TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

One of the more difficult items in relearning how to drive a manual car is getting clutch control perfect.

What was never really explained to me by.. anyone.. was that with the clutch in, the engine disconnects, thereby making the driveshaft freespin.

Essentially, with the clutch in, the engine will simply sit and spin, with the wheels disconnected (and essentially in freespin or stopped).

Now, while trying to get to grips with learning how to drive a manual car (again), you consider the process of moving off the kerb. No easy process starting out if you have no real idea on what you are doing.

Actually, this reminds me of a news story where some kids got busted stealing a car.. The problem? They couldn’t work out how to start it, as it was a manual.

The process of starting the car is easy, clutch in, select neutrel, start the car with a gentle amount of fuel.

Release clutch while in neutrel.

Car is started and won’t move at all (so long as park brake is on, or your on a flat surface, and no one is pushing you, or wind isn’t at cyclonic speeds).

Moving off is the harder part for what I would guess, everyone who doesn’t actually know whats happening, and isn’t being told the process. It’s not as easy as a manual.

The process however, I think I have got pretty much worked out completely (again).

With the car started in neutrel, indicate to show you are leaving.
Select first gear, leave the clutch in.
Drop the park brake.
Apply the foot brake.
Check mirrors.
Check blind spot. <-- Always do this. Apparently, its a key test item from the RTA. Release foot brake. Apply some fuel, not too much, otherwise the engine will roar. Come up with clutch, gently, but not all the way, to 'friction point'. As the car starts to move out, drive out into the lane. Release the clutch after two car lengths. Change to 2nd. Away it goes. Believe it or not, that was so difficult to pick up on, when you are being told ONLY to bring the clutch up to friction point (and therefore, stalling). I'm amazed at just how easy that was to pick up on after being instructed correctly. Applying the fuel is certainly easier, and a lot more definite, and will nearly always prevent stalling! I suppose this demonstrates that you can explain something to someone 100 different ways, and until its explained correctly, in a clear, concise manner, you are basically stabbing in the dark. Today, my drive consisted of a dash out towards Toukley, and was actually a great drive compared to previous experiences. Today was mostly error free, with the exception of taking an intersection right turn too soon (good thing the instructor came out of it OK), and then at a rather blocked off street, making a right turn into busy traffic, with the blockout situation. Still haven't got the art of creeping up to see there yet. And also coming from a 90 (80) zone to a 40 school zone is sort of painful. Not easy to stay below 40, when you have just been doing 80 for the last 20 mins. My goal here however, is to be licenced before Christmas, sooner if possible. Driving has become a more "addictive". I really do enjoy it, and unfortunately for all the IT related stuff, I tend to put that aside for many other things. Come to think about it, things I put the more productive sides of IT away for, include: 1. Whirlpool. I'm truly a Whirlpool Forums Addict. 2. This blog. I update it generally once a day. 3. Games on MSN. Just general games on MSN, they are fun, and certainly better than crunching code. 4. My fiance and child. I love them so much that I do enjoy spending time with them. 5. Driving. I really do enjoy. 6. TV. I watch some TV shows regularly. I love Futurama, and my child followed me into The Simpsons. Thank God You're Here got my attention, and has kept it (but back on break again). Those are really what I step away from things like OzVoIPStatus for. If I stopped part of the above tasks, I probably would put more time into the IT related stuff, like designing the website for the web hosting operation (or even a more general website focusing on all aspects of what I do / have done, but that's a HUGE task alone cataloging everything I've put time into). So, I do think the goal once I get my licence will obviously be the savings involved in regular transport costs, plus the simple flexibility of GOING ANYWHERE, ANYTIME is great. It's fun. Good fun. Fun things stimulate us. They can become addictive. But if something is fun, addictive and productive, well, in the words of 'The Veronicas' - Hook Me Up. Enjoy!

I’ve started with day 1 of my own production windows hosting box.

So far, the results have been great, with specific regard to spam management.

One of the domains hosted is a huge spam target, and gets spammed continually with hundreds of spam emails a day.

The host they were with had various issues, these ranged from lack of spam management through to issues running specific scripting for security.

These issues were not manageable, or able to be worked around due to the inflexibility of the staff.

And prior Australian Web Hosts for Windows seemed to have countless issues which really made them more trouble.

One didn’t have email working properly, another DNS issues, website issues on another, server security on another.

All those are common issues you sort of just “naturally cover for”.

Sure, you won’t find fault free everywhere, but these operations that were being dealt with were poor in many aspects at allowing client flexibility, while still maintaining some higher degree of server security.

The best of them I think was the last, though the issue with email was something a little unmanageable, and they were not willing to solve the issue, simply recommending a VPS, giving me rise that they might have had a vested interest in having a process running to stop any new executables by customers (it could happen!).

So, my goal with web hosting (unfortunately, its expensive to setup), is to offer the best of reliability (up to the network level, hopefully beyond there, but no guarantee), with the best of flexibility, but also, with the best of customer isolation, so they can obviously be flexible, but in their own space.

And I think that will work greatly for them.

What I would like to end up doing with the windows server is sticking some customers on it, adding MSSQL and basically having it closed off after we reach a level where I think customers could potentially affect other customers.

Essentially it will want to work like good business grade hosting, you host your site, you place it there, all tested, and if it breaks on our server, then you are basically suspended until you fix it locally.

Seriously, production environments are for production purposes. And in a web hosting environment, production is the key. Maintain secure production grade principles, and you can host really high packed business websites, and piss all the crap from the lower scale off, so that they don’t cause any issues.

The next step on this subject is ROI.

I didn’t spend money to not make a dollar back (though that was the original plan in a small localised secured environment), we will now need to obviously have a retail operation, but we will certainly enter the market with a single goal, and that is not to pack on as many customers as we can (that would see high profits though), but rather, to maintain a reliable operation, where only the sites we host are found to be secure, and reliable.

Windows hosting is an expensive operation to setup, which is why you can see millions of the CrapPanel based web hosts out there, with many run by 15 year olds who provide no support, have no concept of security, and simply host their IRC eggdrops and make $5 on the site.

That’s not a way forward, or even a way of hosting in a production environment, you don’t produce anything.

The secret to locking out a lot of spam email is simple too, it’s been around for a fair while, yet not enough people implement this strategy.

It eliminates false positives in its approach, and ensures that no mail is left unreceived assuming the other end complies with mail server RFCs.

And many do.

I’ll reveal more about the web hosting operation as time goes on, but I really am happy with the results for today, with the domain that “gets a lot of spam” now seeing levels as low as 30 a day, down from 400.

I hope to emerge as a business oriented web host in this field, but again, a focus solely on the websites we host as being quality websites.

Enjoy!

Tonight, I was watching with amazement (or lack thereof) the great debate between JHoward and KRudd.

Unfortunately, for me anyway, I still am undecided specifically on someone to favour for the election.

It really does suck to be me, because I really, honestly, cannot determine who to pick for at least the next 4 years of government.

Part of me thinks I can change my mind in 4 years, but what happens in 4 years if everyone else supports the one I didn’t support and this election was my chance at perhaps influencing the future (as it should be anyway).

Howard has proven leadership abilities. Tonight however, Howard stood there, rather tired in the debate that I suspected him to give a rising shine to.

Is Kevin Rudd just another Kim Beazley (or Sleazy), and another Mark Latham ?

Or is he a change to the ALP that will see a combination of continued or better good fiscal management, and spending in infrastructure to enhance our nation?

What if Rudd is spending too much, do we all give back that big tax cut?

What if he spends far too much and we have a debt again?

I would rather see the nation in credit personally, because when the government owes money, the balance on the financial side could lead (unlikely) to the decisions being influenced by those that the debt is owed to.

Having a large number of former union officials can’t be much good for our country either. According to Howard, 15% of employees were involved in unions, with many not supporting that at all.

I see that as a strong motive for work choices, and he did make good points that the flow on from industries such as Mining should only affect that area. Awards typically can apply to more than just one particular area.

Howard made a few falls tonight, by failing to answer questions directly.

The question about AWA and redundancy could have been better answered in my opinion. Though he is trying to save face of course, I think he could have answered and followed up with redundancies are paid for by the government where the company involved goes belly up.

The dishonesty (well, lack of answer really) aspect sort of gave him a negative light.

I also find it rather silly that 60 minutes, against the wishes of the National Press Club decided to show the worm on air.

I think the decision of those involved in the voting of behind the worm are somewhat unjustified and likely either Labor supporters, or those voting uninformed because of the WorkChoices scare campaigns.

WorkChoices could very well be the best thing to happen to IR Laws, for a while yet, because, as was revealed, the flow on affect from changes to awards can affect a lot more than the intended party.

Unions don’t need to dictate the terms of employment. In fact, no one should be dictating the terms. The employer and employee should most certainly be able to compromise and agree with each other on the terms that a particular person will be engaged in employment for.

I think that’s fair.

To say we need unions is to say that Australians aren’t able to think for themselves.

Surely, we aren’t stupid and rely on other people to make decisions that affect us directly?

This is about the rate of pay that you are paid for doing a job, should a union decide that, or should you and your employer?

I’m still middle ground on WorkChoices here though, as the argument bought forward many times so far has been that there are indeed “uneducated” people working in our nation, and those “uneducated” people might get bullied into agreements, or sign agreements because they aren’t adequately capable of deciding the terms that they will work with an employer under.

That’s not a government issue, that’s a employee issue still. Is it the nation’s fault they lack any skills to negotiate?

Anyway, the result of the debate tonight is that Howard finished up no better, and the closing statement that Howard had the chance to use to climb the ladder against Rudd got him nowhere!

I’m sure many will see through the Rudd crap, but still, his closing statement didn’t see him any better off.

See yesterday’s post.

We have a choice between two idiots to run the nation, pick one. It’s tough.

Enjoy!

