Internet Explorer Slipping?

I am an avid watcher of the statistics of visits to my websites, because a wide range of interesting trends may be visible before they are widely recognised, particularly in terms of browser use.

In recent months, I’ve been looking closely at the percentage of visits to my sites from various web browsers, and I have seen that there has been sudden and recent change – raising the question “is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer slipping away?”

Here is a comparison of the four major browsers – Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla Firefox (MF), Google Chrome (GC), and Apple Safari (AS) – over the last six months in terms of percentage share of visits to this site:

    IE MF GC AS
Oct 2010   50.5% 20.6% 9.2% 7.8%
Nov 2010   55.3% 21.5% 6.3% 8.5%
Dec 2010   51.5% 20.9% 8.0% 9.8%
Jan 2011   53.3% 20.3% 6.3% 10.9%
Feb 2011   24.3% 35.1% 19.9% 7.2%
Mar 2011   18.5% 18.7% 29.3% 7.9%

At a quick glance, it would seem Safari generally doesn’t change much on a month-to-month basis. Given the the predominant installed based of Safari is on Macintosh computers and Apple’s mobile devices, this number is more likely to move if the Apple’s share of the hardware market changes significantly, and this does not happen on a month-to-month basis.

This leaves us with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome.

Throughout the life of my site with its current hosting provider – (since mid-2008) – Internet Explorer has always been above 40% of site visits, and in the last 12 months it has always held at least 50% share – at least until February just past.

Firefox – with the exception of a few “blips”, such as that in February – has generally hovered around the 20% mark since my current batch of statistics began.

Chrome is however, the big mover. It’s almost always been below 10% since statistics began – until last month. In February it jumped to 19.9%, and so far in March is sitting on 29.3%. In the same months, Internet Explorer dropped from its usual 50% range, to 24.3% and then 18.5%.

Two big jumps for Chrome, coinciding with two big drops for Internet Explorer.

Of course this is hardly a scientific study, and the recent release of IE9 may see it recover some ground – but it will be interesting to see next months numbers, and understand if this trend is a brief one, or will be more sustained.

Stay tuned.

WTF Moment from The Australian

Flicking around the online news media over a cup of Earl Grey this afternoon, I came across this rather peculiar article at The Australian website.

“COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy seems destined to make his own job harder than needed, with breathtaking gaps in his consultative process and an extraordinary belief that everyone should simply take him at his word.”

“Conroy is rightly suspicious of Telstra and Optus, which basically run a duopoly service which they don’t want upset.”

“NBN is the intruder but that doesn’t excuse putting myriad powers in the discretion of the minister nor exempting the NBN from ACCC scrutiny.”

“Yet that is exactly what Conroy has done with his latest amendments, which gives the NBN freedom that the incumbent duopolists could only dream for.”

“By doing so Conroy unnecessarily invites scepticism at a time when, despite previous denials, he seems to be letting NBN loose as provider of retail services to big business.”

Ignoring the factual inaccuracies – (and the traditional right-leaning political bias of The Australian) – for just a moment, you would think that surely if you were going to come up with an article which is clearly designed to debunk the position of Senator Stephen Conroy in regards to his NBN legislation – (in committee in the Senate as I type) – you could do a bit better job than this?

It is 131 words long. I’m sure you’ll agree that it does not feel “finished”.

It is almost as if John Durie forgot to do his homework, and slapped this together on the train on the way into work. He makes a bunch of statements, presents no information to someone who might be reading this with no knowledge of the NBN, and … just … stops.

Laughable.

V/Line: Treating Customers Like Idiots – Still

This afternoon I got the following tweet from V/Line’s curiously named “@vlineinform” account, once again showing how the truth should never get in the way of, well, treating their customers like idiots.

Now – notice that the current time is “16:37”, and that the tweet(s) were received “3 mins ago” – meaning they were posted at “16:34”. These tweets proudly announce that the “16:13” train has been delayed by 15 minutes.

Mind you – (and remember it was 16:34 when these tweets went out) – the 16:13 train had not even left yet. Would not that be (at least) 21 minutes delay?

It actually departed at 16:38, that of course being 25 minutes late. Not 15 minutes late.

Do V/Line actually think we don’t notice these things?

It might take a lot to improve your performance V/Line, but for a start, I’m sure it won’t take a lot to stop treating your customers like idiots.

Fun and Failure at the Herald-Sun

Got this great screen capture from the Herald-Sun newspaper website this morning.

First it was the failure – the nicely put “ceasfire” in Libya. Surely a spellchecker fail on “ceasefire”? Nice one guys.

Then some cheeky humour with “Police to Test Ricky Nixon’s Undies” – referring to disgraced AFL player agent Ricky Nixon, and his alleged affair with the “St Kilda Schoolgirl”.

Funny.

