TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

What should a business do when they are alerted to a negative message about the business on someone else’s media stream?

1. Email them threatening legal action.
2. Accept it, learn from their mistakes and try and improve themselves.
3. Shrug it off and let others do the same later on.

There are several companies out there that deploy some of these tactics.

For example, Retail PC parts supplier in Brisbane, QLD, GameDude has so many negative comments on various online forums and shopping sites that you’d be a complete fool to purchase from them knowing the experiences of others.

And a more recent example, a local computer supplier has threatened me with legal action for a post detailing my experience with them and how I found them rude, and insulting after seeking information about equipment they may have had in stock.

It seems businesses like that aren’t making a lot of moolah and depend on the business they can get, and when someone says something negative, they need to threaten legal action for, and I quote: “deformation of character”.

The IT shops that open up every where could be run by anyone. Any monkey can resell, there’s no real skill with that. You get a little more skill credit if you can provide correct, accurate pre and post sales support, and even more so if you have clearly demonstrated abilities in the industry you seek to resell to.

But essentially, they are still bottom feeders, using no to low skilled people to undertake the work required, which is of a basic level.

Anyway, the businesses in question make somewhere from $5 to $20 a sale, and that’s on parts only. They make a little more profit providing service, but essentially, they don’t turn high profits, because the profits aren’t that soaring compared to other, more specific, and more skilled industries. So, they sort of depend on all those sales they can get to make a good profit, and they don’t even need people capable of spelling “deformation” correctly to do that, or be able to construct correct sentences, or even a detailed paragraph, very poor english skills indeed, but they can still pull out the old screw driver, and see if they can find a fault, or generate some crap for the customer to hear that they might believe and pay for a format.

But what happens when a negative response comes from a prospect customer? Do they learn from it? Should they?

Well, in my opinion, they should, because they could find themselves wishing for a shop to work from.
The Australian legal system has several aspects when it comes to defamation. The clear cut one is:
You can’t sue for defamation if you undertake any activity that brings about such response.
The provision I refer to above is all about incitement. If you annoy someone with comments like “That’s why we run a PC shop and you don’t”, you generally deserve the response that might come from it for insulting a customer anyway.

At the point of insulting me, I immediately hanged up on the person, I wasn’t going to tolerate that. My immediate reaction is, that was so rude, and so insulting of everything I’ve put my life to for the last few years, that I should never purchase from there again, and make sure word gets out that they are extremely insulting – and I immediately started the word of mouth chain.

The point here though is, they bought about such word of mouth themselves by insulting me. That’s clear incitement. They can’t sue me for that. If they did, they’d lose, and they’d be paying my legal costs (possibly from some loan sourced from remortgaging their house to find the money, after giving up the shop they currently retail from, because business wouldn’t fund the costs).

And also, threatening vexatious legal action is also a subset that is available to those who have been threatened by a company or solicitor with legal action and they don’t follow through on it. Should they threaten to sue, and you allow for that lawsuit to proceed (by not complying for example), they can actually get sued themselves for vexatious threats, and be forced to pay any legal expenses, and in cases, compensation.

Now, I’m not an arse. I don’t intend for them to lose their shop, I know, I’m too nice. I do intend for them to pull their heads in and get their arses into gear though, so I naturally took the right course of action and explained the possible loss making legal outcomes for suing me for “deformation” – heh, that’s funny, de form ation. Just how deformed are they?

I’m not out to chase them out of business, they are a local computer shop, without them, we’d have everyone going the extra distance elsewhere, or me starting my own side venture for a PC shop for the locals. I’ve got better interests, hint, higher profit interests, that obviously sparked their eyes a little ;), that I stick with, and grow from. I certainly wouldn’t sue someone for having a negative experience with me. I’d go further out of my way to keep them happy and come to a happy resolution, doing that tends to slow the negative word of mouth down.

How do I know this? I’ve been behind the scenes in a few places, and I’ve seen the complaints, I’ve seen the positives, and I’ve seen the chain reaction results. 10 positive happy customers might not be as vocal, but they are better than 1 negative customer who can scream for cities, states, countries, and planets.

On a different topic, Big Brother seems to have lost interest lately, with a record low audience number for the opening night, and of course, the unreliable media streams like to spit chips about porn sites that don’t exist, according to Behind Big Brother.

Big Brother seems more interesting this year though, I would expect numbers to climb due to having the White Room, and the latest additions.

It seems to be shaping into a good season, but so is all the hype around Big Brother at the start of a season.

WARNING: The following content might be too graphic for some viewers. If seeing scarred tissue, or the internals of a foreign body might make you ill, you are encouraged to look away now.

Ok, with the wimps gone, we can now go into detail about my recent attempts at recovery data.

First, some history. The drive was stuffed sometime during a stormy night in April 2006. Since that point in time, we’ve been meaning to find the cash to get some photos recovered off the drive.

When I approached several companies for recovery prices, it was rather shocking to hear figures like $3000, $900, $2500, and “upwards from $4000”.

Sure enough, I investigated further what they claim to do, and why they think its worth so much. Sure enough, someone in a jumpsuit with a room that is absolutely clean does the work. Establishing a clean room can’t be cheap, and its not every day a HDD crashes.

I left it sit aside for someday when we have the budget to find someone cheap to do the job of getting some photos and data off the drive.

Recently, as in around 2 weeks ago, I was talking to a friend over MSN about it (came up in conversation), and he mentioned he had recovered a drive. One and one clicked together, and I immediately thought, he probably doesn’t have a clean room in his house, let alone one that those “recovery experts” want to charge us a lot to get a drive dismantled in.

Moving on, the first thing we tried was SpinRite, from GRC. We connected the drive, started it up, and unfortunately, the drive wasn’t detecting.

We tried the freezer trick, to see if that’d make it work. Nope, after around 5 hours of freezing, the drive still enjoyed a good click.

So, next, I decided to investigate some videos found online, at a website, I think it was MyHardDriveDied.com.