Thinking recently about the announcement of tax cuts by both sides of government if elected, the result would be around $1,700 back in the hands of taxpayers a year.

That’s a bit of money, sure.

Will many miss it should they simply spend that money elsewhere? No! They probably wouldn’t.

Tax cuts are useful to some people, but what if instead of giving those dollars back, they instead invested that $34 billion.

What could you do with $34 billion dollars?

A lot!

Ask Telstra what they’d do with a contribution from the government of $34 billion (and they were not allowed to pocket it).

Ask Hospitals what they’d do with $34 billion.

Ask Schools / TAFE / Uni what they’d do with $34 billion!

You get the idea right?

$34 billion is a lot of money, so much money that it’d be able to see the OPEL broadband network foot print expanded over the top of itself some 16 or 17 times. That’s a lot more coverage!

But $34 billion might be better spent on perhaps school resources to ensure our kids study more science instead of religion, or police resources to fight the sick crimes the dumbshits of this world are committing, or hospitals get big kickers in funding to ensure that they are equipped to save as many lives as possible, or invest it in rail and make faster, faster, faster rail services from the outer areas of capital cities to go directly to the city centre, solving a majority of the housing crisis that people are having issues with now.

This really does make a bad voting decision. Vote Labor, they are planning large tax cuts. Vote Coalition, they are planning large tax cuts.

Who is going to spend big dollars on ensuring the future is more fruitful, instead of leaving it continue, or even degrade as a result of mass infrastructure under funding?

Give a police officer a pay rise, and perhaps he might do a bit more work in catching criminals.
Give a doctor a pay rise, and he might spend some spare time of his own researching cures to conditions.
Give a teacher more money, and they might push the children harder to be achievers instead of under educated criminals.

Why on earth refund to the taxpayer when there is still a LOT more work this country needs done?

Seriously both parties don’t think the work is done do they?

Surely they don’t think they can upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, with $34 billion less funding?

Australia, we have idiots running the nation, take your pick, both sides are just as dumb as each other.

Enjoy!

Thinking more about connectivity methods available in rural areas..

.. actually, let me clarify what I define as a rural area..

I define a rural area as a area of land where the population density is very light, so much so that in any 50 KM area, there might be a maximum of 40 residential properties.

.. Now it’s known the sort of surroundings I refer to rural, I wanted to mention here, that I was thinking of the different ways rural users could be connected to the internet, in a manner that delivered speeds which were future proof for at least 10 years, where they might degrade to the position where an upgrade might be needed again.

It’s a continuous cycle for the bush area, for sometime, until population density rises and big business find them feasible, the bush will continuously end up in a cycle like:

1. Services Degraded / Non – Existent
2. Services Improved to a Significant Scale for the future.
3. 5 – 10 years later, services are either below metro, but still “fair”, or below demand.
4. Services Degraded
5. Services Improved
6. Go to 1.

As you can see, the cycle for the bush will inevitably continue, the kicker here is investing in the right technology will at least mean that the improvements cost less in the form of upgrades to any network, rather than rolling out new infrastructure.

So, looking at my example, and the cycle that is believed to continue, we can see that the best solution for bush users is Wireless in some way, shape or form.

Running direct cables to these people, capable of carrying fast services are simply too expensive that they won’t be viable for some time.

The counter argument here is running fibre to their farm sheds, but that costs a packet. It’s one big plus is that it will be future proof for a long time (as long as the nation uses fibre optic cables undersea to get its data from the US).

So, back to wireless technologies, which are affordable for the density required to be serviced, the technologies used are all a key part of the decision.

WiMAX is a good choice, when you compare alternative wireless technologies, such as standard WiFi, and other technologies for a few reasons.

WiMAX can extend distances over 50KM, according to the only reliable source of information, WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX#Limitations, but behaves like DSL, with speeds dropping as a result of long distances.

Improvements to the WiMAX technology could see that improve.

The other ideal is doing exactly that in WikiPedia (ie. Providing 70Mbps data services) in a WDS(Wireless Distribution System) type of roll out, where the backhaul is simply the WiMAX network talking back to other WiMAX towers until it reaches a point of interconnect.

The bonus here is that should one unit drop out, the other is still available to offer an alternative backhaul path.

Futher to this, directional antennas and proper site survey can see the technology deployed to significant coverage benefits for the network.

Such improvements can be directional antennas targetting specific troublesome points, and even extending the technology to take on WiFi’s MIMO technology, which uses multiple antennas on a unit to find the best point of connection.

Carefully planned and deployed, WiMAX can indeed be a winning technology for rural australia, no matter who decides to call it sub par.

Until they have actually done it themselves and proven it to be of an inferior standard, or come to the table with better plans, those that claim a technology is inferior are talking out of their asses.

I’m keen to at least see a good worthwhile rollout of WiMAX take place to provide services to those that need it, and I would assume they would take advantage of all possible coverage extending options to save on any tower duplication.

It will indeed be good to see the speeds they will be pulling over such long range networks.

It’s been seen that many wireless based MESH groups of done links on standard wireless channels extending some 2KM+ or more, and receiving signal equivilent to what many call broadband in metro areas right now.

WiMAX is a more stable technology to do exactly what those mesh groups are doing, and with a Wireless Distribution System setup correctly as both the provider of services and the redundant backhaul, I doubt the technology will be a failure at all. I do see it as being a big success, if deployed correctly.

I have no idea why OPEL chose a conservative 20KM for the WiMAX network they are rolling out, as is stated in many areas, the networks are capable of 50KM, so they are somewhat cutting themselves off 30KM for some unknown reason, or perhaps this is where they expect the speeds to drop below a certain level (like 5Mbps?).

Hopefully they investigate all options with rolling this network out, it would be great to see the end results of such a large network.

Enjoy!

Senator Conroy in all his wisdom (or lack thereof) has recently claimed the government’s plan to invest in the OPEL network, with a $958 million government grant is not going to fulfill the proposed 99% coverage of the nation.

1. OPEL never committed to that level of coverage. That was a Coonan announcement, and wasn’t based off OPEL coverage only, with the news that FTTN and other services will also be available.

2. The coverage can’t be measured by anybody at all yet, because they have no idea the equipment being used, the power used on the transmitter, the frequency planned to be used, the version of WiMAX proposed to be used, how WiMAX will work in the specific areas.

So, what you get from the ALP is a rushed announcement trying to show something that it cannot prove anyway.

What they’ve done is used topographics to place predicted coverage on the electorate maps, trying to take into account the surface available.

They have no idea how high a tower is going to be built, or any enhancements with regard to angle that OPEL might do to create better coverage, or how they might deploy the network.

They are working off assumptions, such as 4W EIRP and 5.8Ghz.

Those are never set in concrete and the graphs offered by the ALP are really piss poor attempts at trying to shame out the OPEL effort.

We’ll obviously be able to benchmark OPEL when the develop, tweak and have the network in a complete state.

Benchmarking with nothing there is like benchmarking a computer system with no motherboard, CPU or RAM.

You simply can’t do it.

Enjoy!

I was in the middle of a driving lesson today (don’t laugh, I really have just been uber lazy in getting my license – or is that licence?), and realised something.

There is entirely double standards involved between learner drivers, and that of regular road users, and its rather silly.

For example, as anyone on the Central Coast can surely agree, many, many, many, (bugger it, nearly all) motorists do not bother to indicate coming off a major roundabout along Wyong Road or The Entrance Road for example.

I don’t see many at all anyway.

A human can generally learn a few ways, but one of those ways is mimic, which is essentially by monitoring ‘peers’ for the actions they take in situations.

Looking at the situation on the roundabouts in the area, I don’t really see many people indicate coming OFF a roundabout at all.

But you can bet the RTA will almost certainly take points off for not obeying the road rules (indicate when coming off a roundabout where it is practical).

I didn’t indicate for a few reasons, but one of which is it didn’t really occur to me to do that (I’ve had my L’s since 2003, haven’t really been motivated to get my P’s til recently, got a car now :D).

Anyway, in 2003, I definitely knew that rule, and sure was very capable in abiding by that specific rule in Queensland.

Here in NSW, it seemed to not cross my mind to do that, like I was already doing so proficiently in Qld.

That’s not too big an issue though, as I am sure I can train myself to do that again (it’s amazing what happens in 3 years of not actually doing any driving at all, you forget some of the basic rules!).

Anyway, being a Learner Driver (and not necessarily, learning how to drive) does see clear and distinct changes in other drivers, some will tailgate to try and cause you to go faster, so naturally, go slower.

Today, we had a P plater feel it was their duty to break the speed limit on approach to a roundabout (Wyong Road) and cut across the right hand lane to the left hand lane, simply because they saw 50 as too slow, coming from a side street..

And then we had the other day, a tailgate from – you guessed it – another P plater, who simply felt they could try and rush the speed limit..

I generally do accelerate to the speed limit where it’s safe to do so!

One item I did indeed learn today however, was that you must indicate to undertake a vehicle turning right.

D’oh, I knew that, but it didn’t really occur to me, because again, in the last 3 years I haven’t really been doing much in learning to drive by the road rules, and neither have I really observed many that do drive according to specifics in the road rules (I doubt many indicate coming around a vehicle turning right on The Entrance Road.

The double standards here unfortunately are that, unless you obviously drive to the book that the RTA have (ie. the correct road rules), you inevitably lose points, and may not pass.

I haven’t attempted that yet, hopefully by Christmas I’ll have the ability to set out by myself, and remove that restriction that requires me to chase down a licensed driver to travel with me.

That is SOOO restrictive. 1 hour unfortunately travels by so fast too!

In the last 5 hours driving however, I think I’ve learnt how to adequately control a manual vehicle, maintain position on a road, negotiate turns, roundabouts, hill starts and traffic appropriately, and if you include the idiots that should have their P licenses taken away from them, I could say I’ve done some hazard perception (by not turning into that P plater and forcing them into a mower shop :)).