Online Piracy Not The Problem

There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks, following the apparent culmination of the so-called iiTrial – in which national Australian ISP iiNet successfully defended itself against an accusation by AFACT of facilitating and doing nothing to prevent the theft of copyrighted material by its customers.

AFACT themselves recently released a report claiming that online piracy of copyrighted material costs their members in the region of $1.3b every year. The Australian Pirate Party has hit back, declaring the AFACT report a farce.

Certainly, the “loss” felt by copyright holders is difficult to quantify, and I personally have no idea where the real number lies. The bottom line is I really doubt that both AFACT or The Pirate Party know either, or want to reveal the true number if they do know it.

It is in AFACT’s best interests to make the number seem as high as possible, and The Pirate Party – (as an opposing force) – is interested in making the number appear as small as possible.

However, I don’t believe that it is the piracy itself that is the real problem.

It is more about WHY people download content – the overpricing of the content in the first place, and the locking of people into certain technologies.

Like just about any product – the market will eventually find “the right price”. Price it too high, and people won’t buy your product. Price it too low, and you don’t get a decent return on the investment required to create your product. In almost all market segments, the market invariably finds the happy medium.

The problem with the record and movie industries in particular – (and to a lesser extent the gaming industry) – is that the producers of the material invariably price things too high, and don’t listen to what the market is telling them.

The content producers – (in whichever industry) – don’t seem to realise that people “pirate” their material because they over price it. If it were lower, they’d sell more of them and make their money on volume, rather than on unit price.

Ask yourself how many DVDs you have in your collection. Now ask yourself what percentage of them you’ve watched more than 10 times. Suddenly paying $30 or $35 for that DVD seems like a pretty dumb idea – did you get value for that purchase?

Of course you didn’t.

As long as the content producers think that that is a reasonable price for a new release DVD, people will download it – simply because it is cheaper. Spending $5 or $10 to deal with blowing your download quota for the month to download a couple of movies is still much cheaper than buying an “original” copy on DVD.

Reduce the DVD price – (which probably only costs a couple of dollars to produce) – from $30 to $5, and you’re making six-times-less per unit, but you’ll probably sell ten or twenty times more units.

Downloading a movie from the internet would no longer be the path of least resistance.

However, the entire concept of what a DVD is, is another part of the problem. Many people have/had large collections of VHS video tapes. If your VCR is still in working condition, you can still make use of those tapes.

Once it fails, where are you going to get a new VCR? They are almost non-existent these days. Your investment in VHS video tapes is now worthless.

One day, DVDs will be so “old hat” that manufacturers will stop making the players. Some other “better” technology will come along, and the DVD will die. Once your last DVD player dies, you’ll not be able to buy a new one, and your investment in DVDs becomes worthless.

Whatever technology replaces DVD – (whether it be Star Trek-like isolinear chips or self-aware-self-healing-organic-algal-storage-systems) – one day, they too will be obsoleted, and whatever investment you have in that technology will follow the same path to oblivion as did VHS tapes and DVDs.

That is what the big movie studios and record companies want to protect. They want to protect the fact that every few years, a new technology emerges, and everyone has to re-purchase their content on the new format.

More money for the copyright holders, while you buy content you’ve already bought, over and over again. It’s a scam.

The sooner they adopt digital, storage-format-agnostic distribution of their content, the sooner people will stop downloading material in those formats. I like having something in digital form because I’ll only have to obtain it once.

I like storing them on hard disk for quick and easy access from wherever I am. If hard disks go out of fashion, I’ll transfer them onto the next popular storage medium.

I don’t want to buy it again. And again. And again.

That’s why people download.

Important Twitter Security Enhancement

Twitter today announced a new security feature enabling HTTPS for all web connections to the service. HTTPS is a secure/encrypted version of the standard web protocol, HTTP. This follows similar recent changes by Facebook.

Using HTTPS where possible/available is important – it means that all your communications with the Twitter site are encrypted end-to-end from your browser to their servers. Using it eliminates many possibilities for the “bad guys” to snoop your personal information during any transaction between yourself and Twitter.

Turn it on. Now.

Go to your Twitter Settings Page and make sure “Always Use HTTPS” is ticked, and click “Save”.

This does not necessarily protect you when using third-party Twitter applications, but today’s changes should allow such applications to be updated with similar security functionality, if they don’t already use it. Twitter has had HTTPS available for quite some time if you wanted – they are now at least allowing people to enforce its use.

Do it people. Protect your personal information as much as you can.

Shiny Happy Coca-Cola

Got a giggle out of this piece of marketing fluff on the side of a bottle of Diet Coke this morning.

“Listen closely and hear the happiness being unleashed when you open this bottle.”

Sounds like a piece of the bad marketing english you’d find over at Engrish.com or on a Hello Kitty product.

Funny.

