nullis.net

Have you always wondered the best way to explain the underlying of how the Internet, and DNS work, to someone was wasn't technical?

This illustration is perfect for that.

Ok. So I have typically not read many comic feeds, but I have started to add some to my Feed Reader of late.

Today I decided I would add Penny Arcade to my list of comics I follow, after a few things of late that have pointed me in the direction of it.

Now, I often read my RSS Feed items on the train, on the way to work. While means I am reading it from my mobile, and I don't really want to have to manually navigate to some pages, to check out content. It's why my RSS Feed exists in the first place.

So low and behold, when I realised the Penny Arcade RSS Feed doesn't include the comics in-line, I decided I needed to solve that.

And by the power of Yahoo! Pipes (which I have never used until today), here is the Penny Arcade Comics Only (with in-line Images) feed.

The side point here is that Yahoo! Pipes are very cool.

Remy Stern, Gawker:

Gawker has a brand new look as of today.

It's worse than Digg 4.0.

More reason to never go to any of their sites.

Natalie O'Brien for The Age:

THE personal details of millions of Vodafone customers, including names, home addresses, driver's licence numbers and credit card details, have been available on the web in what is described as an ''unbelievable'' lapse in security by the mobile phone giant.

The actual breach is that people were sharing usernames and password. It seems Vodafone doesn't believe in a structured level of access, instead giving total access to mobile phone shops, that just sell Vodafone products.

I would expect a lot of other businesses in this day and age might even share the same issue. It is probably a good time for them to review their setup of these things as well.

However, combined with the lawsuit, it would seem Vodafone (or rather VHA), might have seriously just impacted their bottom line.

Groupon's Andrew Mason:

One particular clone in Australia called Scoopon, created by the brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovitch, has been making life difficult for us. Scoopon went a little further than just starting their Groupon clone – they actually purchased the Groupon.com.au domain name, took the company name Groupon Pty Limited, and tried to register the Groupon trademark (filing for the trademark just seven days before us) in Australia.

There is also some coverage at ZDNet, which has some answers from the brothers behind Scoopon/Catch of the Day.

They insist that they have been in operation since 2006 (which Daily Deals/Catch of the Day has in some form or the other, however Scoopon is a more recent venture by them, launching only in April 2010, which is well after Groupon's inception in 2008.

I have been on ADSL since November 2004, I guess it is time for me to talk about my thoughts on how the future of ADSL in Australia is shaping.

During this time, I have been with [HTML_REMOVED]WestNet[HTML_REMOVED], on a 512/128 plan. This has suited me well most of the time, but there is often times when I want more download speed. This includes situations such as downloading [HTML_REMOVED]Ubuntu[HTML_REMOVED]'s [HTML_REMOVED]"Dapper Drake" Flight CD's[HTML_REMOVED] for testing, or when I periodically [HTML_REMOVED]<a href="http://gentoo-wiki.com/Advanced_Emerge_World">emerge world</a>[HTML_REMOVED] on my [HTML_REMOVED]Gentoo[HTML_REMOVED] systems.

But most of the time my [HTML_REMOVED]down[HTML_REMOVED] speed is fine. However, it is usually my [HTML_REMOVED]up[HTML_REMOVED] speed that annoys me. Being limited to 128 kilobits (or 16 kilobytes) of upstream can be very disadvantaging when you wish to use SSH to connect to things at home. Often it can be quite slow in response, especially if I am utilising the ADSL line to do anything else.

It isn't just me who is getting feed up with things like this, it is anyway who uses depends on their broadband for either work, education or whatever other means.

Some Australian ISP's have started to roll out their own [HTML_REMOVED]DSLAM[HTML_REMOVED]'s in an attempt to fix this situation, which is fine, but in many cases, the cost can be significantly dearer to go with these options, as there is additional cost of buying, installing and configuration of these DSLAM's by the ISP. But these options are better than what we have ATM, so I Commend ISPs such as [HTML_REMOVED]Internode[HTML_REMOVED], [HTML_REMOVED]TPG[HTML_REMOVED], [HTML_REMOVED]Adam Internet[HTML_REMOVED] and [HTML_REMOVED]iiNet[HTML_REMOVED] for doing so. If [HTML_REMOVED]Telstra[HTML_REMOVED] doesn't start to upgrade their network infrastructure, I will most likely being going with one of these companies. (For these who aren't in Australia, Telstra owns most of the ADSL infrastructure in Australia, and resells this to most ISPs, hence my ISP Westnet, relies on Telstra's infrastructure to be able to provide faster service).

A good question for Telstra at the moment is when are they going to start rolling out ADSL 2 capable DSLAM's into their infrastructure. Personally, I can't see Telstra being in a hurry to do this, especially since they have proven they [HTML_REMOVED]don't want to share anymore[HTML_REMOVED]. Oh and this is probably already proven by the fact that Telstra/Bigpond like to charge excessively high rates for their services, such as [HTML_REMOVED]Bigpond ADSL[HTML_REMOVED], which is currently $29.95 a month for their cheapest plan, on 256/64. You are probably thinking this would be quite cheap for someone who is a light internet user, and it would be. But when you look at the fact it comes with only 200MB of quota and it costs 15 cents per megabyte after that (that's $150 per 1000 megabytes), it isn't that cheap at all, especially when my ISP, WestNet, for the equivalent price, you can get a 500MB plan, on the same speed. Not that much of a difference, but there are many more cheaper ISP's out there. Just check out [HTML_REMOVED]this listing[HTML_REMOVED] on [HTML_REMOVED]Broadband Choice[HTML_REMOVED]. So to summarise this little rant, I think it's easy enough to say that ADSL, in Australia, [HTML_REMOVED]sucks[HTML_REMOVED].