The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[ownedbycats]

A lot of Australia telecoms stopped (or will stop) using POTs recently. Additional searching seems to indicate this was because of the government. It's a bit vague.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

A lot of Australia telecoms stopped (or will stop) using POTs recently. Additional searching seems to indicate this was because of the government. It's a bit vague.

Hmm, it turns out that in the US the FCC issued a August 2, 2022 deadline for elimination of POTS. News to me. I'd like to switch to fiber but it's not available.

[BetterRed]

In 2003 I paid the main telco $240 to have my POTS line installed. About three years ago I learnt that the twisted pair cables under the footpath would be disconnected from the exchange. Because my line was not the primary line to the premises I was told I would have to pay $300-400 to get connected to the existing cable TV coax strung up on the wooden electricity poles - otherwise known as the National Broadband Network (NBN). And, not only would I have had to pay to get connected to their wonky old cable TV coax - I would have had to buy a new house phone!

I don't have a TV so I replaced the ADSL service with mobile broadband (now 5G), which I can take with me if I relocate. And I decided to forego the luxury of having a 'real' phone and learn to live with an unreliable fiddlefone that I rarely carry when I leave home.

Not allowed. Not available. Take your pick. I couldn't retain the service I had - because they tore it down. I would have had to pay for the non-optional, mandated, take-it-or-leave-it replacement… if your phone line was the 'primary line' you didn't have to pay.

It's a legacy of decisions made by past governments. Firstly in the late 1980s when the government owned and operated telco was corporatised in preparation for privatisation… which duly happened of course. Secondly in the mid 1990s when the NBN was formulated. They could have undone some of the mistakes made earlier, but they refused to take advice from industry experts.

Added: goes without saying that the unions and the Murdochs have both had a role to play in Australia's never ending telecoms/media sagas.

BR

[DNSB]

We switched from POTS to the cable company's VOIP about 10 years back since the price about about 33% of the Telus POTS line cost and we got a lot more features (call display, call waiting, digital answering machine, etc.). About 2.5 years ago, the wife and I agreed to drop that line since we both had cellphones and the number of non-junk calls on the VOIP phone was ~6 in the last year we had it (we put up a whiteboard where we marked inbound calls that we answered as junk or real).

[ownedbycats]

I've been using an application for nearly 10 years. Just today, I went to open it and Windows refused to let me because "this app has been blocked by your system administrator." Seeing as I am the system administrator...

So the vent and rant here is: Windows just outright won't let you run applications with revoked/expired digital certificates. (In this case, it was an older VeriSign certificate and the entire root was revoked.) The two options are disabling UAC entirely (yuck) or using a command-line kludge (sigh).

I just stripped out the revoked certificate entirely so at least it's working now.

[gmw]

When we moved here in 2001 we had an extra copper landline connected and set up ISDN. I tried to get ADSL but we were told it was not available (the distances were running close to the limit but not over it). Eventually they pulled the plug on ISDN too and after we installed a large antenna mast we managed to get NextG 3G, and eventually 4G. Despite often getting good speed, the connection isn't steady enough for video. Anything I want to watch off the 'net has to be downloaded first so I can watch it from the local network. And on long weekends when people come down to their holiday homes, forget it! NBN? The best they can offer is wireless much like I already have from Telstra: a dollar short and several years too late.

Meanwhile I dropped one POTS line but kept the other. Every couple of years water leaks into the joins between here an the exchange and I have to report a fault and wait for someone to get out here to replace the joiner. Otherwise it continues to work. It's very hard to find anything on my service provider's website admitting copper landlines exist, but so far no threat of disconnection (touch wood).

Mobile phone reception is ... on the edge. My phone works most of the time (on the north side of the house near the window), but my wife's very rarely. So we use WiFi-calling over the NextG connection using the big antenna, but on wet and windy days even that slows down enough that you have a choice between browsing the 'net or using the mobile phone, you can't do both (anyway, it's rude to browse while you talk ).

I have considered satellite as a fall back (some of my work involves remote support and the latency of satellite can be problematic), but getting by without so far.

[gmw]

On a different but seems-to-me related note, a sign of the times sort of thing, is TPG disowning all email services. TPG and all it's myriad subsidiaries here in Australia are forcing, with little more than one month notice, all users to move their email to a different company (The Messaging Company). They are being assured of 12 months free service, but no one is saying what happens after that.

I say "forcing" because it's the only way to keep their email address active beyond mid-September - and it can take a long time to move email addresses you've had for many years. There was no offer of free forwarding, it's move it or lose it. Of course you can forward it after you move it but that misses the point.

