awkward moments · funny · motivational

For the love of God, will people please stop sending money to complete strangers via Western Union, and complaining that their money has mysteriously disappeared?!?!

I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with the following gentleman at work yesterday. This man, let’s call him “Phil”, was looking to buy a car on carsales.com.au, which is a popular Australian car auction website.

Having found an almost-new Ford Falcon sedan with low mileage for just $12,500, Phil thought that was a bargain.  IT’S ALMOST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, thought Phil to himself. He made some email enquiries, and the seller said that he had to travel overseas with the military, and that he was reluctant to sell the car for such a low price, but that he needed a quick sale and didn’t expect to be back anytime soon.

The seller told Phil that he would remove the car from carsales.com.au, and list the vehicle on eBay with a “buy it now” link.  The seller then sent Phil an email with a URL, to something which looked a bit like this:

http://www.ebay.com.au.car-sales-server.someotherdodgydomainname.co.cn/

Phil clicked on this link which took him to what he thought looked like an eBay listing for the car, with a “buy it now” link.

But Phil was concerned about buying the car ’sight unseen’.  So he did two things:

1. He rang VicRoads, and they referred him to a VicRoads website, to check the legitimacy of cars being offered for sale.  He entered in the registration details, and the make / model / colour / VIN matched the vehicle being offered for sale; and
2. He asked the seller if he was covered by eBay’s “Buyer Protection” scheme.

The seller said yes, of course, and sent him another link to an address which looked a bit like this:

http://www.ebay.buyerprotection.biz/

At this site Phil submitted a form with the eBay Item number, and received a cheerful email reply confirming that the transaction was legitimate, and that Phil would indeed be covered by eBay’s comprehensive “Buyer Protection” programme.

Phil and his money were easily parted. He journeyed down to the local Post Office forthwith, and used Western Union (as requested by the seller) to wire $12,500 to a man by the name of JOHN SMITH.

For some unknown reason, the car never arrived. Phil used a freight-tracking website which the seller provided, but then that shut down, then the emails stopped, and the eBay link which Phil had in his emails stopped working too.

When Phil reported this to eBay, they told him it was a common scam and that Phil’s transaction ID did not exist.

When Phil reported the incident to the police, they told him that the car registration and make / model / colour / VIN were all legitimate, and that the scammers had simply copied these details (and the digital photographs) from a legitimate car advertisement.  They also told Phil that there was little, if any, chance of recovering his money.

How to avoid eBay scams

This list is by no means exhaustive. But some or any of these tips might have stopped Phil becoming the victim of an eBay scam:

1. Learn how to read URLs and internet addresses.  It’s not hard.  If in doubt, ask that tech-savvy person in your family for help.
2. Never, ever use Western Union to transfer money.  eBay says that Western Union is regularly used by online scammers: “They typically ask buyers to make payments using Western Union or a similar money transfer service because they are hard to trace.” Pay using direct deposit or PayPal so that some level of accountability exists.
3. Use a current web browser that offers protection from phishing scams.
4. Always type URLs directly into your web browser, e.g. “ebay.com.au”.  DON’T click on links in emails. DON’T click on images in emails.
5. Don’t buy expensive stuff if you haven’t seen it in Real Life!!  Always inspect real estate, motor cars, white goods and expensive items prior to bidding. The opportunity of a lifetime comes along every day.

And remember, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

419 · awkward moments · buyer protection · eBay · email · fraud · PayPal · scam · Western Union

I’m a self-confessed Sudoku addict. I like regular Sudoku, Samurai Sudoku and even hexadecimal Sudoku. I do Sudoku in books, newspapers, and (until very recently) on-line. I find it relaxing, entertaining and mentally stimulating.

