Just a few of the stupider news stories of the day

The MPAA are threatening to disconnect Google from the internet.  Good luck with that.

Nice one, Apple.  You've only had a FREAKING YEAR to correct the problem.

Cool jury verdict of the day.

How cool an idea is this?

Attack of the flaming NIMBYs

Ah, I see the NIMBYs are out in full force today.

These would be the first people baying for blood if lack of coverage meant they couldn't make a 000 call, if network congestion caused their vital call to their bestie to drop out, or, worst of all, meant they couldn't update their Facebook status on their iPhone.  The world would just come to an end.

I'm not sure if it's just a blind spot or if the people involved are truly so stupid they can't make the linkage, but it's very simple, people - you want mobile phones, you need coverage.  That's the way it works.

Interestingly, The Australian ran a couple of pieces in the last few days banging on about the US plan to build a wireless "NBN" based on 4G LTE technology, and unsurprisingly the hacks churning them out followed the standard editorial line of bash-the-NBN-at-all-costs - these costs including, apparently, their increasing loss of credibility.

As this piece in Crikey points out (ie drives bus sized holes through), you'd need a cell tower in every street to be able to provide comparable wireless coverage to fixed locations.  Fire up the NIMBYs again guys, and get a few shovels of fresh rhetoric in there - they're going to need something to be angry about.  After all, in today's society of outspoken empowerment, apparently everyone's an airchair expert and they have the right to have their opinion listened to, even if they have no idea on the subject and their only understanding has been fed by urban myth and one-eyed media reporting.  (Looking at you, Australian IT.)

Wireless is fundamentally a solution for mobilty and access edge use.  It's limited by the need for towers to ensure decent reception, the need to provide bandwidth to those towers, line of sight, intereference, the need for an antenna at the premises etc.  Why would you want to use it for a fixed premises access solution when there's a viable pit and pipe solution already available?

Wireless spectrum doesn't just appear from the sky, it costs money because there are multiple users contending for it.  Obama can requisition it from TV companies all he likes, but that doesn't create spectrum - it just steals it from another media delivery network that will then have shortages down the track.  It's also not just a matter of waving a magic wand and allowing additional spectrum to be used - if it was that simple, it would have already been done.  The reality there is that the most attractive spectrum has already been used, going further outside this means additional costs in terms of lower efficiency, wider channel bands, higher transmit power levels (watch out for that extra head growing, NIMBYs), larger antennas, higher power consumption for devices etc.  There's a decreasing rate of efficiency that has to be recognised before just assuming it will all be OK.

Fibre might be expensive now, but it's building a network that will be there for the future and can be scaled.  Bung a few new SFPs in the headends (about $200 between 32 users) and right now I could go gigabit to the premises.  The reason it's being limited to 100Mbps now is that frankly there's no need for it (and the odd leecher who wants to download the entire internet every month is not a valid need).

In other news, did you you know there's a red light camera that also does speed detection at the corner of King and La Trobe Sts in the Melbourne CBD?  I do now, dammit.  :(   2 weeks to get the infringement notice out... hopefully I don't have another one in the pipeline.  Luckily that intersection is normally sufficiently congested that it's rare to be able to just drive through it, let alone at better than 50km/h.

Cop this

Interesting conversation on the way home.  Some cop spouting bollocks on talk radio about the evils of mobile phone use in cars, usual weak arguments about safety etc.  I couldn't resist calling their call line.  Conversation is about as close as I can recall it.

 

 

Me:  So why exactly is talking on a mobile while driving dangerous?

 

Cop:  You could be distracted away from your primary responsibility, driving safely.

 

Me:  So talking while driving is dangerous?

 

Cop:  No, the use of the handheld mobile is dangerous.

 

Me:  And it's still OK for me to use a handsfree to talk while driving?

 

Cop:  Yes.

 

Me:  And it's legal for me to fiddle with my stereo, change the CD etc while driving?

