Dear Telstra,

A fault arose with my phone line in February this year (2011), resulting in my wife and I being without a home phone and cut off from the Internet for about a week. Telstra provided us with a free service that forwarded incoming calls to our mobile phone. We were charged full price for our line rental.

The same fault presented itself in March, this time taking over two weeks to get fixed. Again they promised to provide a free call forwarding service to my mobile phone and, as compensation for both faults, they gave us a twenty dollar discount on our line rental. However, when we received our bill, although we had our $20.00 discount, we had been charged $16.60 for calls that were forwarded to our mobile phone, a service which was supposed to be free.

I spoke with two of the contractors that arrived at my home at different times to check out the problem and they told me that a cable had been accidentally dug up and re-buried by a back-hoe operator in a new estate being constructed nearby. They also told me of a 200 meter length of Telstra cable had been strung across a public park on Kirkwood Rd, on top of the ground. They said that this above-ground length of cable is the source of my problem. I was told by Telstra and one of the contractors that came to my house that the damage done to the cable was too great to be repaired by local contractors and that they would have to send a specialised team to repair it properly.

The fault returned again and I reported it on the 28th of April. Telstra told me that someone would be around to have a look at the fault on the 4th of May. They contacted me again to extend that date to the 6th of May. No-one came and I was still without a home phone. I spoke with Telstra on the 9th of May and they gave me yet another date - the 16th of May - making it three weeks without a home phone or Internet access. On the 14th of May I got a txt from the contractors that were working on it, advising that my phone had been reconnected. My ADSL was still down but after a quick call to my ISP, we managed to get my Internet connection working.

I have registered a couple of complaints to Telstra now, but never directly to their Complaints Department. I’ve had my mobile phone battery run flat while waiting on hold to the Complaints Department. Their Complaints Department does not seem to be interested in returning my calls. I received a text message from them on the 28th of March claiming that their complaints department would contact me within the next 24 hours. That call never came. I have never spoken to anyone from the Telstra complaints department.

Internet access at our house is our primary means of communication. We use Facebook and Skype to keep in touch with family and friends across Australia and around the world. Our bills are now sent by e-mail so they don’t have to be printed on paper and we use online banking to pay them. We get our news and weather online. My wife maintains a YouTube channel and I have this blog. Being cut off from the Internet causes us far more inconvenience than losing access to our telephone service. We pay $69.99 per month to TPG Internet for ADSL which we are unable to access while we have this fault on our Telstra phone line. Because we are not using Telstra’s own Internet company, BigPond, no-one at Telstra wanted to know anything about the money we’ve paid for our Internet access - access that has been cut off to us from by this fault.

I was getting pretty annoyed with Telstra by this time and they must've realised it because they assigned me a case manager. My case manager has been very polite and he's tried to be as helpful as the bureaucracy he works for will allow. It's interesting to note that once Telstra has assigned a case manager to you, no-one else at Telstra can deal with you. It's certainly better than talking to a different person every time you ring them up, but when I rang up one day and he wasn't there, I was told that I would have to wait until he got back to work to discuss my problem. Even when I asked to be put though to "someone who is being payed enough to be yelled at", she told me that the only person I can be transferred to is my case manager, and as he's not at work there's no-one I can talk to. When I did get a hold of him, my case manager was very keen to help out. He fixed the overcharging on my bill and in a bit of a win for us, he even gave us a payment to cover the month of Internet we lost.

I went with a mate to find this cable strung across the park. It didn't take long so we snapped a few photos. I couldn't believe what we found. I had been offline and without a home phone for about a cumulative six weeks this year. I had been told on more than one occasion that a special team from Telstra was going to fix the fault because the job was too big for their local contractors. This last fault took three weeks to get fixed. These photos were taken the day after I got the 'repairs complete' message. While talking with my case manager, I offered to send him the photos so he could see for himself why I'm so unhappy with the results of the repairs. He told me that due to privacy concerns he could not give me an e-mail address to send them to, so I'm posting them online here.

The cable comes out of the ground at the edge of a pond beside a bridge amongst some swampy reeds.

It is strung along the top of the ground through a garden beside a path in the park.

It looks as though someone has pulled it up from a shallow covering in the garden bed.

Example one of damage to the cable.

Example two of damage to the cable.

Example three of damage to the cable.

This shot shows the three damaged sections together. On the right side of the photo you can see the well-used exercise path that runs through the park.

This is probably example four of damage to the cable. It's a black plastic bag held on by a couple of wraps of electrical tape. The cable goes in one side and out the other.

About 200m from where it comes out, it disappears back into the ground.

After taking these photos, I have to wonder... which one of these plastic-bag and sticky-tape repairs took three weeks to complete?

I get the feeling I've been lied to. More than once.

I would really like someone from Telstra to explain to me:- If the repairs are just some plastic bags and electrical tape, why did it take three weeks to get my phone back on? If a specialised team of Telstra technicians was here to do the job - as I was told would be the case - how could they just leave a cable that supplies phone and Internet to me and my neighbours, sitting on top of the ground next to a path in a public park?

Conroy - Super Villian

Australian Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy won the Internet Villian of the Year Award at the 11th Annual Internet Industry Awards by the Internet Service Providers Association in London this week. Check out the story on iTWire.

