Author Archives: Michael Wyres

82% of NBN Users Choose Higher Speed Tiers

In something of a surprise at last night’s Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee Estimates hearing, it was revealed that a much higher than expected number of initial NBN users a choosing the higher speed plans available on the fibre network. Both NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley, and Jim Hassell – (Head of Product Development […]

Wet Behind The Ears?

Was just mildly amused by the sequence of events described on the front page of the Ballarat Courier website, in regards to some wild weather interrupting the Australian Masters Rowing Championship on Lake Wendouree. At 8:35am, racing on the second day of the event had been cancelled – (as circled in red) – yet at […]

Link Baiting At Its Worst (Best?)

Keen to get a boost from the popularity of the Australian version of the singing contest, The Voice – on which British performer Seal is a judge, The Age came up with this headline for a story: Of course, when you click on that link, you get: Lost Seal Slips Into Town In Fishy Tale […]

Does Australia Really Want The NBN?

I love local newspapers. In many many cases, they are lovingly created by people who just want the best for their communities, and want to make sure they are informed as to the issues in their local community. The issues that the big metropolitan newspapers don’t give a damn about; issues that are presented without […]

State Government Padding Out Announcement?

Who would have thought a government might pad-out an announcement to provide more bang for the buck with the press release? Not you? Yeah, me neither. New Contract Moves Regional Rail Link Into High Gear Amongst the “features” of the new contract, we have: Major bridge modifications at Dynon Road, Moonee Ponds Creek, Lloyd Street […]

NBN: Me First! Me First!

Ever since the announcement of NBN’s highly anticipated three-year-rollout plan in March, there has been much jumping up and down from political leaders in various areas not listed within the three-year plan. Here’s another from Latrobe City councillor, Sharon Gibson, after Moe was left out: Councillor Battles for Moe Broadband “Cr Gibson will lobby her […]

Mulder Has No Interest In Where The Buck Stops

Late on April 30th, I finally received a response from my March 8th complaint direct to the Victorian Minister for Public Transport, Terry Mulder, about the state of infrastructure at Newport station. I wrote about this complaint a few days later on the 14th, after failures at Newport on both days. I might add, his […]

Chrome ‘Weak Signature Algorithm’ Solved

For people who have – (or have automatically had) – their Google Chrome installation upgraded to version 18 or later, you may have noticed the following error message on some sites you are accessing over SSL/HTTPS: This has been mostly the case for people – (developers in particular) – accessing sites with self-signed certificates, like […]

Andrew Laming: No Criticism Please

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming went on a trolling warpath earlier this month in regards to his perception that the National Broadband Network (NBN) was being rolled out in the Brisbane area on a politico-geographic agenda. NBN Rolls Out Labor’s ‘Map for Re-election’ “The cold, hard reality in Brisbane is that households in Labor seats […]

Mulder: The Buck Shoots Straight Past Me

Thousands of regular commuters on the Geelong line have had their travel plans massively disrupted on numerous occasions over the last couple of months, with signal and power failures shutting the line for hours at a time. People – (quite rightly) – have been complaining long and hard about it. It is apparently news to […]