Check out this SMH report:

“Mr Oppelaar’s cousin, Jason Kelly, said: ”I purely blame police for it. He’s getting chased and that’s what young people do. They get scared and they take off,” he told reporters.”

It goes on:

Mr Oppelaar’s brother, Chris Mills, said: ”You have to ask who’s responsible … in some part it’s the driver for doing the speeds he was doing, but mostly it comes down to the coppers … what good’s a stolen car?”

And from Skye Webbe’s mother:

“I can see he’s done wrong but it’s a petty little crime,” she told Radio 3AW. “

A Current Affair, of course, takes the trash reporting award with this gem. I mean, asking a mum of a person who was in the car getting chased is quite balanced indeed. Here is what she said:

“…maybe they [police] should face charges…I do blame him [Justin Williams] a little bit but I just think that if Police stopped their pursuit, they would all be alive today.”

However I have little interest in dissecting A Current Affair’s reporting. We all know their target audience’s IQ is below 20 and that’s fine. What strikes me as outrageous is the common theme from both the innocent victim’s family and Justin and Skye’s families – that it’s kind of OK to steal cars. Seriously? “petty little crime”, “He’s getting chased and that’s what young people do”.

Here is a clue for all you brainless bogans:

IT IS NOT OK TO STEAL CARS

Now, there are reasonable proposals to handle pursuits differently and they have some merit. Stopping pursuit and notifying police up ahead like they do is South Australia might work in some cases. However, it relies on police knowing that the car is “just taken for a joyride” (which apparently is a legit form of entertainment in Queenbeyan). I am not a fan of this approach and instead propose my own:

.50 cal M2 Browning.

Image courtesy of Dummidumbwit’s Weblog

This is the kind of gun that is fitted to Army humvees and fires big ass rounds that could be used against infantry, light armoured vehicles and low flying planes.

It will only take a couple of rounds to maim a normal car and the gun will serve as a powerful deterrent. Imagine seeing a cop aiming a .50 cal at you in your rear view mirror. You will most likely have a bowel movement and stop the car immidiately. Police should also be give powers to use the gun liberally. Once they pick a good spot to disable the vehice, they should fire away and shred the prick who thought it might be fun to steal a car to pieces.

This way the pursuit can be terminated pretty much straight away, thus minimizing the risk to other road users. Surely, this increases the risk of the offending driver being injured, but I think that’s OK. I would call this “an accelerated evolutionary process”.

The only reason why there are so many joyriders around is because they know, that on the balance of probabilities, they can get away with it. With every police cruiser being equipped with a .50 cal I am sure that perception will change.

Dear AGL,

I would like to write and complain about a very stupid marketing campaign that some incompetent hack in your obviously ineffective marketing department has come up with.

I received a letter in the mail that looks like a newspaper, has a picture of some guy who is not me with the text “ZEVAKA IN TRANSFER SHOCKER” in what looks like 36 pt. font.

The letter then proceeded with a number of paragraphs of drivel about me being a valuable team(???) member and asking me to call AGL to see if there is a better deal you can offer.

I have a number of problems with this:

1. I do not like my name next to a picture of some guy in what obviously looks like negative context. I understand that it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I do not know anyone at AGL well enough to accept that as a joke. In fact I don’t know anyone at AGL at all.

2. In the text of the letter it mentioned a possible $75 disconnection fee and that I should call to discuss a better deal. Well I did call months ago and I am not liable for a disconnection fee and no, you could not offer me a better deal. If you went to trouble of printing this … thing for me, you could have personalised it a bit more.

3. It is plain bad marketing. As a reasonably smart consumer I do not like to be treated as an idiot. AGL could not offer me a better deal even after discounting the plan that I was on. This begs the question of why I was not on a cheaper plan to begin with. Do you overcharge all of your customers and then offer then a discount back to the standard rates when they want to switch?

But I digress, that is an issue of its own that I really don’t care about. And the reason for my not caring is because I will now actively seek to switch my gas service from AGL as well as electricity. I do not wish to give my business to a company that send such snide and contemptuous letters to their customers.

Just in case I did not make my point clear. I will not give my business to AGL ever again purely as a result of this stupid letter.

Regards,

Igor Zevaka

UPDATE: I do feel like I overreacted a little bit. To AGL’s credit I got a call later on offering a 7% discount on my gas which I took, plus they were competitive anyway. I am not angry any more, so I’ll give em another chance.