Anyway, after reviewing his detailed presentation, I came to the conclusion that, we aren’t in the 85% of software recoveries, so the 10% of recoveries are simple logic board changes. Great, That’s simple, unscrew, chuck a new board on, done.
Luckily, I did my research more before I did that move, and noticed you need a logic board with the same firmware, and a near match as the same drive (also mentioned in the video presentation – another great, legit use of bandwidth).

I remembered, I bought that drive, and a second one with it. I bought two because two machines needed simultaneous upgrades, and it just so happened my method of obtaining computer parts means I try to do a big order, so I discount the shipping as much as possible.

As a result of that, a second drive did exist, and should have came from the same box that this drive came from. My assumption was correct.

So, I immediately got to business in swapping the logic board over after ghosting the 120GB to a 320GB drive (that’s a fair deal for .. stealing a 120GB, outdated drive, right?).

Unfortunately, the one bit that ruined all those few milliseconds where I was ready to scream “I fkn rule” was the first click after pushing the power switch. Dang. So we aren’t in that 10% of logic board recoveries, so we must be in the 4% of head crash recoveries, because the 1% of motor recoveries isn’t me, the motor spins ;).

That 4% seems like a rare number, but anyway, it was certain that drive is gonna come apart sooner or later, so I figure, I’ll go look. The video presentation I viewed mentioned to check the tracks for silver specs, and inspect the dust pillow of the drive. I pulled the drive apart to check it out, and.. well, you see for yourself:

HDD Top View

What you can see in the above picture is the outer part of the top platter with a deep scratch in it. The specs you can see on the platter are completely natural, as the drive blows those off as it spins up, that’s the idea of the cushion in the corner, to catch that stuff and hold on to it. The head is the large arm that sits close to the middle chamber that holds the platters.

From there, it was obvious that the head does have to come off, and we still aren’t certain how much damage is done to the underside of the platters (this drive has two platters).

Side on view of HDD

What you can see in this, is the platter, with the head on top of it, and at the bottom sits the second platter.

Anyway, the next step for this drive is to get some sample drives from my MSN friend to play with a head swap to see how that goes, if I get good at that, I’m gonna make a clean box, and pull it apart and do a head swap, and Linux saves the rest of the day again with DD. I tell it to create a full image of the disk to the point of the scratch and we can work with the image at that point which will likely have the data we want recovered.

How’s that for saving several thousand of dollars.

Be aware folks, they aren’t toys, and you shouldn’t attempt this, even though I decided to. You pull a HDD apart, and void warranty at own risk, and any data loss, direct or indirect is on your own hands. Simply, you are highly discouraged from doing any thing mentioned above, and if you do, you do it at your own risk.

The head swap is a little tedious with two platters, you need what I believe is a post it note to keep the heads pushed apart at all times, if they touch, it’s game over. You also need to get the heads back in place in the other drive, to recover the data from, a task in its own when you are working with micro electronics.

Oh, and while I’m posting here, always buy Seagate drives. Nothing’s as tough as a Seagate drive. Even in the video presentation I watched, it was mentioned the highest drives they received issues from were Western Digital, and that completely agrees with my own drive usage.

I’ve had 1 Seagate 80GB drive in my machine for 3 – 4 years or so now, when I built this box back in 2003. That’s how solid they are.

Another Seagate 120GB drive had a bad sector once, was afraid all was lost, started Seatools, waited 30 minutes or so, fixed. Works fine, that happened last year.

Another Seagate 160GB drive just late last year had issues too, it would work, but disappear occasionally, anyway, it powered on for weeks while I waited patiently for an RA number, and eventually sent it back, and replacement works fine. I didn’t lose any data from any of the Seagate drives described above.

This Western Digital is the first Western Digital drive, and.. well, it has one storm go buy and bombs out, in a room that had around 8 or more HDD’s running at the same time.

My server here as a 40GB WD, and a 80GB Seagate, looking at SpeedFan’s SMART viewer, the WD has low rating..

The Seagate drives all have very high ratings, and have very long uptimes. The only time my entire network is down is when a power outage occurs, or when I am doing something that means taking machines down.

I’ve become a lot greener with electricity too, I’ve moved a few machines into virtual machines on the one server and now each machine has a real purpose requiring being turned on, as a result our power usage seems to be realigning itself to a cheaper scale, and the $400 power bills should be gone (it’s nearly that time again too).

Anyway, that’s what a HDD is like for you.

The G9 telcos behind the proposal in competition with Telstra’s FTTN network, have made some ground, ahead of Telstra, as is nearly always the case, gotta love innovation.

Anyway, just today they have submitted a draft plan to the ACCC for their proposed FTTN network.

Look at the essential differences between the proposals:

1. Telstra’s plan doesn’t yet seem to mention how they’ll keep competition getting a fair go, and how they’ll be billed. The G9 proposal states they can offer any product they like, they pay wholesale access, and can do whatever they see fit with configuration and offerings.

2. The G9 plan helps competition, by seperating all retail down to just one body, who will not have a retail interest, and instead, be a wholesale only provide of FTTN access. That means, they’ll bill for telephony interconnection, internet access, and any other services they can offer with fibre in 1.5km’s of reach of a customer’s premise.

3. They mention they’ll be expanding into Newcastle and several other areas. Telstra stated they would only eventually extend into Regional areas after they have the metro areas covered.

4. The G9 plan has one minor setback, which can be solved in a few ways, that’s Telstra’s copper network. They are gonna have to steal it from them one way or another, so might as well as do it legally and get legislation changed to allow for such copper network access.

You know, the funny point with this all is. They propose to give Telstra 5.00 a month for each copper line, used or unused. That’s pretty good. That means, for all the copper pairs, they’ll be paying Telstra a guaranteed 5.00 a month.

Telstra currently get 0.00 from disconnected lines, that sit there, doing nothing. They do make a lot off line rental though.

But of greater interest here is, the proposed broadband prices. $45.00 / mth for FTTN broadband access (wholesale).

Telstra’s current 8Mb/384kbps Artificially limited ADSL plans start at 56.00, ex GST, and that’s before other ESSENTIAL costs are added, like AGVC and so forth. So, before it even gets to the ISP, its likely costed them near 65.00 just for the port, the customer still has to pay for the line rental, and of course, the ISP has to add some data usage, and support, and heck, they are a business, so some profit too.

