Public Address | Cafe | Island Life: Internet the way you want it

reece palmer

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:21:04 +1300

We had a small bug in some hex conversion library code on the site, which is now fixed.

Gravy, ta.

matthewbuchanan

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:32:21 +1300

I'd log in to verify this (again) but I'm getting:
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

The comedy continues! The other thing to check is that you give your avatar a rating of PG or less: if it's defaulted to X, it won't show up here. The interface for setting ratings is…

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:29:05 +1300

Death to The Grey Shadow! Viva cartoon likeness of Robyn circa 2000!

Heather Gaye

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:58:03 +1300

HAVATAR! (dances)

David Slack

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:55:26 +1300

@David Slack: could you double check you signed up with the same email address on Gravatar as you did here? Yours appears to still not be working...

I'd log in to verify this (again) but I'm getting:
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

matthewbuchanan

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:17:23 +1300

Yes, a little red-faced here. But the good news is that a whole heap more of your gravatars will now be working. We had a small bug in some hex conversion library code on the site, which is now fixed.

@David Slack: could you double check you signed up with…

Che Tibby

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:58:03 +1300

i mentioned a few weeks back that i had no internet since moving to new premises.

still have no internet. tomorrow will be 21 days to install telephone line?

and the problem? the telecom "contractor" simply can't be fcked getting it together to install the line to my apartment. he's…

Robyn Gallagher

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:41:39 +1300

Matthew: Yep, that was my comment.

This gives me hope, because it looks like it will be relatively easy to fix.

Begone, The Grey Shadow!

reece palmer

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:36:31 +1300

You get a single email when there's one (or more) new posts, with a link to the exact location of the first new post.

thats the business, exactly what I was after...

reece palmer

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:34:14 +1300

I've associated my image with my email about three times now. The Gravatar is showing up on the comment I left on the Gravatar blog, but so far not on here.

There can be no defeat of The Grey Shadow!

reece palmer

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:31:41 +1300

me neither, done the association thing two or three times now, and it's probably about two or so weeks.

Aside from that I rang telecom today, the xtra helpdesk to be exact. They told me they had scheduled maintenance last night and to restart my router. Then I should be…

matthewbuchanan

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:15:23 +1300

Robyn, which is your comment? This one? If so, the MD5 hash of your email address that we're sending to Gravatar:

9dc774161ab296d76a3ee011e767a

is slightly different from the one on the Gravatar site:

9dc774161ab296d706a3ee00011e767a

This could be an issue with the algorithm we're using, I'll check it tomorrow. Funny that it…

Robyn Gallagher

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:17:24 +1300

I've associated my image with my email about three times now. The Gravatar is showing up on the comment I left on the Gravatar blog, but so far not on here.

David Slack

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:33:47 +1300

nope.....

What Simon said.

In my case it would be about four weeks now.

Simon Grigg

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:08:28 +1300

nope.....

matthewbuchanan

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:44:13 +1300

Most of the issues with Gravatars now seem to be ironed out. If you've created one but it's not showing on this site, make sure you "associate" the image with your email address. This is a crucial step (probably should be automated) in the process.

Stephen Judd

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:10:47 +1300

You know... I don't know what I mean by that. I think that was me misremembering the problems of crosstalk as pairs get bundled up into binders.

I shall cease wittering about things where my knowledge is marginal now :)

It'll be nice when that ADSL2 actually gets retailed...

Juha Saarinen

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:40:30 +1300

What do you mean by "sharing your piece of copper"? Customers normally get their own separate line pairs. Otherwise it'd be a party line surely, which won't work with DSL.

I'm not sure what the techie you talked to means exactly, but it sounds like he was concerned about the…

Stephen Judd

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:24:22 +1300

(Oh yeah, 3 Mbps or more is pretty acceptable performance in that at that speed, many sites can't deliver that fast to you. While it's nice to have 10 so that your network Linux install from Citylink doesn't interfere with your video, that's icing for me).

Stephen Judd

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:22:12 +1300

I do have a cheap DSL router these days (one of the old DSE modem routers XH1149 I think). I'm not upgrading because I'm moving to Wellington soon and I hope to have lovely 10Mbps cable. It would be interesting to know what the best and the worst modems are…

Juha Saarinen

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:26:01 +1300

Just to make sure that the d-slamming (ahahahha!) is fair here, I want to point out it's not a bad technology. It uses existing resources to deliver good speeds. DSL is not limited to 2-3Mbit/s for most people with only those living right next to the DSLAM getting marginally faster…

Stephen Judd

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:09:31 +1300

Can't be swelling my inbox any further, I'm afraid, but I'll investigate the RSS option. Glad to hear further tweaks are in the works.