Hence my horror last week, when in a personal vendetta launched wholly at me and intended to achieve nothing other than leave me in crumpled, listless, lifeless state on the floor of the computer room, grubby Zynga Games shut down their massively popular Challenge Sudoku game on Facebook. At the time this digital atrocity was committed, nearly 20,000 fans were friends of the game and Challenge Sudoku had received a rating of 3.9 stars out of 5 stars, based on 1,468 reviews.

Here’s the heart-wrenching message which greeted me when I logged on, in order to finish a 5-round “harder” marathon against my Facebook arch-nemesis, a game which I can only assume will now remain unfinished until the end of time itself:

Needless to say – but I’ll say it anyway – “important” games like Farmville, CafeWorld and Mafia Wars are still going strong.

Despondent, heart-broken, despised and rejected, I logged off Facebook, shut down the computer and wept quietly for some hours. I then started driving around aimlessly, in an effort to think clearly. I found myself at mum & dad’s, where I stopped seeking consolation and a mug of International Rust.

I confided in my mother, explaining  my Sudoku dilemma.

Mum said, “Well, there’s always the games you used to play in the garage. Let’s have a look.”

Curious, I followed my mother into the garage, where every single game, toy, camping tool, school book and scouting provision from my childhood was safely stored, and will also possibly (and coincidentally) be stored until the end of time itself.

Would you believe, in next to no time, my mother was able to produce 1 x original, genuine, 30-year-old Intellivision games console??!?!?

Woo hooo!! The Intellivision was manufactured in the late-1970s by Mattel, and was a state-of-the-art machine in its day. My family spent thousands of hours in front of this bleeding-edge games console as we attacked aliens from outer space, negotiated Pitfall Harry over alligators and swamps, and even dodged dangerous barrels of burning oil in Donkey Kong.

The Intellivision is a cartridge machine and mum found a big bag of game cartridges too. I raced home and plugged everything in. No fancy HDMI output on this little sucker: the Intellivision was equipped with an RF modulator. Kids, this means you switch the television to channel 0 or channel 1, and plug a coaxial cable between the system and the antenna socket on your TV.

I was concerned that the Intellivision wouldn’t work after all these years, and I was especially concerned that the magnetic media on the games cartridges would have long since become corrupt or erased completely.

I was, however, excitedly surprised to find that most cartridges still actually worked, after at least 30 years of use and abuse, and storage in a high-humidity garage.

Here are some exciting images from the next few hours of my life, showing-off the Intellivision’s magnificent 159 x 192 aspect ratio and 16-colour graphics palette:

…and last, but certainly not least:

Other exciting titles include Happy Trails, Utopia, Star Strike, Auto Racing, Baseball and Thunder Castle.

And the GREAT thing I’m discovering about the Intellivision, 30 years on, is that no-one in the world knows who I am – or anything about me – when I’m playing a game; AND there’s not one single privacy setting which can mean the difference between access to the game itself and criminally-motivated identity fraud.

I’m yet to find a Sudoku cartridge, but for now, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve learned to deal with my Zynga pain. I’m too busy shooting demons and jumping oil barrels.

Long live Mattel!

facebook · games · intellivision · mattel · retro · sudoku

I had a realization this week. I think I might be a “CLI snob”.

Every day I triage email; I key-ahead to delete voicemail without listening; and I multi-select text messages and hit “delete” without reading them.

Now this brutal yet effective time-management technique has started to influence the way I handle incoming phone calls. No Caller ID? No answer. Sorry.

Working in the I.T. industry fifteen years ago, the on-call techo from my department would start a mail client called “cc:Mail” twice daily, and connect to a Netware mail server. We’d check, optimistically (and naively optimistically in hindsight), to see if anyone had sent us any mail.

Nowadays, we’re bombarded with electronic messaging in every form, every minute of the day; especially I.T. people, who often receive automated alerts from monitoring systems and server scripts. And we’re expected to be available 24 x 7!

