Mobile fun

Interesting conversation with an induhvidual at my sports club this afternoon.  The topic of the conversation was crap mobile reception.

Induhvidual:  I fixed my problem, I have a mobile repeater.

Me:  Really?  So do I.  Where did you get yours?

Induhvidual:  eBay.

Me:  Ah, so an illegal one then.

Induhvidual:  No!

Me:  Really.  What did you pay for it?

Induhvidual:  About $100.

Me:  Wow, nice buy.  And definitely totally illegal.  My repeater is legal.  They go for about $800 the last time I looked.

Induhvidual:  Who cares?

Me:  Mobile carriers care.  A lot.  By operating a transmitter in their frequency spectrum that’s not synced with their network, you’re creating a high powered source of interference that knocks out reception for everyone else in the area around you.  In effect, you’re a one-man black spot.  Legal repeaters work by acting as a mobile handset themselves so they sync with the network base station which deconflicts their signal with every other handset in the coverage footprint.  They then rebroadcast on a different frequency again, which they agree with the base station not to use, so they boost your signal without killing anyone else's.

Induhvidual:  So?

Me:  So mobile carriers get pissed about that sort of thing, because their customers complain, and that’s poking the carrier right in their most sensitive area – their revenue stream.

Induhvidual:  They can’t catch me.

Me:  Really?  They can triangulate the source of the interfering signal from their towers quite well, probably plot it down to something about the size of the room you have the thing installed in without too much trouble.  After all, it’s not moving, so all they have to do is take a bunch of measurements and take the average, that’s going to give them your house.  Think how good the GPS signal is in your mobile phone, that’s AGPS that uses mobile tower triangulation to boost the satellite signal.  Does your mobile phone GPS still work indoors?  So does the reverse.

Induhvidual:  Oh.  But they won’t care.

Me:  Let’s think that one through, shall we?  As I said, it’s a revenue stream for the carrier.  Complaints from your neighbours about their services being crap are going to get investigated.  The carrier can measure the interference levels off the base station from a computer terminal on the other side of the world just fine, and pull up reporting of stuff like the noise levels coming and going, dropped call rates off the cell et cetera.  If they see a problem, what they see is complaints or customers leaving for another carrier that uses a frequency spectrum that some dumbarse *isn’t* operating an unlicensed illegal transmitter in, so either way it costs them.  Those customers then go and tell ten of their friends and neighbours not to use that crappy carrier X, they switched to carrier Y and it’s sooo much better.

So what’s going to happen is that one day you’re going to get a knock on the door.  When you answer it, the caller will announce themselves as being a field technical investigator for the carrier, and he’s here to conduct a check for any unlicensed transmitter equipment operating in his carrier’s spectrum, and that he’ll be seizing it under the Telecommunications Act 1997 if he finds it.  Don’t worry, he’ll find it.  The radio analysis gear he has in his van costs more than your house does.

The bloke standing behind him will be a nice police officer.  He’ll be accompanying the carrier technician to make sure your attitude falls within the range deemed acceptable and compliant with the aforementioned Act, and he’ll have been well briefed beforehand so he knows exactly what they can do.  That covers stuff like entry to the premises regardless of your assent, seizing anything they deem suspicious for further analysis, and generally doing pretty much what they want to.

The next character behind him is an investigating engineer from the ACMA.  He’s the one going to be actually prosecuting you for violating the Telecommunications Act.  He cares because the ACMA sells spectrum to the carriers, and it’s pretty scarce, so they charge heaps for it, and in return the carriers expect their licence rights to be fiercely protected.  The fine for individuals for this stuff is currently up to 2 years gaol and fines of up to $175,000.

The bloke behind him in the nice suit is the legal counsel for the ACMA assigned to the investigation.  He’s not going to say much, his job is just to observe and ensure the two engineers document everything well enough that the magistrate doesn’t need to waste too much time on agreeing that you’re well fucked, and that everyone else can move on to lunch.

But hey, use the thing if you like, no skin off my nose.

Tax dodge of the day

Just bought a couple of engineering reference booksfrom a bloke I met online.  Optical transmission stuff for work, thought they would be an interesting read, and he works right next door so why not?

$5 each, pristine condition.  Excellent.

And I just found they have the purchase receipts in them from when they were bought last year… $122 and $132 respectively. So I can claim them on my tax as a work related self education expense at full price.

Win!

Well that doesn't happen every day

I don't think I have ever agreed with anything much Andrew Wilkie has ever had to say, but apparently never say never.

Andrew Wilkie drops a c-bomb on air. #auspol pic.twitter.com/R2W4PSKWRE

— Cameron Atfield (@CameronAtfield) 3 August 2016

Tech support tragedy of the day

Accounting firm gets a Cryptolocker infection, which blows through their main file server like a dose of salts and encrypts the lot.

