Rubénerd!

Suzanne Tindal writing for ZDNet.com.au:

The Australian and Music Feeds this morning flagged a spreadsheet, containing around 1500 BigPond email addresses, postal addresses and telephone numbers, that was freely accessible online. [.. Telstra] believed that the spreadsheet had been created by a consultant to use in training, and not for a malicious purpose.

It's often the case privacy and security breaches occur as a result of unwitting users, rather than someone malicious on the outside. In any event, at least they didn't display cleartext passwords again, right?

Detailed information about Telstra's customer accounts - including usernames and passwords - has been found to be sitting on the open web for anyone to access via a Google search. ~ Sydney Morning Herald

Inexcusable. No database should be storing passwords as plaintext. If people forget their passwords, they should be reset.

No doubt we'll read a press release saying they've learned a lot from their mistake, and have changed their system. Here's hoping they do learn from it, and implement some basic security protocols. They can start by ditching their revised coloured logos and going back to their retro orange one. It looks more serious, and classy.

Sometimes it isn't necessarily that we're not making any progress, but that the progress is proceeding at such an agonisingly slow rate that it seems like I'm not making progress even though I am making progress, it's just progressing progressively with very slow progress.

Moving is what a cow does

When we moved into our new house in Sydney we were told we'd have the phone line provisioned in 3-5 business days and DSL with Internode within another 7-10 days. My old man was horrified having got used to the Singapore way of doing things where new phone lines, internet connections and grilled cheese sandwich catapaults are automatically provisioned and installed on the same day you ask for them, but having been studying in Adelaide previously it was what I expected. Our tax dollars at work ;).

Uh oh, this cafe is full and a women wearing full gothic lolita costume has sat at the same table as me. And she has an iPhone 4! What do I do!? I'm not programmed for these situations! She has epic hair!

Turns out it wasn't that simple (surprise!) because our house and the house of our neighbour were until recently sitting on the same plot of land, which means [insert long convoluted phone line connection problems here].

It's like an unbreakable diamond tether!

When I got my fabulous new iTelephone 4 I was also told by the guys at Optus that I could use it for tethering. They were right, I just plug into MacTheKnife and he can be downloading emails for technical support questions they could look up on Google within minutes.

Two problems. First, in this new house I have a room for the computers and the signal is so poor in there it just doesn't work. Secondly, no matter where abouts in the house I am the connections are so unreliable I can barely sustain any connection at all without timing things out. Because I'm so security paranoid I have multi factor authentication with custom Yubikeys and the like on virtually everything, but it means by the time I log into things its already given up waiting for input! Oh yeah, and try running a FreeBSD portsnap on it ;).

The style is bongly bongle dongle dengy diggy

The (temporary) solution came last night when my father went to Hardley Normals and procured a Telstra NextG USB dongle broadband thingy, to lend myself the use of technical telecommunications parlance. They claimed it would take up to 24 hours to activate, but within an hour we confirmed it worked on our Macs without worries, and it even behaved itself on Fedora on my ThinkPad X40! I somehow think I'll have to work a little harder to make it operate on my Haiku box ;).

It's closed and evil and proprietary and black boxy and all that stuff, but for now it beats Optus tethering until we have proper broadband provisioned.

I had a dream a few nights ago about laying a Cat6 cable from our apartment in Singapore across the ocean floor to Sydney, then up through the Cooks River and across the street to our house. As with all dreams it made no sense, because I was able to detect a signal without any repeaters or anything, and I had a 6000 kilometre long ethernet cable.

Aussie telco Telstra has launched their new Internet and Cyber-safety website for Australian internet users. Shouldn't the word "safety" also be capitalised? No American spell checker I don't mean capitalized!

Hyacinth Bucket (bouquet?)

Eager to break out of the stereotypes that plague Aussie government sites, the designers have bundled all us internet users into neat buckets with our own separate information:

• Teenagers & Young Adults
• Toddlers & Children
• Home Users
• Professionals & Providers
• Forever Young and Retirees
• Tips for All Ages

Good luck if you're a young adult professional, or worse still a toddler retiree. That reminds me of the time I saw a kid in a pram in Singapore that was dressed in a tiny three piece suit. He was very cute, but certainly didn't look terribly comfortable. I imagine his helicopter parents were taking him to a university or preschool interview or something. They start the pressure on kids so early thesedays, when I was a kid all my parents cared about was that I went to school and "tried my best". The late 1990s were simpler times, more wholesome, family friendly times.

As for the site itself...