So this is what ends-up happening, and I’m sure I’m not the Lone Ranger here. I receive roughly 100 to 200 email messages daily, to my home and work accounts. I ‘triage’ these as they arrive, moving them into folders or just deleting them without reading. Some readers might find this to be normal practice, others might be appalled. If it took me just 30 seconds to open and read each of these messages I’d be spending an hour, maybe an hour and a half, each day just opening and reading emails. Not actually actioning them or doing anything productive, just opening and reading.

To manage time effectively you need to identify what’s relevant to you fast, and everything else can go on the back-burner.

If I’m in a meeting, and I have three missed calls from colleagues, and then three “missed call” text messages from voicemail, I’m not actually going to read any of those texts, or dial-in to voicemail and listen to people saying “Hi, ahhhh… looks like you’re busy… okay then, catchya later.” Delete, delete, delete. It’s what type-ahead was made for. I’m better-off ringing them back, or walking through the cube farm and saying, “Hey, sorry I missed your call, what’s up?”

Lately I’ve been ignoring calls from “private” numbers. Not because I don’t love antagonizing telemarketers, but rather, I’ve got a finite amount of time to get work done, and the telephone is a big distraction. At least if I know who’s calling, I can make an assessment as to the relevance of that call before I answer it.

If I “bounce” a call to voicemail, it’s for a good reason: not necessarily because the call is unwelcome, but that the interruption is unwelcome.

Similarly, if I call someone and I get “bounced” to voicemail (and yes, I do send my number on outgoing calls,) then I know the person at the other end is probably in the same position.

Someone called me a “CLI snob” the other day, because I bounced a private number to voicemail. Maybe I am, but for good reason. Time equals money. Show me some courtesy by identifying yourself in outgoing calls, and I’ll reciprocate by answering or returning the call when I can, and when I’m in a position to give you my undivided attention.

The telephone, like email, Twitter, voicemail, faxmail, text messages and everything else, is a communication tool for my convenience. It shouldn’t be a tool for someone else’s convenience to the detriment of my productivity. If it is, what’s the point in having it?

Oh, the private number caller didn’t leave a message either, by the way. I wondered, for a brief second, who it  might have been.

But only just for a second.

ANI · Caller ID · CLI · email · faxmail · productivity · SMS · text message · time management · Twitter · voicemail

Much has been said about the Australian Government’s proposed Net Filter legislation.

Outside of the Government, most of what has been said  is bad; except for this little gem by The Australian, which reports that  the new legislation is unlikely to be passed before the Federal election.

The Government was aiming to introduce draft legislation at the last sitting of parliament. This opportunity has been and gone.

Now, The Australian has reported that a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that  the legislation would not be introduced in the May or June sittings of parliament.

Parliament will not then sit until the last week of August, and the next Federal election must be held before April 2011.

Today, Electronic Frontiers Australia (a vocal opponent of the Net Filter) reported that Senator Sue Boyce had called the proposed legislation ‘a farce’:

The Rudd Government’s hare-brained proposal to censor the internet was descending into complete farce with the Prime Minister admitting he didn’t have a clue what was going on, Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, said today.

“Yesterday, Mr Rudd at a media conference, admitted that he had ‘no advice’ about whether or not the legislation would be introduced before the election and fobbed the matter off to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy,” Senator Boyce said.

“This is despite the fact that Minister Conroy’s spokeswoman was quoted in the media yesterday morning (Thursday) as saying the legislation would be delayed at least until after the June sitting of Parliament,” she said.

Labor promised before the last election that it would force ISPs to block illegal content.  Now, with Labor’s time and resources focussed on the shelving of its Emissions Trading Scheme; extinguishing burning insulation batts; wrangling with the states over health reform and the GST; with any luck the Net Filter legislation will take a back seat, and quietly be abandoned under the guise of a Friday 4:55 P.M. media release like this:

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy today announced he would introduce amendments to enhance protection for all Australians that use the internet.

After much consultation with industry groups and key stakeholders, the Australian Government is excited to announce the next stage of the implementation of its Cyber-Safety Policy.