Faced with a ransom of thousands of dollars, incrementing by the hour, and a deadline before the decryption key is lost forever, the firm's IT consultant decides to wipe the server and restore from backup.  He long ago set them up with Carbonite cloud backup so no loss other than restore time.

Having scrubbed the drive array - so the files and encryption hash are now gone, even if they paid the ransom - the IT consultant now discovers he can't remember the password to the backups.  Carbonite uses 1024 bit encryption.

Fuck.

Backup plan - reimport the private encryption key directly, if that's present the password is not required.  Where is the key stored?  Oh yeah... on the server.



Fuuuuuuuck.

Last resort plan - the owner of the firm should still have the private encryption key in their e-mail.  Only the server was affected so the .PST file should be unencrypted.  The owner's response: ""I don't keep anything sensitive in my e-mail because it's not secure."

Game over.

The accounting firm has lost 20 years of customer files that might be relied on for tax or legal use, all of their workflow templates, their own business and personnel records, down to and including their own company incorporation documents.  They're going out of business, and that's before their customers start suing them for professional negligence and costs incurred.

The IT consultant firm doesn't have errors and omissions insurance, so they're going out of business too once the accounting firm's owner sues them into oblivion.

Final kicker - why didn't the IT consultant do regular test disaster recovery runs, and discover the password issue?  The accounting firm owner didn't want to incur the cost and system downtime to do so, against the advice of the IT consultant, who's now the only person left with an e-mail trail and records to demonstrate this.  So it's quite likely that they will walk in terms of the lawsuit, despite it being their negligence that caused the issue.

"But that costs money!" - any manager/executive/owner, ever.

Another terror attack in France

Another terror attack in France... large truck deliberately driven into a crowd, then the driver got out and started brassing up the bystanders.

Now I wonder who could have committed such an act?





I suppose at some point the world is going to admit that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western values and get serious about addressing the issue, but I also no doubt that our pussified politicians will allow the situation to get a lot worse before they do so.

I'm a vigilante

For the last couple of weeks I've been back to getting the train to work again, which means getting the tram over to the station in the afternoon.

That's fine.  What shits me is the number of weetbix-packet-licence pricks who can't quite grasp the concept of stopping for the pedestrian crossings at the tram stops.  I mean it's not rocket science, it's a superstop with clearly apparent crossings.  Wavy lines, zebra stripes, fluoro yellow signs.

I've been getting very good at reaching out and giving people's wing mirrors a good firm slap as the blow by, which always results in a good firm BANG, and if I'm lucky, a broken mirror.  I've only had one cretin get out of the car and complain, and he pulled his head in smartly when I offered to remove it for him.

A couple of afternoons ago, I was a bit slow off the mark and didn't make it to a mirror in time, so I contented myself with a good solid punch to the back quarter panel.  That must have sounded really impressive inside the car, because the driver shit themselves and slammed on the brakes, with the result that the car behind him - which was also blowing through the crossing at the same speed - ran straight into the back of him.  Bonus points!

While I would have loved to get a photo, I deemed it a wise move to disappear smartly...

Your Sunday morning dose of stupid

This is one of the stupidest piece of lefty socialist thinking you'll ever hear.

Two pommie philosophers think that parents are "unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children" by.... reading to their own children.

‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’

I have a simpler and far more practical idea.  Let's shoot philosophers if this sort of loony lefty thinkspeak is all they are good for, because I'm not seeing a lot of practical application for their contribution so far.

Armchair Socialists specialise in espousing equality, but like all academics with zero practical experience in making anything happen, they don't appreciate that it's usually done by dragging everyone back to the common denominator of the lowest achiever.  Apparently it's OK if a whole bunch of people have to suffer as a result, because in socialist-think that's better than any one person experiencing more suffering because of their own unique circumstances.

Anyone with a level of intelligence superior to a bread mold would respond to this twaddle by asking, quite reasonably, why not improve the experience of the lowest advantaged?  Ah, but that would require work, and possibly getting out of the armchair. Can't have that.  Is there any more tea?

To quote someone else who put it better than I can - 

The reality is that the only way we will have equality is by dragging everyone down to the same level. By hammering down on the hard working, the studious, the enterprising, the principled, the entrepreneurial. And this is what happens under socialism. Merit is not rewarded.

- http://www.bruceonpolitics.com/2011/02/10/why-socialism-is-evil-1-equality/

Of course, one of these cretins is now trying to back out their statement and claim they were misinterpreted, but I think the message came through quite clearly the first time.

Fuck off, you irrelevant twats.