I hope that I gather more driving ability in the coming weeks, to the extent that by the end of November, we are getting very confident that my license should be easy to obtain.

I wish I could get more hours in a week however, driving seriously is rating higher than anything on the PC to me right now, and that could be a real positive change.

Enjoy!

BigPond seems to be set on trying to gain customers in a market where they are losing them, with a new push involving a networking your home angle.

BigPond traditionally don’t support networking at all, and limit support of the customer internet connection to the first and only internet connected machine, refusing to get involved in even basic ICS or Router based networking.

The motive to me would seem sparked by a noticed decline in market share, sliding under 50% marketshare, which speaks volumes about customer loyalty.

Telstra are also likely preparing for the negative effects that will result from OPEL, Optus and Virgin’s marketing strategies, and those I imagine they will feel hurt by.

Examples of that include the Wholesale loss of business.

Inevitably, a new wholesaler of ports is entering the market, and that to Telstra Wholesale spells problems for its near monopoly.

Essentially, all those ports that they have in exchanges will be wasting away, unused. Telstra would have made investment decisions in putting them in there, based on demand increasing, and wholesale competition remaining at low to NO levels.

That’s changing as Optus, Agile, Chime, OPEL and a few others are investing and wholesaling large amounts of ports from exchanges.

Telstra will obviously have to compete for market share on the wholesale and retail level, and the harm done to profit margins as a result will affect Telstra.

Telstra’s retail broadband share is at 45%. That means the other 55% are with competitors.

With any consolidation of the industry, you can imagine the issues for Telstra.

We already know that iiNet has been eyed off by a few passing companies as it is, so its not far fetched that there could be a bigger consolidation, and a LARGER threat to Telstra be formed.

Enjoy!

Yet again Helen Coonan disappoints fans with another bad decision.

The DCITA recently awarded $98 million to the pigs at Telstra for installing ADSL services in Regional exchanges. 211 of them.

Unfortunately, however, the list demonstrates that many of the exchanges Telstra are choosing to deploy into already have government funded, and competitively priced, services in them as it is.

Placing Telstra DSLAMs beside the already existing, taxpayer funded, cheaply priced DSLAMs from competitors like Internode is a very, very, very poor policy decision.

Did Coonan not think to check if broadband services were available in those areas?
Did she just believe crap put in front of her from Telstra?

For me, this nearly sparks an end to Coonan’s employment as far as I am concerned.
This decision really is a poor decision. $98 million that Telstra could have easily found by itself, but instead, was taken from a taxpayer fund, containing $162.5 million for regional investment, was given to Telstra, a extremely profit driven company, to overbuild competitively priced services in many of the regional areas on offer in the 211 proposed exchanges.

$98 million that could have perhaps gone to some of the other ISPs who already have invested carefully in the area, and could have done better with the funds, like expand services into NEW areas, and not overbuild areas where competitively priced services are already available..

Poor planning, poor decisions.

I think we simply got lucky with FTTN in that she did turn it down and avoid a grubby deal with Telstra.

This $98 million reflects some kind of ignorance of Telstra’s profits.

Surely the minister realises that whoever invests in the areas, will eventually be making a return on the equipment, even if they did go at it themselves, they would be making a return eventually!

Telstra more so, because Telstra’s prices mean returns are found rather quickly, perhaps even in the same month of the equipment going live.

Ladies and Gentleman, Broadband Consumers, we have two idiots aiming for that job of Communications Minister.

Coonan: Poor decision making skills, when reviewed in the context of the $98 million handed to a company with exceedingly large profits that could easily have been invested in these new areas, and the fact that a deal was NEARLY done with Telstra on FTTN behind closed doors.

Conroy: Poor knowledge of the areas he is talking about, and more of a Telstra puppet. Coonan demonstrated his lack of knowledge, where he claimed to deliver 6Mbps to areas already getting 24Mbps.

So, take your pick. Idiot 1 has so far made some good decisions, but came close and also made bad decisions. Idiot 2 doesn’t seem to keep informed in what happens in metro areas, let alone regional areas.

It’s a shame we can’t pick someone else to take that spot. Someone who actually can think about the facts behind the presented issue, someone who can look at Telstra and tell them to spend their own dollars, someone who can see the issues competition are facing in investing and giving them a kick along, but also, someone who can set proper competition frameworks that encourage investment and encourage development.

The two people mentioned above are far from what Australia really needs to fill that area of the nations interest. That’s what I can conclude from following many of the decisions and announcements produced by both the fools we have a choice of.

Enjoy!

It has finally, finally been announced.

John Howard finally got the balls up to call the election, on November 24.

I guess this has a few key issues to consider, but the more important one is, who will we be calling our Prime Minister?

John Howard – Liberal
Kevin Rudd – Labor

Both are capable leaders of our nation.
Both have differing views to my own.

I’ve been thinking considerably about what each might put out as reasons to vote for them.

I consider a few factors points that will sway my decision, below, not in order of anything really.

IR Laws
These are important to some extent, because employment depends on it. Jobs need to exist, and the employment pay is a driving motivator for having a job (or not).
Small business also depends on IR Laws, just as big business will.

Voting Howard: We see support for WorkChoices, which does indeed appear good, and from what I know it’s certainly sound, however, we are hearing reports that the uneducated, etc are being unfairly fixed into agreements.

Voting Rudd: No WorkChoices. This will see no change to the environment many are employed under now anyway.

My thoughts: Sure, if unemployment is low, the advantage of an agreement between employer and employee could work in the employee’s favour, but on the other hand, if competition heats up with unemployment, wages / hours could be negatively impacted. I think I support Rudd here and having no change to the system, sure it sucks to not be able to negotiate hours and pay, but then, it means that wages aren’t cut or hours are longer.

Education
Teachers get paid a fortune for what they do. So they should, doing a good job earns them good pay. Training our youngsters is essentially dictating our future.
We don’t need teachers who are not capable of teaching children to be the best they can be, and helping them realise their potential.

My thoughts: I left out the comparison between Howard and Rudd on this one, mainly because I’m not fully aware of their policies. However, I do support the theory teachers should be commission paid. So, the students are tested on a national administered test on certain topics they should know and have a very familiar understanding. We use the results and find the average.

Teachers who perform excessively higher above the average are paid more. Teachers who underperform are given an idea of how they did perform and are then encouraged to perform better (meet the average marker).

This way, we bring all our nations learning into a set of areas that encourage teachers to encourage students. Teachers who are encouraged to help students will obviously be rewarded for the work they do.

The downside to this method is we might end up targetting regions, where we see some areas, where the population in general is not as capable as other highlight areas, and this could affect things for those who are really below average.

But then, everyone has the potential to be the best they can be, so the averaging would basically account for this.

Broadband / Communications
This topic has been a big highlight of the last year (and then some), it was promoted to the status of election issue after Telstra and G9 got down at each others throats and politics paid attention for once. Telstra’s whinging did a fair bit of that promotion, and now we might end up with an overall better outcome.

Voting Howard: The policy seen from them in this matter is already underway, they plan to have an Expert Taskforce review the matter, and basically determine themselves what works best for the nation as a whole, meeting several guidelines, of which users contributed to, and were acknowledged and encouraged into the final guidelines.

They plan to review proposals, and give whoever wins the rights to build the network at their own cost (no cost to taxpayers, will only service metro areas generally). Regional and Rural areas are considered with a few things, such as the OPEL ADSL2+ / WiMAX rollout, and the investment funds from the $2 billion communications fund investment. Good policy for now and into the future.

I still consider in my choice previous choices, such as selling Telstra with network assets.

Voting Rudd: The policy from Rudd’s party (and the silly Conroy) is to take $4 billion from the future fund and invest in a national public, private partnership for building FTTN with whoever has the best proposal to take the services to the people.

My thoughts: This idea works well to a good level, we see government investment into a public network, and the result for me, the end user is a connection that is built in a partnership.

The network would be open access, and considering it involved government funds, we see them basically maintaining an open network for all to access on fair terms.

The government gains a conflict of interest being the regulator and the investor here, again, but they rule each other out if they also have the pricing decisions in their control.

This leaves me to vote Labor, because the policy decisions Howard make are sound, very sound, however, we are far behind now, and we need to catch up. This requires some taxpayer bucks, unfortunately.

Environment.
Global warming (or cooling) has been a hot topic for the last few years, mainly due to proof that the ice caps are melting as a result of the warm gases being pushed out from many of the planets countries.

The issue I am considering here is, who has the better plan to fight this nations global warming, and do little to contribute to any other nations warming of the planet.

Keep in mind also that Australia is not Chernobyl, and I don’t favour nuclear at all really.
Accidents do happen, incompetence happens, and we can’t have that, it’s too risky for us as a nation, without any adequate research, proving it is safe for us as a nation.

Voting Howard: The policy of Howard so far seems to be look at nuclear at all costs, determine its viability, and if it is safe for the nation and also viable, we can imagine they would invest in it.

Voting Rudd: Strict no nuclear policy. Which is just as acceptable, but what do you plan to do to remove coal burning down the ice caps?

My thoughts: This is a middle ground issue. Nuclear should be investigated and very thoroughly, no one should be able to do anything at all with nuclear power until they are proven completely capable and proficient in all aspects of nuclear power.

I suspect stronger training and strong auditing of the people working the nuclear operation, should one go ahead, be required. I suspect something like a strong training certification program, which requires them to identify how nuclear works, and what the big nos are in nuclear are indeed some of the key aspects.

Besides, there’s no point touching nuclear power if all we end up doing is basically the same level or higher damage that coal is doing to the planet now.

So, my voting decision isn’t influenced too much here, but indeed, I would be ok to see nuclear placed, so long as it is a safe medium, and one which is properly, and thoroughly reviewed, and no other options seem to stack up against it.