The Government has determined that the function of ISP-level filtering, while efficient, effective and potentially of great benefit to all Australians, can be even better provided by the introduction of voluntary ISP-based filtering systems and Government-subsidised filter software for home users.

The Government has had constructive discussions with the Greens on this issue and now calls on the Opposition to support this ground-breaking strategy.

To facilitate the quick passage of the legislative amendments, and in the best interests of all Australians, the Government will not proceed with the proposal to implement a mandatory ISP-based Net Filter.

“A range of views were expressed in the public submissions, and I would like to thank everyone who contributed their comments and valuable ideas to the consultation process,” Senator Conroy said.

Senator Conroy said that the discussion period had been most valuable and that the Australian Government was now in a much better position to go forward with informed, decisive action to protect Australians from on-line dangers.

“Such a system will accommodate growth trajectories for internet usage, leverage investment in existing infrastructure and protect  family values through excellence in industry best practice,” Senator Conroy said.

“Control techniques will ensure continuous improvement in these systems and guarantee, at the end of the day, that a holistic approach to internet safety, including proper funding of law enforcement and availability of programmes for family education, is ultimately maintained.”

“This is a can-do government,” said Senator Conroy.

Expect sometime like this, anyway. I tried to think of more weasel words but my head was about to explode.

Feel free to copy and paste though, Senator Conroy, if it helps at all.

dbcde · isp filtering · legislation · net filter · no clean feed · Open Internet · Senator Conroy

Something exciting happened a few months back: my local telephone exchange (or ‘Central Office’ for my American brothers and sisters) was upgraded to support ADSL 2+.

Actually, it had supported ADSL 2+ for some time, but only by Telstra resellers. When the Internet Service Provider iiNet came along, which runs its own back-haul network independent of Telstra, I committed to doing a number of things:

1. Upgrading my home internet from ADSL (supplied by Internet Service Provider aaNet)  to ADSL 2+ (supplied by iiNet),
2. Converting to Naked DSL;
3. Porting my telephone service from traditional PSTN to VoIP, and
4. Freeing myself from the expensive Telstra service and equipment fees and call costs.

Would this be an expensive exercise? Would I ultimately save money? Or would I pay more for the privilege (as I saw it) of being Telstra-free?

Now the dust has settled, it’s time to find out.

The Existing (Old) Setup

I have a small analogue PABX, with extensions cabled to most rooms in the house. This should neither detract from my internet story or cause any undue alarm.

Now, Mr & Mrs Dr Ron have had a common, garden-variety 19th-century analogue telephone line for many years. We only used this for incoming calls. Why? Because Telstra call costs are generally more expensive than… well, anything, really. So when someone called our home telephone number, all the phones in the house would ring and we would speak to the caller. I was on Telstra’s “Homeline Budget” plan, which is the cheapest line rental vs most expensive call rates, at $71.64 per quarter including “recurring costs” (about $23.88 /month). I was on this plan deliberately, to minimise the service and equipment fees, given that we didn’t use the service for outgoing calls. So far so good.

For outgoing calls, we had an account with engin, the VoIP telephone company. Engin offered 10 cent untimed calls to any number in Australia, (a third the cost of Telstra on the “Homeline Budget” plan,) and timed calls to mobiles and international numbers. My engin plan was like a mobile telephone “cap” and I paid at least $14.95 /month for the privilege.

So to make an outgoing call to a local or national number, we would “dial 0″ on an extension, and the PABX would pre-select the line connected to engin’s SIP voice box. We would get a “second dial tone” and make the call.

Now to keep down costs, I successfully trained Mrs Dr Ron to use her mobile telephone to make mobile-to-mobile calls. I did the same. I think calls to mobiles are always expensive on landlines and VoIP accounts, compared with mobile-to-mobile rates, especially when you can take advantage of “free 3 to 3″ and similar promotions run by other carriers.

