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TPG != internode

Indeed. Internode is widely regarded as Australia's best ISP. (Disclosure here: I am not signed up with internode - I am still with iiNet, who were the first off the bat with ADSL2+ in my metro area, and I've been too lazy to change.)

I'm not sure what happens in other states, but here in Western Australia we have WAIX, a useful association of ISPs who charge either nothing or very little for traffic from their members. Needless to say, Telstra Small Puddle is not part of this association, nor Optus. But most of the other players are.

So there are plenty of other Linux mirrors to choose from.

This entire discussion seems so out of place on /. Its an Australian article about ISPs and home electronics. This is usually what I go to http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

For the Americans reading, ADSL2+ is the predominant form of broadband in Australia. I get as fast as 21Mbps on ADSL2+ in Melbourne.

For the Australians, where I come from in America, ADSL-anything has not had good reputation of high bandwidth. We associate ADSL to 1.5 to 3Mbps, at least last time i was shopping for an ISP in Florida thats how it was. Cable broadband is faster in the US.

Maybe that will clear things up for those confused with some peoples responses.

Telstra - the company who created one of Australia's "poverty traps"
& lead ISP's into dependence on high-cost Internet services, that's
been -adversely- affeecting AU's Broadband up-take to this day.

Over-priced Telstra still offeris "cheap" (~$30 & ~$50) Internet plans,
with a 2 GB data quota, and charges a $150/GB "penalty usage fee"
for "excess" usage on -slow- ADSL plans - according to Whirlpool:

. http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-1-2/telstra-bigpond-adsl.htm

You wouldn't let Electric companies charge 1,000% more for the
your using a 3rd KWH of electrical energy; why oh why has AU's
sequence of past governments -ever- let Telstra charge so much
per GB of data usage, just because it's labeled "excess" by the
provider.

Telstra's $150 / GB fees is (symbollically) the "re-colonisation" of
of Australia, this time by a local monarch (ie: de facto monopoly).

Compare Telstra's fees to some -other- Aussie ISPs' plan prices:

While Telstra provides a mere 2 GB for ~ $50 (ADSL):

1. AU's costly ISP, Internode, provides 50 GB / mon for ~$50; &

2. More economical TPG provides 130 GB / mon for tha same $50.

(The latter ISPs' data can - or is - sent at ADSL-2+ speeds, resp.)

------------

Sadly, many naive, first-time Internet users start their home Internet
usage with Telstra (or a nearby "mon & pop" company offering plans
similar in price to Telstra's), ie, before they discover more cost-effec-
tive plans from TPG-class ISP's.

Many really don't understand all the technical jargon, having no idea
how much data they'll use each month, and there's always been a
costly Telstra-originated "poverty trap" Internet plan to "fall into."

Telstra has been taking in much more $$$ than is fair in usage fees,
since dial-up days.

Australians have been - & continue to be stung - by "poverty-trap"
"penalty usage fees" for far too long.

I have no doubts that Telstra has taken-in many times the cost of
their network.

We hope that will finally get World-best cost-effectiveness for their
monthly fees... AND - hopefully -

the $150 / GB "excess" fee will soon be a thing of AU's I'net past.

Any clues antipodeans?

My guess is that because historically broadband plans - both business and personal - had limits on how much you could download (and with a few providers, upload also) in a given month. Once you exceeded that limit, you were either capped to something terrible like 64kbit, or worse - charged vast amounts for the extra GB you downloaded (there were cases of people have excess usage fees of thousands of dollars). Even today you will find little availability of broadband that does not measure usage.
A search of all listed broadband providers for Australia indicate only 10 options for 8/x unlimited business internet access.

Agreed, but just because they have put in 100 pairs does not mean they will all get a copper circuit to the DSLAM/exchange.

If they use a RIM (remote multiplexer)

Damn it I spelt it RIMM previously (That was RAMBUS of course!

http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=RIM_Remote_Integrated_Multiplexer

Link states DLC are used in the US which apparently fit 12 VF (Think 28.8k modem) circuits into each pair, using 2 pairs to create a T1 line from the RIM to the exchange.

Who knows, you may have the capacity available, but increasingly these days RIMs are used to maximize the capacity of existing copper.