Meanwhile The Messaging Company offers almost no detail except that they are trusted by several companies - all of which are subsidiaries of TPG. It does not inspire confidence. Indeed, the whole arrangement looks pretty dodgy to me and I'm wondering who is expecting to profit from it.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

[...] So the vent and rant here is: Windows just outright won't let you run applications with revoked/expired digital certificates. (In this case, it was an older VeriSign certificate and the entire root was revoked.) The two options are disabling UAC entirely (yuck) or using a command-line kludge (sigh).

I just stripped out the revoked certificate entirely so at least it's working now.

Well, technically this arrangement is intended to protect you ... although it seems as if there should be different options depending on whether a certificate is simply expired or whether it has been revoked.

Global solutions (disable UAC) seem like a very bad idea to solve a local (single exe) problem. The operating system really should offer something more selective. Interesting to see the option you did find, thanks for sharing that.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by gmw

When we moved here in 2001 we had an extra copper landline connected and set up ISDN. I tried to get ADSL but we were told it was not available (the distances were running close to the limit but not over it). Eventually they pulled the plug on ISDN too and after we installed a large antenna mast we managed to get NextG 3G, and eventually 4G. Despite often getting good speed, the connection isn't steady enough for video. Anything I want to watch off the 'net has to be downloaded first so I can watch it from the local network. And on long weekends when people come down to their holiday homes, forget it! NBN? The best they can offer is wireless much like I already have from Telstra: a dollar short and several years too late.

Meanwhile I dropped one POTS line but kept the other. Every couple of years water leaks into the joins between here an the exchange and I have to report a fault and wait for someone to get out here to replace the joiner. Otherwise it continues to work. It's very hard to find anything on my service provider's website admitting copper landlines exist, but so far no threat of disconnection (touch wood).

Mobile phone reception is ... on the edge. My phone works most of the time (on the north side of the house near the window), but my wife's very rarely. So we use WiFi-calling over the NextG connection using the big antenna, but on wet and windy days even that slows down enough that you have a choice between browsing the 'net or using the mobile phone, you can't do both (anyway, it's rude to browse while you talk ).

I have considered satellite as a fall back (some of my work involves remote support and the latency of satellite can be problematic), but getting by without so far.

Not much latency with Starlink, the satellites are only 350km up.

I was on an Optus satellite (Indonesian) a few years ago, only really adequate for low volume uploads and downloads, extended dropouts in heavy rain. The new owners installed Starlink a few months ago, last I heard they were more than happy.

Telstra's Next3G = Near End Crosstalk for 3 Grand?

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by gmw

On a different but seems-to-me related note, a sign of the times sort of thing, is TPG disowning all email services. TPG and all it's myriad subsidiaries here in Australia are forcing, with little more than one month notice, all users to move their email to a different company (The Messaging Company). They are being assured of 12 months free service, but no one is saying what happens after that.

I say "forcing" because it's the only way to keep their email address active beyond mid-September - and it can take a long time to move email addresses you've had for many years. There was no offer of free forwarding, it's move it or lose it. Of course you can forward it after you move it but that misses the point.

Meanwhile The Messaging Company offers almost no detail except that they are trusted by several companies - all of which are subsidiaries of TPG. It does not inspire confidence. Indeed, the whole arrangement looks pretty dodgy to me and I'm wondering who is expecting to profit from it.

I first knew TPG when it was the Total Peripherals Group. I was running skunkworks projects, if we needed something not readily available TPG would get it for us via their East Asia contacts… the founder is Malaysian and his wife Taiwanese.

My ADSL service came from TPG - zero faults for years. When Telstra/NBN announced they would be pulling the plug on my landline, TPG tried, but failed, to get the NBN connection fee waived. But they gave me three years free web email service… which expired late last year.

Seems like they became greedy when David Teoh 'retired' and they decided they wanted to be a mini-Telstra.

BR

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by gmw

Well, technically this arrangement is intended to protect you ... although it seems as if there should be different options depending on whether a certificate is simply expired or whether it has been revoked.

Global solutions (disable UAC) seem like a very bad idea to solve a local (single exe) problem. The operating system really should offer something more selective. Interesting to see the option you did find, thanks for sharing that.

Well, I could launch the program if I put it in a batch file and ran that as administrator, but that's not always practical.

[JSWolf]

We've got VoIP with out broadband provider. It's been that way for many years.

[DNSB]

One of my grandnephews got into an argument with a summer camp instructor today when he said the instructor was wrong and the brontosaurus was distinct from the apatosaurus. I got called since he insisted I was the one who told him that. After a quick web search, the instructor agreed with me and then we had a riff on who got to tell the grandnephew that he should have brought up the issue after the session. We agreed on the parents being the right parties to handle that task.

[BetterRed]

↑ ↑ ↑ age guess - 9

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

↑ ↑ ↑ age guess - 9

Close but no cigar. 10 and a right pain in the butt. Reminds me of myself at his age.