstra likely caused a negative reputation for the company, and the picture is sizing up Telstra’s possibly ‘SMALL’ profit forecast..

Management capabilities?
The article linked above seems to suggest that Sol Trujillo doesn’t seem to want to do much in the way of managing and instead wants a fight with political parties. Perhaps Sol has realised his management strategy and/or capabilities are going to get ‘SMALL’ results?

Marketshare?
Perhaps Sol has seen the exit numbers, and they aren’t looking so good, and so it’s looking like a ‘SMALL’ year?

Chance of success in his plan?
Perhaps Sol has realised his plan has a ‘SMALL’ chance of success?

Brain mass?
Sol has sized up brain mass, and discovered his might be ‘SMALL’?

Performance Bonus?
Perhaps Sol has found his performance is sub par, and he is getting a ‘SMALL’ performance bonus?

Ok, I think that’s all we can bite at him with at the moment!

Of course, none of the above can be taken as anything close to correct information, so don’t treat it as such. What we see in the picture is a picture of “Sol Trujillo” and his showing a us a “SMALL” gap.

My first few impressions was, why is he emphasising small?
He is the CEO of Telstra, he should be thinking big. Maybe he has nothing big.
.. to look forward to with Telstra at the moment.

Enjoy!

I suspect our bandwidth usage will continually increase the more thirst we get for technology in our lives.

We already have come to enjoy the benefits given to us throughout the innovation cycles in technology. This includes the benefits of the web (web pages), the benefits of long distance real time messaging, video messaging, realistic priced phone calls using VoIP, and we’ll add P2P, although many still paint it in the ‘its illegal spotlight – but it isnt’.

I predict that our demands will still increase, despite innovation technologies that might reduce the consumption required.

Such an innovation occurred with AJAX, where a web page need only refresh to load the data a user has requested, instead of whole pages, with images.

I predict new emerging technologies will add more to our bandwidth demands. This is seen in games like Second Life for example (which I don’t play, simply, it consumes too much bandwidth for our quota).

Further, more and more will be done on the internet, instead of in the office in the future. The pressure is there for more to do tasks remotely, away from workplaces, simply because there’s numerous tasks that do not require workers in the office, or because qualified work isn’t available locally, or talent isn’t available here in AU.

Certainly there are plenty of skilled people in Australia, and trying to keep our dollars in our pockets is favourable, where appropriate (example: I would rather give Optus dollars over Telstra, simply because Optus is the battler here), and we should keep those Australians producing for Australia.

I think a key issue for bandwidth is that the backhaul in Australia is still overpriced (and companies haven’t ran backhaul where it is wanted – in competition with Telstra), and they have every oppourtunity to.

An example of backhaul being rolled out, is PIPE with iiNet in Sydney have ran backhaul to many of the ADSL2+ exchanges they have. Saves paying Telstra big bux, and introduces competition!

Our bandwidth desire will increase, by how much is unknown, when is still unknown, but we can be sure there are developers looking for ways to suck up bandwidth (and dollars) from internet users. We can see from that we’ll need more bandwidth, to cover our basic demands in the average networked homes.

Enjoy!

Why bother with FTTN if we are just going to have to run cables to homes in the near future anyway?

Essentially, our bandwidth demands will increase as our technology cravings increase, and more bandwidth intensive ‘crap’ is released.

YouTube is just one recent example of ‘crap’ that uses a lot of bandwidth.

Add on internet gaming, VoIP, IPTV, Browsing, Wireless Internet theft, Linux ISOs, and all of a sudden bandwidth demands quickly over power even today’s residentially available connection.

Why bother going to FTTN, if eventually, we will need to tear those nodes down and add FTTH anyway?

Recent research has revealed that using the VDSL technology, it might be possible to increase the speeds on offer up to 250Mbps, which is pretty impressive.

However, the technology still has 4 years to go before it will see any retail deployment.

And after we suck down that 250Mbps to homes, what do we aim for after that?

Of course, you could always just connect another phone line and get a second connection, and use network load balancing and have a big 500Mbps connection.

Then, 10 years later, we have more bandwidth demands? We need 10Gbps to be future proof by that point in time?

Well, that’s where FTTH would have already proven viable, and put Australia as world leaders. We could easily have connections in the area of Gbps right now, if a government decides that the way forward is indeed through a national infrastructure program, rolling out FTTH.

It’s not a “premium” investment. It’s a FUTURE investment. Spending them dollars now, means you get to not require the upgrade in the future. You spend it now, get it out of the way, and that’s it. We are done with broadband infrastructure.

That’s a SOLUTION to the long term problem.

FTTN is a bandaid. It patches over the problem and helps it heal (by allowing extension to FTTH).

Of course, FTTN is a bit useless if you have nodes sitting everywhere that you are going to take out anyway..

Future proofing the national infrastructure for the extreme long term will see less demand on government resources in that area.

Enjoy!

Both technology ministers in our government are near, if not complete, luddites.

Joining Richard Alston, as luddite IT minister, is Helen Coonan, who recently went on the public record with the ABC, stating:
“The technical limitations are of course that the fibre doesn’t go beyond 1.5 kilometres of a telephone exchange or a node.”

Which is a complete load of shit.

FTTN can be simply described as bringing the telephone exchange (where typical ADSL equipment is housed) closer to the customer.

Now, you can ask Telstra, you can ask Optus, you can ask iiNet, you can ask BT, you can ask any DSL carrier in the world, what the limitation of DSL on an average copper line is.

They’ll generally respond with something like 5km. Which would be near true.

For around a 1Mbit connection, using ADSL technology, you want to try and be within 5kms of the ADSL equipment.

ADSL/2/2+ typically however, can provide services at up to 7kms from the exchange, at obviously slower speeds.

FTTN technology, would be used to bring ADSL equipment closer to customers. So, by that logic, if customers (such as me) can get broadband services of as fast as ADSL1 can go (such as me), at line lengths of approximately 3km from the exchange (such as me), then the point published on this ABC website, quoting Helen Coonan stating FTTN won’t work more than 1.5kms can be looked at as uninformed bullshit.

Then, in other news of technology ministers knowing little about technology, we have Conroy, being a luddite, just like Coonan, with comments such as:
“rural and regional Australia will be waiting 35 long years to reach the same level of investment in rural and regional telecommunications that Labor is prepared to do right now”

Which is also a load of shit.

OPEL’s network is offering wholesale backhaul access to providers, one of the big barriers to investment into regional areas, identified by numerous providers, except Telstra (who owns the backhaul network).

Using that wholesale backhaul network, providers will be able to justify investment into those areas, much earlier than the 35 years quoted by the idiot known as Conroy.

I said it before, I’ll say it again.
Idiots employed on the Coalition side.
Idiots employed on the Labor side.

Australia, you have idiots as choices to vote in at the election. Your vote is probably worth about 5c on eBay, because it really doesn’t matter who gets voted in, either way, we have idiots for technology ministers, incapable of even basic research. Those same problems follow through, right through to near the top of the party, where I suspect John Howard and Peter Costello, and Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan have at least SOME intelligence to use.

Enjoy!