Category Archives: Rant

The crap that Fibre To The Node technology will deliver for Australia

Computer Aid Posted on by

It is with great sadness, that I can announce Australia will take a step backwards in becoming the agile and technologically advanced nation that our leaders say they want to promote.

Australia is now a step closer to implementing the non-future-proof FTTN NBN internet technology, as an “alternative” to FTTP.

Based on the “spin” in this article: http://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/fttn-will-help-connect-end-users-to-the-nbn-network-more-quickly.html , its obvious that Australia will have serious long-term issues with broadband speeds.

Its unfortunate that the future potential of Australia’s technology will be hamstrung by “spending dollars in order to save pennies”.

2013 Australian Election: Rudd vs Murdoch

Computer Aid Posted on by

I am a strong believer in education, free speech, and open markets.

Which is why I’m a strong believer in the Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

It is a visionary project which could change Australia’s future.

It will give Australia its best chance to embrace the future digital age and become a bigger player in that field.

In my daily work, meeting people to fix their various computer problems, I notice one consistent attitude: They can’t wait for a faster internet.

Most people regard a faster internet as more important than other issues, as it has a more immediate impact on their lives.

Which is why I am very disappointed by the Liberal party’s “alternative”, which is slower, slightly cheaper in the short term, but massively more expensive in the long term.

murdoch3And recently, there has been another twist: Murdoch has decided that a fast internet for Australia will be a problem for his profitable Foxtel network, as it will allow people to get movies and content without being locked into a foxtel contract.

So what has he done?

Murdoch has decided to try to hobble Australia’s digital future by aggressively campaigning against the proponents of the NBN: the Labour party.

He has thrown out any semblance of unbiased political reporting, and is going all out against Kevin Rudd.

Up until now, I was thinking: oh, it looks like the Liberal party might win with a small majority.

But now, I am really hoping the Liberals do not win.

A Liberal win will hobble Australia’s chance for a better digital future where we can compete with the digital powerhouses of USA and Europe.

I urge everyone to spread the new about Rupert Murdochs plan, and about the guy that he has employed to try and undermine Australias digital future: Col Allen (AKA Col Pot)

 

murcoch2murcoch1

Acer cashback offer is really not worth it

Computer Aid Posted on by

About 6 years ago, I took advantage of a laptop cashback offer.

After about 1 month, I got a cheque in the mail, and I was happy camper.

About 3 months ago, I had the need to make use of an Acer cashback offer for a laptop.

I assumed that it would be a similar process… but no, it was worse.

Obviously, the 3 month delay is the first problem… Particularly when these offers seem to have restrictions like “offer must be completed by “this” date, and offer must be complete “X” days after purchase…

Then, instead of getting a cheque, I get an EFTPOS card

So, looking at the info I was sent, I can see further restrictions:

  • Card is valid for 12 months from the activation date
  • Card cannot be used at ATMs to withdraw cash (presumably, I can buy something from a supermarket and get cash-out… but I’m not sure
  • Card cannot be topped-up, or merged with another card

So now I’m looking at finding a way to spend all the money on the card, and not leave a few dollars.

I can try the cashout option (but it might not work)

Or the only other alternative is to buy over $49 at the supermarket (The card value is $49), and pay the first $49 from the card, and the remainder in cash.

And the sad thing is this: Acer do not operate the cashback system themselves… the use GiftCardPlanet… who charge Acer: $5.95 postage, $4.95 production fee per card, and a 2% credit card surcharge on the value of the card…

That could mean that my $49 gift card actually costs Acer $60.88

So, let me get this straight: Rather than hire a real person to administer the cashback program, an use cheques, such that a $49 might end up costing acer, say, $55 per $49 cashback, they choose to spend over $60 per $49 cashback offer.. with the extra money going to a “card” company, rather than put that extra money into the “my” pocket. And then make it more difficult for me to actually get the full cashback.

I must say: I really cant be bothered with all this crap… From now on, when I see a cashback offer, I’ll look for the actual cost, and compare actual costs, and just pretend the cashback offer doesn’t exist.

Windows 8 experiences, and the future

Computer Aid Posted on by

Although I haven’t “upgraded” to windows 8 just yet, I have encountered it many times in the real world, with real people using it.

