THE NBN

It seems to me there has been a lot of talk recently about the NBN and how we must “future proof” our technology. 

 

There has been a lot of jokes and piss taking regarding the coalitions offerings on an NBN, but I would like to point out that none of these are neither helpful nor accurate. I remember being told of the coalition’s plans for the NBN being like offering a super fast ambulance service that comes out as far as the town hall then a bicycle will be used to carry the patient the rest of the way from the house.  Whilst this is funny it is neither  accurate nor is it  a good analogy for the proposal.  It is also an Ironic analogy as at the2010 election people were presented with the option of voting labour and getting the NBN or voting Liberal and getting 2800 new hospital beds. Australians chose the NBN, now they are complaining that there isn't enough hospital staff to keep the current number of  beds open.

Now before I go too far into this, I should point out that I am all in favour of having superfast internet, for many years I had to suffer dialup speeds as my local exchange was not capable of DSL for many years. I even had friends in the country with broadband internet for about 3 years before I could get it. (I am inside the MELBOURNE METRO Area).

 

So what are the arguments for the NBN in its current implementation:

One argument that seems to be that we will need a serious upload speed that only Fibre to the premise can provide. It seems to be that everyone agrees we don’t need it right now as there is not a great deal of applications for business that would improve with increased upstream speeds. I can imagine a business being able to serve their own website from onsite could have an advantage, however can they also provide the redundancy and server reliability that a profession host can provide?  In several years upstream speeds will become important, there is no debate about that, video conferencing and video calls all suffer purely because of upstream data throttling. However The argument tends to fall apart at the point where it is insinuated that fibre is the only medium which can provide these speeds from the home.  This is a fallacy, I say this because the technology (VDSL) exists to transmit data at 55Mbs downstream on 50 year old pair gain copper networks and 3Mbs upstream, VDSL2 will do 100Mb upstream. Given that VDSL is not readily available my argument is somewhat moot, however my point is that the technology exists and is available to give us good upstream speeds without the cost of laying fibre optics to every house.

The other problem with the upstream speed  argument is the claim that wireless connections cannot keep up with the bandwidth demand especially if we were to put everyone on a wireless network.  This is true with our current 3G network, and partially true with 4G, however that argument relies on there being no further developments in wireless technology.

 There are, however, major developments in wireless technology and proponents of the FTTP NBN have clearly forgotten that South Korea (A country with one of the fastest average internet speeds) has over 20Million users on their 4G network. For reference Australia’s population has only just cracked 23Million. Further to this Samsung has successfully trialled the new 5G Phone which was clocked transmitting 1GigaByte of data in 1 second. This is the equivalent of an 8Gb connection or 80 100Mb FTTP NBN connections combined.  Now they said in 1812 that the human body could not withstand the forces incurred traveling at such break neck speeds of 11 Mph, in the 20^th century they said man would never travel to the moon, the 1970’s the CEO of IBM said the world demand for personal computers would be about 5 and Bill Gates said no one would ever need more than 512K of ram. Now they say wireless will never be fast enough to video skype.  Get my point, The future is unpredictable and spending billions of much needed money in order to future proof a technology that could conceivably go in any direction is not always wise.

 

The other argument I hear is that we need this super fast internet now so that remote Australians can be better educated and health services can be extended to such areas.  The problem with this argument is that the fibre system will not be taken into the bush, they will be serviced with satellite and fixed wireless technology, so pretty much what they already have. Also last time I checked You can send blood samples through the internet and all other information can be relayed over the phone as it already is being. There are not many situations where medical treatment can be improved with advent of faster internet.  With regard to education, in Australia we have already increased spending in schools, most of the schools in Australia now have new buildings, more computers, and magic whiteboards.  It is a shame that what we are seeing with the implementation of all these new resources and technology is that the actual numeracy and literacy skills of our students have fallen.  This means that we need to get back to a more grass roots abacas and storyboard education, less apps and more teacher time.  The NBN unfortunately cannot provide this.

 

I would love to see the NBN in its current form implemented across Australia, but I fear it is not the wisest of projects, the funds have much more important uses, For example if money was not borrowed to pay for the NBN it could be borrowed to fund the NDIS.  We could argue that there will be no return on that investment if it were used to fund the NDIS I.E the NDIS won't pay for itself the way the NBN will. But I beg to differ, If carers can be employed through the NDIS then that creates jobs, if family’s can go back to work because the NDIS is providing for them,  then that creates both a taxable income and reduces the load on the social welfare system. Also if funds for the NDIS are sourced from existing finances  then the requirement for higher  levy’s on Medicare and tax increases to fund the NDIS are reduced if not scrapped outright. 

I know not everyone agrees, But I have to assume health and the NDIS are more important the faster internet.

The basic stupidity of people in schools!!

Article here:


O.K,  so what happened is the PTA or P&T, basically the parents and teachers group, handed out chocolates moulded into sex positions and reproductive body parts.  Not a bad way to get people interested, but really not the best thing to do at a primary school in front of students. 