Now, you take current 8Mbps pricing, and knock at least 15.00 or more off, increase the speed to either full ADSL2+ speeds, or even VDSL speeds.

And you get.. ta-da, great value broadband options.

Broadband that whips Telstra’s arse.

This is a no brainer people. They’ve got the right ideas, they’ve got the right prices, they’ve got a more than acceptable technology for current requirements proposed. The only missing link is how they propose to get Telstra’s copper wire. That’s the real deal breaker here, because it would require public to vote, and I’m not sure just how well people will read through it, and get a lot of ideas around it before they vote yes or no.

Of course, we’ll have a heap of biased Telstra shareholders who can’t see passed the end of their… wallets. And a lot of Whirlpool users (except 1 or a few, Tolmartyr comes to mind), and after that, you might see some legitimate, semi-informed votes. From those who read the proposal, and don’t have a biased interest.

I’m going to state I am unbiased on this one. I want cheap, fast, competitive, economy enhancing, broadband, not as a G9 Active Supporter, but as a Australian. I want telecommunications access that is equivilent to that available in <> 150kms from me, in Sydney areas.

Am I asking too much? I didn’t think so.

This issue had me running around in circles, trying to recreate the same issue many ways.

My system was BSOD’ing when I would load a game, or any full screen 3D video application.

I’m sure most IT savvy folk out there would have immediately ran straight for the one device that would be the start for investigation, the Graphics Card. I did exactly that, and no joy.

I tried swapping memory configuration today, swapping AGP cards, swapping both, so that my setup was near completely replicated on another machine, with exception of the CPU, and .. it completely passed BurnInTest (from Passmark).

Incredible. So, I couldn’t replicate it on another machine, and couldn’t rule out if my old fx5500 was the issue, or if the issue was my Gigabyte GA-8IPE775G’s motherboard, or it’s Memory slots, or my 3GB of DDR400 RAM.

Unfortunately, I wasted several hours getting to the bottom of it, but I did just that, before giving in to claims that Science wasn’t going to be the answer.

Science is always the answer. If something happens, due to an event, you can always recreate that event, and see predictable results, assuming environmental and input factors remain the same. Hint, don’t expect a computer to work, when its sitting at the top of a boiling volcano, heat would cause it to simply give up.

My issue wasn’t heat related however, I installed fantastic Zalman fans in all PC’s here, due to Windows Desktop Search running its caching program late at night one night, and that kept us awake, bloody Intel Fans. Anyway, it was immediately off with Windows Desktop Search, I’m happy to wait a few mins for a result.

Moving back onto the original issue, my issue was Power Supply related.

My system contains exactly the following:

Intel Pentium 4 630 – 3.0Ghz EM64T HT Processor (Socket 775)
Zalman Fan (I think its a 9500LED/9700LED)
Gigabyte GA-8IPE775-G Socket 775 Motherboard, 4 DDR400 RAM slots (supports 4GB), AGP 8x, SATA, etc, etc.
2 x 1GB DDR 400 Sticks of RAM in Dual Channel configuration
2 x 512MB DDR 400 sticks of RAM in Dual Channel configuration
NVIDIA FX5500 256MB AGP 8x Graphics Card
NVIDIA FX5200 128MB PCI Graphics Card
1 x 80GB Seagate IDE HDD
1 x 120GB Seagate IDE HDD
1 x 160GB Seagate SATA HDD
1 x 250GB Seagate SATA HDD (very good reason for using Seagate, they generally recover, when compared to Western Digital)
1 x Pioneer DVR-109 DVD burner
1 x Pioneer DVR-110D DVD burner
1 x Ancient Floppy Drive
400W Power Supply

Now, it runs in Windows normally, in game, it seems to not like the 400W power supply with everything running.

After giving up running around in circles, I pulled the two SATA drives power plug, and ran the same 3D test (15 minutes of BurnInTest), and viola, it passed. Plugged ’em back in, and it crashed.

Pretty conclusive :). So, off to find me a 500W power supply, I think. I know, your probably thinking, why not get a 320GB and just move to it? Performance. You aren’t bogging down one drive with a large lot of tasks when you have several drives, and backup, one fails, there might be a copy on another drive. So, I decided against moving to one drive, and just thought I’d get it the extra power.

It’s not like it’s always using its max power anyway, as Intel Processors chew more power the harder they are worked, so when it’s idle / doing bugger all, it’s using less power, when its at full load (playing a game, or anything INTENSIVE), it obviously sucks more power to fulfill that operation.

Ideally we’ll move to Dual Core when everything fits in place, and the time is right, hopefully meaning less power consumption / better performance. I don’t want to do that just yet.

Anyway, I’m just happy to have zero’ed into the power supply as the issue, it was confusing, and rather annoying to have such an issue with no idea of what’s going on.

Today, we decided we would set about getting ourselves a new bed, to replace an existing bed that has suffered torture from:

Us both sleeping on the sides of the bed.
Having a baby sleep in the middle, and practically push us right on the edge of the bed.

The good news for the baby is he gets the old Queen bed to himself. Can have all the space he likes.

The good news for us is we might get a good nights sleep in a bed that doesn’t suffer from springs digging into back, slats falling off, or the middle support legs falling off.

The even better news for us is the new bed from Fantastic furniture was cheaper than expected.

The better, better news for us is the bed was relatively easy to assemble, and has a relatively strong frame.

And.. there’s nothing negative to report yet, because we haven’t SLEPT on it yet, but I doubt much will be wrong with this.

I think the little one might not have issues with being put into his own bed either. It’s still in the same room as us (yeh, we JUST fit two Queen size beds in the room, they aren’t SMALL :D), just incase he wakes up and starts looking, but he did seem relatively happy to have his own bed to sleep in, jump on, etc.

Also, when we ran the costs for the bed, getting a new single bed, mattress, and a new mattress for the Queen bed was actually a lot more expensive compared to simply letting him have the Queen size bed.

