TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

.. I’m amazed at how the assumption is made that when a WiMAX tower is proposed to be put in, the immediate attack from journalists, and NWAT Media Matters is the fact that there is a lack of Mobile Handsets for use on a network.
We are talking about BROADBAND services here, nothing at all to [...]

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… at least, if the TV networks have anything to do with it.
You see, illegal downloading of TV episodes affects TV Networks because they have no viewers to show the ads to.
Now, if you take a popular TV show, like, uhh, Prison Break, off the timeslot it is in, and don’t show it, and instead, [...]

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Today, on ABC, was the National Press Club.
I don’t generally sit there and watch politicians and the media argue on TV, and it’s not really that entertaining. I’d rather waste time explaining to some Whirlpool users exactly why Telstra is doing them no good, or in recent times, well, drahcir, a Whirlpool user who feels [...]

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Exetel came out publicly, screaming: We WILL shape P2P, this was around 1 year and a bit ago.
When they did this, a lot of customers threatened churns, and screamed all tooth and nail at Exetel about this action that they had taken.
Exetel at that point also claimed (and now, correctly): “Many Australian ISPs were using [...]

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Firstly, I have no idea just how much money has moved under the tables with this news, as it certainly does seem someone is being paid to publish what could be rubbish.
It seems like they are happy to write what seem to be lies.
Here’s some of the lines from the article in question:
OPEL, which has [...]

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Firstly, I want to say ‘Hello’ to Steve Toole. Howdy Steve. Steve is from NWAT. I won’t form an opinion on Steve just yet, but we can already state that he likes to form incorrect assumptions to support an irrelevant argument.
Now to the topic. Pillar Migration, is it really confiscation of Telstra’s ‘assets’?
Short Answer: No. [...]

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Here’s the problem that is brewing for Bigpond.
I have a firm belief that many of BigPond’s customers are:
The uneducated. Those who not know better. Those who have no idea on how to research the competition. They may tend to believe or assume that by going with Telstra they aren’t going to be paying too much [...]

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I wrote in to NWAT after seeing recently that Deutsche Telekom wants a peice of the FTTN action, and they want the G9 group to manage it (see, even Germany sees Telstra as greedy pigs).
I figured, if Singapore Holdings Company owned, Australian employing (and not sacking) Optus Communications Australia were attacked for a few [...]

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.. Are the questions I want to ask Telstra’s Now We Are Talking.
They will seemingly be happily racist about Singapore, despite the fact that Optus is an Australian company, employing Australian people, and is owned, not as they want people to believe, by the Singapore Government, but as fact shows, a Holdings company in Singapore.
The [...]

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The WiMAX technology proposed to be used by OpEl apparently will use the 5.8Ghz range.
This same wireless range is used by many other appliances, and is prone to interference from devices like Cordless Phones (the 5.8Ghz kind), some Garage Door Openers also, Microwaves.
So, looking at it from that angle, and looking at competing technologies that [...]

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Yep, a lot of whinging has started since the OpEl announcement.
A heap of media news stories around it, so much so that the newsbar on Whirlpool has been moving faster than the ASX ticker!
News topics such all centered around flagging the proposal as a bad result, though, I’m yet to see one clear cut, obvious [...]

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… at least they should be.
OpEl, a consortium between Optus and Elders has won a nice fat 900 million dollar subsidy from the government to show support for their plans to roll out broadband services to Regional and Rural areas.
The announcement by the Minister today means that ADSL2+ is not going to be a dream [...]

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These are two competing technologies.
Both can bring Australians high speed broadband.
Both can bring it to Australians affordably.
Both technologies are upgradeable and future proof.
One costs more than the other.
Look at each technology, starting with FTTN.
The costs of FTTN are.
Maintenance of copper wire.
Installation of node.
Installation of DSLAM equipment that will be superseded as its built, if not [...]

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.. That’s right, I am now ready to announce the winner of the poorest journalism yet.
The choice was indeed difficult, with choices from Alan Kohler, who seemed to think undecided on the broadband scene, despite being a financial reporter, had made several comments, that were simply incorrect.
We had the author responsible for the trash that [...]