Given that I am technically savvy, I was able to find my way around the OS, and get my work done, but in doing so, I can now see why so many people are avoiding Windows 8

I can understand that microsoft want to push people to using the “metro” interface, but in this case, 2 things are obvious:

  1. The metro interface is still very “unpolished” (ie few apps, many apps do not have the functionality that most people expect, etc)
  2. The classic desktop has been hobbled in such a way, that it keeps trying to force people into the “metro” system.

Now, if the classic desktop was functionally identical to Windows 7 (ie with the start button, and without flicking people into “metro”), then it wouldn’t matter that metro was unpolished… some people with touch screens would still go there, and everyone else would avoid it until it improved, and was worth using.

On the other hand, given how the current classic desktop works, most people probably wouldn’t mind, if the new “metro” system was an awesome feat of functionality and useability (ie like MacOS or IOS, or even Android!).

So, it seems that, with Windows 8, Microsoft have split windows into 2 parts, and have tried to accelerate the move to “metro” by damaging the classic desktop.

My opinion, is that MS have pushed a bit too hard, and they have also underestimated how attached many people are to the start button, and the classic desktop system.

And this is without even considering how the classic desktop is still a wonderfully functional and productive environment.

My prediction for the future:

Microsoft will publicly say that Windows 8 is the best ever… but behind the scenes, they already know that they have another “Vista” on their hands.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if MS is furiously (and urgently) developing Windows 9… mostly in an effort to fix the “problem”.

If common sense prevails, they will probably re-introduce the start button, and minimise the automatic jumps to metro… this would be the quickest and easiest solution, which would only require a Service Pack update to fix.

However, if MS is unable to see the obvious, they they will probably try to tinker with metro, in an effort to make it all things to all people (and fail).

Given the rise in smartphones and tablets over the last few years, I believe that MS have taken a wrong turn, by trying to unify their OS on phones, tablets, and desktops.

The desktop still has its place, so MS should have kept going with a split OS line:

  • Keep evolving windows desktop for power users
  • Run a parallel phone/tablet OS

Since the phone OS wasn’t working well enough, bringing it to the desktop is just asking for trouble.

MS needs to focus on true functionality, so that computers are properly useable, rather than holding on to the idea that you get the most profit by upgrading windows every 2 years.

Beware Linkedin advertising !

Computer Aid Posted on by

Back in January 2012, I got an email saying that linkedin is now implementing advertising (ie something similar to google and facebook advertising).

They also offered a free $50 “promotion”… OK, its less than the $100 that google offers, but it should be good to see what kind of return it gives.

Then it started getting weird:

I setup a campaign for my website design business, only to find limits like:

  • maximum daily budget cannot be less than $10
  • minimum cost per click (for a CPC campaign) is $2.00

Wow, I could be looking at, at least, $10 per day, per ad campaign.

Lets do the maths: with just 1 campaign, I could use up my “gift” $50.00 in just 5 days

I could be looking at $300 per month.

I’d need to be selling some high profit-margin goods or services to justify advertising in linkedIn.

As a comparison, Google have a minimum cost per click of $0.01 (yep, 1 cent), and the max daily budget also starts at $0.01. You you could limit your google advertising to just 1 cent per day, and then alter it if I want to get more views, traffic and clicks. And then Google also has a huge audience for showing these ads.

Facebook is similar: minimum Cost Per Click is $0.01, but the max daily budget is at least $1.00 (which I personally think is too high for some situations). But then again, facebook also has a huge audience for showing these ads.

So, I just try out the campaign, and as usual, I forget to check until about 2 weeks later (maybe this is what linkedin are planning: that people will forget).

Luckily it only cost me an extra $10 or $15, as I sometimes didn’t get to spend the full $10 per day.

Anyway, I switch off the campaign, and promptly forget about the LinkedIn advertising scam.

At the start of September 2012, I get an email from linkedIn, saying: “Your LinkedIn Ads campaign has been feeling a bit lonely recently. Come back to LinkedIn Ads and reach out to your customers!”.

They offer another $50 bonus, which expires on 19 Sept.

I figure: I’ll take another look.