The thing that stood out to me as the worst possible outcome of this event and subsequent news article was the comments left by the readers.  Most are telling us to "get over it" and "if that's the worst thing to happen" and of course the comment that makes my head shake the hardest is " The way you handle things, determines how your children handle things." Because simply being cool calm and collected will change the chocolates from sexually explicit variety to something a little more child friendly like the road runner and Willie coyote? 

don't be so F**KING daft people!!!  the problem here is not a small mistake made by a fool in a school in outback nowhere, It is a reminder of how hard it is becoming for parents to protect their kids from inappropriate material. Some of these mis-informed people might laugh and say stupid things like how minor it is, but I am betting they either don't have kids or don't care about how their kids are raised. This article 2 days ago points out already how easy it is for kids to get hold of such inappropriate material. Schools not being vigilant about appropriate fundraiser handouts simply makes it much harder for parents to protect their children.

There is a decent amount of published research that shows the younger children are introduced to sexually explicit material the more dysfunctional that child becomes when maturing. We are not talking about people becoming rapists or criminals, but we are talking about delayed or overdeveloped social sexual behaviours as well as inappropriate sexual behaviours for age. 

I can quite easily argue that the parent is the one responsible for protecting their children, and in the case of the porn on the tablet and phone it is quite simply the parents fault, however when school organisation do this kind of thing, it takes away all control the parent has over censoring what their child experiences. And this is simply not funny, not minor, and in no way something that we parents should just "GET OVER".

To all the fools with less brain cells than a box of chocolates, I am shaking my head at you!!

Unions are financial experts?????

news article here


Righto, so apparently the CFMEU are now economic experts.  Please, they wouldn't know their arsehole from a budget ballsup. I mean it, clearly from this article they don't.  Experts from Deloitte access have already gone on record stating this budget will have very little direct influence on the RBA. There are many factors that the RBA look at when deciding how the rates should move and politics is not one of them. Although many politicians will argue they are the cause of interest rate drops or their opponents cause rates to go up, the fact of the matter is that the governments overall running of the country is only one component in the causalities of rate changes, Large companies and international markets play a larger role.

To see a union (who's leading expertise is in striking) making public statements like this is hilarious. If Ronald Mc Donald  started commenting about the implications of foreign policy we'd all have fits, we'd all be crying. No one would  credit him with a single ounce of knowledge on the subject. The same goes with this Union, they have entered into a commentary that is clearly outside their scope of works/education. There can only be one reason for these comments, They want to bolster the labour governments standing in the polls before the next election. Remember the unions are the ALP.

Apart from publicly making comments that are not exactly true, they show us they have no concept of how the RBA works or what influences it.

Please people, keep within your professional limitations. I am not Stupid.

GST for online shopping??

NEWS.COM Article


An enquiry panel has advised the government that it can force online stores to apply GST to sales.
The retail sector is overjoyed as they have somehow come to the conclusion that this is a major reason why online prices are cheaper and people prefer to shop online.  I ask, what kind of cheese cake chewing franchise CEO would come to such a ridiculous conclusion?  Do they really think that the difference between online and in store prices is on average 10%? What bum biscuits!!!


This LED GU10 light bulb is $5 delivered to your door from Ebay. The closest match to this from Bunning’s is $25 (or $10 on special sale).  So if we ad GST to the ebay price it is now $5.50.  Now I don't need to tell everyone why GST is not the problem to the retail industries woes.

If the retail industry wants to win back shoppers, then it is really simple. First they have to drop the ridiculous mark ups they have on their merchandise. People in America, England, France, etc pay significantly less than we do after accounting for the exchange rate and general cost of living. The second thing they need to do is force their suppliers to match the online price for goods.

Big companies have been telling us for years (since the 60's at least) that globalization and capitalist open markets are beneficial for everyone because they promote "Healthy" competition. Now they have "healthy" competition and are losing, they start whinging.   I say play by your own rules, if you can't compete then you are either not as good as the competition or you are charging too much. 

I would not be surprised to find that it costs more to extract GST from overseas online sales than the GST revenue itself. That is if it is even possible to tax an overseas company that has no office or presence in Australia for tax purposes.

The only thing online shopping has done, is allow us to short cut the very expensive (and greedy) middlemen in the Australian retail sector, We are now beginning to get merchandise at the same price everyone else around the world does.

I say, force GST onto everything online, the extra 50c per item will at least create more Australian jobs as the ATO will have to create a new department to manage online sales taxes.

It's not the GST that's the problem, Shaking my head at them with eys rolling this time...

Racial significance??

news.com.au article on mayor who wants to doze house.
So, we have a mayor who owns a heritage listed house, he wants to doze it and build a new one. Residents say they don't want the house dozed and after the first council rejection the house suffered some major fire damage.  Residence are also claiming that the mayor has told them that if he does not get council approval to doze,  he will sell it to a local Islamic group to be converted to prayer rooms.