DSL/ADSL requires a pair all the way to the Exchange/DSLAM to get maximum speed. I am about a kilometer from the exchange and get 15 mb/s

It's worth bearing in mind.

Don't get me wrong, I would like Gigabit to-but that will almost certainly need fibre.

Copper gigabit ethernet cable runs can only be a maximum of 80 meters long

A "wiki for Australian technology" already exists in a way, though mostly focused on the internet: it's the Whirlpool.net Wiki. Brilliant resource.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Shouldn't one run a survey much like the Australian Broadband survey? I mean, really, your survey is limited and open ended. With the ABs, it's interesting comparing the results from year to year... http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2008/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2007/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2006/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2005/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2004/ http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2003/ This is how a survey should be done! We actually have serious issues with our ISP's here, so this is done to perhaps give them a bit of a kick up the arse.

Thus, not a real power issue... that's just the excuse some people make.

I won't disagree that Apple uses a heavy, and many times unfair, hand in management of their apps, but when the 3.0 firmware came out and things like Push notifications and Apple-built multitasking apps came to the fore, a lot of people started seeing substantial battery drainage. Add to this the introduction of 3G and the battery life plummets.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is the only reason, but I think it has a lot more to do with the current lack of multitasking than any conspiracy by all of the upper level execs at Apple.

Greedy motherfucking bastards

This is an example of why PC gaming is alive and well. PC games are cheaper then their Xbox and Playstation equivalents. Lets look at modern warfare 2 shall we, from the rip off merchants EB Games it costs A$119.95 on PS3, A$119.95 on Xbox360 and A98.00 on PC. Now if I go down the road to JB HiFi I can shave A$20 of those prices.

At A$21.95 difference if I purchase 1 game a month I save A$263.40 over the course of a year, If I buy 2 games a month that's A$526.80. Now if my gaming PC costs A$1500, holy crap in three years it's paid for itself.

If you're serious about gaming, you have a PC. Not only is it better (graphics, control, sound and so forth) it's cheaper.

Also happened in Australia. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=677232&p=40#r783 Cant imagine these are 2 isolated cases when its such a popular movie either.

The DBCDE website is unavailable due to demand for the report, which we have mirrored here.

We've slashdotted a federal department. From what I've seen of their emails, they need some people who know about computers and the Internet.

Hooray, we go forward in one direction and backwards in another direction.

Today it was announced that the report on mandatory web filtering was a success, and so the government will be going ahead with the implementation of the Great Firewall of China.

http://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1852

The Federal Government plans to implement mandatory ISP filtering for "refused classification" websites, it was .

The government also released the report on the ISP filtering pilot, which was provided to the government by Enex Testlab in October, detailing the results of the blocking accuracy and performance of the filters.

Senator Conroy announced the new initiatives in a curiously scheduled press conference, with journalists only being notified 90 minutes prior to the start of proceedings.

"The Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block RC-rated material hosted on overseas servers", said the announcement.

"RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use.

"The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100% accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed", said Conroy.

Conroy acknowledged that the filter would only block "inadvertent" exposure to R/C content, and the pilot report bluntly states that any technically competent user could circumvent the filtering.

The report also found that the filters on average "over-blocked" 3.4% of sites that were not intended to be filtered, and that high volume sites would likely cause the filters to fail.

Initial reactions to the pilot report have been mixed, with participating ISPs praising the results (in prepared press releases), while others such as Electronic Frontiers Australia stating that it "brings more questions than answers".

The DBCDE website is unavailable due to demand for the report, which we have mirrored here.

You start out with 5 GB and pay $0.05/MB over that.

So $1000 in fees plus 5 GB plan equals about 25,000 MB

So if they were watching Youtube at 300kbs (and I didn't feel like doing the math, link) so:
300kbs / 8 = 37.5KB/s
37.5KB/s * 60 = 2250KB/m
2250KB/m * 60 = 135000KB/h
135000 / 1024 = 131.8MB per hour

25,000 MB divided by 131.8 MB equals 189 hours 41 minutes of videos in one month.

Wow, really must be in the middle of nowhere.

AU Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Dowloads

Nice to know we have such great editors like kdawson who always keep their eye on the ball.

