I was amused to see this Donkey Kong reference in a cartoon by Andrew Dyson in last Friday’s Age, commenting on the current Australian political stoush over petrol prices. It features opposition leader Brendan Nelson as Donkey Kong, and PM Kevin Rudd as Mario.
It’s official — Vodafone will sell the iPhone in Australia. It’s not expected to be exclusive to them; I’d bet on hearing from other carriers soon confirming they’ll be selling it too.
And reasonably persistent rumours suggest it will be launched when the Apple Sydney store opens, towards the middle of this year.
(via Shane)
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.
Rumours have been flying around about this kind of thing for months. Here’s more: Apple is preparing a 3G iPhone, and it’ll hit the streets initially on Telstra’s NextG network.
(via iPhonic)
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.)
Dan’s noticed there’s not enough Green electricity to supply all those people who are buying it.
This looks like a job for the ACCC.
In a demonstration of how difficult it is to single out a root cause the changes in a figure derived from complex behaviour, an economist (using the exact methodology that John Howard cites for determining the contribution of Work Choices to labour market growth) has shown that:
… [Kevin] Rudd has added many jobs – in fact 10% more jobs per month than Work Choices did.
So: politician lies; footage at eleven. If the government wanted to actually measure if Work Choices made things better, they should have said something like “everywhere except WA”, or “only applies to people born after the 6th of the month” or whatever. Then they’re would be two systems, and you could actually measure it.
Myself, I’m looking forward to the decrease in employment because Rudd is no longer leader of the opposition (read the article, you’ll understand that comment eventually).
I have an ANZ Bank account. Using their website to pay bills is an exercise in frustration. I only have one account, but the website insists on me picking it out of a dropdown with two entries – the first one, the default, instructing me to pick an account. Failure to do so results in an error – “Please choose a From Account.” I only have ONE! Assume that’s where I want to pay from! Then one must pick who to pay, with an option to pick previous billers from a drop-down list. If you pick from the dropdown without JavaScript enabled, you get the error “Please select a biller from the drop-down list or enter a biller code.” – with JavaScript it fills in a few fields for you, but why does it even need you to fill those fields in if you’ve picked your biller already? Fill them in when I click the “I’m done” button!
Finally, we come to a bugbear I have with ANZ currency fields. You can’t enter a dollar amount, it has to include a decimal point with two following cents; they can’t infer from a lack of a decimal point you’re talking about a dollar amount. They enforce this rule on their website, and they insist that at an ATM you enter the number of cents you wish to withdraw from the ATM. Given the smallest unit of currency available from an ATM is $20, what is wrong with this picture?
There’s uncertainty about whether or not 2Clix has dropped its action against Whirlpool. While the Sydney Morning Herald reported it earlier today, Whirlpool commented that they haven’t had any official notification.
Meanwhile ITNews.com.au quotes 2Clix MD David Morgan as saying that the case had been dropped and Turnbull and Co had been notified.
But Whirlpool’s legal people haven’t yet seen the notice of discontinuance, and have been unable to contact 2Clix’s legal people, and have therefore concluded that until they see it formally in writing, and it’s still in the court records, it’s not over. Indeed, there’s speculation from sources close to Whirlpool that it might just be a ploy to make them let down their guard.
Watching with interest.
Alas, hardware geeks in Melbourne, swapmeets are no more. The associated Computer Trader magazine has also gone west, along with its web site, which briefly said:
Max and Dorothea have been receiving a significant amount of harassment by lawyers acting in relation to the sale of counterfeit goods at the swapmeets and by Computer Trader. They have found the allegations and threats of legal action against them to be very stressful and detrimental to their health and general well being. The allegations are untrue and the threats are without foundation.
Max and Dorothea have always been at pains to operate their businesses within the law and with integrity and transparency. They thank their staff and customers for their support over the past sixteen years.
(The site itself is gone already, but is currently available in the Google cache.)
With heightened competition from online retailers and aggregator sites like StaticIce, it’s not hard to see how this kind of game might not be as profitable as it once was. Even obscure/old equipment that once might have been found at swapmeets is probably more easily found on eBay these days. Legal issues aside, maybe it’s time was over.
(Thanks to MGM for the tipoff.)
Software company 2Clix has decided to sue Whirlpool (an Australian online news, forum and community site), for “false and malicious” forum posts about 2Clix’s software products.
Essentially it appears Whirlpool’s users have been critical of 2Clix in various threads, with such gems as:
As a user of 2Clix for over 2 years, and the primary IT support person for my company – I would advise you to AVOID this program at all costs.
and
We installed 2clix and ended up throwing it out two weeks after going live. This company has many problems and I would strongly recommend that any potential users look else where.
While 2Clix had a go at defending themselves on the forum, it seems they’ve also decided to sue the forum’s owners. Maybe they got angry that one of the threads is the top hit in Google. If the case gets anywhere, it could obviously have repercussions for other online communities, so it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.
Update Thursday: This story has hit the MSM.
The Age: Firm sues forum to silence critics
ZDNet: 2Clix scores own goal with Whirlpool case
Computerworld: 2Clix sues broadband forum for “false and malicious” threads
…and and more
Update Wed 2007-09-19: Media reports that 2Clix drops the lawsuit, but it’s not official yet.
Everytime, every single time I’ve tried to use Real Estate Websites for real-world stuff they come up short.
Searching, the basic function of the Real Estate Website, just doesn’t work.
I want to buy a house in a suburb. Not a unit, not a duplex, not an apartment.
So I search for houses, and blocks of land. And included in the result set is a semi-detached home. How the hell am I meant to bulldoze one of those? Is this ability to call a semi-detached house a free-standing house unique to only one website?
One site, Domain, doesn’t let you specify that you don’t want semis, so, of a fashion they can be excused. Except they’re missing a feature the other sites give you. So, Domain sucks.
The other two sites, RealEstateView and RealEstate.com.au both suck because they include properties I specifically told them to exclude. “Oh,” I hear you say, “it’s not their fault. The agent put in dud data.” This would be an excuse if the listing fees were a few bucks. But for hundreds of dollars, they can afford to have someone on minimum wage spend a few minutes sanity checking each listing, or they can have text matching algorithms running over the listing looking for words like “detached” and flagging that entry for review because “house” listings ought not include the word “detached”. For example. Or, heaven forbid, allow the users of the site to report misleading listings for subsequent correction. That would be nice. No more million dollar homes turning up in my sub-$600K search.
Part 1 of this (rather long) series of rants was sent to all three websites. None responded, other than with auto-responders. They all suck so much!