I notice the click costs are still $2 per click, and I cannot set a max daily spend of less than $10…

Anyway, I guess I’ll just run the ad for a few days… I login and using the $50 code they sent me, I re-activate my ad campaign on the 12 Sept (before the 19 Sept deadline)…

I also add a campaign for my name-brand mobile phone look-alikes (iphone, Galaxy, HTC One X, etc).

Within 1 hour of activating my campaign, I get 7 clicks on my ads ($14 out of $50 gone already!)… and 29,000 impressions… ie my ads get shown 29,000 times!

But over the next 5 days, I get no more clicks, and the number of impressions drops to about 200 – 500 per day… It all looks a bit suspicious.

And I also find that the amount of information about my advertising performance, stats, etc is scant…I just cannot figure out why I got so many impressions, and then a sudden drop.

I then take a look over at the billing details, and I see that the $50 credit that linkedin gave me, has a “grant date” of sept 12, and an expiry date of sept 12… A reasonable person would think they mean the “coupon” has been used on that day… but being a suspicious person, I see it as: my “gift” of $50 expired on the same day I activated it, and any clicks after that date, I will need to pay for out of my own pocket. Thanks a lot LinkedIn! 🙁

When dealing with larger companies, it pays to be suspicious, and assume the cards are always in their favour.

So I suspended all my linkedin ads (again)… even though I still have a theoretical $36 in my account… I just can’t be sure about that. I’ll think I’ll just forget this whole linkedin advertising scam (again).

australian government slugs small business

Computer Aid Posted on by

So here I am, struggling to make a living at repairing computers, so I decide to diversify into selling computers, smartphones, and Android tablets via No Nonsense Computers online.

With the tablets and smart phones, I research various suppliers, and obviously I cannot compete unless I buy from China.

I then start to import small amounts of good, to check for quality problems, and gradually increase my purchases.

The last shipment I ordered cost me $1500 (plus $180 in freight cost, plus 3.3% ($50) for paying via paypal).

Since I’m ordering something thats over $1000, customs jumps in and hits me with $241 for Duty and GST.

So, I’m now paying an extra $471  (31%) extra for the goods!!!

Now, who am I competing against?

Lets see: If an average person buys the exact same stuff from ebay, direct from china, they pay no duty (the goods are less than $300 each), no GST, and often the shipping costs are reduced due to economies of scale by the seller in china.

I now have to try to sell my goods for an extra 31% (just to break even, and make no profit!!)

So what options do I have?

I’m left with attempting drop-shipping, so that each individual item is shipped directly to the customer, and I avoid paying 14% in GST and duty costs… I also cannot check the goods for quality and cannot do any value-adding (like install software, and extra configuration).

It doesn’t sound legal, but you could look at it as me acting as a “facilitator” between the manufacturer and the end-customer…

So, does this sound like the Australian Government cares about encouraging small businesses? Not if the business needs to start by importing goods for resale, and particularly when people can buypass government taxes by buying direct from overseas.

This is probably going to fall on deaf ears in Camberra, but the $1000 limit before you get hit with duty and GST should be raised to $5,000 or even $15,000

This will encourage small businesses to start and then establish a local market before then they can start paying duty and GST.

Even a sliding scale (similar to income tax) would be great: up to $5000 per shipment is tax free, then every dollar over $5000 is taxed at 25% up to, say $100,000, and every dollar over $100,000 is taxed at 35%

If the government was serious about encouraging small businesses, then they need to change how they implement import duty and taxes.

Career77.com and workvictory.com another scam alert

Computer Aid Posted on by

If you are looking for work and you get an email that begins with:

Thank you for your recent submission for a role at Employed Success.

To progress your submission further, you must finish an Online Assessment. This has to be completed within the next 7 days in order for your submission to get consideration for roles with Employed Success.

Then my advice is: don’t bother. Just move it into your spam folder and move on.

Its actually a variation on the: Work At Home Mom Makes $6,397/Month Part-Time

They say you make the money from google, but I doubt it.

My website and blog make me about $40 per month, and thats after 7 years of blogging (about 850 blog posts to date), so your chances of making 100 times as much depends on what kind of interesting / depraved / wacky nonsense you can serve up, in the hopes that it goes “viral”. Just because 1 person got lucky and got millions of hits on their youtube video of their pet rock which suddenly developed the ability to play chess, doesn’t mean you will too.