The issue use to be iiNet's supposed caching of said content. Possibly to do with this patent?

At [Internode ISP's] Simon [Hackett]'s request, we're transplanting a post from WP Internode forum [to WP Broadband forum]:

From: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280230
To: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280474

(There's a Poll [on the first thread] on the Q of whether you feel that, an ISP [with] "too many" plan options
may deter you from choosing any of their plans, as Barry Schwartz suggests in his earlier TED talk.)

---

First, some background from an -earlier- post (in the above thread;
reply to the thread in which your comment(s) are most relavent):

In a TED talk, Barry Schwarz (author of "The Paradox of Choice") notes that:

- when there are "too many" alternatives to choose from,
- fewer people will make a choice

Cf: http://www.ted.com/talks/langâ/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

(eg, where supermarket demonstrators showing many jams,
fewer people buy any of the demo'd jams (By contrast,
where just a handful of jams are demo'd, more people buy;

-or-

If [US] companies offer many mutual funds to employees;
employees miss out on employer mathing-comtributions,
of up to US$ 5,000.00, by not making a choice of fund.)

Extrapolating to WP Broadband Choice's tabbed-page with
Internode's many (too many?) plans, I wonder:

How many people give the 'node a miss, eg, due to the
"excess" number of Internode plans shown on offer there?

cf: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-9/internode.htm

(My guess is that ISPs offer from several to many plans,
eg, to keep Aussies focussed on analysing plans for the
"best" deal for them, in part, so that they will have less
energy to -demand- cheap, unlimited plans, such as are
the norm, in many other countries in Australia's "class.")

--- Here comes the post, shifted from forum Internode:

--- (Although it was originally about Internode, feel free to
--- read this post with -your- choice of ISP, ie, in place of
--- "Internode" where it appears, & maybe let us know
--- which ISP you're thinking about in any replies. ;-)

[In WP's Internode forum] Simon Hackett [wrote]:

"[coming up with a new Internet plan] a lot of work and it has to fit in around some other major new project initiatives that are also in the pipeline"

With all due respect, Simon, I â" for one â" urge Aussie ISPs to redirect all the creative energy & programming/implementation time needed to dream up & implement YAPBP (Yet Another Pricy Broadband Plan) ...to find better ways to deliver what Aussie customers know is possible (since so many other countries' ISP provide it, while we drool in envy that they got it right, while AU continues to lag):

- cheap, fast, unlimited, unrestricted Internet ...not: you can use it for -this- (eg, watch TV -or- access -our- choice of files) purpose for free/cheap, but -that- (eg, research or remote medical imaging, etc.) usage is gonna cost you

For far too long, Aussie ISPs have hugged Telstra's "data allocation & penalty (pick one: huge 'excess' fee or get dial-up speed)" model.

Other Aussie ISPs are -starting- to help us to move to cheaper (if not cheap) unlimited plans, if only on an After Hours (during non-peak periods) basis.

Canberrans enjoy perhaps the -cheapest- AH-unlimited plans (speed "only" 2 Mb/Sec, eg, from their local ISPs that resell TransACT), paying from $20/mon for access to it all.

Why should such plans be reserved -only- for those living in Canberra (eg, pollies & C'th gov't officials & public servants)?

What is Internode missing that TransACT has got right?

In a sports-cent

At [Internode ISP's] Simon [Hackett]'s request, we're transplanting a post from WP Internode forum [to WP Broadband forum]:

From: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280230
To: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280474

(There's a Poll [on the first thread] on the Q of whether you feel that, an ISP [with] "too many" plan options
may deter you from choosing any of their plans, as Barry Schwartz suggests in his earlier TED talk.)

---

First, some background from an -earlier- post (in the above thread;
reply to the thread in which your comment(s) are most relavent):

In a TED talk, Barry Schwarz (author of "The Paradox of Choice") notes that:

- when there are "too many" alternatives to choose from,
- fewer people will make a choice

Cf: http://www.ted.com/talks/langâ/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

(eg, where supermarket demonstrators showing many jams,
fewer people buy any of the demo'd jams (By contrast,
where just a handful of jams are demo'd, more people buy;

-or-

If [US] companies offer many mutual funds to employees;
employees miss out on employer mathing-comtributions,
of up to US$ 5,000.00, by not making a choice of fund.)