Congratulations Mr Conroy, the entire world has formally recognized your Internet filtering scheme as the worst thing that's happend to the Internet ever. Well done!

Who are the targets?

Senator Conroy and his Internet censorship goons have, until recently, been selling their compulsory filter idea as a way of protecting young Australians from kiddy porn, but if Conroy is allowed to implement his Great Barrier Firewall, he gives our federal government a filter that lets them block any information they deem unsuitable for your viewing.

Let me stress that point.

If we ALLOW our Federal Government to force this censorship scheme on us, it lets THEM decide what sites are not suitable for YOU to look at, download or purchase. They will have unprecedented contral over your access to information and what you are able to purchase because, as they have since revealed, the scope of their censorship goes far beyond blocking unsuitable porn.

Todays rant is inspired by articles in the news recently describing how Conroy already plans to expand the scope of his Internet filter to block out any websites that sell or allow you to download computer games that fall outside the MA15+ rating given by the Australian Film and Literature Classification Board. Australia is the only western country in the world that doesn't have an R18+ rating for computer games!

Do any of my readers play Second Life? Be prepared to kiss that little diversion goodbye - anything that lets it's players get creative and make whatever they want is definitely going to fall outside our ratings system!

Fallout 3 was banned in Australia for depicting drug use until a censored version was released.

Most of the GTA games have been banned in Australia because they depicted sex scenes. Censored versions have since been released.

F.E.A.R. 2 was banned because it was too violent. The publishers appealed the decision and it was reclassified as MA15+.

There is quite a list of games banned in Australia.

Basically, computer games get refused classification (and subsequently banned) because of drug use, sex scenes and violence - the very same reasons we have an R18+ rating for video and film releases.

The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) recently conducted a survey revealing that the average age of the Australian gamer is thirty years old. Not really surprising considering the average price of a latest generation gaming console or games-capable PC tends to be out of reach of most pocket money budgets. So we know that the people buying games are - on average - adults. The same adults that can rent or purchase a whole range of R18+ movies depicting all kinds of drug use, sex and violence. In some places in Australia, these same adults are legally allowed to purchase X rated material. Yet when it comes to gamers, we are treated by our Government as children no matter what our age.

Savvy gamers in the past have simply ordered their game from a civilized country like New Zealand, a country like every other western country in the world that has an R18+ rating for their games, allowing adults to enjoy their games as they were meant to be.

Our very own Internet Villain Award Nominee, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy plans to put a stop to all that. His blacklist will now include any sites that provide access to games that have been refused classification in Australia. This means that any site that sells R18+ games will be blocked even if you wanted to buy a PG13 rated game.

And even if you think this is okay, even if you reckon gamers should wait until our Government to listen to the thousands of Aussie gamers crying out for a fair rating system for our games, you'd be naive to think that Conroys Internet Censorship scheme will stop at blocking computer games. The blacklist that blocks these 'unacceptable sites' can be added to at a whim. If the Government don't want you to see it, they can put it on their secret blacklist and you lose access to it just as if the owner of the site had pulled it down.

I have put a widget on the side bar of my blog where you can sign a petition at GetUp! who have had some success in promoting awareness about this censorship situation. This censorship scheme of Senator Stephen Conroy's has the potential to destroy the freedom we have online in ways that you won't realize until it's gone. It will give our Government the power to block your access to anything - independent news websites, entertainment sites, community networking sites, even blogs like mine could end up being blocked.

We have already seen the blacklist block legitimate business sites with the Queensland dentist who was added to the blacklist without any warning or explanation, costing them business because the site was down, costing them service and maintenance trying to figure out why their site wasn't working, and no, he will not be getting compensation.

A point I'd like to make here is that our current rating system was designed to apply to movies, films, television shows and also printed media and radio broadcasts. When applied to media, this kind of rating system makes sense. You can be assured that when you hire a DVD rated PG13 that your young teenager should be able to handle the content and you can make informed decisions on watching R rated or X rated content.

But, and this is a very big 'BUT', the Internet is not a one-way media. It is a communication system in which information is sent both to you and by you. Censoring the Internet is like censoring your telephone. It is like censoring your personal mail. It is taking away your access to information. It is removing any option to you to choose to view R rated or X rated material. It is removing your freedom of choice.

Don't let this happen. Sign a petition. Discuss the issue with your friends. Write about it on Facebook. Let Stephen Conroy and his pals know that we are Australian adults and we can choose for ourselves what we watch, what we listen to and what we play. We grown ups now, we like our freedom and we can decide for ourselves thank you very much.

Essential Leopard Software.

I've been trying out lots of software on my iMac to see what works best for me. Here is a list of things I've installed to make the Mac computing experience easier.

1. Logitech Control Center.

Support for Logitech keyboards and mice. The one thing that Apple makes that I can't stand is that pathetic excuse for a mouse. Sure, it's got a nice multi-directional scrolling ball thing but it only has one button which - when you go to play a game - is absolutely useless. And before anyone tells me that it can be configured so it can detect right or left click, it doesn't change the fact that the mouse physically only has one button. Go ahead, grab your Mighty Mouse. Hold down the left button and then click the right button. You can't can you? Because the one and only physical button is already being held down. Most useless mouse ever. So I use a decent Logitech wired optical mouse and the Mighty Mouse gets to sit in the drawer as a spare if I ever get that desperate.