We have a sun to get power from, we have wind to get power from, and we have oceans we can probably find ways to get power from.. Nuclear isn’t looking necessary, and also, we shouldn’t become the planets dumping ground for nuclear waste..

How do you safely transport green goo across the ocean? How do you contain any damage that might occur ?

Security
I don’t see Australia sparking much of a reason for a terrorism attack, that is, so long as we don’t give much reason to terrorists to want to attack us, or for any other country to invade us.

We should indeed be as neutrel as we can with as many other nations as we can, we should be a peaceful nation, but of course, we should also be able to assist other nations in their times of need.

Voting Howard: We can see from previous policy that they take a strong stance to supporting the war on terrorism, which is in a middle ground for me.

Voting Rudd: No real difference here.

My thoughts: I see reason to stop terrorism on a global scale, it affects people heavily.

I see reason to not get involved in terrorism related activities so that we aren’t seen as a country of interest to other nations that might decide to calculate plans of attack.

We should not be feared by all, but certainly not attractive to other nations as a viable attack.

So with all that in mind, I don’t get influenced by the security aspects just yet.

Health
It is important that the nation as a whole recognises the need for people to maintain a healthy lifestyle and maintain their health as best as possible with the isolation and cure of the sick of the nation.

Voting Howard: Will we see more instances of health issues such as the issue recently exposed, the building of a mental health facility in NSW, yet, no staff. Will we see staff in all hospitals prepared to take on big health issues? Will dentist visits be free and easy to obtain, or should we instead, let the market decide with dentists opening their own shops and charging their own rates?

Private Health Cover works for many? Should this be enhanced in a manner that makes it acceptable to many more people?

Voting Rudd: See the same for Howard. Rudd has no experience here, how will he intervene on hot topics like many of the health issues exposed?

My thoughts: As long as we can get treatment for the sick and injured, and the level of treatment is of a good quality, there’s little to be swayed in a voting decision.

I recall that someone thinks dentists visits should be free (covered by medicare), I feel this is a double edged sword, with the nation paying for people’s fillings, extractions and cavity repair. User pays seems to work here, so long as the disadvantaged also get access to treatment, there’s little of concern.

Economy
The hot topic. How much will our taxes rise by under a Rudd government? Will Howard continue ridding the nation of debt, and continue with brilliant ideas, like the Future Fund to remove large expenses such as the public superannuation bill?

Voting Howard: Key economic decisions here all seem sound and doing well for our nation, he has seen us through with the GST being a invention of good measure to see prices drop across many industries. He has also seen us foster a relatively stable import / export, and has unfortunately seen the property issues we have today in NSW.

What do Howard’s people plan to do, to solve this issue of overpriced housing? People need walls, people can’t really afford to pay excessively high for those walls like many stupid people are doing now in NSW!

Voting Rudd: No clear policy on this.

My thoughts: I’m not aware of who has my interests here, and these will likely be exposed more clearly over the campaigns in the next six weeks.
We need some solution to the property issues, because we all want to own property, but there’s too many people getting too much for property. Market demands exceed supply. Sydney siders can’t all sell and move, so I think we know what is needed here.
We need more land zoned and more residential development done to allow for the market to level out.

OR

We need business investing in the regional areas so that the demand is spread away from the heart of Sydney and placed in more areas across the nation.

I’m sure many businesses in Sydney could easily do business outside of Sydney instead..

Besides, with the residential boom, why has there been little boom in the business market? They didn’t just stack those businesses on top of each other to save zoning more land?
Oh wait, they did.

So we see now the issue. Business has little incentive to move out away from the city centre.
Residents can’t (and probably don’t want to) live on top of each other.

What could happen to solve this is zoning more land, or, many people selling up, scrapping the building and building multi levels on top of each other, than encouraging further take up.

If businesses are built on top of each other, the same will eventually apply to residential, otherwise, well, people end up travelling more than it is worth to simply get to work.

A tricky situation, I am unaware of any party policy on this issue, so this will be a influence on my decision.

That’s not all that will influence me either, so I am certainly keeping a keen eye out for who has my interests.

By the polls done online though, it looks like the inexperienced promotionalist, Kevin Rudd, seems to be winning.

I’ve generally been a Liberal supporter, but only because I find myself agreeing with the decisions and policy announced by Howard’s government now, such as the Future Fund, OPEL and the Communications Fund.

Be interesting to see who echos my thoughts in their campaigns (if anyone), but not just echo my thoughts, end up living up to those thoughts after elected.

Enjoy!

I did a transaction with a seller a while ago, and the transaction was a relatively poor transaction, with the seller starting with the wrong delivery details (correct details provided on the transaction), and sending the wrong item.

The seller was left a negative feedback because of both, the item being sent incorrectly, and his close attempt at addressing the item to the wrong address.

The seller didn’t like the negative, and responded with threats of leaving a negative feedback item unless I removed the feedback.

I declined, after close research revealed a negative can be removed if left as a result of blackmail / retalitory negative.

I have plenty of proof the negative is retaliatory, with a Square Trade complaint and numerous emails from this seller outlining all of his threats.

He even threatened to sue me for defamation, loss of income and stress his staff apparently suffered.. – STILL WAITING.

I am still refusing to be bullied into being silenced, and it seems that eBay do take such actions by sellers in a negative light, which is a good thing.

They could prevent all this crap though, all they have to do is restrict the feedback order, the seller must leave feedback after payment is received, and the buyer must leave feedback after the item is received.

This means that feedback can’t be subject to blackmail from sellers trying to influence the ratings (this seller liked to pride themselves on their 0 negative rating). I guess all the auctions are now misleading, as they do have 1 negative feedback now.

The system by eBay could then be enhanced more to allow feedback on not received, not paid items after a set time, or after a complaint has been opened with eBay, therefore removing the influence of negative feedback blackmail / threats.

Then, we had another idiotic seller, who sat on my payment without shipping for 2 days (admitted it), but I left him a neutrel, thought that’d be fair.

Anyway, the response from the seller after I paid quickly, was a neutrel feedback which was something along the lines of:
“Shipment delayed by x ” … .

I was the buyer here.. Why punish me for HIS stuff up?

eBay really need to think out the feedback system more. It really needs to be as free as possible from outside influence, and needs to be as much as possible, operated in a procedural fashion to prevent this sort of rubbish from happening..

Sellers should be required to leave feedback to get feedback (which is generally their own motivation anyway), and buyers should be able to leave feedback after they have received an item.

Simple enough really.. maybe eBay might see the simplicity, but more to it, the accuracy increase such measures will have.

Does eBay support a seller bullying environment?
Let’s hope not, because without buyers, eBay wouldn’t really have much for sellers to stay there for.

Enjoy!

Yesterday, it was revealed Telstra lost in its attempt to drag Coonan through court, in a desperate attempt to gain access to OPEL’s bidding documents (and therefore straegic business documents).

I think that Telstra might have lost more than it thought it would in setting this case up.

They first lost what would seem to be the ultimate goal of the case, getting access to the technologies, areas, pricing of the OPEL network, and use that strategically to compete with OPEL.

They second lost the costs of employing the legal team and working on a case that was going to go nowhere fast (just as fast as the legal system operates, that increases costs).

The third loss was the loss of fees paid for dragging Coonan through court, and all her legal costs associated to that.

The fourth loss was reputation, Telstra negatively affected its reputation, by again holding back regional broadband access, directly, by placing uncertainty around the OPEL network decision.

The fifth loss was being exposed for the pigs they are. They deliberately took this to court, they deliberately lodged a non complying bid in an effort to push this case through so that they were to become the winners. If anyone else won, they’d challenge it. If Telstra’s bid won, they’d have a heap of government dollars to put towards the equipment they already have out there. This is a loss in the reflection against its reputation.

The sixth loss is the precedence loss.

Telstra’s court case would almost certainly be used in any further action Telstra chooses to take, with references likely to refer back to the case, and be used as reference to Telstra abusing the legal system.

Further court cases by Telstra could see direct references to statements by the Judge, such as one which shows they did indeed intend to take legal action, so long as they won’t get laughed out of court.

Further, they chose the court action to fuel their anti-Singapore racism campaign.

They don’t seem to have considered that aspect just yet, but I think it will soon come to bite them on the arse.

Telstra are hypocrites, just look at the New Zealand regulation case as a clear example.

They might not know it, but they could also be setting themselves up indirectly to take the wrong forms of action.

Shareholders really should indeed try and demand that the situations here be more controlled.

The boy who cried wolf, well no one believed him when the wolf came.

Keeping up with such actions and such abuse of the legal system and such media actions could see Telstra themselves get ignored.

That’d be a good sight to see.

Enjoy!

Telstra yet again wastes more shareholder funds after the court case launched against Helen Coonan was thrown out of court.

Telstra’s case had no real grounding from the get go, and documents from Telstra show that they intended to launch action against Coonan, even if the outcome wasn’t going to go Telstra’s way.

Telstra’s reasoning for the case seem to be not just to get hold of any key decision making documents, but rather, get access to documents revealing the intended roll out areas, so Telstra could prepare itself and compete against OPEL.

Essentially, Telstra want access to strategic business data from OPEL, and naturally, they aren’t going to get that, so they tried to do it with force, as well, delay the OPEL deployment as much as possible by placing the funding in question through the court case.

Telstra’s follow up tagline is centered around the government keeping secret the OPEL program, being quoted in the media as “”The decision today means that the Australian Government has succeeded in keeping secret how it came to a decision to spend $1 billion of tax payers money on a program that didn’t even fulfil the original aims,” he said.” – I’ve seen plenty on the OPEL plan, and further Telstra resorted to Singapore based racism, attacking Optus for being a partnership with Elders.

The government aren’t trying to keep anything secret here, far from it, they want everyone to know that OPEL is coming, it’s the bargaining chip for the election to counter Rudd’s proposed situation, which would essentially not solve many problems at all, and instead, create many more.