Extrapolating to WP Broadband Choice's tabbed-page with
Internode's many (too many?) plans, I wonder:

How many people give the 'node a miss, eg, due to the
"excess" number of Internode plans shown on offer there?

cf: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-9/internode.htm

(My guess is that ISPs offer from several to many plans,
eg, to keep Aussies focussed on analysing plans for the
"best" deal for them, in part, so that they will have less
energy to -demand- cheap, unlimited plans, such as are
the norm, in many other countries in Australia's "class.")

--- Here comes the post, shifted from forum Internode:

--- (Although it was originally about Internode, feel free to
--- read this post with -your- choice of ISP, ie, in place of
--- "Internode" where it appears, & maybe let us know
--- which ISP you're thinking about in any replies. ;-)

[In WP's Internode forum] Simon Hackett [wrote]:

"[coming up with a new Internet plan] a lot of work and it has to fit in around some other major new project initiatives that are also in the pipeline"

With all due respect, Simon, I â" for one â" urge Aussie ISPs to redirect all the creative energy & programming/implementation time needed to dream up & implement YAPBP (Yet Another Pricy Broadband Plan) ...to find better ways to deliver what Aussie customers know is possible (since so many other countries' ISP provide it, while we drool in envy that they got it right, while AU continues to lag):

- cheap, fast, unlimited, unrestricted Internet ...not: you can use it for -this- (eg, watch TV -or- access -our- choice of files) purpose for free/cheap, but -that- (eg, research or remote medical imaging, etc.) usage is gonna cost you

For far too long, Aussie ISPs have hugged Telstra's "data allocation & penalty (pick one: huge 'excess' fee or get dial-up speed)" model.

Other Aussie ISPs are -starting- to help us to move to cheaper (if not cheap) unlimited plans, if only on an After Hours (during non-peak periods) basis.

Canberrans enjoy perhaps the -cheapest- AH-unlimited plans (speed "only" 2 Mb/Sec, eg, from their local ISPs that resell TransACT), paying from $20/mon for access to it all.

Why should such plans be reserved -only- for those living in Canberra (eg, pollies & C'th gov't officials & public servants)?

What is Internode missing that TransACT has got right?

In a sports-cent

At [Internode ISP's] Simon [Hackett]'s request, we're transplanting a post from WP Internode forum [to WP Broadband forum]:

From: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280230
To: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280474

(There's a Poll [on the first thread] on the Q of whether you feel that, an ISP [with] "too many" plan options
may deter you from choosing any of their plans, as Barry Schwartz suggests in his earlier TED talk.)

---

First, some background from an -earlier- post (in the above thread;
reply to the thread in which your comment(s) are most relavent):

In a TED talk, Barry Schwarz (author of "The Paradox of Choice") notes that:

- when there are "too many" alternatives to choose from,
- fewer people will make a choice

Cf: http://www.ted.com/talks/langâ/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

(eg, where supermarket demonstrators showing many jams,
fewer people buy any of the demo'd jams (By contrast,
where just a handful of jams are demo'd, more people buy;

-or-

If [US] companies offer many mutual funds to employees;
employees miss out on employer mathing-comtributions,
of up to US$ 5,000.00, by not making a choice of fund.)

Extrapolating to WP Broadband Choice's tabbed-page with
Internode's many (too many?) plans, I wonder:

How many people give the 'node a miss, eg, due to the
"excess" number of Internode plans shown on offer there?

cf: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-9/internode.htm

(My guess is that ISPs offer from several to many plans,
eg, to keep Aussies focussed on analysing plans for the
"best" deal for them, in part, so that they will have less
energy to -demand- cheap, unlimited plans, such as are
the norm, in many other countries in Australia's "class.")