I haven't had a chance to check it out other than a quick skim, but something tells me there won't be anything there about configuring FreeBSD firewalls, or bypassing proposed mandatory government internet filters.

You know what would be really cool? If Telstra offered advice on how to bypass proposed mandatory government internet filters. And the CAPTCHA would be a string of words along the lines of "incompetent" and "intertubes" superimposed onto Stephen Conroy's smirking mug. That'd be hilarious.

In all seriousness though, kudos to Telstra for at least making a genuine attempt to connect to Aussie internet users. I would have just made a page with a few bullet points with links to further information if people wanted it, but this is better than nothing.

So here's the problem, our home internet has now been down all week and I haven't been able to blog much at all during that time, and the timing could not have been worse! Consider this a whinging blog entry to end all whinging blog entries!

We live down the street from the Mawson Lakes campus but I can't easily use their internet for blogging because I configured WordPress in a few specialised ways (tokens, specially crafted cookies etc), and I can't upload any material because their firewall blocks SFTP and SSH connections. I can continue to blog from my iTelephone and publish directly, but by another stroke of terrible luck for some reason my data plan has been so slow its almost been unusable. I've hit the Publish button here nine times and each time it tells me the connection failed. It's not the iTelephone's fault of course, its the darn Optus and their less than stellar coverage.

To ward off the jitters, cold sweats (and for some reason munchies) that result from not having an outlet to post ridiculous streams of consciousness, I've started blogging on a local Django install on my MacBook Pro which currently has to be plugged into an external display because the internal one crapped out (another stroke of good luck!) in the hopes I'll be able to publish them once home internet is restored. I've blogged some more anime episodes, some Ruby and Python observations compared to The Javas, receiving Esther Golton's Aurora Borelis CDs, the daily Sudoku puzzles I've finished, floss software on a ThinkPad X40, my inverter adventures on my MacBook Pro...

So far both Telstra and Internode claim nothing is wrong on their respective ends, and our modem is in the identical configuration it was in before The Internets died. I really hope this doesn't degenerate into a farce, I have too much work and too many assignments to put up with and deal with politics. Sometimes the Internode technical support team is quick to reply, but I've sent two messages today and have not got back a single response. Luck of the draw I suppose.

Okay, I'm pressing the darn Publish button again. If I were with SingTel Mobile in Singapore I wouldn't need luck, it would work instantly. The ironic part is of course that Optus here in Australia is a subsidiary now of SingTel.

And because this friggen internet trouble has wrecked this week, it means I'll have to spend all next week working and studying when I was supposed to be on week two of my mid semester break. Absolutely brilliant :(. Ah developed, first world problems!

Now ladies and gentlemen, as far as being a neighbour goes I reckon I'm pretty easy to get along with. All I need is a reliable internet connection, water and electricity. The only loud music I play is jazz fusion. When people living across from me have a gas leak and call the fire department in at 3am I just roll over and go back to sleep. When Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door, I hide my copies of The God Delusion and The Portable Atheist and pretend to care about what they're saying.

Presenting exhibit 1936a, the photograph above. Ever since I started studying here in July last year these telephone access covers have been sitting here without a footpath around them. When it rains it becomes a river of mud, when it's dry the temporary fencing which has been standing there longer than some of the houses surrounding it serves to snag feet and bags.

I submit dear reader that Telstra should stop sitting on whatever part of their corporate body they primary sit on instead of helping taxpayers and come down to Mawson Lakes here to fix this problem, because I'd very much like one of these days to be able to walk to uni without tracking mud for a few hundred metres or tripping and falling flat on my arse which not only hurts but looks terribly unsophisticated and tends to make me look as though I'm trying to pull off a John Cleese walking impression. I'm flattered by the comparison, but honestly all I want to do is walk without the aforementioned events occurring.

Please Telstra, look at the rambling nonsense you've reduced me to.

Another day goes by, another group of people have a negative opinion of the Great Australian Firewall that Senator Conroy is so desperate to implement. It's got to the stage where even the American Slashdot website has an article almost every other day about it.

This afternoon, chief operating officer Greg Winn of Australia's largest telco Telstra has compared attempts to filter the internet to boiling the ocean. According to the IT section of the Australian newspaper:

"My view on that is that's like trying to boil the ocean ... to think that you're going to be able to centrally filter everything, I think that's a pipe dream," Mr Winn told reporters and analysts yesterday.

Child protection agencies have welcomed the Government's move to filter the internet but civil libetarians, ISPs and the technical community have rallied against it for various reasons.

