Posts by Clive Harris

Shades of SCO saga

This sounds like a re-run of the accusations SCO were making about Linux right at the beginning of their infamous onslaught against Linux. (Their lawsuit being funded by Microsoft, as was later discovered) Essentially, the accusation was that something of the quality and complexity of the Linux kernel could not possibly have been put together by a bunch of "unwashed hippies", so therefore it must have been stolen. A lot of people took this seriously at the time, before it was shown to be a bunch of lies. Is there any reason to suppose this latest accusation is any more plausible?

At least it wasn't as bad as a place I worked at in the early 80's when one of the cleaners unplugged the PDP11 payroll computer half-way through its run, to plug in her vacuum cleaner. It took a couple of days to get that one sorted out. (There's a good reason why hospitals etc. have special sockets just for vacuum cleaners)

This NBN rollout is rapidly turning into a shambles. My daughter ( a few miles down the road from me) had NBN installed a few months ago and she reports it as constantly breaking down and significantly less reliable than the ADSL she had before.

Meanwhile, it's starting to become serious for me. My father (who lives with us) had a bad fall over Christmas and, as a result, I have to get an alarm button fitted. Mobile reception is very dodgy here, and we have frequent power cuts, so I need a reliable phone line. The NBN FTTN boxes are starting to sprout up in our street and I'm getting frequent letters and emails from NBNCo urging me to "make the switch".

I can't get any reliable information on what happens to FTTN phone and internet services during a power cut. The advice on the NBN website is that they will stop working and I must "make alternative arrangements" (carrier pigeons I suppose). When the boxes first started appearing in our street, I cornered one of the technicians and asked him about this. His reply was that the boxes were supposed to be fitted with batteries, but they were being left out to save money. A couple of days ago, I saw another NBN technician working on the box outside my house. He told me that the boxes now had backup batteries and would run for up to 16 hours. He then opened the box to show me rows of 12V SLA packs inside it. However, he then told me to delay switching over as long as possible because the boxes were not yet working properly. He also commented that, in his opinion, these boxes would soon be ripped out and replaced with something more reliable.

An FTTH connection would be ideal for me, provided I could supply backup power within the house but, from what I'm hearing, I first have to get FTTN fitted and then ripped out again, and it would than cost me thousands (if it's even possible). This whole thing is rapidly becoming a real headache.

CBA lost $650000 of my money!

I've never trusted Commonwealth Bank since they managed to lose $650000 of my money in 2001 (OK I got it back eventually)

When I emigrated in late 2000, I sold my house in England and, on the advice of my local adviser, I put the money on deposit at CBA. I didn't understand the process of buying a house in Australia so, when I bought a house over here, I trusted CBA to handle all the paperwork. About 2 months later I received an eviction notice! It appears they had set me up with a large line-of-credit mortgage. The money I had brought over from England had apparently vanished, so no repayments were coming in. When I called them, they apologised for a "small paperwork error" and promised to sort it all out. A month later I received another eviction notice, and the money from England was still nowhere to be seen. That's when I threatened to call the police, citing evidence of fraud. The reaction from my neighbours and colleagues was interesting, generally along the lines of "Yeah, mate, this happens all the time. Lots of immigrants lose all their money. You just have to put up with it". There was also some comment along the lines of "How dare you foreigners attack our great Australian banks". The bank's response was that I had obviously attempted some sort of currency fraud, and I only had myself to blame.

Eventually it was sorted out. It appears that my branch was closed just as the house purchase was going through, and some paperwork was mis-filed when my accounts were transferred to another branch. The $650000 was eventually found (in a non-interest-bearing account!), and I used it to pay off the mortgage, which I had never needed in the first place. I wasted thousands in stamp duty, conveyancer's fees, lost interest etc, but I finally got the deeds back in my hands. CBA never officially admitted any responsibility, although one branch manager told me, strictly unofficially, that she was "livid" with how the bank had treated me.

They put one last sting in the tail, which I only found out very recently. Last year I took out a mortgage to help my daughter buy her house. It turned out that CBA still had a caveat on my deeds, which they had "forgotten" to remove. That cost me a few hundred to fix.

CBA! Not happy!

P.S. The other banks over here aren't much better. Last year I donated $50 to the Mozilla Foundation from my Westpac account. Westpac responded to this "suspicious transaction" by freezing my account. They didn't give me any warning, or even tell me that they'd done it. I only found out when I started getting calls from people whose payments had bounced. When I phoned Westpac, their response was that I should be grateful for their "alertness" in responding to an unusual transaction.