--- Here comes the post, shifted from forum Internode:

--- (Although it was originally about Internode, feel free to
--- read this post with -your- choice of ISP, ie, in place of
--- "Internode" where it appears, & maybe let us know
--- which ISP you're thinking about in any replies. ;-)

[In WP's Internode forum] Simon Hackett [wrote]:

"[coming up with a new Internet plan] a lot of work and it has to fit in around some other major new project initiatives that are also in the pipeline"

With all due respect, Simon, I â" for one â" urge Aussie ISPs to redirect all the creative energy & programming/implementation time needed to dream up & implement YAPBP (Yet Another Pricy Broadband Plan) ...to find better ways to deliver what Aussie customers know is possible (since so many other countries' ISP provide it, while we drool in envy that they got it right, while AU continues to lag):

- cheap, fast, unlimited, unrestricted Internet ...not: you can use it for -this- (eg, watch TV -or- access -our- choice of files) purpose for free/cheap, but -that- (eg, research or remote medical imaging, etc.) usage is gonna cost you

For far too long, Aussie ISPs have hugged Telstra's "data allocation & penalty (pick one: huge 'excess' fee or get dial-up speed)" model.

Other Aussie ISPs are -starting- to help us to move to cheaper (if not cheap) unlimited plans, if only on an After Hours (during non-peak periods) basis.

Canberrans enjoy perhaps the -cheapest- AH-unlimited plans (speed "only" 2 Mb/Sec, eg, from their local ISPs that resell TransACT), paying from $20/mon for access to it all.

Why should such plans be reserved -only- for those living in Canberra (eg, pollies & C'th gov't officials & public servants)?

What is Internode missing that TransACT has got right?

In a sports-cent

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

two words for you: "root access".

on Android you have to bend over backwards to gain it

Cough You were saying.

Android is almost as closed as iPhone...

Because Google vets Android Marketplace applications, actively tries to stifle hackers, readily bans or rejects applications on a whim (duplicates functionality), charges US$99 a year for the dev kit, has a killswitch and under no circumstances will open source the actual OS code.

No...
Wait...

They dont.

When installing applications:
on the iphone I have to ask Apple's permission.
on an Android phone it has to ask my permission.

"Multiple Image Handling Vulnerabilities. ImageIO and Image RAW are both OS X components that help the operating system handle images. Both components suffer from vulnerabilities involving the way they handle various types of images (Canon RAW, OpenEXR, PNG, etc). Though the vulnerabilities differ technically, they share a very similar scope and impact. If an attacker can get a victim to view a specially crafted image (perhaps hosted on a malicious website), he could exploit this flaw to either crash an application or to execute attack code on the victim's computer." was posted on this Australian telco forum http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1256354&p=1

(I firehosed this story too with some extra information about how the Copyright Lobby primed the Australian Media to run a ridiculous piracy=terrorism story, complete with a claim by Australian Reporter Mike Munroe that pirates could "burn a DVD in 3.5 seconds":)

Australia's Fairfax group published an article by Journalists Eamonn Duff and Rachel Browne claiming that people who download films from illegal file-sharing websites are financing terrorism. The article only quoted media industry sources and was basically a warmed-up press release. That evening Channel Seven "Sunday Night" current affairs program claimed how how movie piracy is being used to fund terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for the Bali bombings in 2002 which killed hundreds including 94 Australians. Reporter Mike Munro claimed pirates "could burn a DVD in 3.5 seconds."

While technically-savy voters can sort fact from fiction, technically-illiterate politicians are easily swayed. What's the best way to combat this sort of misinformation? Is it possible to educate our politicians that there are two sides to every story? Or are they hopelessly in the lobbyists pockets.

Where do you live?
If you live in America then please shut the fuck up. Those of use in the rest of the world are starting to be allocated private addresses that are being NATed via our ISPs. This means we can't do port forwarding or use our connections for anything other than browsing on port 80.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/981410.html

Just to add to this: You can actually get/make HDMI->ethernet->HDMI converter cables. If you cut out and wire the cable in yourself it'll work fine, if you use professional ones it'll route through your switches and everything. This should leave no question about why HDMI was developed; it isn't cheaper, it doesn't run for longer lengths, it doesn't give a better picture, it's just a different plug with copper inside to make us buy new shit every year.

I've spent over $200 this year on HDMI cables and an HDMI splitter (mainly to run a cable through a wall to a projector), and I diligently made sure they were all 1.3b compliant like the moron I am, and along comes 1.4..
How can a cable which streams digital data from A to B become obsolete due to a protocol change? Have these guys really not heard of the OSI model (also known as "common sense")?