I guess the more prominent issues that arise are:

We’ve got little room in this house to place him in his own room.
One room is the bedroom, the other room is specifcally packed with bags yet to be sorted through, and other equipment. The bags plan to be turned into containers stacked on top of each other, but still wouldn’t meet the ability of being a bedroom, and another room is pretty much the room where all the activity occurs with 1’s and 0’s.

So, there’s not a lot of room for a bedroom for him, that might be something we have to work out later on, still remain unsure of how we’d even come close to solving that one.

We did also look at new lounge chairs at Fantastic Furniture. They’ve got some fantastic deals.

2 x 2 seater lounges for $600. That’s a steal.

Look at the “commercial” shops for example, Cap’n Snooze: Better take the VISA. Forty Winks: Better take the MasterCard as well. They are ridiculously expensive, when compared to Fantastic Furniture – for no obvious reason..

Anyway, buying a new bed was a detailed decision, involving through inspection of both mattress and bed base, as well as talking to the other shop where we got the other bed from originally (amazingly, the prices of that bed have dropped, and the deal was better, but we’ve already experienced their ‘quality’).

So, the things to check: Does it use Posture slats? If so, does the middle bar, and its feet seem solid (take it out, I did, and looked at a few things, mainly, the feet weren’t gonna fall off (the others did), that the design was to support the middle bar, and not simply have it resting on it (so, look at a rectangle that goes over the middle bar), and basically look at the general quality of that. It’s the part that really stuffed the other bed up big time, with slats coming out in the middle of the night, and all sorts of issues.

Aside from that, take it for a test, this might require your partner as well (hey, you can try before you buy, right?), and see if its comfortable.

Don’t buy big brand name mattresses, the cheapest mattress (that isn’t foam) will remain as comfortable as any other mattress after it has aged, the difference between most of them is the spring system in the mattress, but that doesn’t make much of a difference when you have > 60kgs on the bed, and pushing down on springs. Sure, the design of it might play a factor, but you’ll wear them down eventually, and that new 1500.00 matrress is basically the same as any old 200.00 mattress, so get the cheapest.

I do have to say that in general, quality from Fantastic Furniture (we bought a Futon and a Chair from them before) has been “average”. The Futon (whilst shouldn’t be used as a lounge chair) as become a little more problematic, the bottom breaking away, and the bars on the front have previously annoyed the little one.

And my chair has had the wheels on the casters come off.. numerous times, so many times so, that I’m sure I’ve only got two of the original castors on the chair now, swapping them with castors from a cheap KMart chair purchased a fair while ago.

So, as you can see, they aren’t a superb quality of furniture from previous experiences (at least from usage of the chair), but I did think they deserved a shot for bedding.

New Zealand Telecom is looking toward selling its copper network rather than facing a regulatory split.

That’s an interesting move, they don’t get regulated, and they get a lot of cash for a copper network, as most copper networks are monopoly networks (and thus avoiding duplication of expensive copper networks, and digging the sidewalks up for new connections).

I’m thinking that perhaps they should have done this with the copper network (and other monopoly infrastructure) prior to Telstra sale.

Just think where we’d be now. One monopoly, wholesale only provider, providing telecommunications, Telstra being a retail “wannabe”, and a heap of competition driving prices low.

Now, if that was done, we’d be looking at things differently, compared to where we are now, with Telstra wanting to roll out FTTN at inflated prices just to keep a monopoly, rather than compete.

Actually, if you look at Bigpond / Telstra in comparison to a lot of others, they don’t seem prepared to compete in retail at all, and simply enjoy milking the monopoly.

Bigpond isn’t competitive, the only reason they have customers is because of the fact they have a brand name, or the cable networks.

Given the option, and the real facts, customers would more certainly look at the picture differently, and probably say NO to Bigpond.

They don’t get to see all this until after they are with Bigpond, and that means they’ve become a Bigpond victim.

Cable subscribers are generally happier, although the plans are not as great with Cable, the offering is different, no port blocking of port 80 inbound, for example, but they also meter uploads, which is a minus to simply routing port 80 via port 9010 for example.

And of course, they don’t offer many incentives compared to Optus, with the exception of the monopoly network they have.

Back to the copper network, if it was auctioned / sold off to a infrastructure provider, we’d be ranked a lot higher on OECD, probably consider 256k as the less expensive dial up, and have a booming online economy by bringing more IT services online.

Just think of the possibilities if we all had fast net connections, you could literally run your own slow traffic webserver from home, at the same time as be on a VoIP call, and have the kids watching live streaming, and those bandwidth hungry torrents running smoothly.

All that would have been possible with a bit more thought in place from the government. Without that thought, you know, what happens when Telstra is privatised, and kicks up a backlash against us for regulation, what do they do?

They simply should of stopped retail, or sold the core network, or kept it in government control, and maintenance.

By not doing so, the Howard government has screwed Australians. The plan they come up with to fix it had want to be good, otherwise Labor are in, easy. At this moment, they have my vote, depending on what Coonan decides to demonstrate that she is a clear leader when put beside Conroy, who is both a thinker, but at the same time, a fool (he has been proven to be uninformed before).

I want faster net access, and someone’s gonna bring it. Whoever is gonna get it to me fast, cheap, and with competition should remain the front runner. The G9 might be a little slow with the looks of funding and the rollout coverage, but the end result is COMPETITION, and INNOVATION. That’s drool worthy.

What a fantastic site from the competitors (and wholesalers) of Telstra.

Love the title: Tell The Truth Telstra.

Good luck with that one. Probably have more luck finding people to work for free to install fibre cable, compared to getting them to say anything remotely close to the truth.

The FTTN network proposed by SpeedReach does the following, that Telstra’s does not:

* Keeps Regulation intact.
* Maintains competition, and enhances it.
* Looks after Australian Consumers better interests.
* Reinvests the profits made to enhance, extend and innovate the network.

Those are fantastic points for the network.

Look at history as well.
iiNet / Internode: Released ADSL2+. Optus did so also in 2005. Telstra is turning on its ADSL2+ DSLAMs (slowly) at exchanges where competitors have ADSL2+. Taking the even safer approach also, Telstra gives the competitors a nice head start. Telstra doesn’t even offer it, for near 1 month or more after the exchange is enabled.