On A Personal Note: NBN Concerns

It has come to my attention that my name appears in the blogroll of the site “NBN Concerns”.

While it is somewhat flattering that people find my thoughts and discussions in regards to the National Broadband Network (NBN) valuable and/or interesting, I wish to clearly state for the record that I am in no way associated with the “NBN Concerns” site, and any material posted directly on that site should not infer or imply any endorsement by me of that material.

I feel that it would have been far more courteous for the operators of that site to contact me and ask if I would like to have been included so prominently amongst their material.

They chose not to do so.

The Sheep Is Dead – Long Live the Sheep

It is a common expression in this country that the foundation of our economy “rides on the back of the sheep”, referring to our long and proud agricultural history, with the “sheep’s back” statement particularly related to our wool industry.

The National Broadband Network (NBN) has undoubtedly become one of the hottest politicial stories of 2010 and 2011, with opponents passionately opposing the cost to build the network, and supporters vehemently debating the technical and economic benefits of its existence. Regular readers of this site will be in no doubt that I am firmly in the supporters camp.

Opponents of the massive Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) network variously want a completely unworkable wireless solution, or a combination of the failed OPEL Networks plan and a Fibre-to-the-Node (FttN) network to meet the desired outcomes more cost effectively.

The idea that a FttN solution will be “cheaper” and a “better solution” to the planned FttH solution is a fallacy. Anyone who thinks that the original FttN plan – (a mathematical model developed by a team of bean-counters at Telstra) – will compete with a FttH plan over the medium to long term doesn’t understand how similar a FttN and FttH solution would be in terms of how much work would need to be done.

In the short term – (the very short term) – a FttN network will be cheaper, but in fact you actually lock Australia into an expensive upgrade cycle, and it will never deliver a consistency of service, and a uniformity of service user to user – a key aim of the NBN. Speeds will still vary depending on how far you are from the node – just as distance from the exchange creates massive variances in speed right now.

Moving completely away from our aging copper network has many technical and cost advantages.

The Coalition wanted to spend $6b to get everyone up to the mysterious 12Mbps speed target, which is in fact slower than some people get right now.

Great. Fantastic. You can do that – but what happens a few years down the track when everyone needs 50Mbps?

You have to spend more money again to acheive that target, and then a few years later, you need to throw even more money at it again to get even faster as people’s need for speed rises.

The NBN is measured as a 30 year project – how many upgrade cycles would a FttN network, designed initially for just 12Mbps, lock us into for the next 30 years?

It will be no cheaper – in fact it will be more expensive, it will not provide service equality, and leaves Telstra in charge to continue raping and pillaging the wholesale market, just as they have done for years.

Average broadband speed in Australia is currently about 2.5Mbps (ABS figures), so the planned base NBN speeds – (ironically, of 12Mbps) – will improve average user access at least by a factor of nearly five.

The MINIMUM speed is lifted to 12Mbps, and therefore the average speed end user speed will be well beyond that with the higher available speeds. The FttN proposal only lifts people to a MAXIMUM guaranteed 12Mbps – certainly, some will get more, but that’s more of a side effect than it is an actual target of the plan.

The FttH version of the NBN also gives higher reliability, lower latency, and almost limitless expansion possibilities for the future. For example, the current state of the art for GPON technology – (exactly what is being built) – allows for 40Gbps with current proven fibre signalling technology.

There are already laboratory tests giving 400Gbps in a GPON-style network installation, using the exact same fibre that will already be in the ground, simply through improved signalling technologies.

The NBN will cost a lot of money, but the reason for the “big spend” is that deploying this kind of infrastructure will eliminate much future spending on expensive and repetitive upgrades down the track.

By building the NBN as proposed, we eliminate the network as a limiting factor – (like it is now) – and allow the market to spend time, money and effort developing applications on top of the network for the good of everyone.

At the moment, all the investment is wasted patching up a rotting, failing, undermaintained, 60-year-old copper network that is bursting at the seams, and artificially controlled by Telstra, driven by its legal responsibility to deliver the best possible outcomes for its shareholders – which is incompatible with consumer outcomes.

I can imagine a similar argument 60 years ago about not needing to spend taxpayer money building the copper network because we had the postal service and telegraph. In actual fact, the copper network cost more per head of population all those years ago, than the NBN is planned to cost per head now.

Might I add that the project is also ahead of schedule, and under budget.

Many think it’s a colossal waste – and they are entitled to that opinion. However, in my opinion – (and this is shared by many) – actually NOT doing could cost Australia a whole lot more.

Consider, by the year 2020 the ABS predicts that Australia will suffer from $20b in lost GDP simply through traffic congestion. People sitting in cars not being productive. Goods sitting on trucks not moving to where they are needed for other people to be productive.