 

Cop:  We don't recommend it.

 

Me:  Is it illegal?

 

Cop:  At the moment, no.

 

Me:  Is it legal for me to hold something else while I'm driving?  For instance, a piece of wood?  Or a pen?  Or a keyring?

 

Cop:  Yes.

 

Me:  So the talking isn't dangerous, the holding or manipulating the object isn't dangerous, but the combination somehow is?

 

Cop:  Yes, you're not allowed to talk on a handheld mobile while driving.

 

Me:  So is the mobile somehow an inherently evil object?  Or a weapon of mass distraction?

 

Cop:  Studies have proven mobile phone use while driving is distracting and leads to higher accident rates, which is why the law is there.

 

Me:  What if I take the SIM card out of the phone, or the battery?  Is it still a mobile?  Is the device still legally a phone if it's no longer capable of making a phone call?

 

Cop:  No, but what would be the point of that?

 

Me:  Bear with me for a moment.  So you agree that a mobile phone that can't make a phone call is not inherently a risk to safe driving in of itself?

 

Cop:  No, why?

 

Me:  Because I'd like your public official answer whether it's legal to have a conversation going on a mobile via a handsfree, and at the same time just hold a second dead mobile which is totally incapable of making a call.  This precisely simulates the situation which you say is dangerous and distracting, but yet it's apparently completely legal, and I therefore presume safe in the eyes of the police, correct?

 

Cop:  Erm....

 

Me:  Because you were talking earlier about how the law was tightened in 2009 to remove all the loopholes, so naturally you got them all, didn’t you?  By the way, did you know I’m talking on my mobile while driving?  I’ve made it through rush hour from Albert Park to Caulfield while talking to you, seems safe enough to me if I can debate a senior police officer to a standstill while doing so.

 

Radio DJ:  And we'll be right back after these messages!

Scammers and impeccable timing

I just found out over the weekend that my mother received a scammer phone call from some Indian scumbag telling her that her PC had a problem during the height of the cyclone festivities.

Whilst my mother is normally a polite and well spoken individual, even with obvious scumbag ripoff merchant scammers, I suspect her response was a good deal less cordial than it might have been under more relaxed circumstances.

Oops

Just had another fire alarm and building evacuation.

For once, it wasn’t a false alarm; the builders on the 4^th floor drilled down through the slab... into Telstra Learning Academy’s comms room on the 3^rd floor.

Oops.

At least TLA knows their VESDA systems are working OK.  :D

LinkedIn

Anyone had a look at LinkedIn, or got their profile on there?

And does it strike anyone like... Facebook?

I will admit I have a profile on there, but it really does feel like yet another social network trap, just under the guise of “professionalism” and “business”.  The pressure is there not to be on LinkedIn because you particularly want to be, but because everyone else is, the implicit message being you’ll be the odd one out.  Of course now it’s not just socially uncool to be the conscientious objector, but it’s professionally damaging too.

All of a sudden, it’s SpaceFaceMyBook all over again, trying to see how many “friends”/connections you can accrue, in the mistaken belief you’re encouraged to develop that this actually means anything in the real world.

I suspect the reality is that just like Facebook is actually a way to provide enough functionality to get people to voluntarily agree to stare at advertising, LinkedIn in a trap to get people to buy useless premium subscriptions to something they don’t need, by scaring them of the consequences otherwise.  And then in the future, they’ll start providing webmail, online collaboration, secure document storage and hosting etc – and we’ll all just have to buy into it... because it’s the new paradigm.  By the time people realise it’s an artificial construct it’s too late, you’ve already taken the blue pill.

The more I think about this sort of stuff lately, the more I realise that increasingly we’re all being very cleverly manipulated.