My wife has a lot of family overseas, and we ring friends overseas too. Weekly calls to England, Scotland and Denmark are not uncommon. International rates on engin weren’t too bad and international rates on the mobiles weren’t too bad either.

The New Setup

We have kept the PABX: no change.

We’re still using mobile phones for mobile-to-mobile: no change.

We churned from the old ISP (aaNet) to the new ISP (iiNet).

We ported our telephone number, from Telstra PSTN to iiNet VoIP. This went surprisingly smoothly. We experienced a service outage for a few days, which was expected and clearly explained in the T’s & C’s provided by iiNet.

We cancelled the engin account, as it was no longer needed, and I got sick of their poor customer service (but that’s another story).

Incoming calls still arrive by dialling the same phone number, but these are now carried by iiNet VoIP into the PABX. (The iiNet router has anFXS port which drives an analogue trunk circuit on the PABX.) Similarly, outgoing calls are carried via iiNet VoIP instead of engin VoIP.

For richer or poorer?

Previously I was paying:

• Monthly Telstra bill: $23.88 + call costs, if any
• Monthly aaNet bill: $94.25 for 40 GB bandwidth
• Monthly engin bill: $14.95 + call costs not included in this cap, e.g. international calls

So previously I had a minimum monthly investment of $133.08 for home internet and telephone calls.

Remember I haven’t changed my call usage patterns, or the way I use my mobile telephone.

Now I’m paying:

• Monthly iiNet bill: $69.95 for 30GB peak/30GB off-peak + call costs not included in this cap

In addition to a financial windfall of $63.13 per month, I’m also ahead because:

• There’s no separate Telstra account;
• There’s no separate engin account;
• I’m using ADSL 2+ technology, better (albeit marginally, at my house) than first-generation ADSL;
• I’ve got half as much bandwidth again, compared with the previous internet plan;
• Unlimited, free, local and national telephone calls, as opposed to engin’s 10 cent calls which chipped-away at a “cap”; and
• VoIP quality is much better, for two reasons: (1) I’m on a faster network connection; and (2) my new router, provided by iiNet, has a Quality of Service feature which was missing in the old SIP box.

So Dr Ron wins. Faster, cheaper internet, and more cash towards that Mediterranean retirement villa.

Seriously though … that’s $756 /year in my pocket.

What have we learnt from this exercise?

Review your internet contract, and personal internet requirements, regularly.

Internet “plans” come and go, just as fast as mobile phone plans these days. If you stay on a plan for longer than 12 months, chances are that a faster, cheaper plan offering more bandwidth has become available, that might better suit your needs.

Shop around, and monitor consumer advocacy websites – like Broadband Choice in Australia – to compare “apples with apples”.

Happy hunting, good luck.  See you in the Med.

aaNet · ADSL · ADSL 2+ · engin · iiNet · naked DSL · SIP · telstra · voip

About 200 – 300 people attended the rally in front of the State Library in Melbourne this afternoon.

Speakers included:

Sarah Jenkins, Australian Sex Party;
Trent Hawkins, Socialist Alliance;
Colin Jacobs, Electronic Frontiers Australia;
Muriel Ardnt, Exit International; and
David Crafti, Pirate Party.

Here are a few pics.

Got some good vox pops too, which I’ll mix-up for a future Tech Talk segment.

Click here for more information about the Open Internet movement in Australia.

Electronic Frontiers Australia is one group which opposes Senator Conroy’s proposed Net Filter legislation, the wording of which will be released later this month.

#nocleanfeed · melbourne · no clean feed · Open Internet · openinternet · rally · state library

Dr Ron has a telephone line provided by Telstra.

Telstra is the largest telecommunications service provider in Australia. Telstra operates and maintains the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, sells its own services, and allows other service providers to re-sell parts of its network.

Unfortunately, Dr Ron’s telephone line has no dial tone, and no battery (FAIL).  This is probably caused by an open circuit, or faulty equipment or a power failure at the telephone exchange.

