Take note politicians, the public are fast becoming tired of these obviously two faced press releases. Time to face facts.

http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/government-tech-policy/43276-gartner-grades-gov-20-a-fail

Picture courtesy of Twitter: The Famous Fail Whale

Telstra - Broken Pits

The NBN is on the way to delivery and so is the sale of Telstra infrastructure which was once previously owned by the taxpayer valued at approximately $11B AU as it stands.

During my travels around the Brisbane area what is becoming increasing familiar is the yellow tubular temporary fencing that Telstra use when there are works happening on pits and trenches on footpaths or where there are damaged pits awaiting recification.

I have started to take notice of the damaged pits in my area and some of them have had the yellow fencing in place for well over 6 months. Within a 500m radius from my residence there are at least 3 damaged pits that have been sitting for months with the barricade around them.

Telstra are holding off on maintenance as much as possible so once again the taxpayer will be paying for rectification of the pathways that they once owned.

I sincereley hope that Sen. Conroy has allowed for funding of cable pathway rectifications works in that $43B.

Seems like a bit of a co-incidence to me.

What do you think?

I decided to do a search to try a find a reasonably easy process on OSX. I found a few different methods but most out of date with broken links so I decided to compile my own howto combining information from many sources. I will try to link back where possible.

Here we go.

Step 1

Install Xcode from Apple. Signup here and register as a developer if you do not have an account.

http://developer.apple.com/programs/register/

Download Xcode when you are logged in and install the default configuration.

Step 2

Install CMake

mkdir /temp

cd /temp

curl -O http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.2.tar.gz

tar xvzf cmake

cd cmake-2.8.2

./configure

make

sudo make install

cd /temp

svn co http://aften.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aften Aften

cd Aften

mkdir default

cd default

cmake /temp/Aften/

make

sudo make install

cd /temp

svn co svn://svn.videolan.org/libdca/trunk libdca

cd libcda

sudo ./bootstrap

sudo ./configure

sudo make

sudo make install

sudo port install mkvtoolnix

cd to the download location of the mkvdts2ac3.sh script

chmod 755 mkvdts2ac3.sh

cp mkvdts2ac3.sh /usr/local/bin

mkvdts2ac3.sh yourfile.mkv

I had a laugh anyway.

Unbelievable Bigpond Pricing 25/07/2010 - Image credit Bigpond Website

***Update***

Well it looks like the pigs weren’t quite flying yet. After further investigation it appears the devil is in the detail.

BigPond Multiple Product Benefit – You must be eligible for the $10 BigPond Member Benefit plus have one other eligible service on your Single Bill, with a combined monthly access fee of at least $89 (based on the 12-month broadband pricing for customers with a full service fixed phone). Eligible additional services are a BigPond Wireless broadband, FOXTEL from Telstra service or Telstra post-paid mobile.

Which means that the starting price for the Bigpond Elite 50GB Liberty plan is $79.95 per month. Funny that the plan details are on a page with 49 plan in the link. Bit misleading isn’t it Telstra? But that just normal from them.

Are my eyes deceiving me? Is it a blue moon? Is that a pig flying? All these are valid questions when I see the current pricing on Telstra’s Bigpond page.

Telstra pricing is typically out of this world and I don’t mean that in a good way. I am certainly surprised at the current pricing offered by Bigpond today.

I am currently with iiNet on their Home 5 plan which gives me 70gB Peak and 70gB Off Peak for $69.95 per month when bundled with the home phone.

For the same price I can now get 200gB of data (including uploads) from Telstra. That is simply unbelievable pricing from Telstra who have always typically been 50% more expensive than their competitors.

What will be interesting is if Telstra Wholesale also drop their pricing appropriately to other providers or if it will take the usual court case to kick Telstra into gear.

Congratulations Telstra on finally being competitive.

Express Air Freight at your Front Door

I have installed a couple Vivotek IP7330 IP CCTV cameras at home due to a friends car being broken into (more on that later).

Now that these cameras are installed I get to see all the goings on at home when I am not there. I was lucky enough to capture this today showing the great care that Australia Post takes with your parcels. Not only was he too lazy to bend over to put the parcel on the matt but he also decided to throw it at the ground from a distance.