Everything from moving away from in-TV adverts to in-program product placement, which you can’t avoid, and is so subliminal that you don’t even know it’s being done to you.  The human brain has an excellent ability to discard rubbish, the average person ignores at least 85-90% of what they see and hear every day.  Can you remember any of the billboards you drove past on the way to work?  But the ability and facility to do that is something we’ve learned by recognising advertising when we see it, thus giving us the ability to isolate it from what we bother assimilating

 I know I do it now with banner ads on websites, to the point where SWMBO fairly frequently points out I have porn open on my screen at home in a banner somewhere; I honestly don’t see the damn things.

Now, how do you do that when the message is ingrained into the content you actually want to absorb?  Like your TV program?  Or the SpaceFaceMyLinkedInBook web page you’re looking at?  Or when it’s ingrained into your daily and professional pattern via communication and resources and you can’t escape it?

I used to think that we’d be in trouble when Minority Report-style targeted advertising would be popping up in front of us as we walked down the street, but now I tend to think otherwise; this

Banks

For a number of years I have maintained savings and cheque accounts with a bank currently known as Bendigo Bank.

 

I began this association over 20 years ago in North Queensland when the institution was known as Northern Permanent Building Society, and although the bank itself has been absorbed, renamed and morphed over the years, the accounts remained the same.

 

The accounts were used primarily for savings (remember when savings accounts actually paid interest?) and for writing the occasional cheque – because there’s always one pest who wants a cheque for payment.

 

I think at peak I had about $15,000 in the savings account, but kept little in the non-interest-bearing cheque account, and to be honest I had no problems with the bank over the years, despite changes of institution name.  This came to a halt one morning around 12 years ago.

 

I had written a cheque (for the one aforementioned pest a year who wanted one) and mailed it on a Monday afternoon.  This was done in the full knowledge that there was not enough cash in the account to cover the cheque, but I intended to rectify that first thing on the Tuesday morning (this is pre the internet, let along online banking).  Both Australia Post and the cheque recipient must have set records for speed on this occasion, as by the time I arrived around 11am to cover the cheque, it had already been bounced, and a $30 dishonour fee levied.

 

This displeased me greatly, and I proceeded to explain this to the teller in some detail and volume.  The main thrust of my argument being that this demonstrated that the bank was clearly capable of clearing a cheque on the spot, which seemed to be rather at odds with their stated policy of taking five days to clear one when I was the one that wanted the cash.  As a result, I put my case that they could withdraw the dishonor fee.  Now.

 

Now possible?  Under any circumstances?  No problems.  I will be closing both accounts.  Now.

 

You can’t give me $15,000 on the spot?  Are you a moron of some kind?  Funnily enough I do not want to walk around with $15,000 in cash.  I will take a bank cheque.

 

There’s a $10 fee for a bank cheque?  Entirely unsurprising.  I will take the balance of the account, save for ten pieces of silver, which you may keep.

 

Oh, there’s a $20 account closure fee, is there?  Right, what’s the least amount of money I can leave in the account and still maintain it open?  $1.  Excellent.  I will take a bank cheque for the balance of the account minus $11, of which you can have $10 for blood money, the remaining shekel to remain in your clutching mercenary grasp.

 

At this stage the teller, refusing to make eye contact with me, very quietly said that there was a $15 a year dormant account keeping fee.  I replied, far less quietly or politely, that the bank would be suing the executors of my dead estate for the fee, and she should proceed as instructed.

 

And there the matter has rested for the past 12 year, punctuated only by the occasional bank statement showing balance: $1.00.   I’ve never heard a word about fees.

 

Until yesterday.

 

Last week the lumbering bureaucracy of Bendigo Bank apparently groaned to light and disgorged a letter advising that since my account had been dormant for the last three years, it would be cancelled and the balance taken as a closure fee if there was no activity for a month.

 

So, with some delight, internet banking has just been used to make a deposit to the account, thus marking it as active in their systems – presumably for another three years.

 

I’m looking forward to getting a statement sometime in April, which will say balance: $1.01, and should the current state of affairs continue, I fully expect to be increasing that to $1.02 some time in 2014.