Divorce, consent orders, and superannuation splits: getting the wording correct

Computer Aid Posted on by

Here in Australia, the processes of getting a divorce and sorting out the split of property, is supposed to be getting easier (for those of us who don’t want (or cannot afford) lawyer fees.

Having just ended a 2+ year process of getting a divorce & a consent order (property settlement), I can see that the scales are still weighted in favor of guiding people away from a DIY solution.

I persisted, and with a fair amount of digging, managed to do it on a minimal budget.

First the usual disclaimer:

  • I’m not a lawyer, so don’t blame me if what worked in my specific situation doesn’t work for you.
  • This only works if both parties are in agreement on the split. If there is no agreement, then lawyers are the only way to go (unfortunately).

In my case, my ex did start getting lawyers involved, assuming I would just agree to whatever they proposed. After strongly disagreeing with a very unfair (for me) series of proposals, she eventually realised that the best results for everyone was to actually talk to me, and come to a mutually agreeable solution.

By that stage, I had taken a gamble and actually filed for divorce in Brisbane. Once someone starts divorce proceedings, the other party cannot normally stop the divorce. The gamble was: once the divorce was final, there was then a 12 month time limit on completing the consent order. If she delayed, then someone was going to have a major inconvenience (eg she could be forced to pay half the mortgage, which I was now paying… but then she could also move back in and claim half the living area… or she could force a sale of the house, to resolve any outstanding equity in the house).

Getting a divorce is actually quite easy, but it should be done after a consent order.

In the end we decided that I would get the house (and a considerable mortgage), while she would get a large chunk of my superannuation.

They say you can do it yourself, but then you get strongly pushed to get legal advice at every turn.

I ignored the “suggestions” to get legal advice… I can be stubborn sometimes. But I also got free (but limited) advice from real lawyers at community centres on many occasions… they won’t do anything for you, but they can point you in the right direction.

In the end we kept our son out of the consent order (it removed many complications), and so we just split the household effects, the 2 cars, the super, and the house itself.

The wording of the actual consent order was mostly straightforward (I can write legal-sounding stuff without too much trouble).

But splitting the superannuation ended up being the biggest problem.

It turns out you must give the super funds involved, 30 days notice of how you are going to split the super, and if the wording of the split is not “correct” (ie it must not make sense to a normal human), then they (in this case, Australian Super) will reject it.

You must get the super fund to agree in writing that they do not object to the split (and send them a “form 6” so that they can legally disclose how much money is in the super fund), before you file the consent order to a magistrate.

In the end, these are the orders that were approved (I’m publishing them here, in the hope that they will help minimise frustration for someone else in a similar situation)

The main part goes like this:

CONSENT ORDERS

BY CONSENT IT IS ORDERED

  1. That the applicant will retain ownership, all interest and liabilities in the business “XYZ Widgets” and the respondent relinquishes any claims in relation thereto.
  2. That the applicant will retain the family home at 2 Divorce Court, Deception Cove, VIC 7654, (the Home), and will also be fully and solely responsible for any mortgages, debts and Lines Of Credit, related to the Home.
  3. That the respondent fully relinquishes the family home at 2 Divorce Court, Deception Cove, VIC 7654, (the Home) and all associated liabilities, and is obliged to sign any relevant documents relating to relinquishing ownership and refinancing of the Home, within 30 days of receiving said documents. If a signature cannot be obtained within 30 days, then the court will be authorised to sign on behalf of the respondent.
  4. That the respondent will retain the red 1965 Hyundai Getz 5 door hatch.
  5. That the applicant will retain the white 1966 Hyundai Getz 3 door hatch.
  6. That the respondent will retain all furniture, appliances, and any other goods that have already been removed from the family home at 2 Divorce Court, Deception Cove, VIC 7654.
  7. That the applicant will retain all furniture, appliances, and any other goods that are currently at the family home at 2 Divorce Court, Deception Cove, VIC 7654.
  8. That in accordance with section 90MT(1) ( b ) of the Family Law Act 1975, (the Act), whenever a splittable payment within the meaning of section 90ME of the Act becomes payable to or on behalf of Basil Bushy from his interest in his Australian Super Superannuation account, Sandy Beach Bushy is entitled to be paid (by the Trustee of Australian Super) the amount calculated in accordance with Part 6 of the Family Law (Superannuation) Regulations 2001, using a base amount of $25,000 and there is a corresponding reduction in the entitlement that Basil Bushy would have had but for these Orders.