You could do worse than have a hard look at Metafilter for features – it's a had a LOT of careful usability tuning for a community…

matthewbuchanan

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 20:12:47 +1300

If you click on "45 comments" you go to the beginning of the thread. If you click on "7 new" it takes you to the first new comment since your last visit, which is generally exactly where you want to be. Not the last comment in the thread, but the…

Stephen Judd

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:18:02 +1300

I particularly like the way Metafilter handles this. What you see as a logged in member is something like this:

blah blah (45 comments) (7 new)

If you click on "45 comments" you go to the beginning of the thread. If you click on "7 new" it takes you to…

Russell Brown

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:51:19 +1300

while we're at it, does anyone know if its possible to set PAsys up to show the most recent post rather than the first? Could this be done RB?

Just click "last post" for any thread from the home page (or the Publ;ic Address Cafe page) – that's what I…

Jason Lea

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:36:14 +1300

I have telstraclear cable on the 10/2Mbps plan and got this:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 9161 kbps (1145.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 2130 kbps (266.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

when i first went on to the plan i was only getting 3000kbps, but it turned out to be my network…

Stephen Judd

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:48:53 +1300

"Apparently the potential line speeds on the copper network are some where around 7.5-8 Mbps"

That's only true if you're very close to the exchange with low line noise, few other devices on the wire, and so on. 3 or so is as good as most people can expect.

Several…

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:25:18 +1300

while we're at it, does anyone know if its possible to set PAsys up to show the most recent post rather than the first? Could this be done RB?

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:18:59 +1300

Just had a look it's only available to subby's

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:15:52 +1300

Remuera is the one that got upgraded ever so slightly recently so dear old Jenny could have broadband(sic) but it sounds as though you are getting better than a lot of us, well, me especially. Apparently the potential line speeds on the copper network are some where around 7.5-8 Mbps!…

Stephen Judd

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:07:04 +1300

520 is Remuera in my distant and vague recollection, and so at least a couple km away.

Because I'm renting and leaving town soon I have no filter and *cough* my router/modem is hanging off an extension because of the impractical faceplate location. Therefore I think I'm probably not getting…

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:49:30 +1300

That 716 up is good, the 2188 down not so good. Are you pretty close to the exchange stephen?

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:47:50 +1300

Myself I'm on the gone largely undelivered plan, no data capo and supposedly "as fast as your line will allow" (insert tui ad here) only $50 a month mind, but I would like to actually get the service promised in advertisements though.

Stephen Judd

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:45:55 +1300

Hmm. Here in sunny Greenlane I see (Orcon DSL) 2188 down and 716 up. Considering I have plugin filters and a degree of dodginess in the phone wiring that's not too shabby.

Kumara Republic

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:28:54 +1300

PS. I'm on the 20GB/month plan, which gives 4Mbps down/2Mbps up.

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:10:55 +1300

Last Result:
Download Speed: 1413 kbps (176.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 76 kbps (9.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

and this is on a saturday afternoon when people are out doing stuff, BTW the test data corresponds to the time it is posted +/-- a minute or two.

Robyn Gallagher

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:07:04 +1300

Speaking for the people on the interwebs – the Grey Shadow!

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:06:13 +1300

I forgot to associate the selected image with my email address, just went and did that so good old animal should be popping by in a couple of minutes/hours/days/weeks?

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:04:34 +1300

Not a bad nom de plume that, the grey shadow, maybe an aged super hero.

Robyn Gallagher

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:37:11 +1300

The grey shadow ain't goin' nowhere. Oh well.

Robyn Gallagher

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:36:20 +1300

I've just been over to Gravatar, I've reassociated my image with my email address, done a test there and now I'm hoping that it will all work.

matthewbuchanan

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:43:58 +1300

And no sooner I post that, than I see Tom is back, and claims to have fixed the subtle synching bug that has plagued him for the last couple of weeks. The system is still working through a backlogue but seems more responsive today.

matthewbuchanan

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:28:04 +1300

I really think PA should switch off those personalised icons until the system serving them up can cope with the load.

damn... system has been seriously sluggish for the past two days.

Yes, we're close to giving up on Tom/Gravatar, undoubtedly the cause of the slowdowns this week. Some browsers…

Che Tibby

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 09:18:13 +1300

damn... system has been seriously sluggish for the past two days.

juha. depends. my telstra connection was "5 down, 3 up".

i averaged about 3.5 down, 1.5 up.

but compared to ihug and woosh that was a japanese bullet train.

Juha Saarinen

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 09:01:32 +1300

Should be faster... isn't the TCL cable service 10/2M now?