Time for the competitors to milk the slow period for all its worth, roll out DSLAMs, get them online, advertise targetting that community, with cheaper, faster, better value, broadband, without length contracts, or short quotas, or expensive overusage charges.

That should build a LARGER customer base, and more to it, increase the footprint of ADSL2+ ISPs to a point where they pose a bigger threat, to a point where Telstra having FTTN means they lose access to customers, and therefore, have a stronger case to plead.

A better idea, by that idiot, Alan Kohler, was this:

The government puts the rights to the building of an FTTN network up for auction, the winner of the auction is the bidder with the lowest wholesale monthly price, thus ensuring cheap, fast broadband for Australian consumers, and not ONLY that, it ensures that innovation kicks in, because there’s no way Telstra will be stepping in for a low wholesale bid, Telstra Wholesale won’t be one of its most profitable companies, will it.. They won’t be milking Australian consumers, and Australian small businesses for all the possible profits they can make.

The idea is good. They could add contractual conditions that come with the rights, for example, the rights include extending the network to 95% of Australia within 5 – 10 years, for example.

The advantage of the SpeedReach / G9 FTTN is that the initial information states its competition friendly (they don’t retail), the network would be maintained and innovated, because they won’t have greedy pigs behind the administration of it.

The incentives here from the SpeedReach / G9 FTTN idea are all fantastic, and the plan is sound.

I don’t see why Telstra would be a clear leader, except for the fact they are threatening to sue if the G9 are allowed to seize copper wire from Telstra, thus cutting their services, and running those services from the node.

The issue here for Telstra is clear, they are threatened. The G9 consortium could be given access to freely walk into Telstra exchanges, tear out the copper, run some fibre, and charge Telstra for access.

Though, a clear point here, Telstra WERE invited to participate in the FTTN network, and own a share of it.

They chose not to, and declined, likely because they want the Trade Practices Act rewritten, and by holding everything in a deadlock (the copper network, refusing to release a FTTN network, limiting ADSL2+ and ADSL1 to certain exchanges or certain speeds) all suggests that this is the goal. They want to fight and put the government in an uncomfortable position in an election year, but they didn’t run the math properly: 1.6 million shareholders, 20 million Australian’s. You are sort of outnumbered there. And with Tell The Truth Telstra revealing facts, and hopefully getting some share of promotion from other websites, They could indeed inform the uninformed, and therefore swing the opinion / rig the election so to speak.

The goal here for them is to have some supporters, so much so that instead of Telstra having any active supporters, we all see a heap of T4 Active Supporters, supporting the release of truthful information, without the deceitful misinformation, and guidance done by Telstra, and it’s propaganda website, Now We Are Talking.

So, here’s a link in support of competition, Australian consumers, Australian small business, Australian ISPs, and the Australian economy: Tell The Truth Telstra. Support Australia, withhold those dollars from the foreign ran, and foreign shareholders at Telstra, and keep them in Australia, support Australian ISPs, take your services away from Telstra (except your landline, $19.95 Homeline Budget), get VoIP, and rip those dollars away from them further.

The more uncomfortable, and the more squished into a corner they are, the more they will be forced to compete.

Those shareholders might hang Sol if he doesn’t bring them a return, so let’s put them in that position, to hang him, if anything, to support Australian owned, and Ran businesses, like iiNet, and Internode, who care about the communications infrastructure, and who don’t just look after shareholders, but the competition also.

Tell The Truth Telstra.

Points to both sides of the Fibre-to-the-node argument:

Telstra’s FTTN plan:
* Is approaching 2 years old.
* Will affect competition for providers who have rolled out their own DSLAMs
* Will reproduce the same scenario a lot of ISPs have now, trying to compete on price, but Telstra raise the bar.
* Has a multi-billion dollar company behind it
* Offers speeds up to 100Mbps to around 50% of the population
* Doesn’t require taking the copper back from Telstra, and rebilling them for it
* Has a company that has experience behind it with networks
* Is being proposed by a company that does its best to disable competition
* Is being proposed by a company that limited, and still does limit the speeds of the technology to speeds it sees fit
* Has minimal government support, due to requests for regulations to be removed
* Is bring proposed by a company that doesn’t innovate unless competition drives it to
* Doesn’t have Australian consumers best interest’s at heart (no matter what they spin)

G9’s FTTN plan:
* Is around 18 months old
* Will affect competition for providers who have rolled out their own DSLAMs
* Will lower prices
* Won’t raise the bar for ISPs, as they have no conflict of interest
* Will promote more competition
* Doesn’t have a multi billion dollar company behind it (yet)
* Doesn’t have speeds decided, but it is assumed ADSL2+ at a minimum, therefore, 24Mbps to most users
* Requires taking copper from Telstra (compulsory acquisition, however, a lawsuit will be likely from Telstra)
* Has Optus behind it, as well as several other ISPs, with general experience with rolling out networks
* Is being promoted by a group of companies that likes to promote competition for the sake of filling unused ports
* Is being promoted by a group of companies that consist of providers that were the FIRST to install ADSL2+ and Microwave tower networks to Regional SA, and hasn’t limited the speeds of technology where the price was right
* Is being proposed by companies that were first to the market with other technologies
* Requires ‘reasonable’ changes to Regulation to prevent over build (asset / investment protection)
* Is being proposed by companies that took risks in the face of a large monopoly
* Has fought against the monopoly for years, and still does, to gain some competition ground
* Has both innovation and Australian consumers better interests at heart

If that’s not enough, some more pointers:

Telstra charge $56+ ex GST, excluding other costs, to lease a simple 8Mbps ADSL1 port to ISPs.
Optus charge less than $49.95, inc GST, inc other costs, to lease a ADSL2+ port, with absolutely no restrictions to ISPs

Telstra retail ADSL2+, with a total of 25GB of data (and with a fast connection, you need that extra data to enjoy it) for: $129.95
Optus retail ADSL2+, with a total of 60GB of data (with a fast connection, you need that data to really, really, enjoy it) for: $69.95

That’s a BIG 50% difference, with more value, faster speeds, and no hassle.