Where's the monolith?

Can you see the black rectangular monolith, with sides in the ratio of 1:4:9, right in the centre of the Red Spot?

Back around 1980, and fresh out of university, my first job was for a company making control systems for printing equipment (Crosfields). A customer asked us to help with a static problem and, as part of my training, my boss took me with him to look into it.

The customer was printing the wrappers for fish fingers, using a toluene-based ink onto cellophane. The cellophane passed from one roll, through the gravure printer, onto another roll (each roll a few thousand feet long). There had been a history of explosions, thought to be caused by static. These were tolerated until the local union boss took a look round, peered into the machine, and lost his eyebrows when it blew up in his face.

He immediately called everyone out on strike, which was when we were called in. When we arrived, my boss handed me an ancient field-strength measuring machine and told me to take a look round, while he went to speak with the managers.The printer had been started up for our benefit, so I waved the meter near the take-up roll. The dial immediately swing up to around 300kV/foot (almost 1MV/m in modern units).

When my boss came back, I reported that to him, and showed him where I had taken the measurement. He didn't believe me and pointed to the machine in disbelief. "Don't be ridiculous. It can't be that high. You must have made a mistake. Look at that th....". At that moment, a thunderbolt shot from the roll to his outstretched hand, throwing him across the room.

He slowly staggered back to his feet "Yes. OK. I get the point. We do have a static problem".

In retrospect, it should have been obvious. The setup was effectively a Van der Graff generator. Static was being generated by the cellophane flexing as it ran through the printer and it was steadily accumulating on the periphery of the take-up roll, which was acting as the dome of the Van der Graff generator. The big trough of toluene-based ink was just waiting for a spark to set it off.

I think the problem was eventually fixed with some carefully-placed electrostatic "tinsel" placed next to the rolls (Icon depicting what was happening there several times a week)

Real people are getting hurt

Let's not forget that real, innocent, people are getting hurt by this. My sister was in hospital when this broke out, recovering from surgery. Last Saturday, the hospital had to send her home early, in a wheelchair, when their IT. systems completely collapsed.

Unfair to donkeys

What harm have the donkeys done? why does everyone keep wanting to kick them?

This will be a confounded nuisance

This will be a real headache for me if eBay go ahead with their threat. Despite the assertion of eBay being just a "Tat Bazaar", in reality they provide a convenient outlet for a lot of suppliers of tools, machinery and spare parts to conveniently sell to Australia. I have frequently used eBay to get tools, spares for agricultural machinery etc. Availability is much better than from local suppliers, prices are frequently much less than what's charged locally (even after paying postage) and, surprisingly, delivery is often faster.

Only a few weeks ago, I used eBay to source some (quite heavy) central heating components to do some much-needed repairs on my house and my daughter's house, from a UK supplier. The quality was excellent and the prices were less than half what local companies were charging. (Interestingly, some of the parts were made by an Australian manufacturer - work that one out!)

International outfits like eBay, Amazon etc. have well-organised processes for shipping large and heavy items across the world, so it would be a lot more difficult for me to buy locally and then ship the stuff myself. I don't mind paying an extra 10% for my imports, but it would be stupid for the government to make things so complicated that suppliers just stop sending to Australia. I do hope sense prevails and some sort of deal can be worked out.

When my daughters were young, they kept a couple of pet chickens. One year both chickens died just before Christmas. In order to save their Christmas, I had to embark on a frantic search for two new chickens on Christmas eve. The only place open was the local battery farm, so I went there.

I won't describe what I saw in that place, except to say that it put me off battery eggs for life. I bought the only two hens I could find that still had any feathers on (I think they cost me $10 each).

At first, these animals were terrified of the outdoors, and spent all their time huddled in a corner of the shed. After a couple of weeks they ventured out and I think they had a happy few years of freedom before a fox got them (digging under the buried netting to get into the shed).

At a rough calculation, I could have bought another 39998 of those chickens and still still have legally been "free range" (I have a rather big garden), but I don't think the neighbours would have liked it.

I gave up on Parallels when they stopped supporting their Linux products

I gave up on Parallels when they stopped supporting their Linux virtual machine products. I was left with several useless Parallels licences and several Windows VM's which I could no longer access.