2. Flip4Mac WMV.

This is Microsoft software. It adds Windows Media support to Quicktime so you can watch .wmv and listen to .wma files as well as watch Windows streaming media on the web. Typical of Microsoft, they have a couple of different versions of the same thing with different levels of functionality and price. Stick with the free one. The alternative is to get Windows Media Player for Mac and no-one wants to do that!

3. Perian.

Perian is known as the swiss-army knife of QuickTime components. Basically it adds support to your Mac for lots of different video and audio formats allowing these files to be used in your other Mac software.

4. Growl.

This is notification software and is very popular. It links into the Mac OS framework to deliver notifications of software events that happen on your computer like letting you know when someone comes online or when your torrent has finished downloading. With a bit of extra fiddling, you can install the Hardware Growler which comes with it. Then it will monitor your computer hardware which provides information about your network, notifies you when you plug something into the computer or if a disk has been mounted or ejected.

5. MacFUSE and NTFS-3G.

It really does suck when your Windows using friend comes around with their external hard drive to find that your Mac won't even read what's on there. This solution comes in two parts.

1. Part one is the installation of MacFUSE which is written by Google. It establishes a mechanism within OS X that allows it to connect with non-native filesystems. Simply put, with this installed, you can 'teach' your Mac to read disks that are not formatted for Mac.
2. The second part is the installation of the NTFS-3G driver. This is the bit that 'teaches' your Mac to read Windows formatted NTFS disks.

It took me a while to get this working the first time but that was on the Mac Mini about a year ago. The latest versions were easy to install. One, then the other. Done. I can read all my mates external hard drives now. For all those using Boot Camp, this lets you read and write to your Windows drive too, but that may screw up your Windows install... like I care about Windows anymore...

6. Safari 4.

At the time of writing this post, all Macs come with a web browser called Safari but currently you get Safari 3 which, while it's a capable web browser and it's quite quick, it doesn't shape up too well against most of the competition. Safari 4 is still in beta but is a vast improvement over it's predecessor, integrating the tab bar and the title bar together to give you more space for the pages your looking at and the Top Sites feature that shows all the sites you visit the most on one screen with thumbnails so you can easily recognize the site you want to go to.

7. UnRarX.

Leopard has support for most compression types built in including the most popular - ZIP, but some of the archives we download are compressed in a RAR file. To open these, I use UnRarX. This utility won't add full RAR support to your Mac, it does nothing but decompress RAR files. It's small, light and does the job.

WWWWII

There is a war on in the web-browser market. Some call it "Web War II". Others say it's "The Second Browser War". All we know it that it's really good for us.

I've spent some time getting to know most of the popular browsers out there, so lets start with the most well known browser in the world.

• Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer, or IE, is the browser that comes with every copy of Windows. It's ugly and cumbersome to use and has historically been slack on security to the point that in 2004 the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team [US-CERT] recommended users switch to a different browser. While Microsoft have become a lot more security conscience since, I honestly don't have anything good to say about this browser. Even the latest version seems to be a poorly implemented copy of feature sets from competing browsers.

• Firefox

Built by the Open Source community and the Mozilla Foundation, Firefox seems to be the current market leader. It's fast, stable and secure with hundreds of plugins, themes and add-ons available. It's usually the first thing I install on a computer.

• Google Chrome

There are a lot of great ideas being implemented into Google's Chrome minimalist browser. It's super fast and (apparently) built from the ground up for stability. However, it's very new and I found it to be lacking somewhat in the stability department. Knowing Google, it will probably be in beta for many years and undergo many improvements with constant updates. If for some reason you don't like Firefox, this is a great alternative for Windows users (currently there is no official Mac version of Chrome). As it matures, it will only get better. Google, after all, know a thing or two about how the Internet works. While using this browser, I really missed some of the toolbar add-ons and customizatioin options that I had in Firefox which brings me to...

• Safari

Safari is the browser you get pre-installed with every Apple computer. While Safari 3 works great on the Mac. It's fast, stable and secure. The Windows version however, was not really what I would call a great browser... or even a good browser. Like Chrome, Apple have taken a very minimalist approach in the design of their browser, so like Chrome I once again miss the toolbar add-ons and customization options that I had with Firefox. So even on the Mac, we ended up replacing Safari 3 with the OS X version of Firefox.

Safari 4 was released recently and since it's release I've been using it on both my Mac and my Windows machine. It's got the same minimalist approach but it's been redesigned almost in the image of Google Chrome, but with the sense of style that only Apple seem to have. It's still in beta so the Windows version is as stable as a straw house in a fairy tale. As to be expected, on the Mac, it's awesome. It has the three most important things. Speed, Stability and Security.

So while I love the way it does it's "inline spell checking" which is great when I'm blogging, I may very soon finish up my evaluation of Safari 4 beta on my Windows computer and go back to Firefox, at least until Safari 4 comes out of beta.

On the Mac, Safari 4 beta has been impressive. The top sites page and the ease at which you can find something in your history make it so you don't even need to set up your browser anymore. You just start using it and it sets itself up for you. There was only one thing we missed - a particular Firefox add-on that allowed us to monitor our download usage called "Internet Usage Meter".