Dr Ron rings Telstra on his mobile phone, asking for help.

The IVR answers promptly (WIN) and asks Dr Ron to enter the phone number he is having difficulty with, which he does. He then presses the “#” key as instructed. The IVR says that it’s putting him through to an operator. The ensuing conversation goes something like this:

Telstra Operator: “Hello, welcome to Telstra, my name is Sonny. How can I help you?”

Dr Ron: “Hi Sonny, my name’s Ron. I’m ringing to get help with my telephone service. It’s not working, there’s no dial tone.”

TO: “Okay can I get the phone number you are having problems with please?” (FAIL)

DR: “Sure, it’s the one I just entered into your computer 10 seconds ago.”

TO: “Ohh, ahhhh, it hasn’t come through for some reason, (FAIL) what number are you having problems with?”

DR: “Why hasn’t the number come through? I did what I was told, and even pressed the ‘#’ key.”

TO: “I’m sure you did but the number didn’t come through. What number are you having problems with?”

DR: “03 98xx xxxx.”

TO: “I just need to check your name, address and date of birth please?”

DR Ron provides this information.

TO: “Thankyou Ron, let me put you on hold, just one moment.”

Dum dum dum, da dum da da dum… the girl from Ipanema goes walking and… when she passes, each time she passes….

TO: “Hello Ron?”

DR: “I’m here.”

TO: “Yes there’s a fault with that line.” (FAIL)

DR: “Yes. I know. I’m pretty sure I told you that. That’s why I’m ringing.”

TO: “How many telephone handsets do you have on your line please?’

DR: “Just one,” lies Dr Ron convincingly, for the purposes of keeping this already untenable situation as simple as possible.

TO: “Have you unplugged your fax machines?” (FAIL)

DR: “Almost certainly.”

TO: “And computer modems?” (FAIL)

DR: “Yep.”

TO: “Do you have ADSL internet on that line?” (How can Telstra not know this? FAIL.)

DR: “No, it’s dead.”

TO: “But ordinarily?”

DR: “Yes.”

TO: “Okay a telephone technician will need to come out to have a look. I just have to let you know, that if the fault is found in the customer equipment, a charge of $105 may be applied to your account – but you will be advised accordingly if we’re going to do that.”

DR: “Okay, great,” says Dr Ron, confident that his $105 will remain safely in his wallet.

TO: “Okay just one moment please.”

…and when she walks … she’s like a samba that… swings so cool, and sways so gentle, and…

TO: “Hello Ron?”

DR: “I’m still here.”

TO: “Can I just get an alternative contact number for you, like a mobile?”

DR: “Sure, use the one I’m calling from now.”

TO: “What’s that one?” (FAIL)

DR: “I’m sending it with this call. It will come up on your telephone, and your computer. I always send my number with outgoing calls.”

TO: “Ahhhhh, oooh, it hasn’t come up.” (FAIL FAIL FAIL)

DR: “Why not? Maybe you have a faulty telephone there too?”

TO: “Ahhhh … maybe…?”

DR: “Okay, it’s 0419 xxx xxx.”

TO: “Thankyou Ron, the fault will be fixed by 7PM tomorrow at the latest (POTENTIAL WIN). We will send you a text message to let you know when the service has been restored (POTENTIAL WIN). Is there anything else I can help you with?”

DR: “Absolutely not. Thankyou for your time Sonny.”

TO: “Thankyou Ron, and thankyou for calling Telstra. HAVE A NICE DAY.”

Call #2

Needless to say, 7PM the next day came and went. No telephone service for about 20 hours now. (FAIL)

The IVR prompts Dr Ron to enter the phone number he is having difficulty with, which he does, and even presses the “#” key as instructed. The IVR puts him through to an operator. The ensuing conversation is this:

Telstra Operator: “Hello, welcome to Telstra, my name is Gilbert. Can I get the phone number you are having difficulties with please?”