This idiotic plan is not killed and dead. The Labor government in general, and Senator Stephen Conroy in particular, have been taken aback by the strength of the opposition. The article noted in the summary only covers some of the incompetent answers given to hard questioning by the main Opposition party and one of the minority parties.

Trials are still being underway involving 4 tiny ISPs, one medium ISP, one Christadelphian ISP and one large ISP majority owned by Singtel.

There is no engineering, vendor neutral specification giving trial design criteria or testing methodology as the basis for the trials. There is no requirement for the ISPs to disclose which method of censorship they selected. The ISPs have been supported to the tune of $AU300,000 but there is still a $AU887,000 consultancy contract for the testing and reporting of on a system to block up to 10,000 URLs. The IWF annual report lists between 1100-1300 sites blocked by their system. Rumour has it that much of the testing in the small ISPs is using equipment from the same censorware vendor but this is not confirmed as several censorware vendors have been lobbying for the windfalls. Watchdog, using the NetClean system was involved in some separate testing undertaken by another ISP, Exetel. The Exetel trial received a great deal of criticism in the Australian internet community and Exetel customers. The trial has not been cancelled and neither has the testing consultancy.

Any assumption that the scheme will disappear is premature.

A list of 1000s of banned films and publications is still in existence. The censorship regime has become more and more repressive over the last 10 years. Realistically the entire basis of censorship needs serious review. It is managed by more than one government authority under several different pieces of legislation. The proposed censorship of the internet is under the control of the telecommunications authority which is yet another government authority.

You would have to try very hard to find a more incompetent approach to anything to do with IT, networking or civil liberties all in the same package.

> eschew newspapers and post notices of public record on their own Web sites.

This will be great for the Aussie Government. Public servants are supposed to advertise externally so all appointments are competitive, but they typically pick a buddy or relative for the job. The external advertising is a real pain because it gets applicants who might get the job.

No problem! They convene an "Interview Panel" populated by the buddy's friend and three other disinterested public servant chair-warmers who have no interest in the outcome. They advertise for some poor saps to go through the interview process without realising they're wasting their time. The guy makes sure the panel chooses his mate as planned, but the interview is still a waste of every ones time: the saps and the chair-warmers. Advertising will avoid this charade. Yay for Government efficiency.

Summed up here: "Government and councils only advertise a role because they are legally compelled to. They usually have an incumbent in the position, an acting who is taking up the role or someone already lined up. Unless you exceed each part of the person spec by a country mile, you're only wasting your time." http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1059770.html

Stockholm's cheap, symmetric 100 Mbps Internet is like a dream, for Australians, whose highest speeds come over very costly ( $150 / GB "excess" data usage ) Big Pond cable... if they can get that speed at all.

Nest down, in speed, is ADSL2+ but it also comes at high cost, for very little data "allocation"

(I think it's ISP's - first Telstra Big Pond, in its day, now most others - trying to force fit "scarcity" model onto the Australian market, ie, even after Australians have discovered that the land has excess data capacity, not a scarcity.)

Symmetric DSL is quite rare in Australia, except where the main application is VoIP, and there it comes at unaffordable cost (ie, for home users).

Even looking at asymmetric DSL Australia's "unlimited" Internet plans are dwindling...

Au $ 99/mon only buys ADSL 1.5Mbps / 256Kbps, It costs more, without a 24 month contract!

One of the few -affordable- "unlimited" Internet plans wasn't even listed (last time I checked) on Broadband Choice (ie: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ which lists & lets user to search through nearly all Australian ISP plans.

(It's offered by South East Queensland Telco, apparently a merger/takeover of iTel, itself an affiliate to Bendigo Telco, which once offered unlimited Internet plans, itself, but has since gone to limited ones, albeit with reasonably high limits.)

Asymmetric Internet speeds can limit one's modes of expression.

The earlier choice to go for technologies that brought savings (eg, splitting available uplink bandwidth into slices, to provide for several customers' upward data needs) is coming back to bite Aussie ISPs, as has their arbitrary & tiny download "data quotas" - both of these following the gov't-owned (now, majority held) Telstra [Big Pond] near-monopoly.