Readers outside of Australia: Most Internet service plans in Australia have a limit on the amount of data you can download each month. Those that can secure a plan with unlimited downloads usually have to compromise the speed of their connection. Some plans even charge you for every MB you download over your quota.

Problem solved. For all those Mac users in Australia who subscribe to TPG Internet (yes, I'm talking to all 7 of you!) There is a Dashboard widget that can monitor your download usage. It's for TPG users only and it's called, unsurprisingly, TPG Usage Meter [TUM].

End of ramble.

Minnie is fixed

I ordered a new Pioneer slot-loading laptop DVD burner for our Mac Mini. It arrived yesterday and I installed it. I have opened up the case before but removing the DVD burner and replacing it was a little tricky - and a lot nerve-wracking, but I managed to get the new drive in without breaking anything so I'm very happy. The computer recognized it and after asking me to confirm the region code, it worked straight away without any problems. The 'action' on it when you put a DVD in is a little different from the old drive. It needs a little bit more of a push to get it to 'eat' the disk, but at least now it ejects it as it's supposed to. Something interesting that I noticed with the burners was that both of them had their manufacture dates on them. The original burner from Apple with the Apple logo sticker on it was manufactured October 2007 but the new one that I just put in was actually manufactured 3 months earlier! No wonder it was so hard to find someone with that model in stock.

Apple released a new version of their Safari web browser and I'm trying it out both on the Mac and on my Windows rig. So far, it's working really well. It's fast and tidy - like a cross between Firefox and Chrome. It has a similar start page to Chrome and an interesting place for the tabs - in the title bar! Not sure how they managed to do this on the Windows version, but they did and it works quite well for me. It even spell checks as I type this blog. Handy.

We've had a few good showers over the last couple of weeks, filling both our water tanks. It seems that out of all of Australia, we've been extremely lucky with the amount of rain we've received with just the right amount to keep Cilla's Garden looking great and keeping water in the tanks and pond. Other places in Australia have not been so fortunate. North and North-West Queensland have had far more rain than they bargained for with entire communities being cut off by floodwaters. To the south in Victoria they could really use some rain to help with the fight against the bush fires that are still burning down there.

This blog - Our Spatial Planet - has some satellite images of the bush fires. It gives you some idea of how vast these fires are.

Load of bullamakanki

Bullamakanki.  It took me a while to work out the pronunciation, but what a cool word.  Say it aloud.  I like it.  It sounds Australian.  No-one should apologize for using it.  Google can't find the word anywhere, but this post should fix that.  Although there is an Australian country music group called Bullamakanka...

This post is a response to 'Observer' who commented on my last post with the suggestion that I over-stated the reaction of the general public to the Governments plan to censor the Internet by describing it as a 'massive uproar' and saying that I was making 'misleading, incorrect and exaggerated claims'.

Well, I have to say, I stand corrected.  The fact is that the general public are not even aware of this scheme.  The general public won't know about it until they're paying more for an Internet service which runs slower and prevents you from accessing sites deemed unfit by the Australian Government.  And even then most will only notice when they can't reach their favourite porn site anymore.

'Observer' goes on to explain that there has been an Australian censorship authority which has been censoring all other media for one hundred years and that there has been no uproar about that at all.  To quote: "Nothing, nada, nichts, zero...".

Well, if I'm to understand the gist of the word correctly, that right there is a load of bullamakanki.  Censorship has created an uproar in Australia many times.  A lot more than zero times, I can assure you.  The Office of Film and Literature Classification formed in 1970 is the "censorship authority" which is responsible for deciding what you can and can't see on television, DVD's or videos, what video games you can and can't play, which books you can and can't read and what music and audio you can and can't listen to.

There have been many calls from people who play video games for an (R) classification for video games.  Currently in Australia, any video game that exceeds (MA 15+) cannot be sold in Australia.  As someone who has worked as a software salesman in a retail store, I witnessed an uproar among the gaming community whenever a new game comes out and Australians had to wait for a 'dumbed down' version to be especially made to comply with our (MA 15+) rating.  This damages commerce and increases piracy as gamers seek other means of acquiring an un-cut version of the game.

It's not only members of IT related industries that are complaining about censorship in Australia.  Art exhibits, for example, are often under fire with some exhibits being put in sectioned off rooms with warnings and others being banned entirely.

I could go on further about how censorship in Australia has caused 'uproars' - from Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's days as Premier of Queensland having police beat and arrest student demonstrators to books being pulled out of our school libraries by people who have never even read them, but I think I've made my point.  Anyone who thinks there has never been an uproar over censorship in Australia should perhaps do some research of their own.

Don't get me wrong.  Censorship isn't always bad.  I have very little issue with the way censorship works on the television for example, with adult themed content restricted to late night viewing and proper warnings for content that is particularly gruesome or disturbing.

The reasons that Senator Stephen Conroy give for implementing the Internet censorship scheme are honourable.  He tells us he wants to implement his Great Barrier Firewall to protect our children and teenagers from child pornography and other "unwanted" content.

The reasons that George W. Bush gave for invading Iraq seemed pretty honourable at the time too.