I download because I don’t have to pay for it. Simple as that. And no matter how much anti-anti-filesharing people bang on about studies about people who download also buy more stuff I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe that I am in the minority. In fact I don’t personally know a single person that says that they buy the DVD when it’s available. As far as I am concerned it’s a forum rhetoric.

Many people support iinet in the whole ii vs. AFUCT ordeal because they want to be able to download stuff for free. Except they’d say it’s because of privacy concerns, ISPs shouldn’t be judge, jury and the executioner etc. They are still in denial.

Whilst I admittedly am infringing that does not make my support for iiNet less valid. I think iiNet have good a good chance at defending themselves from all the accusations because I believe that entertainment industry should not bully their way around protecting their failing business models. I believe my moral compass is about on par with most people, so that is an indication of us being right and them being wrong.

Technically I think that any ISP can stop or at least slow down a game changing percentage of “illegal” downloads to the point where downloading becomes a domain of super-geeks. In demanding something like that the movie studios are not THAT unreasonable. It can be done. That still doesn’t mean it should be done.

The industry is where it is now because of people’s creativity and technology that enables it. The technology changed but people will always be creative. It may kill entertainment industry (highly unlikely though) but it will not kill entertainment. If if it does, so be it. They are a bunch of pricks anyway.

I spent $80 on internet ($30 of which is phone, which I wouldn’t spend if i didn’t need to have a phone line). This is how much I am willing to spend on my entertainment. I download mainly shows and barely ever watch a movie. This is my budget. If there was a service out there that would give me the ability to check emails and watch a half a dozen episodes a week I’d get it. $3 per episode on iTunes??? Come on, you gotta be joking. I would also pay for a device/service that gives me one click easy access to anything I want. Without stupid time or region windows.

If I was Jason Calacanis and I had my own podcast I would say: “Dear TV/movie industry executive donkeys. Please stop treating us like stupid people. Internet has been around for decades now. Region windows do not make sense. Start doing things that make sense and give us a good way of accessing the content. Please someone clip this and put it up on YouTube.”

So when I say that I want to get stuff for free I actually am saying that there is an amount of money that I am prepared to pay each month (i.e. what is now spent on Internet) for access to stuff without feeling restricted. So yeah, please, entertainment industry executive donkeys, start making sense.

Here are some graphs showing the frequency of the connection. The first graph is connections by minute for the first hour, the second is connections by hour for the first 40 hours.

Alas, the communication gods were with me and the phone was playing up when the tech got in yesterday. He called me on the land line before he got in, 3 minutes later the line got heaps noisy and then dial tone disappeared. I was so happy. He hooked up at the box outside the house – no dial tone – at last I got some sort of proof that it wasn’t inside my house.

Then he hooked up some device that told him there was a break 123 metres away. He went and fixed it in a manhole up the street somewhere and the line is back up. Fingers crossed it actually is fixed. We’d know in about a weeks time :) So far, though, the internet has been pretty stable.

So I rang iiNet and started the incorrect callout fee dispute again. Hopefully it goes through without any snags. I gotta say I am quite impressed with iiNet support people, they have been very professional and I just got the feeling that the system that they have set up prevents the kind of bouncing between departments that you sometimes get.

This is somewhat backflipping on what I said earlier about dealing with the “machine”, however, the sticking point was that the issue was intermittent and wouldn’t happen whenever a tech would get in. Now that the technical issue seems resolved it’s a lot smoother.

So, lessons learned:

1. Make 100% it’s not your equipment. A good ISP should walk you through the steps to ensure that. Google isolation test if they are not very helpful. Try different modems, filters and cables.
2. Make 100% sure that the issue is not on your premises. It’s worth paying a technician to come in and verify there is nothing wrong with the wiring at your house/flat/MDF.
3. If the issue is intermittent, keep calling up and tell them to send a tech whenever you confirm that it’s still happening. Just about the only shot you got at fixing a fault is for it to be happening when the tech is around.
4. If you have ADSL but no dialtone this means there is a break on one wire. Apparently ADSL can work on a reduced speed over one wire, while the phone needs two.

And here is the graph showing just how dodgy the connection was.

What caught my attention was the line that went something like this: “…What you want a fast enough machine to play DVDs in hidef, which not many other slim laptops can.”

Two issues there. One is that DVD is not high definition. Two is that any laptop with a dvd drive can play DVDs just fine.

As per playing hidef content – that’s probably true. Depending on the codec, some netbooks might not be able to play HD content.