Dr Ron: “Sure, it’s the one I just entered into your computer.”

TO: “Ohh. Well it hasn’t come through for some reason, what is the number please?” (ARGHGHGGHHH FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL)

DR: “Why hasn’t the number come through? I think you’ve got a faulty call centre. It didn’t come through last time I rang either.”

TO: “Okay, I’m sorry sir, but you will need to tell me the number you are having problems with.”

DR: deep sigh of despair, followed by “03 98xx xxxx”.

TO: “Thankyou sir, one moment please.”

…through early morning fog I see… visions of the things to be…

TO: “Are you there sir?”

DR: “You betcha.”

TO: “Yes there is a fault with that line, sir.” (FAIL)

DR: “I know. That’s why I reported it faulty. Yesterday. Your colleague Sonny said it would be fixed by 7PM today. It’s now 10PM. Why isn’t it fixed?”

TO: “Ahhh, let me have a look sir … just one moment.”

… suicide is painless… it brings on many changes…

TO: “Yes sir, I can see that it was supposed to be fixed by 7PM. I am very sorry, I don’t know why it hasn’t been fixed (FAIL). But there will be a technician come out tomorrow to fix it.”

DR: “What time?”

TO: “Between 8AM and 4PM.”

DR: “Do I need to be home to let them in?”

TO: “No, there is no need to be home, they will call you if they need access to the premises (POTENTIAL WIN). In case they do, can I just grab a contact number?”

DR: “Sure, use the one I’m calling from now.”

TO: “Oh. Ahhhh…” (FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL)

Déjà vu: the experience of feeling as though an event has already happened, or has happened in the recent past – the experience is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness”, “strangeness”, or “weirdness”. The “previous” experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience “genuinely happened” in the past. Read more.

DR: “0419 xxx xxx.”

TO: “Thankyou sir, we will call you if we need to access the premises, so someone can be home (POTENTIAL WIN). Also we will send you a text message to let you know when your service has been restored (POTENTIAL WIN). Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

DR: “Almost certainly not. Good bye.”

TO: “Thankyou for calling Telstra sir, HAVE A N…” <click>

Day #3

Telstra technician arrives on the front doorstep at 8AM, with no advance phone call or warning (FAIL). Grunts, and says he’s here to fix the telephone. After a quick inspection of the “customer equipment”, technician decides that the problem lies elsewhere, and leaves.

Service magically restored at about 2PM (WIN), almost 48 hours after being reported faulty.

Customer service fail?

The Telstra customer service IVR is bloody woeful. It answers promptly, but why do customers have to repeat numbers back to an operator, who should have the numbers on a computer screen? This isn’t rocket science, the technology to do this has been around for 20 years. Same goes for capturing a caller’s CLI.

No text messages ever arrived from Telstra.

No explanation was ever given as to what went wrong with my service.

No-one rang to pre-arrange an appointment time.

The estimated fault resolution time was over-run by 19 hours.

Do the WINS outweigh the FAILS?

Well, let’s not quibble about such things as “customer service” or “fault resolution”. Surely the ends justify the means in such circumstances.

In any case, your call is important to us.

Have a nice day.

customer service · customer service fail · failure · fault · service fault · telstra

Hi all,

This is just a simple house-keeping post.

Today I deleted over 1000 WordPress user accounts on The Surgery.

Chances are, if your username was “buy_viagra”, “animesex” or “fdksjahgiliegdlzzq” then your account has been deleted.

If I deleted any legitimate accounts, then I apologise a thousand times over. Please re-register with my eternal gratitude.

No tags

I recently blogged about Western Digital’s new WD TV Live Media Streamer.

It’s going great guns, but I had some difficulty setting up Samba shares on my Linux server, and seeing these shares from the WD TV Live.

