Why is Optus so Awful?

Why is Optus so awful. I'm probably unfairly picking out Optus in this rant, when it really applies to all telecommunication providers generally. They are all horrible.
In particular, here are the things I have found horrible about Optus as a mobile comms provider:

• The coverage and availability of 3G data is pretty horrible. This might be slightly better with Telstra. Yes, I'm aware it is a difficult problem to solve and needs to be balanced with having 3G towers everywhere, but I never realised the situation was this bad.
• Pricing. Seriously? They charge at least ten times more than is reasonable for calls and data, and then give you ten times as much credit for any given plan. Really? Obviously this is so they can charge massive amounts when you go over your quota. It's just ridiculous.
• Website. The Website is horrible. To check your current mobile usage is slow, convoluted, and when you get there plain confusing and inadequate. See previous point about making vast amounts of money off people blowing their limit.
• I had bad experience actually getting a phone in the local Optus store. The expected guilt trip over not buying insurance was amusing. The selling of phone covers boring. The pushing of premium SMS and voice mail etc tedious. And after saying 'no' to everything, I was still charged for some premium SMS thing on my first bill. Oh, and then it took them three days to get my number switched from my old phone when it was supposed to take a maximum of four hours. FFS people.

You may be inclined to feel a little sorry for them though. They are pushing a seriously aging business model against the flow of technology. It won't be long before all we need from these people is a pure data connection, and the phone and software does the rest. Already we see Apple killing SMS with iMessage, and obviously there are a bunch of VOIP providers. All we need now is for them to fix mobile data access on their networks so all these things work all the time. Maybe that is why they aren't overly concerned about 3G not working half the time. It keeps them in the business of selling telephone calls and SMS. They've already lost the fixed line home phone business.

Stupid Impact

I watched what is perhaps one of the most stupid science fiction films of all time last night. It was on commercial television, so I suppose I'm really just asking for it.
It was called Impact. I don't care if it is just low budget and made for telly. There is no excuse for plain stupid science mistakes. The main premise of the film is that some super dense asteroid hits the moon, and lodges inside it, making the moon weigh twice as much as the Earth. This asteroid was later shown to be a piece of a brown dwarf. Seriously, there are so many problems with this it is in the same realm as Space 1999, only this was made in 2008! Complete and utter bullshit.
Most obviously to me, anything that weighs around twice as much as Earth and is the size of an asteroid, hitting the moon is just going to punch straight through like it's made of cheese. Conservation of momentum isn't going to see this chunk of superdense rock travelling at interstellar speed slow down anytime soon hitting something one twelfth as massive, especially when it's so much smaller than its target. Bullet through cheese.
Secondly, a brown dwarf is something half way between Jupiter and a star. It's not even a star. I think they probably meant a white dwarf. At least it has a super dense core, and could at a stretch be responsible for the thing in this film. This shit reminds me of Jennifer Anniston in a hair product advert saying "Here comes the science!". Hey, Writer, you suck!
The film progresses from here downhill with random gravitational fluctuations, "like electrical storms", where gravity is practically reversed on the Earth's surface in selected small areas. That's just plain crap. I can't be bothered going on any more. Of course it ends with them trying to blow up the moon, *sigh*, splitting it in half, allowing the super dense asteroid to escape to the Sun, and the two moon halves magically going back into a proper orbit. Oh yeah, I didn't tell you about the gross abuse of orbital mechanics in the film either. Watch it if you want.

Cian's DSTT

I finally got Cian's DSTT working properly. It's been a bit of a saga really.
I ordered this thing along with a 4Gb MicroSD card, and with the DSTT comes free, a USB MicroSD reader.
Now I suspect that my problems all started with the shipping of these three items from the dodgey online store from which I ordered it. In fact, the store's website isn't even loading as I type this. The Dodgey Award givewaways are:

• all three components ship to me loose, in a standard envelope
• none of them are wrapped in boxes, plastic, foam or even bubble wrap, but are directly exposed to the care and attention of Australia Post directly. [The microSD card shipped inside the USB reader, which is probably better than loose, since it is the size of a small finger nail]
  
• the address was hand written on the envelope in writing clearly more used to writing chinese characters (it is amazing how you can tell this, isn't it? BTW - its the very badly hand-written part that's dodgey, not the chinese hand, the Chinese rock)
• the microSD card ships with a load of pirated games on it (complain, me?)
  

I open the envelope on arrival, and my shoulders are already slumping, this is not a good sign. First, I put the microSD in the DSTT and then into the DS Lite. It actually friggin works! For about a minute. And then then it has problems loading occasionally. And then it has problems loading games ever.
I tried putting the MicroSD card in the reader, and the USB reader in the PC, and the PC can't see any files, and tells me I need to format the files system.
I send back the USB reader, as it wasn't until the next day that I see loading problems on the DS. Anyway, they happily send me another reader to try, a different brand, also loose in an envelope. This reader allows me to see files, but will only allow transfer of files for ten seconds before off-lining itself.
At this point, Cian loses the DSTT and MicroSD card, and a week later we find it under his car seat. *growl*
I send back the reader and the MicroSD card, and they happily send me another of each, a third brand of reader. Loose, in an envelope of course, even after explicitly asking them to send the gear in its original packaging. *sigh*. This time, I can read and write the files on the card happily, and the DS can play the games on there, no problem. Occasionally, it can't load games, but mostly it is now all working. Way more trouble than $40 is worth. Don't use this website.