Mr Winn agreed with broad comments from the ISP community that internet filtering would make surfing the web a slower process.

"The one thing I do know is that once you start filtering, then you're going to add latency no matter what," he said.

And it seems when asked, Senator Conroy babbled on incessantly in Parliament in a typical attempt to avoid the question. This would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

Meanwhile, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy came under fire this week for failing to reveal details of the trial.

During question time on Wednesday Senator Conroy was asked how many participants would ISPs have to enlist for the live trials to be credible.

South Australian Liberal MP Cory Bernardi also asked if the results of the trials would be independently verified.

Senator Conroy couldn't provide answers to both questions within the two-minute timeframe provided.

The Singapore Grand Prix and bills episode!

Reviewing the first Formula 1 Grand Prix night race in Singapore, Massa's pits fuel pipe adventure, the lights and skyline, Alonoso was one lucky guy, Ferrari's woes; version 1.1.1 of the addictive Nations application on Facebook; Twinings Chai tea; ridiculous Telstra phone bill nonsense; and avoiding suggestively named Naked DSL!

Music for this episode performed by Chris Juergensen from Magnatune.com.

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 37:00 17.1MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

ASIDE: This is not a paid advertisement, despite it reading as such. Having something go well for me is a big thing you see!

After several weeks of disastrous encounters with phone companies (Telstra and Virgin Mobile, I'm looking at you guys!) something has finally gone well: I'm typing this post from our newly established Internode ADSL connection!

Internode (Wikipedia link) is a local, Adelaide based internet service provider that, unlike other ISPs in Australia I've had experience with, have two very important things going for them: their heads are screwed on and their arses aren't on fire! We went from applying for a connection from scratch, to having a modem and working connection in less 4 days.

Monday, 11th August

Registered online for ADSL2+ broadband plan

Tuesday, 12th August

Recieved SMS saying that our local phone exchange isn't ADSL2+ ready and that they can't connect us (Telstra's fault, not theirs). Went online and changed the plan to ADSL 8Mb/s

Thursday, 14th August

Recieved SMS saying we were all connected and ready to go. Went into the city and picked up the modem, went back home and went to RubenerdShow.com :-)

What blew me away even more than their timeliness (is that a word?) was their customer support. When we registered online, I chose the option to pick up the modem from their office in the CBD instead of waiting for a courier delivery. Getting the train into the city from Mawson Lakes only takes 20 minutes or so, and I figured I might as well save the $15 and grab a bite to eat. What, I'm not allowed to eat? I'm only human.

When I arrived in the city, I went to their office to get the connection finalised and collect the modem:

11:29

Walked into building. Told receptionist what I was there for. Was directed to a counter. Noticed all their computers were aluminium iMacs and their chairs were bright orange... very important!

11:30

Was told that my credit card worked and that the new connection was successful. Was told to wait while their technician configured the new modem. Was asked if I wanted to pay for the modem with the same credit card they had on file. Naaaaaaaaaah worries.

11:38

Walked out of customer service centre with modem and activated account.

Compared to Netspace that sent Kevin Tan and I a faulty modem back in 2005 and took a whopping two months to get connected as a result, and TPG Australia that took over three weeks, this was fantastic! Virgin Mobile Broadbandget a clue!

ASIDE: If you didn't read my adventure with Virgin Mobile's Wireless Broadband service, they wouldn't let me register before I provided an Australian bank statement as "capacity to pay". My Singaporean bank accounts and credit cards were useless despite them meeting the minimum requirements and then some. Fine with me, I took my business elsewhere!

Internode House on Grenfell St, from Google Maps street view

As a free and open source software advocate (no, me, really?) what really impresses me about Internode is that they're also an officially licenced mirror of SourceForge, meaning when I download software I'm getting it from a server that's geographically next door, and doesn't count towards the monthly quota. They also have another comprehensive local software mirror that includes amongst other software... FreeBSD ISO images :-).

Unfortunately as I elaborated in a previous post, our local telephone exchange's DSLAM isn't ADSL2+ ready, meaning we're stuck with 8Mb/s 40GiB-limit plan until at least the end of the year. Telstra trying to get to me again it seems... what an oven of stupid grilled cheese sandwiches.

ASIDE: What's the collective term for grilled cheese sandwiches? Chuck Peddle?