“Samba” is an implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) networking protocol. Samba shares look like Windows shares to a Windows workstation, and behave the same way. Samba can also be setup to do clever things like emulate a Windows Primary Domain Controller, so the Windows workstations on the network think they’re talking to a Windows PDC, when in actual fact they’re talking to a Linux system emulating a PDC, providing enormous flexibility and saving thousands of dollars in Microsoft licensing.  Pretty cool, huh?

But I digress.  At home, I have a Windows workgroup. I also have a Linux server running Fedora 9 which I use for my internet gateway, firewall, DHCP, Network Address Translation (NAT) and other stuff. For most people, all this stuff is done by their ADSL router or similar device. But I’m not like normal people. And I’m running a business from home and I need the flexibility which a Linux server affords.

I wanted to have all my media on an external (portable) drive, connected to the Linux server, which is always on. Then I wanted to “share” this drive on the network, so I could access it from the new WD TV Live.

This is not a tutorial in connecting USB devices and mounting external drives in Linux. Also, this isn’t a tutorial in setting Linux file and directory permissions. For help doing that, you’ll need to hit Google.

Anyway, my new drive was mounted in my Linux file system at “/home/ron/elements”. (Co-incidentally it’s a Western Digital ‘Elements’ external hard disk.) I didn’t have Samba installed, so I installed it like this:

yum install samba

“Yum” is the Yellow-Dog Updater which is an easy and safe way to install commonly-used Fedora packages via the internet. I added my username “ron” to the SMB users’ file, like this:

/usr/bin/smbpasswd -a ron

…and added a new, browsable share in the Samba config file, like this:

[elements]

comment = WD Elements Share

path = /home/ron/elements

public = yes

writable = yes

createmask = 0777

directorymask = 0777

browseable = yes

printable = no

Then I started Samba, and added it to the correct startup runlevels like this:

service smb start

service nmb start

chkconfig smb on

chkconfig nmb on

All good! I could see the share by browsing on a Windows machine to the IP address, like this:

\\192.168.2.2\elements

…BUT a hit a brick wall at this point.  There were two problems which I couldn’t resolve. The second, I suspected, was directly related to the first:

1. I couldn’t browse the machine by its NetBIOS name, “derek”, which I’d specified in the smb.conf file, and
2. The WD TV Live couldn’t see the Samba share.

Graeme Callaghan helped me over this hurdle; with another 5 minutes fiddling, I had the problem solved.

Graeme’s Fix for Samba – NetBIOS problems – don’t forget your DHCP daemon!

There were two settings in the Samba config file which I had left as the default, being “remmed out”.  These were:

wins support = yes

dns proxy = yes

I un-remarked these.

Then, I un-remarked a critical setting in my DHCP server’s configuration file, which was also on the same machine:

option netbios-name-servers  192.168.2.2;

This setting controls NetBIOS name visibility on your network. If your Samba server is on a different physical machine, point the IP address in your DHCP config file to the Samba machine’s IP address.

Then I restarted dhcpd, smb & nmb. Low-and-behold, my Fedora server was suddenly browsable by its NetBIOS name; e.g.

\\derek\elements

Even better, The WD TV Live picked up the changes straight away.  The server “DEREK” was now available in my list of “Shared Folders” on the WD TV Live menu.

I needed to *turn off* a setting in the WD TV Live called Settings / Network Setting / Auto login to network share. Then I browsed to DEREK in the Video / Shared Folders list, entered my network credentials (which I had created earlier with the “smbpasswd” command) and verified I could see all the folders correctly and access the media OK. I then reset the Auto login to network share to ON so I wasn’t prompted for a username and password every time I tried to access this network resource.

There seems to be a lot of consternation on message boards about WD TV Live connecting to Samba shares. It’s easy when you know how (thanks again Graeme). Hopefully this is useful to someone.

For info, package versions are:

• samba-3.2.11-0.28.fc9.i386
• dhcp-4.0.0-22.fc9.i386

media streamer · NetBIOS · network · Samba · share · WD TV Live · Western Digital