Past is prologue... colonial gov'ts gave less than optimal treatment to early Aussies, just at they gave less than optimal treatment to Aboriginals... and - more recently - Telstra offered (& offers) less than optimal Internet plans to Aussie Internet users.

Only friendless, new Internet users continue to fall for Telstra's Big Pong retail ISP near saturation advertising & telemarketing of its overpriced Internet plans (retaining the ancient & exploitative $150 / GB "excess data" fees).

Soon after these new-to-Internet Aussies discover that Telstra Big Pond's prices are highly non-competitive...

EXCEPT in Australia's Internet "black holes" ...such as some parts of Adelaide's pricy (& otherwise trendy) Mawson Lakes development, where the telling non-upgrade of RIM's to more sensible "last mile" technologies continues to embarrass the State, the Delfin developers... while, of course, either continues to fill Telstra Big Pond's coffers with cash, or leaves (eg, international students & other) residents without fast Internet at home.

This surprises most people, when they first learn of it, since Mawson Lakes is located immediately beside South Australia's Technology Park and a UniSA campus (formerly known as The Levels).

This also occurs outside of Adelaide, of course. We just had YET ANOTHER report of Telstra Big Pond -shocking- a property owner with a HUGE (4-digit) Internet bill, almost all of which was for "excess usage"... at the $ 150 / GB rate.

Most of Australia's ISP's seem quite punishing, having inherited & embraced Telstra's data-usage "cash cow" (for ADSL, ADSL2+ or Cable: $150 per GB for "excess data usage" as if it were precious water... several ISPs have reduced it), rather than seek better & lower cost Internet upstream suppliers

No one seems brave ehough to even try to approximate Stockholm's or the France's, etc. of this world, ie, in fast, Internet pricing.

Internet threatens on-shore businesses, and the gov't reflects this in not working very hard to do anything to bring Internet costs down.

By contrast, the Swedes seem - as always - confident that opening the Inte

Rubbish. Do a tiny bit of research. NO ONE in Australia has access to 100mbps.

Try doing a little bit of research yourself, its quite easy to get 100 Mbit fibre if you're willing to pay for it, Amcom offers up to 10 Gbit. Prices quoted on whirlpool for 100 Mbit fibre is about 45-50K AUD and this still seems accurate, we pay 18K AUD a year for 10Mbit fibre unmetered.

but I'm stuck between two exchanges so I only get 8-10mbps

Luxury.

I'm 3.3 KM from an exchange and due to the ancient copper lines in my area I never get more then 5 Mbit due to signal degradation. Even with Fibre you aren't guaranteed to get 100Mbit from the server but you will get closer to promised speeds then you would with with DSL. Optic Fibre offers a more consistent connection then copper based DSL or cable, the 10 Mbit fibre at work is better then my 24 Mbit DSL at home, I can download a 700 MB Ubuntu ISO from iinet servers in half the time from the Amcom fibre line then I can from my iinet DSL line.

Not cynical enough good sir. The next Liberal government will just privatise the entire network just like they did to every other bit of government infrastructure to raise enough cash to give themselves a pay rise.

Actually, according to the Whirlpool homepage story they are already planning it's ultimate sale (in the not too distant future)

Private industry would contribute up to 49% of the funds, and the government would sell the company after operating it for 5 years, he said.

I suggest that you have a look at Electronic Frontiers Australia, Get Up!, or Whirlpool. They have been covering this for months.

After all, one could say that AT&T and Verizon also "enable" people to download copyright-"protected" material

AFACT (The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) obviously agrees with you filing a lawsuit against Australian ISP iiNet in November last year.

"The action was filed by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network, the Australian licensee of some of the infringed works".

The movie industry is fighting against the very laws that they helped create. There are five very interesting posts that I found in a couple of minutes on Whirlpool that discuss the situation the ISPs and the media companies are in. The short of it: the media companies lobbied for particular procedures that let them go after individual users; they got them; and when they found that they were unworkable, decided to go after the ISPs instead. Deja vu, anyone?

