iiEmail
OzEmail tilts towards iiNet (Australian IT / Michael Sainsbury)
From the article: “IiNet is likely to be the last company remaining in the drawn-out sale process that has been under way since last June, when OzEmail’s owner, MCI, began scouting for a buyer. iiNet is understood to be happy to pay more than rivals SP Telemedia and No2 ISP and telco Optus for the business.“
iiNet has been moving ahead in leaps and bounds recently with the acquisition of many small to medium ISPs in the east cost and their nationwide DSLAM rollout. It would certainly be much better for consumers for the OzEmail users to go to iiNet than it would be if Optus have the winning bid.
Asterisk again
Jan 19, 2005 Asterisk, Internet, VoIP
For the past month or so (excluding the holidays) I have been getting stuck into Asterisk again. I have found the perl AGI interface to be particularly interesting and have been experimenting with some of the options. One of the things I would like to implement to gain some experience is a system to phone me up just before I finish work for the day and tell me what the freeway congestion is like. While I could easily look this up myself it is far more efficient to have a system look it up for me and then based on the level of congestion recommend either using the freeway or taking an alternate route. Although if the Victorian government was able to take care of the traffic problems it wouldn’t be necessary at all!
On another note I am thinking of selling my Cisco IP Phone 7910s due to their poor support under Asterisk. While they are a great phone when used with a Cisco CallManager the support in Asterisk is terrible resulting in all sorts of weird issues. I’d love to get a 7960, but they’re a bit out of my price range at the moment.
Google had an outage!
Google plays down outage (Australian IT / Andrew Colley)
You know you run a good ship when a 15 minute outage makes the news. If it was headline news every time Telstra had a 15 minute outage there wouldn’t be room for anything else in the morning paper. I could say the same about my power supplier, TXU. 3 unscheduled outages since Dec 25th is a very poor effort on their part.
Telstra’s Reach to ditch customers
Telstra’s Reach to divest customers (The Age / AAP)
From the article: “Telstra Corp Ltd’s troubled undersea cable joint venture Reach announced it would rid itself of some customers to free up capacity instead of expanding to meet demand.
[...]
Reach said it would gradually divest itself of third party customers as their contracts come up for renewal, freeing up the capacity for Telstra and PCCW.
“Existing third party data contracts will be honoured and Reach will work closely with its data customers to ensure a managed migration process,” Reach said in a statement.“
You wouldn’t want to be a Reach customer at the moment. Changing undersea cable providers can’t be an easy job.
Telstra attempts to dodge $300 million fine
Telstra treads fine line in broadband row (The Age / Colin Kruger)
From the article: “The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will consult Telstra’s rivals to determine whether it should revoke a competition notice against the telco and stop the clock on $300 million in potential fines.“
Knowing what Telstra rivals are like, I doubt there is anything Telstra could do at this point to weasel their way out of this one. If they were serious about losing their anticompetetive image they would have taken action in a much shorter time frame than the 10 months it has taken so far.
What interests me most in all these Telstra dramas is that none of the business or political commentators seem to be relating them to Telstra low share price. If the government are serious about boosting the share price prior to a full sale they should use their controlling interest in Telstra to force them to resolve these issues. I certainly wouldn’t recommend investing in Telstra at this point in time.
John Butler puts his money where his mouth is
Jan 8, 2005 Music & Entertainment
Musician sows seeds for others (The Age / Patrick Donovan)
From the article: “Some rock stars spend their fortunes on mansions, private jets and high-grade cocaine. But ARIA’s “best male artist” of 2004, John Butler, has decided to give something back, offering $50,000 in grants to indigenous artists, refugees and social activists.“
John Butler has putting out great music for a while now, and he’s always quick to speak up on issues that matter to him. It’s fantastic that he has been able to release his music independently to prevent a major label from eating up all his profits, and then put that extra money back into the community. Kudos to you John.
Photo from The Age
Have your Sims got a virus?
Sims 2 hacks spread like viruses. (Security Focus / Kevin Poulsen)
From the article: “Something strange is happening in the Sims 2 multiverse. Players of Electronic Arts’ enormously popular simulated life game are complaining that their artfully-crafted homes and mansions are beginning to resemble the Twilight Zone, thanks to an artifact of the game’s design that causes hacks to spread like viruses from user to unwitting user.“
If you read the article you’ll see the response from EA has been somewhat muted, but at least they’re not blaming the hack creators for the problem.
2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
Jan 5, 2005 Current Events
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. (Wikipedia)
If you’re thinking of making a donation to help the tsunami victims please consider donating online. This reduces the processing fees associated with your donation and allows more of the funds to go to relief efforts.