Some lines Bigpond like to use when asked:
Our Network is stable.
We have Free content.
We are Australian.

Ok, but, so is Optus’s network, considering it’s also available Wholesale to other ISPs, with no complaints.
Optus also have Free content, actually, a reseller of Optus ports, Netspace, has Free PIPE traffic as well on selected plans.
Umm, after T3, you are owned by every man and his dog who thought you’d be worth buying. That includes several multinationals. You are also being run by USA CEOs. Telstra, you are no longer ‘Australian’. You rip off ‘Australians’ with highway robbery prices, and continually abuse your monopoly position.

Telstra had a few ways to go about the face of competition, rather than innovate and embrace it for all the good dollars it brings (Telstra Wholesale is one of Telstra’s largest profit earners, so they aren’t selling below cost, or where’s the profit come from?), they decided to stifle it, reduce it, plug it, and the Australian economy, and basically create expensive services for those that can’t get faster services elsewhere, because they couldn’t work with competition.

If you look at the many webhosting companies around the world, most are working with another provider, who resell their network capacity to them. That provider could literally annoy the crap out of the customers on the other provider, and encourage more sales by doing so, they don’t. They work together, and enjoy the profits they make from both angles.

Why didn’t Telstra simply focus on innovation, and infrastructure wholesale, and basically create a fair play market? Oh, that’s right, the businesses they sell extremely overpriced services to would move to other services which are cheaper.

But, in the face of the current competition, they don’t really have much to go with now, most businesses can get by easily on an Internode ADSL2+ Annex M connection, for a lot less dollars too.

It’s pretty much a catch 22 for Telstra, work with it, and the competitiors price you out of the market, work against it, and you near ruin the Australian economy by pricing everyone out of it, or not innovating to bring newer technology to those that might use it best.

One disappointment with many products is failure to stick to standards.

Nearly every system you look at is ATX. They are either mini, midi or maxi. Generally, midi.

They all are the same size however, to accomodate different hardware, for example, in a mini ATX you can stick in a IDE disk. in a midi ATX, you can stick in an IDE disk, and so forth.

Unfortunately, companies think they can go better, and not stick to standards. One such case is a recent issue involving a box that doesn’t have the room for a second disk, and not only that, the CD drive is 1cm thick (thin), and the system is basically not suitable for upgrading.

Why can’t they stick to standards? Nearly every other manufacturer can adhere to standards, they don’t need to squish things down worse than the fat kid at McDonald’s who flattens your burger, by whatever means possible.

It’s a waste of time, and an inconvienience when you look at it in comparison to placing other hardware in the same area with it, for example, having a smooth, rounded top, therefore, nothing can get stacked on top of it, and being a different width, thus not stacking in a good way on the side, taking up a different space area.

They are a pain in the butt really.

Standards exist for a reason, so that someone else can pull it up, or others can develop to it, and not have to worry about satisfying the specs of other machines that might be too little, or too big.

Can you imagine if an IDE drive was available in several different sizes? You would fit some in your case, others you’d need a hacksaw for, and others you’d need a bit of filler to fill the loose space.

Manufacturers that don’t stick to standards exist primarily to satisfy a group of users (minimal) that want small, different style hardware. Good luck upgrading that to something newer, near impossible.
Good luck stacking that in a group of machines, it’ll either be too high, or too small for one allocated space, and require half the next space (therefore wasting that next space).

Pretty pointless to differentiate yourself from standards. Be unique, but not at the expense of ignoring standards.
Same applies to web designers / HTML coders. W3C didn’t put those hours of effort in just so you can ignore them and play with your balls, the standards are there for a reason.

Take a look at gameco.com.au – hardly standards compliant, and more to the point, who needs a clock on a webpage, when you have one in your start bar for Windows users, or in your applet for linux / mac users?!

Standards. Please follow them.

Telstra have certain charges.

For example:

$59 – Connection Fee to connect an inplace operational connection at a previously lived in residence.
$125 – Connection Fee to connect an existing line, where there is work required to be done on the connection to bring about a working service.
$200+ – Connection fee to get a second line installed.

Now, here are the processes involved in MOST of those jobs, keeping in mind that the post isn’t intended to be attacking the technicians doing the work, but more to it, the charges being charged by Telstra.

Further, keep in mind the work behind this is relatively simple, requiring little more than joining copper wire, and attaching fittings to the customer premise.

And more to it, Telstra have claimed repeatedly that the copper network it proudly claims ownership of, has been paid for back to taxpayers via dividends multiple times.

The work involved:
Connection at an previously lived in residence with dial tone:
Enter data into its system to assign a telephone number to that cable, and further data entry into the accounting system. The work is done by computers, no physical work involved in most cases, simply behind the scenes data entry and configuration.

Connection at a place where work is required to supply the service:
Figure out where the fault with connection is on the cable path and correct it. Most cases this couldn’t take more than 1 hour, by simply identifying where the pairs join together, and verifying the cable at the point of connection, and the exchange.
Some work may be required, like opening a pillar, and unattaching, reattaching and testing power / line signal at various points, so some knowledge of the pillar might be required.

Connection of a second line:
Attach the second pair of the copper wire to the cable path, and attach the cable pair to the exchange, recording details of the cable joins (if needed).
Visit customer premise, find the point of interconnection, and split the second pair already in the cable off to a new socket.

As you can see, the work involved doesn’t have a HIGH cost, or a VERY HIGH level of expertise, the work is not so difficult, but more so, requires thought, and due care (as does many jobs).

So, without devaluing the technician’s who do a job of keeping the infrastructure running, how much does Telstra really need to charge for a second line, considering the infrastructure is paid for, and the work isn’t HIGHLY skilled.

I’d expect to pay a skilled mechanic more than a line technician (simply, they can’t believe they are worth $200+ for one hours work).

And before anyone jumps in and says its to cover the costs of maintaining the line, what on earth does Line Rental go to?

I somewhat doubt the charges reflect the true costs. Sure, the work is not entirely cheap, but seriously.. $59 for data entry? I wish I got paid that much for a 15 minute phone call..