In other news to attempt to dull out Telstra’s court case loss (and big mass loss of shareholder funds in legal fees, and being ordered to pay Coonan’s legal bills), the news of 211 proposed ADSL enabled exchanges was bought about today.

211 exchanges across Australia will finally get ADSL broadband services under the Australian Broadband Guarantee, giving Telstra $98 million in funding to provide services to areas. The ABG consisted of $162.5 million in funding, and we can assume that there is still some funding left for the likes of Internode to continue deployment to areas where they can service.

My thoughts here are that the government should now completely no longer assist Telstra at all with any more services, Telstra’s profits well and truly could cover such minor expenses as that, considering they also choose to burn cash on vexatious lawsuits against the Australian government, burn a lot of shareholder funds in advertising which is misleading, burn a lot of funds in misleading websites, burn a lot of funds in general.

I imagine the total of all expenses above would come close to half that $98 million.. Telstra could have easily managed to spend that.

I believe our government really needs to exclude Telstra from any subsidy style funding tenders, so that competition can get a fair go in areas where the costs to service a customer might not be cheap, but with subsidy style funding, they could become viable.

Supporting Telstra’s greed does consumers little in the way of good. The government (either side) need to recognise that.

Enjoy!

I’m not sure what percentage of the population this applies to, but I think a percentage of people might recognise what I am saying here.

Bad money management.

People who live OFF debt. Litterally. They feed themselves not off the paychecks, but off debt.

They house themselves not off paychecks, but off debt.

How do they continue such a cycle?

Interest ends up costing you more than the cash in your back pocket!!!

The people I am talking about are those who see a price tag which says $1999, take it home today type offers. They end up paying $2500 for that $1999 item, clearly don’t realise it though.

Debt money is the WORST money. If you can’t fund it out of your own pocket, do you really need it?

We don’t live like that at all, and live well and truly within our means and add to a savings account regularly, so that we end up making INTEREST off the money we don’t spend, rather than hand that interest over to a bank.

And to us, its much easier losing 6% interest than it is placing it on the credit card (purely an emergency / payment of automated bills item), mainly because saving a bit of cash takes just a few weeks. Paying off the credit card could take months, and we end up paying much, much more than the 6% lost on moving funds away from savings to fund purchases.

We also have people who owe us money. They aren’t exactly smart at managing money, and I would guess they are living beyond their own means, which is a shame really. They need a good smack around the head and be tought some smart money management, rather than trying to flog everything out on debt, and then running from debt for a while.

We are at a stage with one particular debt, owed to us for nearly 2 years, which is approaching legal action. It’s less than $1000, but it is becoming worth persuing just to try and get some sense out of the person behind it.

Financial security doesn’t exist in living a life paying off debt. The sooner many people in the nation realise that, the sooner the nation might be in a better position.

We are a nation living on debt. $30 billion of it. Needlessly in many cases, I’m sure.

Why live beyond your own financial means? You do realise that sooner or later they’ll want the money.. They get the interest they charge you sooner or later. And you more than likely won’t win lotto..

It’s better to be making the $ off your savings rather than finding new ways to spend them.

The secret to financial success? Get money and hang on to it.
Stop giving it away to the banks in CC interest, start getting it from the banks in savings interest.. Simple really.

Don’t owe people money. If people owe you money, get a contract drawn up for recovery.

Enjoy.

Need we say anymore but that statement?

It says a lot about Telstra’s actions with regard to competition.

Everything from pricing retail lower than wholesale through to the current mash up we have now are all a direct result of Telstra’s complete dislike of competition.

Competition means they have to compete, they have to work for the customers, instead of having them handed to them due to lack of choice.

This for Telstra means they have to put the work in to getting those customers on board, they won’t simply come along for Telstra’s higher prices, unless of course they are the Telstra lovers in the population (the older people who know little more).

I definitely believe Telstra BigPond’s marketshare is derived from the ignorant. The more people that are made aware of the competition, and the rates Telstra charge, and Telstra’s deceitful marketing tactics, the better off as a whole they’ll all be.

On the other hand, if you can’t beat them, join them.

ISPs could start offering plans at $7.95 for 6 months, from $29.95, on a 2 year contract with low usage and when the customer gets the BigBill they are offered to upgrade the plan to the higher plan and cop the BigBill..

I think other ISPs should do this, and drive Telstra’s scam out by simply undercutting them to a level that the deceitful marketing deployed by Telstra loses all effectiveness.

Or, we can wait a good 30 years or so and by that point, the market would have changed to the more intelligent generations who will be aware of Telstra’s deceitful marketing and stay away from them!

Or, perhaps by that point in time we’ll see some good change in the industry, with the forced structural seperation of Telstra. That’d fix it.

Or as has been suggested recently, make regulations so uncomfortable for Telstra, and don’t budge, and eventually they’ll agree to Structural Seperation, and that’d be a win for consumers (yeh, don’t believe Telstra’s trash), because the consumer wins by having a level playing field to purchase services from.

… And if I have to read another shareholder whinge about how this government owes them something, I will want to slap them across the face for being fat greedy pigs. The government owes shareholders nothing. They bought, they knew regulations were on the horizon.. Idiots.

.. And the same above applies to anyone who calls a Telstra reseller a leech, or getting regulated, below cost, discounted prices. That’s absolute trash.

There are some people seriously blind to the basic logic at play here.

Oh, and for those wondering.. Christopher had no answer to my question. Because its the truth. Telstra Wholesale doesn’t sell services below cost. They are full of shit. If you want to listen to shit, go read the shareholder crap on Telstra’s Now We Are Bullshitting website.

It seriously is full of shit.

Enjoy!

Solution 1 would be to take the licenses off them, and jail them where they might learn how to speed while walking!

But seriously, that’s not a entirely realistic solution, as all it will acheive is more people in prison, but the roads will obviously end up “less dangerous”, purely because speeding would be removed as a statistic in the overall make up (among all the other various reasons for incidents involving motor vehicles).

A better solution, which has many side effects that I was discussing on the Whirlpool forums (In the News), is the solution involving GPS tracking.

Essentially, all registered vehicles will require a GPS tracker fitted to the vehicle, in such a manner that removal would be damaging.

The GPS device than behaves like a normal GPS unit, logging where the driver has driven, the speed between two points is regularly checked, and the speed limit is obtained by a database after accurately identifying the road they are travelling on (using GPS + database).

When a vehicle is found to be speeding, fine the driver or slow the vehicle down.

This had a heap of flow on realisations too!
GPS tracking will allow to identify where a registered vehicle is at anytime.
A significant number of crimes involve motor vehicles, eg. bank robbery, auto theft, and so forth.

What would happen to those criminals if they stole a car for example, robbed a bank? Well, they’d be able to track which vehicle it was due to logging, and then trace that vehicle’s location near immediately and have cars on its rear in minutes.

There’d be no getting away, as changing vehicles would be detected by the remote command centre where they’d be actively following the chase and be able to determine when a vehicle is slowing down.

We’d see a drastic change, there’d be no to low speeding, due to the high risk of getting caught – why bother with fixed speed cameras, when you can have the speed trap follow the vehicle at all times?

Auto theft would hit low to no levels, mainly because tracking the vehicle down would be a simple task, and the logging would see any link between the theft and the criminals path of travel (and any subsequent vehicles stolen on the path).

Crimes involving motor vehicles would definitely decrease. We’d be putting a large number of criminals out of a job. They’d not be able to steal and respray cars to make a living. They’d not be able to rob a servo and speed off in an effort to ‘lose the police’.

The downside to it? None really, aside from the privacy obviously, but who cares if its logged where your vehicle has been? If anything that logging would prove very useful in fighting crimes, and again, reduce the spending on speed cameras, and probably remove speeding related offences altogether.

There are numerous other alternatives too, which aren’t as privacy intrusive, one of which would be an array of speed cameras to ensure accuracy, and even be used to determine the average speed across a stretch of road.

My favourite overall aside from the GPS tracking unit, but has less of an overall effect (won’t stop motor vehicle related crimes) is the unsigned speed camera array.

Setup a array of speed cameras (using any of a road sensor type sensor) at any chosen legitimate area (not near a hill, etc.). Calibrate the trap, and ensure it is accurate.

Then, that’s it. Don’t put signs up. Try and hide them along light posts or the like to make them less visible, and wait.

Because drivers don’t know about it being there, and there’s no notice of it, they’ll speed right through it and get a fine in the mail.

That’ll teach them ignorant idiots that our speeding laws exist for the safety of all road users.

It’ll introduce an element of fear into them as well, fear of the unknown. They don’t know where the cameras are, so they are less likely to speed, and therefore remove speed out of many of the excuses for an accident, and likely reduce fatality rates.

So the concentration can then be put into the more pressing areas, after removing speeding, such as educating kids to not run out on roads, and drink driving, and all those other accidents that go with speeding to contribute to the accident.

Eg. Speeding isn’t directly responsible, the other half is a wrong turn, illegal overtake, cutting a car off, whatever the reason, there’s two parts here.

Speeding is just significant because it is indeed involved in many of the accidents, but not always directly responsible.

So, remove speeding and we get to focus on the real details. Whilst speeding may not be the cause of accidents, fatalities are contributed to highly by how fast the vehicle is going (slower vehicle, less impact damage, etc).

Oh, and if you are wondering where I started thinking about this, a story was published on news.com.au a while ago, a 54 year old whinging he’d lose his job, mortgage, kids etc, as a result of a row of speeding fines from a speed camera which didn’t get proper signage until August (his fines were in July).

He wants to sue the RTA in a class action for failing to put signs there is a speed camera there.

But that doesn’t change the fact he was speeding…

I just stole 3 cars and a boat because I didn’t think I’d get caught, please let me get away your honour?

Somehow I think he has little left to stand on, because the laws of speeding still stand, even if the enforcement was not exactly correct.

