Telstra - coming into the 21st century kicking & screaming

This whole iPhone thing has been very depressing, with Australian telcos basically trying to rape consumers up the ass for exorbitant data fees. Telstras plans being the worst offender of all, averaging at $1/MB.

It got me to thinking, forward-looking telcos like the unfortunately named 3 Mobile have come to terms with the fact that their role in the new communications landscape will essentially be as an ISP, and are embracing it with data plans at a mere 10c/MB.

Telstra must be afraid of being relagated yet again to being "dumb-pipes" for mobile data, and are reluctantly being dragged into it kicking and screaming the whole way. It's clear they fear that offering affordable data rates would inevitably eat into their voice profits when VoIP becomes more ubiquitous on mobile handsets.

3 Mobile on the other have been offering Skype phones for quite some time now. Interesting that they are one of the Australian providers not granted an iPhone dealership...

Ted Dziuba is a douche bag

..based on no information or experience whatsoever, except that he slammed Zoho whilst talking bollocks in a Wired interview.

He accuses them of having "no engineering merit", and simply re-implementing office apps online "with no added merit". The man is talking out of his ass. Zoho's web apps were kicking ass long before Google or Microsoft bought their way into the online office space.

Zoho's retort is intelligent and non-confrontational. Kudos, Zoho. Fuck you Ted "douche bag" Dziuba, whoever the fuck you are.

Social vs Anti-social: torrents & recording "industries"

Just had a small revelation:

P2P file-sharing networks encourage social behaviour by the nature of download speeds being improved by larger numbers of people "seeding" after their downloads have completed rather than just getting what they want and then closing the transfer.

The RIAA on the other hand dictates how, when, and where you will make your acquisition, and exactly how much you must pay. If you break any of their terms, they will sue.

Fair's fair, but I know who I'd rather play with...

A word on un-capped bandwidth

I just realised, in Japan where bandwidth is cheap and unlimited, the thought is never on your mind that you have to try to get your money's worth. You pay a reasonable, flat rate per month, and as such you don't feel compelled to try and squeeze every last MB out of your monthly plan.

Here is Aus, where bandwidth is expensive, and limited, we employ bandwidth throttling in out bittorrent clients, and install dahsboard widgets that meter our usage down to the MB to make sure we don't get speed throttled, or let any of our precious, pre-paid MBs go to waste.

And come to think of it, I don't think I've ever download more stuff in my life. I mean just yesterday was the last day of our billing cycle, and I found myself on YouTube with one eye on the bandwidth meter trying to make sure that Optus only got to keep the minimum of bandwidth which I've already paid for. They only ended up with a few MB in their pocket in the end.

If it was uncapped, I'd only download stuff when I really had to, as opposed to actively seeking out things to download in order to utilise the last of my bandwidth. Another example of corporate fear and greed causing more harm than good.