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Found a spare ten minutes today to have a sticky in the In The News forum on Whirlpool (and I don’t normally hang out there at all), but I saw this rather appealing topic, the topic of the young not able to afford something so important as Home Ownership.
Anyway, as I normally do with long, [...]

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This is part four of the series on setting up ChilliSpot with FreeRadius, using MySQL, on Tomato.
The final part is to get ChilliSpot running on the Tomato router, which includes modifying its firewall to block packets.
The first step tonight is to modify the firewall script. Tomato is a bit different in how the firewall is [...]

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With the previous two completed, that is, setting up FreeRadius, MySQL, and sourcing the ChilliSpot package, and having this on your now setup CIFS network share.
What we need to do now is look at the configuration, and make it suit our requirements.
Open your network share, and edit the file ‘chilli.conf’ in your favourite (or not) [...]

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This is the continuation of last nights entry on how to set up ChilliSpot with FreeRadius, on a Tomato firmware based router.
With the mysql database created, and setup, and the configuration done for FreeRadius, we must of course, test that FreeRadius is working as expected.
First, we need to create a shared secret for us to [...]

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I’ve decided to share how to setup Chillispot with Free Radius, using MySQL for the user database, and running ChilliSpot on the tomato firmware.
I don’t want to make this too long, but also want to be detailed, so don’t be surprised if this spreads over a few posts.
The first step in setting up is to [...]

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What a surprise.
She’s been evicted. I had her flagged as one most likely to continue right on to the end of Big Brother.
I wonder if the poll had “issues” of some sort? Nah, Big Brother wouldn’t risk the negative media, would they!?
Anyway, with Emma gone, Big Brother is starting to take a different shape.
Aleisha doesn’t [...]

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Over the last few days, we’ve had storms.
That is, rain, and thunder, and wind.
This has had effects on many people, some worse than others, as can be seen in the news stories plastered all over news.com.au.
Last night, we went to bed, and the rain and wind were loud enough to keep me awake for some [...]

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As many might know already, CentOS 5 has been released (for some time).
However, the issue for some (or many) will likely be the huge, mammoth, overly large upgrade to CentOS 4.4’s replacement, CentOS 5.
The good news is, its done, and you don’t need to reformat, you can simply put yum to even more yummy goodness [...]

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Today, we upgraded the crash server to a new BIOS version.
This new BIOS version quotes that it Improves Memory Compatibility. And so far, the results seem to be promising.
We moved (backwards) from Fedora Development to Trixbox 2.0.
The previous server we know would crash when any interaction with yum, or any compilation was done, on MOST [...]

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With an announcement from the government due soon about the changes proposed to the FTTN network idea, there has been plenty of speculation.
However a recent news article in SMH mentions that the federal government might be throwing money at a network afterall, but not billions.
Oi John, How about you just thank Labor for the idea, [...]

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Phil Burgess attacking the ACCC and showing support for an ALP tax payer funded broadband plan was the last straw.
Telstra have now placed themselves in a dark spot.
The government is going to establish a committee to review and create a framework for faster broadband services and use this, as a sticking tool to guide proposals, [...]

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That’s right.
Internode have had to raise prices on plans, from around $5 to $40 to reflect the true costs in supplying those plans. That’s fair if you ask me. They’ve basically gone downhill for a while, and a rise to recoup losses from high speed abusive users is certainly in order.
Can’t be in business if [...]

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When a viewer of NWAT (or a Telstra staff member) finds Whirlpool, or more specifically, discussion relating to the G9 plan, why is it that they immediately go into attack mode, and attack the G9 proposal for what are all “good” things for a consumer.
Time and time again I read suggestions of duplicate copper networks, [...]

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Thinking about each technology, the advantages and disadvantages of each are pretty obvious:
FTTN (fibre to the node) works by moving the exchange, closer to the home.
All of Australia’s telephone exchanges are connected to each other with backhaul, in the form of fibre.
This fibre network carries data between Telstra exchanges (generally phone calls, as well [...]

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Having a conversation with a MSN friend tonight, we began talking about a lot of topics, but we hit a rather great, lengthy, well, debate, on the topic of VoIP in a business environment.
You see, my MSN friend was talking about VoIP not being ready as a business technology.
I fail to see how VoIP, when [...]

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