He lost his license already, and got it back, works as a professional driver, and speeds.

If only there was a poll on whether he deserves to ever be let on our roads again! I’m sure the result would be no, he has had and lost his chances!!

Don’t speed on our roads. You are not a hero, you are a careless idiot, and deserve to lose your license for speeding in the first place. It’s a privilege to drive on our roads. Treat it that way.

Enjoy!

Telstra’s latest attempt at trying to patch things up with the government seem to have been deployed in a typical Telstra way: Incorrectly.

Telstra released a letter to shareholders which is full of misinformation. The letter tries to influence the voters who are also shareholders to vote at the election in a manner that is to remove the current government.

The tactics by Telstra are all based on its approach, there is no loser for them. FTTN is coming, they know it. If the current government won’t give in to their demands, they’ll push them on the brink of the election being called so to severely influence decision. What have they got to lose either way (aside from customers and the value rapidly destroyed in the brand name)?

Well, they could end up in several different ways..

The actions Telstra take now have actions and reactions.

Attacking the government on regulation of CDMA:
Action: Government enforced decision to make Telstra honour its promise
Reaction: Telstra threaten legal action and also try to influence the shareholder election votes.. (again).

Attacking the government for not removing regulations on broadband:
Action: Telstra complained about regulations and investment issues.
Reaction: Government funded OPEL.
Telstra reaction: Telstra uses it as another item to influence shareholders.

Another one?

Well, let’s see. Telstra attack the governments on both sides to the point where they decide structural seperation will almost definitely sort all problems..
.. Telstra fear ending up like that poor payphone.

They’ll only get so far with constant whinging. Personally, I think they’ll get ignored for the most part. Telstra letters to shareholders will almost certainly be thrown out like typical Telstra marketing, and shareholders won’t care.

And those that do read it, and do know what they are doing will realise that in supporting that, they’ll be cutting their own throats by pushing prices up, or denying themselves of CDMA services, or whatever the case might be.

Essentially Telstra won’t be able to produce a interest significant enough to dint any percentage on the votes on telecommunications.

Many are concerned about more PRESSING issues than Telstra, who is a whinging baby, and can be seen for little more than that as a result of Phil’s loud mouth- which has shut up recently, or the media are ignoring him, either way, someone learnt, or copped a brick to the head. They’ve whinged so much that the whinging is just meaningless now.

People do realise Telstra aren’t going to get anywhere, heck, even the government the crap was supposed to target saw right through it and believe it will have nil effect on the outcome (people want education, health, schools, employment, lower taxes.. no more Telstra, all important issues).

Telstra might shut up after the election, which still online seems to be flowing in Labor’s way.

What I’ll vote for?
So far, whoever will sort idiots like this out, who have 0 disregard for speeding laws:
Whirlpool ItN forum (need to be a member):Whirlpool Link
And also the news.com.au article (no membership needed): SMH

Such idiots should never have been relicensed to start with, I don’t care he has a mortgage, job and kids. Should have thought about that before he put the rest of the users of the road in danger. His disregard to me points out that he might as well as not have kids, because clearly his attitude isn’t one of which favours coming home off a hard day delivering items as a professional driver to a family, or even at all.

One would assume a 54 year old would have half the sense not to speed like a wank. Even after losing the license once.

I’m still in the progress of getting off my L’s and whilst it was much easier back 54 years ago, it is still no excuse to abuse that privilege the way he has continually done.

I’m all for support of unsigned speed cameras. Add an element of the unknown fear to these idiots, because they don’t value their kids, mortgage, jobs or life – otherwise they’d have at least some regard for the speeding laws set out.

In other, completely legal news, Seven and Unwired are getting closer together. The share price of Unwired rose to 51c at some point, 1c more than what Seven’s peak offer is.. Now, all they do need is a better offer to compete harder between Seven and another company, and those shareholders will do better than Telstra shares for some time!!

Enjoy!

Looking further into WorkChoices (and following a Whirlpool thread on the subject), it seems that in Victoria, a study conducted has exposed WorkChoices as a reason for lower pay and more hours.

I can’t speak certainly on the nature of the statistics exposed in this PDF document, as I was too busy watching Melbourne kick Manly’s arse to the tune of 38 – 8, but, I can tell you that the conclusion of the document does state that WorkChoices can be pointed as being responsible for the lower wages and higher hours to do the same job.

Clearly it points out that WorkChoices gives the unskilled (I’d guess about 30% + of Australia’s workforce) a disadvantage for being not skilled.

I still stand with my view however, they’ve had a decade to get skilled, they did nothing, their own fault, however, I don’t think WorkChoices is a solution, if as the topics have revealed that it could send us the way of india and the like and have a low wage workforce.

I doubt that’ll become common nature here.

The PDF report spoken of earlier, done by professors at a Victorian area, http://www.business.vic.gov.au/busvicwr/_assets/main/lib60013/awa-ca-earnings-paper.pdf
Shows in the conclusion:
“Overall, the dominant pattern with AWAs is that they are typically associated with poorer average earnings than registered collective agreements.”

But, in the “About the researchers” topic, we see:
“He previously worked for ten years in the then Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations, over five years of which was spent in the Senior Executive Service of that Department, including head of the Wages Policy Branch, with responsibility for the Equal Pay Unit, the Labour Research and Economics Branch and the Research and Policy Development Branch.”

So, I question as to whether that was done on Labor’s time or Liberal time.

The report still cannot be ignored however, as the statistics taken, if taken from a reasonable segment of the workforce suggest AWA’s disadvantage employees.

Now, I’m not sure on the complete effect on the economy. It starts to look by that report at least, that this is another Howard Government stuff up, just like the Telstra sale was.

I don’t want to see our country be lowered to the ways of some other countries were employees fight for low dollar wages. It’s not worth it.

I’m still keen on seeing more evidence to influence my decision here, because unlike MP’s, I like to review all the information available on a particular matter before making my ultimate decision on it. Which is fair, considering with time, there’s nothing actually lost as opposed to making “blind decisions”.

I know a few things are good decisions by our current government, simply because the alternative is worse. This includes the OPEL agreement, which assures underserved areas better communications services and competition.

What I remain unsure about is: AWA’s are they good for the australian workforce, or do they lower wages and make employees work harder for the same dollar?

Awards cost a bit to administer, but if Aussies will be working harder for less bucks on an AWA, then well, the obvious is clearer, keep the current taxes flowing to fund award maintenance, because AWA’s make employees worse off.

.. Which means the Howard Government wasted $200 million dollars.. Not the first waste of money.

I’m still not convinced Labor is the answer either.

You can only spend so much money before you need to push taxes up.

Enjoy.

I’m curious with the IR laws being such a big election issue as to whether there is any evidence from anyone, a real case study, where the employee was an honest, hard working employee (and not a slacker taking 5 sick days a week) which was disadvantaged to a measurable scale as a result of being placed onto an Australian Workplace agreement?

Thinking about this subject the logic all makes sense:

Those that are unskilled and didn’t bother to use the last decade they had to get some skills are obviously going to be placed on AWA’s with minimum conditions that the fairness test will accept.

Since they currently work, accepting minimum wage as the norm, then the changes by being under an AWA should generally be no different to minimum award rates.

Those that are skilled, or valued in what they do, the employer is likely to not want to make this a headache for the employee and instead just simply try and create a favourable agreement, at or better than current conditions to basically get the employee on side, so they don’t up and leave as a result of the agreement.

The media has been filled with crap lately, and I’m not trying to lean towards anyside of it.

The workplace ombudsman makes sense to administer the fairness test, when you consider the amount of dollars spent administering all those seperate awards, and industrial relations action is getting rare (not rare completely, but rare), it’s suggestive that the Awards were satisfied and don’t require much in the way of administration.

So, to fix the high costs associated with awards, placing in AWA’s makes sense, afterall, it’s not a taxpayer affair that someone “got a job”. It’s an employer, employee affair. Something that as service provider, and service seeker, can surely be negotiated between them both on fair terms.

I don’t see Employer’s as being the mean people in the equation here. They’ve got a business to grow, they want you on their team cause there’s no one else around to fill that position with unemployment levels low (considering that there is 100,000 unfilled jobs in Australia) they really are going to want to hang on to you rather than waste, time, money, productivity on making you redundant, funding the finding of someone else to replace you (can take months, even years), and then train that new person to be as proficient as you.

It’s all a big headache.

Which is why many don’t bother to audit sick days too often as its not worth the time, unless an employee is taking a lot of sick days!

Finding employees isn’t simple. It’s not a simple call and position filled, there’s very much more to it.

They have to locate a job placement agency as well as pay for advertising, because you don’t know what rubbish the dole will send you and you might find better people who are LOOKING for that job, and not being forced to it.

Then you have to interview. The number of candidates, some running late, time spent interviewing. There goes 2 days of one or more staff member time, depending on the position.

Then after you’ve interviewed, you have to review the notes, generate a short list.

From that short list, you have to determine if you want to speak to any again or if theres a clear leader. So you either have another day gone in just interviewing a few of the same people in more depth.

After that, they have the job.

All that time, the job you had is not being done, or being done half assed by another staff member who is going to be doing half his / her own job at the same time, thereby halving productivity.

So, the new employee starts Monday. Shows up ready for work. Then you have to train them how you do things in the company, get them familiar with all procedures and policies and make sure they know where everything goes, how to get paid, etc. There goes a day at minimum, a week in training them is possible.

Add on to this that they are still learning, bound to make mistakes, and won’t be as proficient or speedy as the employee that didn’t go ahead on the AWA due to a pay or hours descrepancy.

It all of a sudden becomes VERY cheap to simply fix the descrepancy and eat it. Unless of course a new employee could be found, settled and proficient in 3 – 5 days, the majority of jobs will likely be secured by AWAs anyway!

