There was three seperate topics I wanted to write about tonight.
Problem for me is, writing three seperate topics would take considerable time that I could be doing other things with.
I’ll do short recaps of the two items I was going to do this post on, and focus primarily on the next Telstra scam afterwards.
Flat tyre, and ‘tards on the road
Today, I went for another driving lesson, nearly ready to go fetch my P license, and be allowed to drive on my own. Woohoo.
Friday, I spoke to the fools that work at the RTA, and on 3 seperate occasions, I was given 3 different reasons for the lack of availability of a testing at the local office.
1. They are booked out through to February. Yeh, right, why isn’t other testing centres nearby also booked?
2. They don’t have a driving examiner. Umm, but did they just sack her? She was there last week, when the school I am with just got a failed student?
3. They haven’t unlocked bookings for this month yet. OK, fair enough, perhaps they should in advance.
I was explaining this to the instructor today, and lost a little concentration, talking and focusing on the RTA and its rampant stupid inconsistence, and its complete failure to get a simple question like “Why is there no tests available?” answered correctly.
I’d be putting all the staff through a lesson in Business Administration, right now.
Anyway, as we were talking and thinking of the RTA, I lost a little focus on what I was doing and clipped the gutter, nothing too bad, except, well, later on, the car starts making a sound like it was in the wrong gear, or the road surface just got really rough.
We quickly consider what happened moments before hand, and realise we might have a problem with the rear tyre.
So, we pull over and check it out, and sure enough, the tyre was flat (with a small hole).
The next 10-15 minutes was spent replacing it, before continuing on to what was a near perfect drive.
About 5 minutes later travelling down The Entrance road, some stupid tard decides to do a star jump out into the middle of The Entrance Road (The Central Coast Highway for those unfamiliar).
I quickly pull the car to a stop nice and tidily, and sound the horn to get this fool to get off the road. He didn’t want to move, and a B-Double was in the other lane. I slipped into neutrel, and revved it a little, and the fool didn’t move. Stuck it into first and started towards them and the tard bolted off the road.
I guess he really was Chicken afterall. Still a very, very stupid move to make. If I wasn’t concentrating (as I wasn’t a little earlier) he wouldn’t have had the chance to play Chicken, I’d have not stopped and knocked him flat on his face, probably the better move considering his stupid idea of jumping out into the road in the first place!
Telstra: The Only Option for FTTN: My arse
A recent article in the news suggested Telstra would be the only option for FTTN.
Now, everyone I can think of will believe that it is absolute bullshit that Telstra could only build FTTN.
Optus could.
The G9 could.
Deutsche Telekom could.
Sprint could.
BT UK could.
Realistically, any company with the dollars can build an FTTN network in Australia.
The time it takes is also of consideration. But I beg to differ as to whether we need FTTN.
If we all had unrestricted ADSL1 services, and encouragement on deployment of ADSL2+, and WiMAX, the need for FTTN is immediately eliminated in many, many, many cases.
So, I suspect the Expert Taskforce might return with two possible results.
1. Legislate that any FTTN related deployment actions are allowed, and deny Telstra’s claims of legal action, simply because it is advancing Australia, and Telstra doesn’t have the balls to do it. (ie. Legislate in favour of the G9’s proposal).
2. Focus on the ADSL2+ outcomes and see that we don’t need FTTN right now, and recommend that ADSL2+ be focused on for deployment with WiMAX.
Election 2007 – The Next Telstra Scam?
The 2007 Election will see telecommunications be made a medium level issue, the higher issues will remain focused on the abolishment on the biggest waste of money, Unions.
Telstra wants to try and show its willingness to become politically involved (and perhaps should instead become a political party – Telstra meets all the requirements to become a political party, such as misleading the public, providing any story to support your point, and then becoming a hypocrite at the other side of it, expecting far too much from those that support you, etc).
Telstra started a new website recently, on the Election 2007, which claims to be showing the Telecommunications Policies of either party.
Amazingly, they decided that they would be unbiased (heh, how’s that possible when it is still under their direct control).
I figure this move is a result solely due to low traffic on the Now We Are Talking website. I decided that I had spent a fair bit of time there pushing points to people that can’t see past their fat arses (and they are fat as a result of being Telstra shareholders).
So, in recent times conversation on the forums have hit rock bottom low levels, and that to me suggests that Telstra’s marketing campaign – If you are a shareholder, read here: Telstra just wasted a lot of your money, as I said they would! – has failed miserably, failing to attract significant numbers to support its own cause.
Amazing, isn’t it. All those dollars in advertising, GONE!
Telstra’s management are soon to realise a very powerful message: Australian’s don’t get politically moved by company issues.
Australian’s couldn’t give a rats arse about shareholders.
Australian’s care ONLY about the price and service.
Australian’s are pissed off enough with Telstra’s high line rental and poor services.
This Election 2007 site however, does indeed contain very much near unbiased content todate, and I suspect this approach is to try and at least realise some goals out of the money pissed away to the overpaid developers of the sites (that apparently let polls get rigged, and have demonstrated some poor coding standards).
I do however, believe that the party’s messages and policies are best received direct, from your local MP.
Ask them why you should give them a vote, based on telecommunications policies.
They’ll send you their standard “Australia’s broadband is piss poor, but we will fix it” template letter, which will go into detail on either a WiMAX network, or the destruction of the regional telecommuncations fund.
Don’t trust Telstra for anything on any of its websites, we can only assume it is unbiased “NOW”. That’s almost likely to change, as Telstra decides that they are pissing too much money away.
Enjoy!