The Superannuation Fund responsible for the split of funds will be Australian Super. The applicant currently has funds with Australian Super (account number 123456789). The respondent currently has funds with Australian Super (account number 987654321).

 The operative time for order 8 is: 4 business days after the service of the final orders on the trustee.

 

 

Notice the weird wording of part 8 (which just means please transfer $25,000 from Basils super account, to the super account of Sandy Beach Bushy).

Also note that in part 3: the party thats giving up ownership of the house cannot stall or delay the transfer of house ownership by refusing to sign… as the court can now sign on behalf of the recalcitrant party.

Scam warning: Terry Riley bettennis.com.au

Computer Aid Posted on by

By now, most of us can pick a well-polished scam quite quickly.

With Terry Riley (bettennis.com.au), its a not well-polished, so initially, it fell into the realms of: “unlikely, but possible”.

I got a call from a “Cathy White” just before I was going to visit a customer. It sounded like a scam, but since she just wanted my email, and permission to send 1 week of betting tips, I decided: why not. She said Terry “lives and breaths tennis”.

So I ended up getting 3 tips from Terry and (without actually betting anything), I checked the outcome, and all 3 were winners.

There is very little information about Terry Riley on the internet.

Since his email tips also show his Varsity lakes address (gold coast, QLD), I figure: a real scammer wouldn’t do something like that.

To prove his past track record, he sends you a scan of hand-written tips for 4 months (Jan 2011 to April 2011), and the results seem reasonable: between 1 and 4 losses per month, and about 14 to 21 wins per month.

Overall, the wins more than cover the losses.

After a lot of thought, I decided that the yearly payment of “only” $600 was a reasonable risk, as I could bet at whatever level I wanted … I was just buying tips, so I wasn’t locked in to losing many thousands of dollars… and I could stop anytime I liked.

So I started a betting account (with a modest amount of money that I could afford to lose), and started receiving Terry’s tips.

After a few months, it I got the feeling that Terry was a big tennis fan, and that someone might have convinced him to use his knowledge of tennis to make some money.

After a few months, it also became obvious that Terry could not pick winners as well as he thought he could.

Sure, in the 10 months since I started receiving his tip, I’ve probably had 2 months that were profitable, and 2 months that were break-even, but otherwise its been a downward slide.

After a few months, Terry decided to introduce 2 tiers of tips: tier1 = tip is likely to win, but tips are less frequent, while tier2 is more frequent, but less likely to win. Obviously I started ignoring all the Tier2 tips.

I’m now down to 15% of the initial money deposited into my betting account. If I had started with the “recommended” $10,000, then I’d be down to just $1,500. Luckily, I used a much smaller starting amount.

To his credit, Terry doesn’t make excuses for any incorrect tips, but when I received 5 losing tips in a row, followed by 10 tips of alternating win-lose outcomes, it became obvious that Terry has either taken his eye off the ball, or he exaggerated his abilities.

After having done some research in this field, Terry’s results are no better than if you randomly pick results yourself, or if you follow a simple rule like: only bet on players whose odds are between 1.1 and 1.2

Verdict: Terry tries hard, but just doesn’t deliver.

Convert raw filesystem into NTFS (partition recovery software cannot do fixboot)

Computer Aid Posted on by

I got called out to a wreckers yard, to fix an infected Windows XP Computer.

It was a bit tricky, and once the infection was removed, the computer was left unable to start most exe files (some file associations were corrupt).

By that stage, it was closing time, so it was better for me to take the computer back to the office, and fix the problem during spare moments in my evening.

Once that was complete, I let the HDD defragment overnight.

The next morning, I closed the defrag window, and restarted the PC.

And then I got a bios message that said: operating system not found.