I’m keen to see real life case studies from anyone screwed by an AWA. Considering its a key voting decision many are likely to use (it must explain the ALP lead), I’m wanting to see why I shouldn’t just vote based on budget history (Liberal leads) and maintaining the current situation which isn’t toooooo bad.

– Still beats putting Rudd in to favour Telstra’s scam, which is my real motivation for not voting ALP. Doesn’t seem like a strong one does it? Well.. That gives you some idea of what I think shouldn’t happen with FTTN.

Naturally its not the strongest of reasons to influence voting, but in the absense of any other pressing issues, that’s all I really have.

I admit I have reviewed the Kevin07 site recently, and he does have a fair bit of impressive stuff.

But, I wouldn’t want to support Conroy, as Coonan, although FAR from perfect, is still miles ahead of Conroy in the staying informed department.

Hmm.. Perhaps I should vote for someone else altogether. Both of the choices aren’t that appealing, it’s just maintaining the current situation won’t exactly see Telstra given the rights to continue being consumers over, and it won’t see a raid of the future fund (a good idea, it lowers taxes long term).

I’m still undecided, but of course WorkChoices is still a key point in my voting decision, I’m just looking for hard evidence that WorkChoices have affected people negatively, and those negative actions have come solely from hard arse employers, and not as a result of employee misconduct, slacking or bludging.

You know, a factual story, and not a media beat up that WorkChoices actually screwed someone over.

That is what would likely change my decision!

Enjoy!

With the likely that Unwired shareholders accept the deal on offer from Seven’s network investment body, the new news that we see is that there is discussions with Seven and Austar over the possibility of Austar’s spectrum in regional areas being sold to Seven, or the possibility of a JV with Austar being done to give national deployment of a WiMAX network.

The news is in an ASX announcement by Seven’s Network body which states that they wish to deploy WiMAX, and to do that they plan to buy all shares and remove UNW from the ASX, thereby making it a private body (public through parent companies perhaps).

WiMAX deployments require a fair bit of capital, and then the returns can’t be guaranteed due to the fact competition exists, like Optus and Virgin (can’t really call Telstra competition, when the prices are set at levels that make them a clear loser).

This could however, give rise to regulatory concerns surrounding Seven’s investment in WiMAX which would result in Seven having monopoly control over a WiMAX network.

One is able to assume however, that Seven won’t be running the company at a loss like Unwired have been for some time (a loss, but a decreasing loss), but the same assumption would apply that the pricing on wholesale access would be at FAIR levels, and not the completely unreasonable levels seen from Telstra.

Seven would obviously leverage the benefit of being a TV content producer, a WiMAX network, Engin’s Internet Connectivity, VoIP and Seven & Engin’s TiVo import to offer a vertically integrated product lineup.

However, they may keep much of the buyout seperate, and save the brand names as well as offer a bundle seperately.

They would be offering a very unique product to the market, one which might see Pay TV prices drop to acceptable levels too!

Enjoy!

I think I predicted the future when I wrote my blog post back on September 5th 2007, located here: http://www.tocpcs.com/unwired-engin-and-seven-a-perfect-threesome/.

Unwired’s trading halt is a result of the a bid from Seven Network’s Network Investment arm placing a takeover bid for Unwired.

What can we expect with Seven teaming up with Engin, and Unwired?

Well, hard core action from a threesome combining forces to create one large retail market explosion.

Channel 7 has TV, Entertainment Content, Advertising.
Unwired has internet access covered.
Engin has telephone, internet provisioning and the TiVo units covered.

So, from that big threesome, they could create a complete package, home entertainment, internet access, telephone services, television time shifting, all advertised on Channel 7’s own station.

That realistically could see them as a tough competitor to Virgin, Optus and even Telstra, if they choose to expand the network, either using Naked DSL like Engin is planning, or using Unwired’s wireless spectrum.

The change would also make for a more competitive playing field and could see more investment in the company for WiMAX deployment from Seven’s own investment in the company.

They are paying a well, not excessive, but above fair amount for the shares, which leads me to believe the Unwired deal means a bit to them, so they want to make it a sure fire investment by pricing at a level which is bound to be accepted, yet still a bargain considering the purchase contains Unwired’s spectrum.

2008 and 2009 will be interesting times!

Enjoy!

Reading through the ‘Telstra Forum’ on Telstra’s Now We Are Talking website, it’s very clear that many are expressing their complete dislike of Telstra’s management and current actions.

Telstra recently put up a survey for shareholders to answer questions about Telstra and it’s situation. The survey is located here: https://survey.globalreviews.com/telstra/ and asks questions to the respondent, who be a Telstra Shareholder.

The users are expressing how they dislike the survey’s questions being leading questions and all are written to support Telstra’s biased agenda.

Such questions include:

The Australian Government recently decided to give nearly $1 billion of taxpayer’s money to subsidise the SingTel Optus/OPEL consortium to build a network that largely duplicates the coverage already provided on Telstra’s shareholder-financed Next Gâ„¢ wireless broadband network.

With five possible responses: Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Don’t know, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree.

The question is worded in a manner to make the ignorant, those who have no idea really what they are talking about to read “taxpayers money” and “SingTel”, in order to provoke a response from the respondant in support of Telstra’s agenda.

Telstra ran opinion polls on the Now We Are Talking website months ago, and unfortunately for them, the polls didn’t work in their favour, and they haven’t been running polls since they were exposed during a result that reflected Telstra at that point in time had a strong dislike of the actions it was taking.

The type of people Telstra have for shareholders don’t seem to know a lot about the subject they are talking about, the proof is in the pudding, let’s have a read of a comment that I saw recently on the website:

I think this government SUCKS. It supposedly believes in “free enterprise” and privatisation, and, despite electoral promises to the contrary, sold off a major portion of Telstra ( ie the family silver) shares to the public, in order to improve its bottom line and advance and enhance the myth that it is an economic manager par excellence, but then shackled the company as a business and prevented it from competing as a free enterprise business in the marketplace. They are monumental hypocrites, IMHO. And as for Helen Coonan, her credibility is zilch, as far as I am concerned. Her performance on the ABC Radio National’s “The National Interest” two weekends ago was disgraceful. It is blatantly obvious that she and the government have lied through their teeth about the research that allegedly shows that over half of young people who go online in chatrooms etc are contacted by strangers. The details of this research are yet to be revealed, despite requests to release it for public scrutiny, and follow-up queries from “The National Interest” have been ignored. She said on the programme that she “would consider releasing the research data”, but obviously has no intention of doing so, as it would show up her claims for what they are – lies, damned lies and (cooked) statistics. The government has spent (ie. wasted) many millions of taxpayers’ dollars on the “NetAlert” campaign, money that would have been put to much better use on education, health, or broadbanding the country and bringing it into the modern world of the 21st century. A collective pox on their house!!

Now, reading that, the author of that comment wrote exactly: I think this government sucks. Ok, that’s an opinion.

“It supposedly believes in “free enterprise” and privatisation, and, despite electoral promises to the contrary”
Free Enterprise, it sure does, and privatisation isn’t something it announced it believed in. It simply saw privatisation as a solution to a conflict of interest it had.

Electoral promises to the contrary? What Electoral promises? The sale of Telstra was always on the books, and in doing that, they now have no conflict of interest and can perform the jobs they are performing well at, by being the regulator, and not the conflicted owner as well.

“sold off a major portion of Telstra ( ie the family silver) shares to the public, in order to improve its bottom line and advance and enhance the myth that it is an economic manager par excellence, but then shackled the company as a business and prevented it from competing as a free enterprise business”

Sold Off? Telstra was 49% sold off before T3. What was the prediction? They’d just hold 51% endlessly, and regulate itself ?
The Government’s job is to regulate, not to own a telecommunications company. The family silver is not Telstra. If you bought Telstra Shares with the family silver, and don’t like the fact they are now privatised, and not performing well for you, that’s not the government’s fault, that’s TELSTRA’s fault. Telstra’s job is to perform. The regulatory goal posts haven’t moved at all. They’ve been the same all along.

Telstra doesn’t like the regulations they were privatised with. That’s not the government’s problem. The regulations were there when shares were sold. If you didn’t investigate, that’s YOUR problem.

Telstra was not shackled after the sale of T3. They still have the same regulations that applied, and nothing has changed to stop them ripping off consumers and wholesale customers. They still do!

“They are monumental hypocrites, IMHO.”

A monumental hypocrite would own Telstra, regulate prices for the consumer and at the same time pester the Telstra board for better returns. That’s the situation they were in, they are no longer in that position. In fact, any idiot could have predicted the government was selling Telstra not for financial gain, but to remove the conflict of interest it had.

They did that. What do you think would happen after the conflict of interest was removed, and the government was the regulator and not the majority shareholder? Well.. Let me guess… They would.. REGULATE.
I suppose there are some silly, silly people in this world. Not sure who ranks #1, but people buying shares with news that the government is selling to remove a conflict of interest with regulation? Hmm.. They sort of come in at the top #10.

“And as for Helen Coonan, her credibility is zilch, as far as I am concerned.”

Really? She has more credibility than Conroy, who believed Metro users deserved a maximum of 6Mbit in 2005, where many of them were able to receive speeds in excess of 12Mbps, and some 24Mbps! Coonan knew this and attacked him with it when he raised that point during question time, which clearly demonstrates his lack of knowledge of networks in metro areas, or perhaps networks full stop. You want to trust communications to a near idiot?

“The government has spent (ie. wasted) many millions of taxpayers’ dollars on the “NetAlert” campaign, money that would have been put to much better use on education, health, or broadbanding the country and bringing it into the modern world of the 21st century. ”

I won’t make ultimate comment on NetAlert. But what I will say is:
NetAlert (and any other filter) is designed to be a control mechanism, and not complete supervision. There’s no substitute for a parent’s eyes. They are the most forward looking, the most cautious, the most caring (well, most are, some aren’t but that’s not a discussion here) eyes available, and therefore the best form of prevention when it comes to access to inappropriate content, or contact with inappropriate people / machines / morons / criminals.