The movie industry is fighting against the very laws that they helped create. There are five very interesting posts that I found in a couple of minutes on Whirlpool that discuss the situation the ISPs and the media companies are in. The short of it: the media companies lobbied for particular procedures that let them go after individual users; they got them; and when they found that they were unworkable, decided to go after the ISPs instead. Deja vu, anyone?

The movie industry is fighting against the very laws that they helped create. There are five very interesting posts that I found in a couple of minutes on Whirlpool that discuss the situation the ISPs and the media companies are in. The short of it: the media companies lobbied for particular procedures that let them go after individual users; they got them; and when they found that they were unworkable, decided to go after the ISPs instead. Deja vu, anyone?

The movie industry is fighting against the very laws that they helped create. There are five very interesting posts that I found in a couple of minutes on Whirlpool that discuss the situation the ISPs and the media companies are in. The short of it: the media companies lobbied for particular procedures that let them go after individual users; they got them; and when they found that they were unworkable, decided to go after the ISPs instead. Deja vu, anyone?

The movie industry is fighting against the very laws that they helped create. There are five very interesting posts that I found in a couple of minutes on Whirlpool that discuss the situation the ISPs and the media companies are in. The short of it: the media companies lobbied for particular procedures that let them go after individual users; they got them; and when they found that they were unworkable, decided to go after the ISPs instead. Deja vu, anyone?

yep, gp is extraordinarily clueless... they're acting surprised we have more than 5 ISPs? what rock have they been living under? plus anyone who's been paying even the slightest bit of attention knows that the trials are a sham with 5 little know isps, and not even one of the "big boys". not bigpond, no optus, no iinet, no way!

This was first mentioned on Whirlpool, I was reading the thread. It appears to be deleted now however:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-alert.cfm?a=priv-deleted&t=1165021&v=0

And to further my point about six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon blacklisting, here is a link that eventually leads to the banned Danish list.

I think I should be pretty safe, though... the last step before getting to the list? The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Oops.

(Props to the Whirlpool poster for discovering this hilarity).

Now that my net is back up I'll reply (oh how I loathe BigPond):

I don't think this had anything to do with child porn, the ACMA merely ruled that the page contained prohibited content. Why pictures of aborted babies were ruled to be prohibited I'm not sure, the pictures certainly weren't something you'd want to see before you sit down to eat, but there was nothing whatsoever illegal about them.

Here's a link to a thread on the forum about the topic and the reply the ACMA sent to the person who submitted the complaint: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1161107#r4

If you look in the original Whirlpool thread where someone posted their submitted complaint about Wikileaks site (As a test to see if they would block it) the response they posted is an automated reply to all online ACMA complaints. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1158941&p=44#r873
This whole thing is fud.

Are you just looking at Telstra's pricing? Those are not realistic prices. Try Whirlpool's Broadband Choice search. I count 11 plans that have more than 16GB for less than $50. That's in Brisbane, but if anything there'd be more choice in Victoria. Then there's plans with large off peak quota that aren't included in the search, like Exetel's 6GB+54GB for $40.

P2P throttling? Not here.

Exetel do, and we know of this only because they've been vocal about it; other ISPs may do it with more subtlety.

Forbidding servers on residential connections? Not here.

The Whirlpool broadband survey 2008 disagrees (search for "not allowed to run server", optus certainly restricts it).

So while the majority of ISPs don't do it, you shouldn't make out that it's all sunshine and roses in bandwidth cap land; some of the larger ISPs (Telstra and Optus) measure both uploads as well as downloads when considering your monthly bandwidth cap too (which seems to be an effective way to reduce p2p since you'll hit your cap that much faster by "giving back").

I agree that shaping connections rather than billing for excess usage makes more sense for ADSL/Cable connections though; it's much less daunting to get throttled as opposed to being charged extra. Internode have implemented a "Data Block" system that allows you to purchase chunks of bandwidth to extend your monthly cap in a pinch if you're about to get throttled (i.e. it isn't cost effective to do regularly) which could be worth looking into later on.

One more thing, if you do implement caps you'd want to look into some sort of monthly usage meter that's easily accessible to your customers. Net Usage Item is an example of a Firefox addon that tracks usage from various ISPs that helps people avoid overrunning their caps.