The ACCC served a competition notice against Telstra in relation to expensive wholesale line rental, that it had deemed as anti – competitive (and rightly so too). This notice was served in April last year, after Telstra raised the line rental price by $3.10 for wholesale.

The ACCC removed that notice in early March due to changing regulatory circumstances, makes sense, if the environment changes, and the notice is no longer applicable, the notice should definitely no longer stand.

Telstra seemingly continued the case through to the Federal Court, at that point in time, Telstra informed Broadband News Website, Whirlpool, “It was disturbing [that] the ACCC could get it so wrong”, obviously disagreeing with the notice, and indicating that a possible misunderstanding was going on.

The Federal Court today ruled that the notice itself was invalid, because the ACCC didn’t follow procedure. That’s probably a valid point, all too often we can see government departments outgoing, not following procedure, but anything inbound to any department follows procedure (sometimes lengthy, and full of red tape), or it doesn’t get done.

So, because the ACCC didn’t contact Telstra, as they are apparently supposed to, prior to issuing a competition notice, the notice was deemed invalid.

I think the ACCC might have followed due procedure, because the breach was with regard to the “charging of higher prices for wholesale, then is available retail” provisions, which basically gives immediate grounds for a notice to ANY company.

However, the mixup, or the technicality, is being abused by Telstra’s nowwearetalking website as leverage, taking it completely out of context.

The regulations themselves were most likely sound, the procedure followed with issuing the notice was NOT followed, and that’s all the issue was. Even consulting with Telstra and following procedure at that point in time, I’m sure that the notice would have stood, until the ACCC removed it.

I guess they do need to take a bit more care in issuing notices, and follow procedures, not just so they don’t get flack like this, but so it really sticks to Telstra after they pay lawyers to fight it, only to go back to the same judge, and be told to.. well, pay up.

Telstra like to spin anything so they seem like the good guys, but they are demanding 27% return on an FTTN network, that other providers aren’t demanding, which means that well, cheaper prices for consumers with faster internet connections, as is the case now with ADSL2+. Go anywhere but Telstra, and your net connection contains more value, at a cheaper price.

Telstra are money hungry pigs, and the more people that find that out, and start looking at alternatives, the better off we all will eventually be. They might fight by rising prices, but a fat load of good that’s gonna be when they have no customers to raise prices too.. It should promote the exact opposite, lower prices, faster speeds, more innovation, better value.

Our current broadband sucks, unless you have ADSL2+, which means you live in a capital city, or large metro area, in which case, your doing pretty good!

Under recent threat from the proposal of the Labor party to peer with the private sector, Telstra have again bought their FTTN proposal back to the table for further consideration.

Telstra originally stopped talks around it’s FTTN network after they couldn’t get the ACCC to agree with their impression of adequate ROI (and frankly, I don’t see anyone but shareholders agreeing with Telstra ROI).

I don’t see any problem with anyone making some money. It’s what makes the world turn, however, even I don’t charge through the roof on jobs that I can. Why? Because the better interests are not in stealing peoples money, but rather, helping people succeed.

Now that ‘helping people succeed’ factor seems to be integrated in Labor’s idea, as well as in the G9 idea by allowing competitors access to the network for a minimum fee to fund infrastructure growth, research and development, and obviously a bit on the side (as everyone wants).

Unfortunately, Telstra don’t seem to want to ‘help people succeed’ or ‘make life easier’ for anyone but it’s shareholders. They don’t care for consumers. That’s obvious with their excessive ROI demands, and the long fight against the Australian government, who really, should just ignore it. I for one expect them to. And when they whinge at the next government, I would expect them to ignore that to.

Ignore Telstra. They have nothing worthwhile to say from what I have been reading on their Trash talking “NowWeAreTalking” website.

In fact, they pay out Optus for being foreign owned, yet clearly, the shareholders of Telstra are no more Australian, in comparison to the immigration folk, hitching a free ride to the detention centre.

In related news, Optus has also struck back further at Telstra’s high and rather stupid wholesale prices by increasing them at $2/month for those on 512k plans. Further to this move, Line Rental will start at $55 dollars and include unlimited local calls, however, International and Mobile Rates will differ.

The spark for the move is Telstra Wholesale’s excessive pricing, leaving Low Margin’s available to Optus. Of course, I think there might be more behind the scenes on top of the low margins. Think about this. Telstra have in recent months repeatedly attacked Optus for being Singapore owned, and repeated the boring “Sending your dollars to Singapore” speil (didn’t Telstra have jobs going in India?). As a result of those attacks, Optus is setting a example, and showing Telstra to be blatant liars, by demonstrating that the dollars being made from Telstra services are virtually nothing, and the only real value you have in Telstra Wholesale customers are the actual customer base, and not the revenue they bring, considering it’s nearly all Telstra’s anyway.

So, that’ll set another Telstra lie back to bed, and well, might cause Optus to drop some of its less profitable customer base, but that’s a good thing, because with high profit customers comes high profits, and with high profits comes funds for network expansion, and with network expansion comes growth, and with growth comes a kick in the teeth for Telstra.

Competition, you gotta love it.

In June 2007, Optus is expected to make a rather fantastic and interesting move.

They will dump the Telstra garbage they resell, in exchange for reselling solely from its own footprint which carries much higher margins.

There are good reasons for optus to stop selling the Third World Expensive Garbage that Telstra Wholesale describe as “Broadband”:

• They don’t lose out on high support needs users, who they make 5% off
• They make fatter margins, something like 30%, compared to that of Telstra Wholesale Garbage
• They only have to support users they are actually making the support costs back from

As you can see, the decision would primarily be profit motivated, but I congratulate them on prompting such a bold change in the industry by stopping selling rubbish, they have to pass off as Broadband, to actually start selling broadband.

In somewhat significant related items:

Telstra have finally figured out how to identify who Joe Blow, and Joe Blow are, living at the same address. OMG, they are the same person. We’ve been sending out two bills a month for his phone and net. Let’s scrap that and… well, they now get a single bill. I wonder if the shareholders factored that into the reasons not to buy Telstra? Poor management of expenses. Previously each customer was just a number, or 3 to Telstra. Now they are just a number. They still don’t know who the customers are.

