Some Optus customers are facing a $179 charge for a new modem following the storms that lashed the Victoria and NSW this week. Australian IT understands that the carrier has been called on to replace a large number of modems used for its HRC cable broadband service since the storms hit on Wednesday. Customers whose equipment is out of warranty will be charged $179 to replace their modems, which are only available from Optus
With the help of a friend, I finally finished the upgrade on the computer.
Got the Amacrox case I wanted. It looks like a G4 done in perforated aluminium. The handles are useful for carting the beast around and I now get muh better airflow under the box.
Upgraded the graphics card, which was two computers old, could go above a resolution of 1024×768 and had an annoying habit of occasionally going wiggy on startup.
Doubled the RAM to a respectable 1G and added a second 80G hard drive. The hard drives are in black removable rack mountings, which wouldn’t fit in the old box due to a length dispute with the motherboard.
To top everything off I added lights to the box. They were going to be separately powered, but a recently replaced power supply blew within a month and the store swapped it for a 500W for me, so the lights got hooked in the new PSU unit.
My fascination with blue lights did have me leaning towards blue, but Laridian suggested green, so I went for both. Blue and green lights are good and look pretty spiffy bleeding through the perforated case. Also swapped the standard fans over to blue LED versions and they provide the bleed through the clear logo at the front of the case and light the back as well.
The computer is currently running well and the lights keep me well amused. I like blue and green lights.
Oh, and I got a Flickr account, as you’ll see if you click the thumbnail image
Two key witnesses appearing before a Senate inquiry in Canberra have backed bribery claims made by federal independent MP Tony Windsor. Mr Windsor says he was offered an overseas posting to quit politics, a claim he has repeated under oath at the inquiry. He says that businessman Greg McGuire made the offer on behalf of Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and Nationals Senator Sandy Macdonald. John Howard‘s cronies are still trying to weasel out of the charge
The Canadian government is moving to counter worries surrounding Canadian citizens’ privacy being compromised by the United States’ Patriot act. Apparently the FBI currently has the right, through Patriot, to search documents which may contain Canadian information sent to US firms carrying out work under contract. Thankfully, privacy still means something up there
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a statement to the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, attacking part of an anti-terror bill that would restrict media coverage of terrorist attacks and calling it unconstitutional. You’ve got to laugh when it’s Russia who are more progressive than the so-called free west
Former MP3.com chief and Lindows CEO Michael Robertson will reenter the music world next week with MP3tunes, a service that promises music without DRM restrictions. MP3tunes hopes to attract users who are fed up with restrictions on copying music from sites that use digital-rights-management techniques, such as iTunes
Six Romanians have been jailed for digging up the corpse of a cancer victim, ripping his heart out and eating it because they thought he was a vampire — via Warren Ellis
When told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three American high school students said it goes too far
in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories — via Warren Ellis
The research team at Johns Hopkins University have found a way to crack the code used in millions of car keys, a development that could allow thieves to bypass the security systems on newer car models. This shouldn’t affect Australia, as our codes are apparently tougher to crack for the time being
I’m always a sucker for shiny things and Bent Fabrication‘s shiny metal art objects make me very happy.
If you must inflict drooling, shitting, hideous little yard apes on the world, at least you can distract people from the horrible creatures with a shiny, metal, cartoon plane-like pram — via BoingBoing
Employees could receive a bill each month for the cost of stolen
bandwidth and wasted time if Australia-based Exinda Networks’ URL Bandwidth monitoring system takes off
Controversial Australian political and business web site Crikey announced its AU$1 million sale to Private Media Partners
Google is now an ICANN-approved domain name registrar, an intriguing move that could be tied to its blog hosting service, Blogger. Yahoo recently dropped its domain prices to US$4.98, as hosting companies use domains as a cheap way to lure customers. Registrar status could allow Google to compete aggressively on price. Bloggers seem to resist paying for hosting, so cheap domains might help Google’s plans for world domination
iiNet has revealed plans to launch voice over IP across its network by mid-2005 as it launched a spirited challenge to tier-one carriers with new voice and broadband bundles
Optus has reached 100,000 resale DSL broadband customers since entering the market less than 12 months ago. The move comes amid indications the number two telco plans shortly to announce details of an investment of up to AU$100 million in its own DSL network
Under the new US Order, the saving and planting of seeds will be illegal and market will only offer plant material produced by transactional agribusiness corporations
Broadband via optical fibre, which provides transmission speeds up to 400 times faster than current ADSL technology, is set to be trialled in Tasmania
Telstra is trialling booster
equipment that can increase the transmission limits of ADSL broadband by up to 20 kilometres from an ADSL-enabled exchange
CSIRO Minerals has found a way to reduce waste from car recycling, recycle materials that are currently thrown away, and make the end waste less harmful for disposal. In the age of environmental responsibility, old cars no longer rust away disgracefully, overgrown by weeds in remote country paddocks. Today they disappear into the jaws of huge shredding machines in metal recycling plants, along with broken washing machines, refrigerators and other metal wastes
Robot hacker Trevor Blackwell is at it again, this time with a self-balancing Eunicycle. Blackwell writes, Some time ago I built a self-balancing two-wheeled scooter. Since then I realised that two wheels are redundant, and only a single wheel is needed to make a rideable vehicle. A vehicle with a single wheel is much smaller and lighter. It weighs under 30 lbs and is easily carried with one hand when going up stairs or on public transportation
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