Great 🙁

Anyway, a bit of extra work, but it should be something trivial, like doing a chkdsk

I plugged the drive into the office computer, and windows says:

Disk/Drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it?

Obviously not.

I try UBCD4Win, but it also cannot recognise the partition as NTFS.

And a chkdsk will not work at all.

Using UBCD4Win, I run fixMBR, but that doesn’t help.

So I try Easeus Partition Manager, but after scanning for a few hours, it cannot detect and fix the problem.

I then try a few different partition tools, and I get some very strange results.

Some will immediately detect the partition as NTFS, and show that there is nothing wrong with the files and folders on the partition.

Others will just scan for a few hours, and not find anything.

How can similar software give such different results.

And most forums on the net are full of suggestions like “use data recovery software, then reformat”… It really shouldn’t be necessary.

I’m sure there must be a simple fix to get the filesystem restored.

So, after spending most of the day on this, with the customer getting very impatient about getting their computer back, I find all sorts of interesting pieces of information:

  • The NTFS filesystem is identified using the number “07”… in this case, some partition tools say its 07, other say its 00
  • The filesystem type is stored in 2 places: MBR and boot sector

So, its starting to look like the MBR and the boot sector have conflicting information about the filesystem type.

So how to fix it?

  • Boot from a windows XP CD
  • select recovery console
  • at the command prompt, enter: fixboot c:

For some reason, I kept thinking “this is a filesystem problem, not a boot problem… so fixboot will not help”.

So its a happy ending after a very frustrating day!

And I am very annoyed at these “partition recovery” companies!

Before starting a partition recovery process that could take many hours, how difficult is it to check that the filesystem type is consistent (rather than just looking at either the MBR or the boot sector)?

wordpress weaver theme: how to change the sub menu width

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’ve recently started using the weaver theme for WordPress.

One of the biggest mental hurdle to jump over, is to not directly alter the CSS stylesheet, but to use the CSS sections under the main options menu of the Weaver Admin panel, and in some cases, the <head> section of Advanced Options

However, I did find that using google to find the correct snippet of CSS code really didn’t work well, since most people go straight to altering the CSS stylesheet.

But I soon found out how to “uncover” the correct CSS on my own.

A good example was the menu bar along the top of:

Home Loan Advisors

I added the CSS:

{font-size:180%}

to the CSS sections for “Menu Bar text”, “Menu Bar hover” and “Menu Bar current page”

This made the menu font just the right size I wanted.

However…

The drop down menu was a fixed width, so the sub menu words were wrapping around, causing an ugly mis-alignment of the gradient background.

The solution:

I found someone who mentioned changing the #access and #access2 section in the stylesheet, but I decided to carefully look at the stylesheet myself (Appearance -> Editor)

The stylesheet is reasonable well documented, so I went to the menu section of the stylesheet, looking for something about “width” and a size of about 100 to 300 px (pixels)… which is what I guessed was the width of existing sub menu.

it didn’t take long to find a section that looked like this:

#access ul ul,
#access2 ul ul,
#access3 ul ul {
    box-shadow: 0px 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
    -moz-box-shadow: 0px 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
    display: none;
    position: absolute;
    top: 38px;
    left: 0;
    padding-left:0px;
    float: left;
    width: 180px;
    z-index: 99999;
}

So, what I wrote in the Advanced Options -> <head> was:

#access ul ul {width:240px;}
#access2 ul ul {width:240px;}
#access3 ul ul {width:240px;}

I was close: that altered the menu width, and the background shadow, but the gradient background hadn’t increased in width.

Another look at the stylesheet showed this code:

#access ul ul a,
#access2 ul ul a,
#access3 ul ul a {
background: #333;
line-height: 1em;
padding: 10px;
width: 160px;
height: auto;
}

So I also added the following code to the <head> section:

#access ul ul a {width:220px;}
#access2 ul ul a {width:220px;}
#access3 ul ul a {width:220px;}

Bingo!

Just the right width!

However, some alterations are more difficult than others.

Ultimately, more comprehensive documentation (or even more meaningful variable names), would make this process a lot easier.

I mean, why call sub menu widths: “access”, why not just call it “sub-menu-width”?