With my access to the internet as unreliable as it is, and without my audio recording equipment that enable me to put my life on the Rubenerd Show podcast / audio magazine / new time radio show / internet radio show instead of here (thank goodness Leo came to his senses about netcast) it seems the quality of posts on this blog are rapidly deteriorating as I use this site to discuss not trends in free and open source software, Mac software and open standards, but the goings on in my life instead. For your convenience I'm appending the term "musings" to the heading of each such post, so you may promptly ignore them.

ASIDE: Archaeological term?

It's a lazyish Sundee afternoon to use the archeological term, and I'm sitting once again at the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes. I know the owner on a first name basis now, and I figure it's only a matter of time before he starts seeing me mention Boatdeck Cafe enough to justify sponsoring me. I figure five Betty Blue Sea of Espressos per mention should suffice, though I am willing to negotiate higher, on my own part.

Here we all are sittin 'in a rainbow,
Coh blimey 'allo Mrs Jones, how's your Berts lumbago?
I'll sing you a song with no words and no tune!
I'll sing at your party while you suss out the moon, oh yes!

Lazy sunday afternoon, I got no mind to worry,
Close my eyes and drift away, Close my eyes and drift away,
Close my eyes and drift awaaaaaaaay...

Aroo de de de do
Aroo de de de dido

One thing I desperately have to learn to stop doing is jinxing myself lest nothing I need to get done never gets done. Case in point (or blunt object if pointy things scare you), last week I claimed we'd have the telephone line connected in our house on Monday so we would be able to finally get home ADSL. It's Sunday and we just got a dial tone!

You could plug some onions into a phone socket, but if your phone line wasn't connected, I 100% guarantee you would not hear a dial tone out of them.
Photo by Fir0002 from Wikipedia

Given past experiences with the national Aussie telco Telstra, I opted to use Optus instead (ironically Optus is owned by Singapore Telecom!) but our house wasn't accessible for them for some reason which is beyond me. Something to do with either grilled cheese sandwiches or our local exchange I think, though I remember having an Optus phone in Mawson Lakes last time I was in Adelaide, strange.

After being transferred to four separate departments, twice and reciting the home number to be changed seven times, on a phone call that took over an hour and a half, I know how it feels to be a tennis ball... insert pun about not getting anywhere and being whacked hard back and forth here. As it turns out, the previous tenants in this rental property didn't cancel their account when they left, so not only did we need to register a new line with Telstra, but we needed Telstra to deactivate the previous tenant's account. This entailed faxing the tenancy agreement with my name to prove that in fact the previous tenants didn't live there anymore... and then faxing the same tenancy agreement again when they denied having received it.

ASIDE: I was so frustrated after being on the phone for so long, when they asked me to fax information, I promptly reminded them that you need a phone line to use a fax, and that asking me to use one was akin to asking the owner of a busted time machine to go into the future to get the required parts, or asking a car driver to drive to a repair shop when his or her car won't start. For what it's worth, the guy in the call centre thought my analogies were funny.

All in all, it's been two weeks but we can now finally use the home phone line, and complete the registration for ADSL. Having grown up on cable internet in Singapore since we moved off ISDN in the late 1990s, this is quite a new experience, and one which I can't truthfully say has been a fun one. Untruthfully I could say the experience has been like a cheesecake with a Betty Blue Sea of Espresso from the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes.

You think I could get Keith Olbermann to declare Telstra the worst person in the world? That would be so much fun!

As for the weather, it's still pretty crazy down here. Our house has a metal roof, so any rain sounds are amplified in the order of a trillion to one, or whatever the mathematical ratio is. Unlike Singapore where it's not unusual for it to rain for several hours continuously, the rain here in Adelaide in the last week has been torrential (torrential?) but only in two or three minute bursts. Adelaide is supposed to be the driest state capital in Australia with the least amount of rainfall, but it sure hasn't felt like it these last few weeks. Now if only more of that rain was pouring down further upstate and in New South Wales so the Murray River disaster could be alleviated... did I just say further down upstate?

Aussie weather chart for today (low/high temps) from WeatherZone.com.au

The last thing I'll mention in this useless post is that there's an AFL game between the Adelaide Crows and Richmond on the television on the wall in the cafe, though fortunately the sound is turned off. It's funny how these fully grown men grope and wrestle with each other in tiny satin shorts, yet it's the computer and science nerds who's masculinity is constantly being questioned. Overcompensation do you think, or just a difference in brain size? Not that I'm insinuating anything, or incinerating anything, or combusting anything, or grilling anything.

Do you think phone company employees intentionally draw out support calls for as long as possible so they can bill you more?