And, moving onto more exciting news, more competition is about to spread as Telstra investigates a $300 Million dollar link to the US. This link is believed to rid them of the expense of paying Southern Cross cables, and push their own profits further higher. Such a move has fantastic incentives for users, like reduced costs or higher quotas because ISPs will have choice, and in a market of choice, price is generally the winner, unless your incompetent, in which case, competence is the winner.

PIPE Networks also planned to build one into Guam, which is progressing and seems to have financial support behind it, leaving the east cost with Southern Cross Cables, PIPE Networks, Australia – Japan Cable (AJC), and Telstra’s Cable to the US as possible competing methods of getting those bits flying around the planet.

I would suspect more of these providers to be planning to implement a technology Simon Hackett (Internode MD) has been speaking of for so long, it’s nearly a Platinum Album now. That’s WDM. Wave Division Multiplex. The technology is understood to allow a single cable to carry many times the original capacity by using different Wavelengths, thus allowing multiple streams in one cable. Fantastic Idea, allowing Terabits of capacity down one single cable. This technology likely to also reduce the cost of broadband, as the cables are generally resold based on capacity, so if they dilute capacity by adding more, at minimal cost, you can only expect prices to come down.

On that note, 2007 is going to be a lot more interesting with all the broadband topics currently heating up. Cheaper broadband, faster speeds, or more value for money, so far seems like everyone’s a winner, except Telstra, who will still be crying at Christmas about it’s the latest LSS decision of $2.50.

April Fools Day. Some funny pranks:

Whirlpool: Mandatory ISP filtering will block P2P

This one didn’t get me. I was expecting it. Rather funny to see the shocking number of people that fell for it though.

Whirlpool: Aura adjusted.

This one DID get me. I recently have had my aura on Whirlpool on a steady rise from the deep area of “Pervasively Low”, to “Pervasively Normal”, to “Pervasively Low”, to “Pervasively Normal”, and today… “Pervasively Luminescent”. Now that was a shocker, I believed it, because I assumed my aura was rising yet again.

I immediately had a look over the forums to discover “The Pool Room”.. However.. It wasn’t in sight. Oh no! No Pool Room, but very high aura.

I started poking around, and discovered that it was an April Fools joke. Got me good, it did.

SuperTorrents: Advertising.

Not official yet, but I suspect the advertising idea is part of an April Fool’s gag, mainly because they can’t reasonably expect us to believe it costs them more than $5000 USD to host a server in Colocation in the US.

I get 1.2TB on a lowend server for $59USD, that alone tells me that they either use a LOT more than 1.2TB, are with a very expensive provider, or.. are full of.. brown matter.

I suspect the ads to disappear, however, I am appauled by this, it’s no real joke to be shoving enlarge ads in the face of younger children. That’s just not funny. Besides, April Fools jokes aren’t designed to be profit making exercises, and I suspect they do turn a profit from the donations on that site alone. As well as that, my personal 2c is the site is ran by kids, but that’s not really the point here.

The ads themselves are rather intrusive and they serve nothing more but profit raising.

If they go the way of demonoid, a userbase might still exist, but at 1kB/sec for uploads. They would eventually drop the need to sign up to download torrents just to hold on to some users, but the userbase will still dwindle, why?

User won’t upload much. Why would they? There’s no point if you are depending on the userbase to keep coming back to click ads / profit, you aren’t gonna tell them to go away with bans, you basically kiss the cash they bring in .. good bye.

There are better trackers available, such as BitMeTV. But there’s a few reasons to stick with SuperTorrents as well, so I do hope they remove the ads.

Other April Fools day issues:
It seems some kids like to set trashed houses on fire. A house just down the road from us is in a bad state, however, around lunch time today, firefighters were on the scene putting out a … well, minor spark.

Kids need a good kick up the rear, starting fires in houses, even if they are trashed, is a bad thing, the people in the apartment building next to it wouldn’t appreciate being smoked out. That’s no April Fools.

Entertainment value of .. well, you be the judge.

Here’s an interesting point, Coles and Woolworths do not sell Panadol for babies, not very convienient.

The reason I understand it as being so, is because they could get sued if someone were to buy Panadol from there, and overdose or so forth. Notice they still sell Adult tablets, and the Large bottles (designed for Children over 2+).

Now, just thinking from the lawsuit avenue, what if I couldn’t get Panadol from anywhere else, and they didn’t have it?

Could I sue Coles / Woolworths for NOT having it?

What if someone purchased the large bottle, and gave the wrong dose (of the wrong medicine), could they sue because it was all that was available?

I find the move to not sell Panadol of the baby level a little.. stupid. They are more likely to get sued from the other two pointed out avenues, compared to someone buying it and giving out a overdose.

Also, there’s heaps of chemists around, so, one could theoretically buy from seperate chemists.

I just don’t see why they WOULD NOT sell it for fear of a law suit, there is a more likely lawsuit from those requiring it, or purchasing the wrong product, because the right product was not available – which will likely do more harm, compared to having the actual product available.

The chemists around my local area all close spot on at 5pm. Too bad if you needed some a little after, like we thought of today.

Luckily a Day / Night Chemist a short while over was open til 7pm.

Coles is generally open until 10pm most nights. Woolworths is open until 12am most nights, except weekends, 10pm. The extra hours mean a lot to someone chasing Baby Panadol during those hours after 5pm. It’s simply weird to be excluding all people, because of the very small likelihood of someone being stupid. Actually, if someone were to sue for selling it, I’d tell them to grow a brain, and use it. It’s not a retailers job to judge what people purchase, it’s actually the purchaser’s job to ensure they are buying and using the product for the purposes intended.

I suppose in a world that will sue over anything, not for reasons of “just compensation”, but “for the money”, you can only cover your ass so much, and even in doing so, you open up more holes for others to attack anyway. It’s a difficult area, and no – win, no – fee lawyers who sit up on coffee all day and night to find those loopholes are somewhat the problem.