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 02:15:23 +1300

damn

Kumara Republic

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:57:35 +1300

Reece: For comparison, here's my TelstraClear cable speed via nzdsl.co.nz:

Downstream: 3873 kbps (484 kBps)
Upstream: 1303 kbps (163 kBps)

Kumara Republic

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:49:00 +1300

If this was America, which the Rod Deanes in our midst would look to as a model for anarcho-capitalism, Telecom would have rightly gone the way of AT&T as per the Sherman Act.

reece palmer

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:19:39 +1300

latest speed test from gone lame plan,

Last Result:
Download Speed: 1477 kbps (184.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 77 kbps (9.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Bryan Dods

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:21:08 +1300

How does this go again?
Govt spends a billion to establish a network at the public's expense. New govt or the same govt sells SOE at discount to those who can afford to buy shares.
Those who cannot afford shares then have to pay monopoly controlled 'market rates' to use…

Juha Saarinen

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:21:55 +1300

Very good shunt Kyle, but you missed "steaming video" so points deducted for that.

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:19:10 +1300

I'd also throw this in: would the govt-owned rail network be of some help to Rod's plan?

Look, I know it's gotten bad out there, but I'm not sending emails by train, no matter how close they go to my house. And don't even start me on streaming video by…

Don Christie

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:28:58 +1300

OT – except they keep getting mentioned.

I really think PA should switch off those personalised icons until the system serving them up can cope with the load.

Juha Saarinen

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:12:26 +1300

Neither of the cellular broadband offerings are designed to replace a fixed-line service. Think of it as very fast indeed dial-up that you're actively discouraged from using a lot (check the T&Cs...). Both have much higher latency than say DSL, but they are more responsive than Woosh.

The Vodem comes with…

Tom Beard

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:03:43 +1300

Tom, bro, it ain't html :)

Blame it on nearly 15 years of habit!

And back to the topic... does anyone have experience with Vodafone's vodem 3G thinggy (sorry for the technical jargon)? On paper it looks like it might get slightly better bandwidth than I'm currently getting from Woosh,…

reece palmer

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:17:24 +1300

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10426475

reece palmer

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:14:43 +1300

Latest result from the nzdsl speed test on the Go last plan,

Download Speed: 417 kbps (52.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 124 kbps (15.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

apparently smoke signals are good if the wind is right, and you're not in a public space,

and on a completely tangental…

reece palmer

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:02:36 +1300

I'm just waiting for the refund.
As more people drop off the go franz josef plan (with all it's glacial express speeds) It'll be better ish. still the only reasonably priced no data cap plan I'm aware of, so I wont be changing until the jackbooted hordes come up with…

Trakman

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:51:33 +1300

I wonder what David Cunliffe has to say on this topic.
Lord of the dark fibre...RISE!

Hamish

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:17:39 +1300

Although with the 'gentrification' of the area (I do like Farro...) I might have to make the move to Panmure! :P

Hamish

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:16:53 +1300

Perhaps not surprisingly, DSL speeds are pretty good in Sunny G.I.

Tony Kennedy

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:26:07 +1300

how the hell can a company make 3-digital million in profit, but not offer a service agreement worth a goddamn?

The worst part is that you live in the middle of our CAPITAL CITY

And if you do get xtra "broadband" in the A Valley, the speed is Cr$p. Telecoms…

Simon Grigg

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:19:26 +1300

f your answer to any of these questions is "no" then you may be a New Zealand internet user.

I look enviously at New Zealand and dream some nights of my old connection. I explain to locals here that broadband can be faster than 256 (with a two gig data…

Adrian Wills

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:53:16 +1300

and when the internet does finally get sorted: http://www.joost.com/

from the folks that brought you skype...

Hadyn Green

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:19:03 +1300

The worst part is that you live in the middle of our CAPITAL CITY!!!

If you lived in the back-blocks and had just built a house 5-days walk from civilisation I'd be a little forgiving to Telecom. I support anything that kicks bad service in the butt.

Che Tibby

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:10:55 +1300

Ring Telstra and say "Telecom and iHug say 12-14 days, how fast can you do it?" It's amazing how a technician frees up when you mention the competitors.

that's exactly why i went ihug, telstra had said TWENTY DAYS to get a line connected, and ihug (under)promised 5-7.

it's becoming…

Hadyn Green

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:03:45 +1300

Che: Ring Telstra and say "Telecom and iHug say 12-14 days, how fast can you do it?" It's amazing how a technician frees up when you mention the competitors.

It's how I got (admittedly cable) internet in 3 days.