Petition for Apology to Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a legend. An awesome mind. Imagine his contribution if he had lived another 30 years! There is now a petition to the UK government to apologise for his prosecution (and chemical castration), which probably led to his suicide. Sign today!

[update - 11/9/09]
Success!

FTP PASV problems

I've been having some problems with a friend connecting to an FTP server I set up using IIS 6.0. IIS is a real pain in the ass. Filezilla seems much better. The big problem with any FTP server is setting up the PASV ports on the router to be forwarded to your target machine, as well as the obvious port 21.
FTP server in active mode means it tries to connect back to the client, which when the client is firewalled as well, obviously isn't going to work. Putting the FTP server in passive (PASV) mode means the client connects both the control and the data connections. The control connection is over port 21, and the data connection is over a port specified by the server.
So you need to tell the FTP server to use a narrow range of ports (Passive Port Range) and then forward all these ports at the server's router to the server machine.
Then any client can connect to the server from behind their firewalls.
Only, I'm having a problem with a particular situation where the client can't connect to the PASV port. I don't know yet whether the problem is IIS 6.0 or a Bigpond router. Both Microsoft and Telstra SUCK. *sigh*

Dickhead

A Prize Dickhead.
This guy (whose name I shall not utter as he probably googles himself) today released a statement to say he received "a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb"
i.e. "God told me in a dream last week that he doesn't love Victoria anymore because of the state's stance on abortion. The bushfires are the obvious result of that."

Dickhead. Dickhead for the following reasons (oh, where to start?):

• God's love is unconditional (random page proving my point).
• God most probably does not exist.
• Dreams are just you talking to yourself.
• Telling people who have lost loved ones that it's because God is punishing them really doesn't help.
• Telling people what you think they need to hear isn't necessarily what they actually need to hear.
• Using a national disaster to push you own politics is disgusting, immoral and bordering on evil.
• Using religious righteousness as the excuse for the above is worse.
  

Commercial TV

<rant coarselanguage="yes">

Commercial TV seriously pisses me off. I don't watch it if I can help it. In fact, the only time I watch it is when I want to just chill out on a Friday or Saturday night with Sinéad in front of the telly, and even then I'll push to watch a download.
It isn't especially the commercials that piss me off on commercial TV. Some commercials are entertaining, and you can deal with commercials quite effectively by hitting the mute button. Try it. Seriously. No sound will probably just annoy you at first, but you'll soon come to appreciate the absence of complete shit being shouted at you.
What really pisses me off is movie truncation. OK, so you've sat down to watch a movie that perhaps you haven't seen for a long while, or maybe even its a relatively new one that somehow you just missed in the [DVD rentals/Cinemas/downloads]. You've dealt with the ads nicely with muting (v.s.) and really quite enjoyed the film right up to the point where the credits start rolling. At this point, the movie has not fucking finished and the commercial TV assholes squish the credits into a third of a screen, mute the movie and start spouting bullshit at you about moronic TV programs you aren't going to watch because they make your brain bleed out of your ears. "Hey, assholes! I was watching that!". I often want to read some of the credits to find out who some of the actors were, but more importantly, the end music is an important factor in leaving you in a particular state of mind. It can actually be a large part of the film. Directors take care with this, and artists are paid lots to have films finish with their work.
What I also hate about commercial TV is the way they move schedules about, very often without telling you anywhere in advance. Say there's a particular science fiction series you've been enjoying. One week, they might just not fricken show it all, the next week they could put it back by an hour. "Sure, we'll just show this at 12am instead of 11pm, no one will care". Assholes. Or worse, bring a show forward by an hour, so you can sit down in time to watch the credits. No wait, you never get to see credits, they're spouting bullshit at you. It's enough to drive you to downloads.
Oh, yeah, most of the programming on commercial TV is just moronic bullshit you aren't going to watch because it makes your brain bleed out of your ears. I may have mentioned it. But that's OK. I don't watch it. My favourite moronic bullshit I don't watch is "Current Affairs" shows. These sensationalist, purile, indignant "fact finding" stories make me want to puke.
OK. deep breath. I think I'm done now.

</rant>

Building a Workstation

From 20/5/2003.

So, after moving into our new house, I decided that I'd had enough of working off a stupid, tiny desk that you self build with self locking pieces, and build myself a workstation desktop right across the length of the room.

Actually, lets talk about this pissy little desk I've been using for four years. It has four pieces, the top, sides and another piece that connects the others together. It sucks like a jet engine sucks a careless engineer to his splattered death. It sucks hard in a non-reversible way.

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Little Plastic Nuts

From 16/4/2003 ...

OK, so you are probably wondering how I can possibly rant about little plastic nuts. Surely you get exactly what you see, and you can be prepared for the consequences of dealing with them? Oh, no. Not these nuts. These ones cost me hundreds of dollars. OK, so it was 1.8 hundreds of dollars, but hundreds of dollars nonetheless. And more annoying than the dollars was the stress and the days of work to recover from the situation they placed me in. *sigh* But I get ahead of myself.

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