I am not one of those pedantic types on the internet that take offence to every misrepresentation of a fact. In fact perhaps the ad people wanted some bad publicity on this (as in no publicity is bad publicity). What this means to me is that the product must be real average if they have to resort to such cheap shots.

Then there are problems that are plain difficult to even reproduce, no matter how many days you spend on it. I am in the middle of one such problem trying to print on a thermal printer using Bluetooth. So far it’s been one of those absolute royal pain in every extremity bugs that absolutely get under your skin. But this post is not even about that. What I want to vent about is much much much worse…

Even worse than being on the receiving end of having to fix an intermittent fault is having someone else fix it for you. Especially if the mob that fixes it is a “machine” with “processes” and “procedures” and other stuff that is certainly there for a reason, yet still infuriating for us normal common folk. Ever had to get your telco fix a fault for you? Then you know the pain involved in having the most trivial issue snowball into a massive problem.

Now imagine what a non-trivial problem would become if put through the “machine”. Yeah. It’s shit.

Intermittent loss of dial tone and frequent ADSL drop outs is absolutely the worst thing you can have wrong with your telephone line. Enter iiNet and Telstra. Everyone that knows anything about telecoms in Australia knows that Telstra is just plain evil. They are a monopoly, they play dirty and they are not ashamed to admit it. But we won’t get into that right now.

Because Telstra is also in control of the infrastructure, the government stepped in a while ago and introduced operational separation where the infrastructure arm of Telstra treats both Telstra consumer arm and other telcos that use its network equally and fairly. Which is kinda what’s been happening. As a result of that there are certain rules that all telcos have to play by when dealing with Telstra about resolving issues that are on Telstra’s network – things like dodgy phone lines.

And so this process kinda works. In most cases. Having been trying to resolve my issue for well over a year I can now see that it doesn’t work when the problem is not resolved in the first visit. And I gotta say that I 100% played by the rules, I did all the troubleshooting steps that iiNet requested, I tried different phone leads, filters, modems etc. I also got an electrician to check the wiring in the house. Only when I verified for the third time that the problem is not in my house that I called support and asked them to fix it. Two tech visits later the problem is still not fixed.

At that stage I was ready to give up and let it go. I’ve had dodgy internet that drops out twice a day on average, half of the time I couldn’t use the phone but I just about had it. A few months later I discovered that my bank account was overdrawn to the tune of $300. Thinking that I mistaken CR for DR (which I do all the time) I double checked it and discovered that I got direct debited for $700 for “incorrect” call-out fees.

At that stage I was furious. Not only I have a dodgy service, not only my provider can’t fix it, they charge me for their inability to do so. And not even a courtesy call to say, hey, you know how we told you that if the problem is at your place we’d charge you? Well, we are charging you. Nothing like that.

Here comes the interesting part. When the technician came over he changed over some line segments between my house and the exchange. The tech was really good and knew what he was doing, we had a great chat during both of his visits. Now there are three major line segments between the house and the exchange:

1. House -> pit on the side of the road.
2. Pit -> pillar on the end of the street.
3. Pillar -> exchange.

Numbers 2 and 3 were swapped over with no improvement to the quality of my connection. When I rang up and enquired about it the response was: “Our wholesaler could not find a fault on their network hence it must be at your place, hence the charge”.

Two things wrong with that. One – not all of the line segments have been double checked, hence it cannot be conclusive that the fault isn’t there. Two – when asked if I could get a technician from Telstra to come and double check the house they said “Oh no, they don’t do that, they checked the network and that’s it”. I should also point out that at no point did the technician come into the house to check anything.

Also, the only way to appeal the $700 charge is for me to re-lodge the fault and risk another $100 charge. This is becoming a lot like extortion. I have been serenely patient throughout the whole process but I’ve had enough. I rang up and had the issue escalated. The result is there is a technician coming tomorrow and he might be coming into the house.

At this point I have absolutely no patience left to leave it up to iiNet to solve the issue. I understand that in this business chances are they know better than you about what to do. Well, not in this case. I am going to insist that they swap line segment 1 as I have a fair suspicion that it is the problem. The reason for that suspicion is a whole other story and deserves its own post.

It makes me kinda angry that if I wasn’t so dedicated to fixing this problem I would never get anywhere. I have gone above and beyond trying to find a solution, and most other people wouldn’t. Because the $700 is at stake here I am more than determined to see this to the end. And I’d rather it just worked…

The story continues, read on.