Category Archives: Internet

Goldplated parts

What dumbarse designed the Optusnet web site? Out of interest I went to compare plans to other providers, and Optusnet has turned into a portal which has so much stuff on it, I can’t even find anything about services they sell.

When I did find it (memo to self: go to the main Optus site, not the Optusnet site), I found some totally incredible equipment service charges, where if a problem isn’t their fault, and you’re out of warranty, you’ll get slugged:

  • Faulty Network Interface Card (NIC) — Service call ($99.00) and replacement fee for NIC ($50.00)
  • Faulty Ethernet Cable — Service call ($99.00) and replacement of Ethernet cable ($55.00)

Please tell me I’m reading that wrong. They’ll try and charge me $149 for replacing a NIC? $154 for replacing an Ethernet cable?

Where does one buy a $55 Ethernet cable, anyway? It’s like $10 a metre retail. And it’s not hard to buy a NIC for under $20. I guess Optus’ ones are all gold-plated.

I guess they don’t really want the business.

Firefox ponderings

Is it just me who’s finding Firefox 2.0.0.13 (on Windows XP) freezing way more than previous versions?

Drive.com.au’s used car search is a particularly notable crashing site; ditto NineMSN Video. Both are fine in IE6/7. But there are others too, and if I had to point to a pattern, it’s that many involve multimedia components on pages, such as during Flash video playback.

Ah, I see Firefox 2.0.0.14 has just been issued. The main thing seems to be correcting a bug called “Crash in JavaScript garbage collector”… hopefully that fixes it. (Why does every update need the inline dictionary re-installed?)

By the way, anybody else notice how on Blogspot comment pages in FF (but not IE), it refreshes itself after loading, so if you’re quick at starting to type your comment, you have to start again? Annoying.

ADSL2+ at more AU exchanges

Telstra has upgraded a bunch more exchanges around Australia to ADSL2+, including my humble local in Bentleigh, Victoria. When I looked, Whirlpool’s Broadband Choice hadn’t been updated with the new information yet, but you can check via Telstra Bigpond’s page.

Whether I upgrade or not is another matter. I’ve noticed that while downloading Linux torrents, the bottleneck is actually at my PC, not the modem/net connection. The torrent speed is pretty good, but the connection on the PC doing the torrenting is swamped, while the other PC sharing the modem isn’t. This is a very puzzling thing to me, and something I need to explore further, as obviously something (LAN card maybe?) is operating sub-par. Obviously that needs tackling first… until then, 1500/256 will do me.

Sync Google Calendar and phone

I really like Google Calendar. Shared calendars, good interface, it’s becoming my calendar of choice. Except of course the calendar I always have with me is in my phone, a Nokia 6230i.

So I was looking for a way to sync them.

Via Outlook would be pretty easy. Nokia have well-established Outlook syncing software, and you could use Google Calendar Sync between GCal and Outlook.

But I don’t use Outlook since switching to Thunderbird. Ideally a solution would sync with Thunderbird Lightning, but it’s not that important.

I went looking for options:

Open source: GCalSync — for Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry and a few others that run Java. One weakness: does not update entries that have been modified on the phone. Not updated since 2006 though.

Open source: GMobileSync — for Windows Mobile 5.

Open source: PrimoSync — details vague at the moment.

Commercial: CompanionLink (US$29.95, free trial) — for Blackberry, Windows Mobile via Outlook, Palm OS, Apple iPhone

Commerical with some free options: Goosync — the free option is limited to 7 days past, 30 days future, 1 calendar only. I had to refresh my Internet Access Point settings to get it to work. Seems to work okay… the question might be how much the Net access from my phone costs. But it’s handy that it can be initiated any time from the phone, so I’m going with this for now.

Some other options

Just in case you need to know

My main web provider logs all their problems onto a fault-tracking database, and publishes them onto the Web, including via RSS, to make sure their customers are kept informed, and can work around things where necessary.

Even down to the most trivial thing.

We are currently experiencing issues with the on hold music on our telephone system. This is causing customers to receive silence when placed on hold. Periodic messages are still being played.

This will be rectified tomorrow morning.

Maybe I don’t need to know that, but it’s reassuring to know they’re being open and honest about any faults that occur. If only all companies were this open.

Netspace shaping

Memo to self: when my ISP (Netspace) shapes after hitting the monthly download limit, they do not automatically unshape at the end of the billing period. You just have to disconnect and re-connect to get the proper speed back. Annoyingly, this information is nowhere to be found in their online help.

(It’s never happened to me before, which is why I didn’t know.)

More downloads at once

Normally you can only get two downloads from any one site happening at a time. But it can be overridden. I know, I know, you’re not actually meant to do this, as it breaks some HTTP standard or other. But occasionally it’s warranted… umm, if you’re talking to your own web server. Yeah.

Firefox: In about:config, go to network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

IE 4+: Get in the registry and alter HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
— MaxConnectionsPerServer for HTTP 1.1
— MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server for HTTP 1.0

Apparently you can’t change it in Safari. (Anybody know better?)