So, I will say that NetAlert might not be a total waste of money, however, I do state here that NetAlert could perhaps be tested more strongly, and perhaps the NetAlert is a waste of money, who knows, we won’t have statistics on crimes, rapes, incidents that it has prevented, all we will end up having in the end is crime statistics that could show the crimes increase, but that doesn’t state the user had it installed, or maintained correctly.

The same applies for ISP level filtering, which might be a big waste of money, but on the other hand, if it prevents crime, then its been a good spend of money.

I suppose you can’t blame fools for buying Telstra shares, they do seem to have not done any research and bought for the sake of buying something. These same sorts of buyers buy Bigpond because its free installation. But idiots, it costs you $1000 to $2000 or more over the longterm than it would to simply pay the $100 install fee with other non to low contracting ISPs.

Bad money management, it’s there in shareholders too ?

Enjoy!

The Expert Taskforce have revealed the guidelines which FTTN proposals must adhere to. I got a copy of them for myself and thought I’d run through some of the proposal questions, since that is what essentially is important here.

They go through a few questions, such as:

Project Title:
Bob’s Faster Than Telstra’s Network (Bob’s FTTN).

Name Of Proponent:
Bob..

Consortium Members:
Bob and Jim from Jim’s Mowing

Proposal Summary:
We will give you a broadband FTTN (Faster Than Telstra’s Network) broadband network.

This network will include wholesale access to all providers on equal basis, as Bob and Jim have no intention of retailing, we simply will make sure we make our network affordable and try and get big customer numbers on board, and after that expand our network to be offering services on many levels, so we can generate revenues from the core network infrastructure, without becoming a retailer of broadband services, or disadvantaging ISPs who wholesale.

The network will cover all the regional areas that are left neglected, and fix up many of the broadband black spots that users are having as a result of Telstra’s upgrades being poorly planned.

Summary of Aus. Gov. Objectives:
We will meet the objectives by delivering cheap broadband connections on the wholesale level, and allowing multiple wholesalers to prevent any conflict of interest, so that we can have a competitive levelled telecommunications industry.

We will also meet any and all regulation requirements which are fair and reasonable, and have valid points backing them.

We won’t be submitting paper work if the prices of services are obviously not a issue, or if there are no wholesale issues. It makes no sense.

Project Costs:
The project is estimated to cost somewhere between $1, and $3 – 4 billion. That’s not really much of your concern however, as the key aspect for this is the assessment of the regulatory requirements and the delivery methods, impact to industry. Our costs aren’t YOUR problem.

Index of Annexures:

– None. Our proposal is simple. A FTTN (Faster Than Telstra Network) at fair prices to wholesalers who can choose how to compete with each other to gain consumers.

Additional Confidential Information:
– Nothing to hide unlike some big telcos.

Proponent Details:
– We don’t have a big office building, which is how we save on costs. We don’t need a big building to compensate for lack of size in other areas.

Infrastructure and Consumer Outcomes:
We propose to rollout a FTTN (Faster Than Telstra Network) to Australians in Metro and Regional areas. These services will be excessively Faster Than Telstra’s Network services, and provide for future proof upgrading to FTTH, which is a item coming to the network after the millions or billions we poor into it are recovered. This could take 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years. It can happen sooner for some consumers if they want to foot the installation costs for what could be offered to wholesalers as a future, futre upgrade, which will ensure the service they have will remain Faster Than Telstra’s Network.

Capacity of services is whatever you can fit in a big fat 1.2Tbps fibre pipe line across international waters. Since we are basically going to buy out Southern Cross Cables, there’ll be no issues with international backhaul, and since that is the case, we will have no requirement for a set limit.

Now we realise we are being unreasonable here, and potentially going to put high, high, high speed broadband in the hands of n00bs, the actual outcome will likely be a acceptable usage policy to ensure users are fair play users, and aren’t abusing the internet by attempting to copy it faster than it grows.

It will be open access, so much so that any old joe can plug a fibre cable into the network and receive services, and due to its completely open nature, it will interoperate with everything, or we will make it that way.

Network Coverage:
The network will cover as many places as we can get the network to reach to stop the suffering of Telstra’s excessively priced slow broadband services.

Timeframe:
However fast we can get people to work. Might be very fast if Howard gets elected with the new IR laws which will allow us to pay the employees “competitively”.

Network Construction:
The network will be constructured of fibre from recycled breakfast cereal. Users will be migrated as more fibre from recycled breakfast cereal becomes available.

Retail services:
Since we aren’t pigs, there are no retail services, wholesale only, and wholesale prices are set the same across the board for all ISPs, so they can compete however they like to. We get our costs, they set the prices and provide the services however they like.

Consumer outcomes:
Consumers get access to services delivered on a Faster Than Telstra’s Network (FTTN) broadband network.

Effeciency:
We are very energy effecient.

Competition:
We don’t compete, but we aren’t anti competitive. As for retail competition, things could become a war zone, but we won’t get involved there, that’s between each ISP / Battle Station.

Open and non discriminatory access:
Because of a low cost model, we can’t afford to be liable for discriminatory actions, so we won’t discriminate, and our network will be more open than a 24 hour McDonald’s.

Wholesale Strategy:
Confidential information of Wholesale ISPs will be protected just like our network. Open and non discriminatory access.

Wholesale Pricing:
Starts at $1, inc GST.

Losses in rural areas:
Since the FTTN (Faster Than Telstra’s Network) services are expected to see everyone jumping on due to the price hike that Telstra applies being no longer relevant, and Telstra coming to a point where it is going to have no choice but admit that it doesn’t actually have excessively high costs in Regional areas, we believe the services will pay for themselves (as they will do, because the prices are based solely off costs, and nothing else).

Regulatory and Legislation Changes:
None required.

Compliance with legislative or regulatory requirements:
Something tells us the rollout of the network and the prices they’ll be provided access to, and the method of access will not require any real compliance, but of course we won’t try and break any legislation or regulation.

Binding Commitments:
We commit to deliver a FTTN (Faster Than Telstra’s Network) broadband network.

Assurances Sought:
The assurance that this proposal will be accepted.

Corporate Structure:
We aren’t a pig filled corporation.

Responsibilities of Consortium Members:
Jim will cut the grass. Bob will roll the cables.

Consortium Agreement:
Jim agrees he will cut the grass. Bob agrees he will roll the cables.

Roles of stakeholders:
To give Australians fast internet access by cutting grass and digging holes where required, and running fibre cables where required.

—

I was thinking I might do something different, something a little more.. well I won’t describe, but if I think of it, I might put that up tomorrow.

Enjoy!

A new bill introduced into the Senate is to introduce powers to the Federal Police Commissioner to allow censorship of terrorism and cyber crimes.

The ACMA would hold the power to administer the block lists, the Federal Police Commissioner the power to decide what is blocked, and the responsibility for blocking would fall on the ISPs, which would be an unwelcome burden to the ISPs all over for installing filtering capable of this, without affecting user experiences.

So, the change would require ISPs to filter content, this means fitering all requests through a filtering server, which has the side effect of reducing speed available to connections.

I see no issues with blocking such content really, the content is of criminal or terrorism nature, but a valid point with regard to Greenpeace was raised, which highlights Greenpeace as being accused of criminal actions.. Such a website being blocked might have counter reactions.

I guess we would need to be positive that the filtering would be ONLY on the websites that are of a specific nature that no one in Australia should be viewing anyway.

I’m saying we should allow for the content that might be of a questionable nature, sure, but we should be more “precise” in what is being blocked, and not try to use wildcard style filtering which could block sites that are inappropriate.

I think a list of < 100 sites that shouldn't be visited by any Australian under any circumstances is "valid", but the line is drawn at the censorship of sites that might even be extremely questionable. Who are we to say what a user does with a connection to the internet? Concise filtering is good, because the list would be small, and any flaws in the list would be identified easily. Wildcard filtering for child porn, etc, might not be OK, though it is illegal, I think using wildcards tend to get a few false positives. I found myself unable to browse Whirlpool forums at a NSW TAFE, due to a block put in place. Considering I was studying and researching IT, I felt the ban on such a website.. STUPID, and just highlights how wrong a regexp or wildcard filter can be. I think filtering might not be the answer entirely however, as in a strict model, you wouldn't be scanning incoming content for questionable content, and instead would be scanning for the domain in the request, which is acceptable, but not fool proof, as you could use a proxy to bypass such a filter. So, the ultimate job is obviously going to come down to not filtering internet content, as such a move would see false positives blocked (they DO happen), besides the also mentioned conflict of interest, if the Federal Police Commissioner doesn't like a website, or the government doesn't like a website, they could of course choose to censor it, the same applies to a political website. The filtering bill shouldn't go forward on that basis, as the internet is a interconnection of networks, the user chooses what they look at. I'm all supporting a move to restrict content that no Australian should be viewing, in the interests of reducing crime, sure, but in the interests of the freedom of the internet, I think it will be a bad move. In similar news however, the content filter "NetAlert" will be extended into Medicare, Centrelink, Child Support and the ATO. The goal is obviously to create more awareness of the filter, and the obvious is perhaps they didn't get enough users of the program, and want to make sure everyone knows about it? I don't see myself installing a filter provided by the government, simply because if I want something restricted, I'll restrict the remote IP, and if that's not doing the trick, I'll restrict the local IP - problem solved, though the user tends to be disappointed at not having any IP access, but obviously with reason the restriction is there. Actually, such a move might be best being applied with filtering here too, where if someone was found to be accessing content that no one should (the ISP can track that by referencing IPs accessed, and if the IP is in the list, flag the request for review), the result could be better as it would identify the access, and create a shortlist of those who have tried to access such content. Don't kid yourselves, ISPs have full logs of IP port access, so they know already what you access.