Telstra, Lebanon, Punks and a very socialiable week

[tcpip]

Tuesday night was Linux User's Victoria; Richard Smith gave a surprisingly entertaining talk on Opteron Hardware Performance. Russell Coker gave a less entertaining, but thoroughly valid, presentation on security issues in /tmp and /var/tmp. On theme, Friday night attended the local node of 2600 AU, whereupon caseopaya partied damn hard for a couple of older folk.

On a somewhat related topic Telstra are being arsehats again, by deciding not to upgrade to a national fibre network leaving Australia with broadband speeds so slow they're not even counted as broadband on international standards.

Obviously still in the partying mood, attended the Continuum ball the following night; I like Continuum balls, it means I can go clubbing with Perth people once a year ;-) Following night had dinner post Contiuum at the increasingly famous Xanghai on St Kilda Rd and followed up with East Timorese (I really can't get a grip on Timor Lestenese) coffee afterwards at home.

In between all this (Thursday night) visited Mr. and Ms. txxxpxx who proved to be most delightful hosts as we watched the notorious Hitchcock film Jamaica Inn and on Wednesday night watched "Punk's Not Dead" at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Included lots of footage of elder punks (most in their fifties) like the Exploited, Subhumans, GBH, UK Subs etc and a fair bit of the new scence in the US (not so good, imo).

Briefly visited the peace vigil on Friday night against the recent invasion and violence in the mid-east. More than a handful of the local Lebonese community present, poor blighters. In comparing Israeli attacks you can either use abstract maps (hat-tip to erudito which suggest one thing or aerial photographs (courtesy of Professor Juan Cole).

Oh, and ran Cybernoia on Sunday. Players went to Berlin, foiled an assasination attempt against them and blew up more hotels.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

On a somewhat related topic Telstra are being arsehats again, by deciding not to upgrade to a national fibre network leaving Australia with broadband speeds so slow they're not even counted as broadband on international standards.

And I would be happy with affordable sub-standard broadband.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

The Age article about broadband is appalling. Whoever Garry Barker is, he's a liar and a fool. His lack of understanding of mega (M) vs milli (m) is a poor start. After 3 lies within 2 opening sentences, his credibility drops to zero.

The international minimum broadband standard is 2 megabits per second (mbps)

Lie. ITU FAQ says "1.5 or 2.0 Megabits per second". Most homes can get 1.5Mb/s so, of course, using the 2.0Mb/s figure is just a beat-up.

The best domestic service in Australia offers 1.5 mbps

Lie. The best domestic service in Australia offers 24Mb/s. (DSL2+ is offered by Internode, Iinet, and various others.)

and is available only to subscribers less than 1.5 kilometres from a telephone exchange.

Lie. 1.5Mb/s DSL is available out to over 4km from the exchange.


After the lies, he moves on to merely misleading commentary. Singapore, for example, has more than 10 times the population density of Melbourne. Of course they will be able to build broadband cheaply for all Singaporeans and we will never, ever, be able to compete with that, except in the CBD. There's also the question of how important that is. Singapore is tiny. I've found international links to Singapore sites to be appallingly slow and overloaded in the past and the vast majority of internet traffic into Singapore will not be local. 100Mb/s to every home is utterly useless when their international links can't possibly supply a fraction of that.

A much more appropriate comparison might be the USA, where most DSL is between 640kb/s and 1.5Mb/s. DSL2+ is much more widely available in Australia than in the USA.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Looks like Michael Malone at iiNet picked it:

"They've had this fibre to the node project, which we call Telstra's bunyip - it's a large mythical creature that we don't actually think is real. Telstra has put it out there as the ultimate bogeyman. What they're really saying to the market is, "You can go out there "and you can invest in your own infrastructure if you want, "but in three years it's all going to be worthless "because we're doing fibre to the node." The industry is a roller-coaster ride."

That comment from back in late July...