Senator Stephen Conroy tells us that other western countries like the UK and Sweden already have an Internet blacklist and IP blocking scheme just like the one he's proposing.  This is a lie.  This story reveals the truth about how Internet service providers in Europe handle their blacklists and it's a far cry from the plan that Mr. Conroy is proposing.

An Australian Senator lying to the public to win support for a scheme that restricts what websites we visit should be cause for alarm.  An Australian Senator lying to the public should be cause for alarm for every Australian citizen.

But don't just take my word for it that this Internet censorship scheme is a bad idea.  Here are some of the things that the leaders of three of Australia's biggest Internet service providers have to say about Senator Conroy's plan.

"...the idea that ISPs could filter the Internet is technically impossible... and is a bad idea anyway." 

-Telstra Media's Justin Milne

"...the Internet is full of anonymous proxies - none of this stuff actually works."

-Internode's Simon Hackett

"...I do worry that this is the thin end of the wedge, that the government will come in with a small list of sites for the ISP to block and that just includes the real stuff that everyone agrees on like child pornography and bestiality.   And so we say 'We're willing to comply with that', but it becomes an area which can then be used for so much more.  So you might see the next step as an attempt to block out XXX sites or hate speech sites, and you think 'maybe, we can live with that', but then after that, it could be to block out competing political positions, or to block out sites about religion or sexual orientation that the Government says is no longer suitable for children in Australia"

-iiNet's Michael Malone

You can see these people saying these things on a video interview that you can watch on ZDnet.com.au.

So I thank you, Mr Observer, for pointing out the inaccuracy in my previous post.  Australian citizens are not in a massive uproar.

But they should be.  

This scheme will needlessly cost Australians money by raising the cost of our online access.  It will damage the performance of our Internet connection resulting in slower network speeds for everyone.  It is not possible for it to do the job it is intended to do because of the open nature of the Internet.  Anonymous proxies, encryption techniques and tunneling networks make it impossible for ISPs to monitor the content of data being transferred .

So I ask all my readers to join with me in creating a massive uproar against this ill-fated, costly and useless attempt to censor our Internet.  Let your friends, family and work colleagues know what our Government is trying to do and educate them about pitfalls of such a plan.  Sign the petition at GetUp.org.au with your e-mail address.  This is important to us all.  We must be heard.

Internet Censorship

I'm very concerned with the new government proposal to censor our Internet by creating a private blacklist of sites that contain "unwanted content".  

The Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, is ignoring the massive uproar of Australian citizens and, not only is he going ahead with his oppressive censorship scheme but he is expanding the list of censored material to block pretty much anything that the he or anyone else in the Government deems unfit.  It seems that no matter how many people cry out, no matter how many angry phone calls and e-mails are sent, he is of the opinion that he has the power and he shall do whatever he wants!

Please take the time to read the following items.

• ISP-level content filtering won't work - Brett Winterford and Julian Hill, ZDNet.com.au
  
• Doing as we're told - Mart Vernon, Townsville Bulletin
• The internet filter we still have to have - Jennifer Dudley, Courier Mail
• Children's welfare groups slam net filters - Asher Moses, Sydney Morning Herald
• If You Hate The Idea Of A Filtered Internet, You Should Probably Sign This... - Nick Broughall, Gizmodo
• Internet filter to block 10,000-plus "unwanted" sites - Jennifer Dudley, Courier Mail
• Net porn: Whose rights matter most? - Clive Hamilton, ABC News

Despite the debate and despite the politicians wanting to implement this censorship scheme, Telstra - the company that pretty much owns the copper that most people use for their broadband and also owns the most extensive 3G network in Australia - say that the scheme is impossible to implement.  Telstra, iiNet, Internode and just about every IT professional in the country is telling us that this trying to implement this scheme will cost enourmous amounts of money - only a small fraction of which will actually be paid by the Government, the rest of the cost will be passed onto the consumer - and in the end, it won't work.

Technically the scheme is impossible to implement.

It will cost many millions of dollars trying to implement it, most of which will be paid for with higher Internet access costs to the consumer.

If it is implemented, the Government will decide what is suitable for you to look at, read, watch or listen to online.

I signed the petition at GetUp! Action for Australia.  GetUp! sucessfully rallied to help  get David Hicks out of Guantanamo and sucessfully fought for Work Rights in Australia and are now on the case for Internet Freedom.

Save our Internet... again!

Chrome - Googles new Internet Browser

It's a bit hard to go on about Chrome.  It was launched very quietly and had it not been for a friend pointing it out to me, I probably wouldn't have discovered for a while yet.

Google have launched their own Internet browser.  My first thoughts were "Why do we need another Internet browser with so many others like Safari, Internet Explorer and my beloved Firefox?".  Like most software from Google, it's very spartan, yet usable.  Most of what's special about it is under the hood.  To the end user, it's a very basic browser with very few features.  It has more screen space than any other browser.  It's faster and more stable than any other browser.  It looks pretty good too.

Google have created a comic style help file/manual for those that are interested in the inner workings of Chrome.  It was the comic that convinced me to give it a serious try so I'm using it as my default browser for a while.  So far the only thing I miss from Firefox is the GoogleBar addon because it allowed very good access to Google Bookmarks, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Maps but the single search/address bar seems to have an uncanny knack of knowing what I'm asking of it.