Tom, bro, it ain't html :)

Tom Beard

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:28:33 +1300

Because I've moved house a lot, and want to have my own internet access in various workplaces, I've stuck with Woosh. It's much more reliable now than it was a year ago, but it's not "broadband".

Che Tibby

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:11:05 +1300

shortontimetoreadwilljusttalk

was with telstra, and loved it. had used woosh and ihug since coming back to nzl and both were, in a word, dodgy.

won't use telecom on principle.

moved house, but have no cable (heritage building). so, have to go back to ihug. they said, "5-7 days till installation".…

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:08:14 +1300

Oh, before I forget: one missed opportunity for NZ was that we (us, the state, etc) didn't build the Southern Cross Cable entirely or partly. It's making money, so it would've been a self-financing investment.

Unfortunately, it didn't happen because of ideological reasons.

Andrew Ecclestone

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:58:57 +1300

While it's not so much related to the problems with NZ telcos, this piece by John Naughton in last Sunday's Observer suggests another good reason for the nation to own some of the infrastructure that has become so strategically important.

Another article suggests that 27 per…

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:53:24 +1300

Maybe Sam thinks it's about Internet PERLing...

Don Christie

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:42:20 +1300

Whist I am in PA mode Sam Vilain has several posts on Internet Peering and a possible solution:

Sam Vilain

We work together but that doesn't stop me from agreeing with most of his posts on this issue, even when he's channeling Ayn Rand.

Money shot:

How can you sell…

andrew llewellyn

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:42:20 +1300

I'm considering changing it to a 3mb picture of my cat...

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:49:42 +1300

/me quickly Adblocks Andrew's Gravatar in FF to speed up loading of PA System.

andrew llewellyn

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:47:54 +1300

Yeah – actually it did turn up shortly after I posted yesterday. First time I neglected to associate it my email address, after that was rectified... Thunderbirds Were Go.

FATnastic!

Russell Brown

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:40:39 +1300

You'd think it was local body election year!

Dude! Your Gravatar turned up!

Don Christie

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:40:12 +1300

It also ignores ease with which one or two players can totally dominate the NZ market place, both horizontally and vertically – hence the failure Rod talks about.

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:10:55 +1300

While competition in general is good, the Internet is a collaborative and cooperative environment and as such a special case.

Telcos often try not to collaborate and cooperate with competitors (see the US Peering Wars for examples) on purpose. The idea is to munt the experience for competitors' customers in…

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:06:07 +1300

I think Telecom was mostly upset that TelstraClear got the money and used it to extend its fibre network so that it goes by some large, high-value customers now. Like the CRIs and universities.

In the past, only Telecom could service those...

Don Christie

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:05:54 +1300

One of the main issues, for NZers wanting to exchange data with other NZers has nothing to do with capacity. There is shitloads of that.

It has to do with the very well documented and very well understood fact that two main Telecos, Telecom and Telstra refuse to play nicely…

Russell Brown

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:52:26 +1300

Finally I think there IS already just the network that Rod's talking about, govt funded even ..... at least something to build a greater infrastructure on – the new University net is I understand being built on existing dark fibre and would probably make a great start for just this…

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:49:07 +1300

Light up some of that murky fibre...

It's interesting to read the material on the REANNZ site which proudly proclaims the following:

REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd) is the Crown-owned company set up to establish, own and operate a high-speed telecommunications network for the research and…

Paul Brislen

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:47:44 +1300

So long as any govt-owned network is run on a MUSH network methodology, I think this would be a great idea.

MUSH (municipal, university, school, hospital) networks work best when they're set up by non-telcos. I spoke with Bill St Arnaud from Canada about this a couple of years ago…

Paul Campbell

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:37:52 +1300

I should add that here in Dunedin we have an ideal infrastructure for fibre-to-the-curb for much of the city – the old, now unused coal-gas mains – or we would except that apparently the city sold them to Telecom for 1$ a while ago (probably so that Telstra would get…

David Slack

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:23:50 +1300

__Finally I think there IS already just the network that Rod's talking about, govt funded even ..... at least something to build a greater infrastructure on – the new University net is I understand being built on existing dark fibre and would probably make a great start for just this…

Paul Campbell

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:20:17 +1300

Well Rod's blog silently swallows my postings so I guess I'll have to vent here ....

I completely agree with Rod – like a slowly growing number of people I live in NZ and work elsewhere (in the US) – I'm an exporter, I export my labour (don't get me…

andrew llewellyn

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:06:12 +1300

You'd think it was local body election year!

Tom Beard

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:04:31 +1300

It looks like local councils, even fairly right-wing ones, are coming to the same conclusion.

Public Address

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:04:31 +1300

Discussion from blog post.