So... how did Telstra get rich again?

Picture a company in a Perth industrial area, not far from the CBD. An area that has had ADSL for at least 4 years.

Zoom in on the ADSL modem, note the Telstra badge.

Pan across to the filing cabinet, notice the Telstra account for ≅$700-$900 a month for ≅4GB down, ≅1GB up on a 1500/256 ADSL link (a 1000MB limit, mind, not a real gigabyte, then 19c a meg each way past that), and well over $100 a month line and equipment rental.

Mystery solved. Four customers like that pretty much pays a technician’s wages.

Take the firm’s financial controller to a random ISP’s web page. Click on the broadband plans. Watch him go grey, as he figures out that they’ve essentially thrown away $750 a month for the last two years.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Penguins dont do much with their time ay?

08 March, 2006 14:14

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

Search This Blog