So far, so good.

The Real Dr. Seuss Impersonator

I recently received a cool poem in my e-mail that rhymed and carried a rhythm well. It was entitled "Why Computers Crash" and was attributed to Dr Seuss.

I've been an admirer of the works of Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr Seuss) since I was a kid. One of my favourite books during my childhood was called "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew" which was about a guy who went looking for a place to escape his troubles and went off to search out Solla Sollew "...where they never have troubles, at least very few...". It was such a popular book in our family that when we bought a farm in 1981 and ran the place on solar panels we called the property "Solar Sollew". Clever eh?

However, knowing that Dr Seuss had passed away in 1991 I went off to find the origin of this poem and found the answer via Google at one of my favourite websites - Hoax-Slayer. (I might just add this to my links list while I think of it.)

The original poem is quite a bit longer and carries the Dr Seuss feel all the way through. However the poem was written in 1994 by Gene Ziegler. It can be found in it's entirety published online by the author on his Cornell University homepage. The poem is actually called "A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer".

Then some bastard edited it, renamed it and re-attributed it to Dr Seuss - digital vandalism.

Apparently Gene was unimpressed and he tears some virtual shreds off his dastardly digital nemesis with a second poem entitled "Hang the Information Highwayman!" - also a good read knowing a little of the history behind it.

Of course this abridged version of the poem has been circulating by e-mail since 1995 and has probably had the title changed numerous times since it's original plagiarism. The e-mail I received had the acronym risc incorrectly spell corrected to risk and even thanks Bill Gates for supplying the experiences described in the poem, yet it was written about a Macintosh computer about a year before the release of Windows95.

So if you get this e-mail sent to you, be sure to let the sender know about the original. Not only for Gene's sake, but also for the readers, because the original poem in its entirety is simply a better read.

Why Firefox is so great

Tech News

Couple of noteworthy tech news items...

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Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft. Love him or hate him, one cannot deny the impact he has had on our lives. I have spent many years buying, using, fixing, playing with and even selling Microsoft operating systems and software. Although he is generally considered a lousy programmer, he was a great business man and in these later years he has improved his personal image dramatically through his philanthropy with his fortunes.

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The Internet is about to open up to an unlimited number of top-level domain names. For a long time we've been pretty much stuck with .com, .org, .gov, or .country (.au, .uk, .jp). but now - if you can afford it you can have whatever top level domain you like. Expect to see .city (.sydney, .london, .tokyo, .nyc) and .company (.ford, .google, .microsoft, .bhp). Buying and setting one up will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars range so don't expect a .dgar anytime soon! :)

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OS X is starting to become noticed by malware writers. Two new trojans have been discovered that can compromise the security of Mac computers. I've had antivirus software running on our Mac since we got it. ClamX is free antivirus software for OS X and has regular updates. Firewall is built in and on by default in Leopard but Safari seems to get some nasty security holes in it like Internet Explorer does! Perhaps the big companies should give up on trying to build Internet browsers and let the entire world create, build and use Firefox3.

Firefox3

Firefox3 is out. Get it.

MacSweeper.com

MacSweeper is a website designed to coax install their spyware cleaning program but is being reported by f-secure to be fake. It seems that the Apple fanboys are seeing it as a right of passage proving that Macs are popular enough to have malware written for it. The f-secure researcher quotes a journalist he had an interview with on the subject.

“I visited the macsweeper.com website. I know I probably shouldn’t have but I used a Windows PC so I knew I wouldn’t get infected.”

Happy 25th Internet

Today we celebrate the new year of 2008 and also the 25th anniversary of the full switchover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET laying the foundation of what we know as the Internet today which took place on the 1st of January, 1983. This was the Internet's birthday.

For the Internet's a jolly good network,
the Internet's a jolly good network,
the Internet's a jolly good network,
and so say all of us!

Hip Hip,
Hooray!

LG Warranty Problem

After waiting months and receiving four service calls, my $3500 LG air-conditioner is still not fixed. I wrote the following e-mail to LG on the 6th of December.

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Attention: The Service Manager.

My air conditioner has been out of commission for over two months now. You have sent repair agents to repair it on no less than four occasions. Parts have been replaced and the unit is still not functional.

My complaint is about how LG have handled this matter. Your slow response and inability to get this unit repaired in a timely manner is unacceptable. LG have publicly listed their Consumer Complaints Procedures on the LGE Australia website. It is clear that these procedures are not followed because if they were, my complaint would have been resolved in a positive and expedient manner and I would have been kept informed of proposed actions, expected time frames and the progress of the resolution. No-one at LG has ever contacted me about how this issue is being resolved - instead I have had to call LG repeatedly to get any attention paid to this matter.

I expect someone to contact me with details of how this issue will be resolved.

Regards,

Jonathan O'Hare

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I received the following reply later that night...

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Dear Jonathon

Thank you for emailing LG Electronics Australia. We regret to hear of the issues you have experienced with your air conditioner.

The unit is covered by a Manufacturers repair warranty - this is designed to protect the customer from any manufacturing fault that may occur during this period. This means that should a manufacturing fault occur during this period, the customer will not be charged for the cost of repairs for either Parts or Labour - It is a repair warranty as opposed to a replacement warranty. Nonetheless, we accept that your unit has had numerous repairs and that your situation may involve some investigation to see if there is some other solution we may be able to offer you. Please fax a brief summary along with all previous service centre reports to:

ATTN: Karine Fax: 02 8805 4243

I hope this has been of some assistance.