I have to ask:

1. Why is that a bad thing? is he insinuating that Muslims are degrading and will have a similar impact to the residence as, say, a new bikie gang club house?

2. Why do the residence care if that is the case, do think the same also?

Maybe they should call his bluff and let him sell to either the council or the local group who want prayer rooms. If they don't like the game this mayor is playing then why let him get his way. I'd rather have a quite mosque living next door rather than a greedy mayor. 

  It will be interesting to find out if the mayor is using Muslims to blackmail his neighbours into not complaining or if the neighbours have invented the Islamic story to discredit the mayor. Either way it seems the world is full of arseholes with small closed up minds.

Like this:

cops shoot and aggressively arrest reckless teens.

Now why on earth does it matter what the race the teenagers are?  When I read the first article there was no mention of the teenagers race, creed or colour. My opinion on how they were treated has not changed since I have found out. If someone steals a car and drives on the foot path running over Innocent people then I think the police should be allowed to use whatever force they see fit to prevent further injuries.

Over the course of time the truth will come out, So why would there be "tensions" that need to be eased in the community. If tensions are rising and people feel the teens were miss treated because of there race, then that is not only jumping the gun (any teen in this situation should have been treated the same) but that the community getting up in arms would be guilty of the same racial discrimination they assume the police force of. 

If after an investigation it is discovered excessive force was knowingly used, then you could apply some pressure from the community to show your displeasure, until then the community is making assumptions and escalating the situation with no good cause other than their inability to accept the posability that these teens have through their actions brought these consequences on themselves.

I look forward to seeing some resolve on this issue from both sides, I seriously hope no one dies.

is this really news?

If this is what passes for news today we are really in a boring country:

http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/someone-give-this-girl-a-job-as-a-copywriter/story-e6frfmd9-1226325952734

I think news limited got so carried away with their character assassinations in the political world they didn't realise they were shooting down young girls.  All she did was cut and paste a comical ad in hopes it will help sell her car. But when Australia's largest news group contacted her and made it the nations most read ad she must have thought she hit the jackpot.

Now It would appear that not only was this little car more important than the new bills to exempt FWA from internal corruption investigations, but it was worth coming back to today so we can all point our finger at the young lady and laugh at her in a de-humanising way. C'mon news.com, give us real news, tells us about the Craig Thomson affair and why we have a parasitic government hell bent on F**king us over at all cost. We don't care about plagiarised car ads.

Having said all that if you just swapped the girls name for Julia Gillard's, then we'd all believe it. She would tell us anything to sell her crackpot policies just like a dodgy car.  The budget has had so many banana skins shoved in it to hide the whine that the only industry in Aus. left making money is the banana growers. 

Just like a used car sales team, half of the Australian manufacturers have had their odometers wound back to make them appear more valuable and just like being sold a dodgy warranty for your car the government have canned solar rebates leaving the solar manufacturers and installers high and dry just like they did with the botched up pink batts scheme.  Yes this government are a lot like used car salesmen,


Keep up the good work riping off the average Aussie!!


P.S  there's a cheap 4x4 going for sale if you are stronger than Chuck Norris ;)

Another self important w**ker!!

Reading this this morning:

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/uk-hacker-jailed-over-abortion-website/story-e6frfku0-1226326365200

So, Apparently this halfwit has proven to us all that there is step lower than ignorance. Usually ignorance is merely the lack of understanding or knowledge of a subject. However this bloke has shown us you can go farther than that and it is far worse than ignorance, it is an active choice to be ignorant in the face of the common sense and basic understanding. 

This man has made two fatal mistakes which prove to us he is a W**ker:

1. He laid claim to be apart of a renowned Internet group "Anonymous", mostly I think because he believes that means something (really all it means you think they are elitests and your a wannabe). After all they haven't actually hacked much yet. Most of the time they have been given access to private server information from a mole or spy or some disgruntled employee. Who, in the sane world, really believes a bunch of random Internet nobodies are better educated and resourced than the CIA, FBI, Interpol, Scotland yard, ETC.  Not likely.

2. He has somehow got into his head that he is morally superior. I say this simply because regardless of your view point on Abortion, who has the right to private information? Just because you disagree with a moral question like abortion does not give you the right to steal sensitive information. We do not always know why someone makes the decisions they do.

So to the elite anonymous wannabe. Pull your head in and use some basic intelligence to argue your point. Do not try to force other people to accept your views through illegal actions and childish claims.

Definately shaking my head.

Breaking news, after I posted the above this news report was published:

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/hacker-who-stole-10000-abortion-patients-details-jailed-for-nearly-three-years/story-e6frfkui-1226326599566

I would just like to say that In light of my earlier post, he must have read my blog and I take full credit for his realisation that it was wrong. :P

 He also must have realised that staking claimed to an underground group that is responsible for alleged criminal activity may not have been the smartest thing he has ever done. Especial when under arrest for gaining unlawful access to a private computer system.