I find it amusing that the goal of Australia Post is “To offer responsible and valued products and services”. I wonder when they will start.

Wow, has it really been that long since an update???

I have decided to give my personal blog a makeover and update the WordPress software to the current version. Two hours later and a little re-organisation we have lift off. Hopefully I will keep it up to date this time around.

I have selected a new theme and decided that I will add some of my thoughts on the goings on in telecommunications and security around the place, well mainly Australia anyway.

Enjoy

http://nerdynigel.com/?p=22

I received an email from the store asking me to contact the Store Manager. Upon calling the Store Manager I was told that they have a Video card for me in store and to go and pick it up. I was surprised that they finally came through with the goods. My work colleague was also able to get the card at the same price.

Thank-you Michael from Harvey Norman.

I was flipping through my recently delivered copy of the October 2007 edition of the Atomic magazine and happened to come across a 2 page spread from Harvey Norman advertising that they have the Gigabyte 8800GTS 320MB video card for $259. I though this was a great deal and phoned my local Harvey Norman store in the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane at 10am on Friday 14th September 2007 to confirm the price. Unfortunately, that is where my troubles began. I was told the person that could help me was busy on the phone and he would call me back as soon as he was free. We never received a call.

Lunch time came around and a colleague at work was also very interested in purchasing the video card at this price. We decided to go for a walk to try and order the product directly over the counter.

Upon entering Harvey Norman and asking to purchase the video card, we were immediately told that Harvey Norman didn’t have any stock. Quite funny considering the Atomic magazine advertising the deal has only just been released. I know that the Department of Fair Trading will require Harvey Norman to prove that they had sufficient stock at the time of advertising due to previous experience. I then asked the young sales person if we could order the video card. The sales person seemed to be rather surprised that we would order the card and wait for delivery of approximately two weeks.

After the sales person took our details and confirmed our order I asked to see which card he had ordered. To my surprise the video card on the order was a nVidia 8500GT. I suggested to the sales man that the card he had ordered us was incorrect and re-enter the correct details for the Gigabyte 8800GTS 320MB video card. He stated that he was unable to do this and called over his supervisor. The supervisor said he would talk to his manager and see what the problem was. When the supervisor came back, he stated that the advertisement was printed in error and Harvey Norman would not honour the advert. I said that was not good enough and I would like to speak to the manager. Apparently the manager was in a meeting and therefore unable to talk to us. We were assured the manager would contact us as soon as possible.

I do not believe the advert is just a print error and it has the specific model, description, box and card picture on it. See below.

I waited till 2:45pm to call Harvey Norman back again to try and speak to the manager, and was told the manager was still in a meeting and would call back as soon as possible. Once again, no phone calls were received.

I phoned again at 4pm and spoke to David from the computer section and was told that this was the first he has heard of our problem and assured me that he would get either the second in charge, Michael or the manager, Sacha to call me back as soon as possible. He sounded more believable that the previous staff we had spoken to.

At 6:19pm, I received a call from Michael who rudely stated that the advert was a print error and refused to sell the video card at the advertised price. I suggested that this was not good enough and once again said I would like to order the video card at the advertised price. Michael then started a story that staff knew of the misprint and they had notices in store that had not been put up. This was news to me as all of the staff I spoke to were not aware of the advert. I told Michael that I was not happy with just forgetting the advert as Harvey Norman have falsely advertised the video card, and my next step is to submit a formal complaint to the Office of Fair Trading. Michael said he had no problem and promptly hung up. I cannot believe how large corporations can get away with this. I am not sitting around and taking it. I will submit a formal complaint against Harvey Norman as I have done again Officeworks before.

I suggest Harvey Norman go and read the Fair Trading Act 1989, and more specifically the sections:-

• Part 40 False and Misleading Representation.
• Part 46 Bait Advertising

Fair Trading Act 1989

Harvey Norman Advert

You can see the normal streams here
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

I have also come across some higher quality streams.
Here are the details.

Resolution: 320 x 240
Bit rate: 151kb/s stream
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1369080

Resolution: 400 x 300
Bit rate: 301kb/s stream
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?sg_id=49573&id=1369081

Resolution: 400 x 300
Bit rate: 500kb/s stream
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368570

Resolution: 640 x 480
Bit rate: 1200kb/s stream
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163

Have fun