Kind Regards,

Karine Wyatt
Correspondence Officer
LG Electronics Australia Pty Ltd
ABN 98 064 531 264
2 Wonderland Drive Eastern Creek,
NSW 2766
Australia Tel : 1800 643 156
Fax: 02 8805 4243

IMPORTANT NOTICE This email, including any attachments is a confidential communication between the sender and the intended recipient. They may contain legally privileged information or copyright. You should not read, copy, use or disclose the content without authorisation. If you are not the intended recipient or you have received this email in error please contact us at once by return email and then delete both messages. We do not accept liability in connection with computer virus, data corruption, delay, interruption, unauthorised access or unauthorised amendment. This notice should not be removed.

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To which I replied

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Dear Karine Wyatt,

Thank you for your response to my e-mail.

I regret to inform you that receiving your polite and kind words and explanation of my warranty via e-mail has not helped at all as my air conditioner is still not working.

I will not be faxing any information to you as you already have all my information and are aware of my situation.

I have not asked for more than the Manufacturers repair warranty and your own Consumer Complaints Procedures to be honored. Right now I have an expensive air-conditioner that is not operational in the hottest months of year. We have been waiting for our warranty to be honored now for over twenty-five weeks. This issue does not need investigation. It needs a resolution.

LG have a billboard on the side of our local shopping center boasting LG as a world leader in air-conditioning. It's a shame you can't say that about your after-sales support. I believe it's time for LG to prove that "LG acknowledges that a complaint received gives LG the opportunity to maintain confidence in its product or services" as quoted from your own website.

Regards,

Jonathan O'Hare

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It is the 20th and I have not received a reply. It has now been over six months and my air conditioner has been non-operational. Allow me to quote a lie from their website.

We provide you with the best customer care.

http://au.lge.com/support/main.jhtml

I don't feel as though I have been provided with any customer care whatsoever and despite what Karine Wyatt writes in her e-mail, I certainly don't feel protected by LG's warranty. In fact, I would describe it as being subjected to LG's warranty!

Then there is the Consumer Complaints Procedures. I have listed them before.

One can read them here : http://au.lge.com/support/consumercomplaintregister.jsp

It is clear that LG do not really care for complaining consumers. Best to ignore them apparently.

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Some guy in Emerald travelled over 200 kilometers to do his first and only call out to our air-conditioner. We only ever saw him once... in June, or July, can't be sure now... He left to order a spare part and never came back. We rang LG after about a month and they informed us that that guy wasn't their service agent anymore. Prizeman Electrical apparently are not impressed with LG either. Gladstone's local service agent for LG is currently Prizeman Electrical & Refrigeration Service. They are not the bad guys here. They've been around five times now to do LG's bidding. The last three times they've recommended to LG that the whole unit needs replacing - which LG has flatly refused to do. So far, they've replaced a circuit board and a compressor. What LG are asking the service agent to do now is replace the condenser coil.

Now for those of you not familiar with air conditioners, that's about it. There's a condenser coil, a compressor and a circuit board. And that's it. The only original bit left in my outdoor unit will be the casing. Pretty much everything inside has been replaced. Well, pretty much everything inside is supposed to have been replaced. You see, LG have sent a condensing coil for a different model. It won't fit my unit. So it'll have to go back again. And they'll have to send another one out.

Apparently I'm not the only one they're upsetting here. The refrigeration mechanic is furious. To the point where she has mentioned possible legal action against LG.

Now I'm not sure exactly how it works with the service agent but I believe they get paid per repair. If that is the case, then the agent would only get paid some measly minimum amount even if they had to do many repeat call-outs and many hours of work, like in my case. If I remember, I'll ask her next time I see her.

I'm just sick of the whole thing. One can take the complaint further but even the ACCC can't actually force the company to do anything. I can blog about it, but unless it gets read by someone who can do something about it and actually gives a shit, then it's just online noise. And they know that you would actually have to spend your own time and money jumping through rings to try and force them to do the right thing and that if you did take them to court they would definitely be able to spent more money than you on lawyers and such.

Those that read this can learn from my past experience and may act upon it if they so choose. If you are in the market for an air conditioner perhaps this is reason enough for you to choose a brand who is committed to providing good after sales service. Don't just take my word for it - Google "LG warranty" and see if you can find anything positive that doesn't come from an LG website.

Bet you can't!

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Joost

Ad-supported on-demand interactive television. Joost is television-quality full-screen programming with hundreds of shows to choose from. Watch the shows when you want and as many times as you want. I've been using Joost for a few days now and it is as good as it sounds, but there is a couple of things you'll need to know and have.

• You'll need a computer.
  
  I'd recommend any Intel-based Macintosh computer running OSX 10.4 or later, but if like me, you don't yet own a Mac, you can also run it on a 1GHz Pentium4 and 512Mb RAM running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and DirectX 9.0c
  
  
• You'll need a broadband Internet connection.
  
  The site recommends a 1Mb connection and warns those with an upper limit on their Internet download or those that are on a pay-per-megabyte plan that watching Joost for an hour will consume about 320Mb of your download limit. So if you are on a plan like the one that Activ8 me are offering to rural Australians, don't go near this or you will be literally paying thousands.
  
  
• You'll need an invitation
  
  Like Gmail, Joost is invite only. You can get an invite to Joost by filling out the "Please Invite Me" form on their site. I've noticed that filling this form out doesn't instantly get you an invite. For some people, they had to wait a day for it to turn up in their inbox.

Joost is beta software but it runs well on my systems. All the shows I've watched have only had a single sponsor so there was only ever one single ad in the ad breaks. I think last time I actually counted the ad in an ad break on normal free-to-air television I got up to about seven ad in a single break!

Browsing the channels is a straight forward affair and I found it easy to find something to watch. Once you have chosen a channel, you can then browse all the shows on that channel and watch the one that you want immediately.

Joost also features several widgets that can choose from be displayed on the screen while you are watching a video. This allows you to have instant message windows, a clock or a news ticker. They plan to release more widgets as they're developed.

I seem to have stopped watching normal television. I'm tired of endless advertising and reality television. Give me a good movie or even a documentary any day.

Browser War II

It was 1994 when I became aware of this thing called the Internet, which had actually been around since the 1950's but had only been released to the public in 1990. At that time I was playing the original Doom and the original Warcraft on DOS and some people ran Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

1994 was also the year that saw the foundation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

A friend of mine who we used to call was studying programming at uni used an OS called Linux. We used to call him "Spanish Bob" because his name was Robert and he came from Spain. He could dial-up to the university servers to get on the Internet where we would use Netscape Navigator to browse web pages and IRC chat with people from all over the world!

In August of 1995, Microsoft Windows95 was released and along with it was the Microsoft Windows95 Plus! Pack which would include Internet Explorer 1.0 to directly compete with Netscape's browser.

This was the beginning of a period known as The Browser Wars. By 1997 it looked like Netscape were clear winners with over 70% of all netizens using Netscape and less than 20% were using Internet Explorer.

Then Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 was released which was more faithful to the open standards set out by the W3C than Netscape Comunicator 4.0 and Microsoft were giving Internet Explorer away for free, supporting it's development with the success of Windows95 while Netscape's browser was pretty much thier only comercial product. By this time, IE was being bundled with every copy of Windows. By the end of 1998, Internet Explorer had won.

In the wake of Browser War I, the Mozilla Project was launched by Netscape in 1998. Netscape released the source code for Netscape Communicator to the public, making it free for anyone to disassemble, alter and redistribute the code. This was like Netscapes poison dagger for Microsoft Internet Explorer, allowing the entire world to build a browser that they wanted, one that would adhere stricly to the open standards set out by the W3C, allow all manner of add-ons and extensions and provide the features that the modern netizen wanted.

The Mozilla suite, which included a browser, e-mail, address book and internet relay chat client, didn't really become that popular, but with a safe monopoly on the browser market, Microsoft had all but stopped development on Internet Explorer. Mozilla had a community that was alive with enthusiasm with updates and new features being added regularly.

In 2004, the browser component of the Mozilla suite was separated into a stand-alone product and Firefox 1.0 was released. Browser War II officially commenced.

Firefox is up to version 2.0.0.6 and if you've never tried browsing with Firefox before, you should really try it out. Also, if you are sick of Outlook automatically opening virus infested e-mail for you whether you like it or not, perhaps you should try out Thunderbird, the standalone Mozilla e-mail client. I don't use Thunderbird myself, I use Firefox to access my Gmail instead.

Firefox = Good.

We're gonna get our shows!

In a bid to stem the flow of pirated television shows, local networks will start broadcasting programs like Heroes, House and Californication within days of them being aired in the US. This was bound to happen sooner or later. When we are left on a cliffhanger and we jump online right after the show and someone in the USA says "Oh yeah, we saw the conclusion to that nine months ago..." it annoys people. Well, starting next month, we will go from being a season behind to just two or three days behind the original air dates of out favourite shows.

Shows quick to air - Herald Sun

Web turns TV ratings around - News.com.au

TV lag shrinks - Sky News

Hit Number One!

I was checking through my StatCounter page (follow the link "View My Stats" under "The Counter" in the bar down the side) and I always check "Came From" statistics with fairly keen interest. My blog has been online for over a year now and I've had hits from all over the world. I've even got a hit from someone at Microsoft.com!

What made this last examination remarkable was that I had got a couple of hits from people searching on Google. You can try this now. Goto Google and search D'gar and D'gar HQ is top of the list. Cool! But there was another one from Google Germany searching for Talisman "Forth Edition". Notice the mis-spelled "Fourth". I mis-spelled it here in my blog Talisman is back! and now anyone else in the world who might mis-spell it will find a fine example of my poor spelling. Lovely.

Also made a first page for the search, albeit at the bottom of the first page for myspace layouts big speakers, although, something I didn't mention in my blog post MySpace, people looking for MySpace layouts rarely find what they are looking for. In my search for MySpace layouts, I found more posts about how hard it is to find MySpace layouts that I actually found sites offering MySpace layouts. I also didn't mention big speakers in that post, but they are something I like to play with...