In the simplest terms, if the NBN encourages even 10% of the commuting population off the road to become remote knowledge workers – (and no, we cannot do that effectively and efficiently now with a maximum of 2Mbps of upload available to most people in Australia) – you can see a potential increase of $2b a year in GDP, straight away by doing nothing else except making this infrastructure available.

If we see 10% less traffic on the roads, it also means the 90% that is still on the road have 10% less traffic to deal with, so they gain an increase in productivity by not actually doing anything differently than they are now.

Having 10% less traffic on the road means less wear and tear on the roads, saving on expensive road funding. It should also mean 10% less road accidents, lowering the pressure on ambulance, hospital, and rehabilitation services – delivering consequent cost savings – and increases in efficiency in those sectors. Hospital waiting lists should be able to be reduced because less people will be taking up hospital beds after road accidents.

Having 10% less road accidents means less pressure on your insurance premiums, and the lowering of the need to build new roads and freeways.

Even more simply, 10% less vehicles on the road reduces carbon emissions from motor vehicles by 10%. How much would it cost to fund environmental programs to do that by themselves? This would be a free hit, for crying out load!

In Melbourne, a project costing over $1b to add an extra lane to the city’s most significant freeway system – the Monash/Westgate corridor – is about to be completed. Great – we’re encouraging more cars onto the road, and more people off environmentally friendly public transport options. This is a complete waste. We will be feeding even more cars in a shorter amount of time into the same amount of space in the CBD.

There are now more cars crossing the combined capacity of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, than were crossing just the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1992 when the tunnel first opened.

So now, even more cars are being fed into the same place – (the Sydney CBD) – than there was originally, and this was supposed to REDUCE congestion. Another half-a-billion dollars “well” spent.

Can you imagine the difference if people started being able to work from home, or in activity centres in the suburbs? We wouldn’t need to be spending all these wasted billions of dollars on road infrastructure for a start.

All this if the NBN makes it viable for businesses to send just 10% of people to work from home – (and thereby requiring to rent 10% less office space) – instead of in the office.

Imagine if it hit 20%? Or 30%? Add the numbers up and see how quickly the above macro-improvements to the economy “pay” for the price tag of the NBN. This is before the NBN makes a single cent itself.

Yes, the NBN is a lot of money.

But there is a difference between spending money and making an INVESTMENT in the future of our nation. The governments of this country – (and indeed the whole world) – spend money for stupid projects that create bigger and more expensive problems that have to be fixed later.

I’d much prefer Australia to lead the world than do what it always does – and that’s to stick it’s head in the sand and say “it’s too hard”, “it’s too expensive”.

How about for once we say to the rest of the world “too bad – we’re doing this, and we’re gonna win”?

Even Google themselves recognise that the policy for the construction of the NBN is a world leading position. How could we in our right minds ever choose to ignore this opportunity?

People just need some foresight for the future. Politically speaking, I’m quite a right leaning, traditionally Liberal voting person – but quite frankly, the “carefully carefully, quietly quietly” rhetoric of the current conservative politicians in this country makes me sick. It is almost like they want Australia to be followers, rather than leaders.

With risk comes great reward. There is risk in building the NBN, but equally there is risk in not building the NBN. If we build it, we MIGHT have nothing to show for it – but if we don’t build it we will DEFINITELY have nothing to show for it.

It is time for Australia to show some guts. Getting in and having a red-hot go is what made Australia great in the first place, but we slid off the sheep’s back a long time ago. We can’t rely on resources and agriculture to carry us along forever.

It is time for Australia to ride again – and to show and lead the world. We need to let go of the teddy bear, and start being a grown up nation.

The sheep is dead – long live the sheep!

BACKGROUND: This post was developed from a conversational thread over at Delimiter, which in turn was a repost of my recent post in regards to poor NBN information presented by the Coalition in federal parliament.

Who Gives the Coalition NBN Information?

On my way home from the office yesterday, I caught an extraordinary speech from the House of Representatives from Member for Macquarie, Louise Markus, in regards to a motion to have National Broadband Network (NBN) enabling legislation read in the house for a second time.

Listening to her speech, I was repeatedly flabbergasted out just how inaccurate large swathes of her speech was. I kept asking myself, where did she get her ideas on what the NBN is, from? Where did she get such dumb ideas?

From the top – (these quotes are taken directly from her speech, as found in the House of Representatives Hansard, 28th February, 2011):

“Now is not the time to commit to a $50 billion spend on a technology that is no better than other technologies being used across the world today – wireless, DSL, HFC cable and other systems that deliver fast broadband.”

FALSE – exactly what performs “better” than optical fibre? I mean, is someone going to develop warp technology to bend space-time anytime soon, so that we can move things faster than the speed of light?

Even Albert Einstein himself only postulated that this kind of thing MIGHT be possible – he never proved it beyond theoretical calculations.

I pre-emptively nominate the Member for Macquarie – (or for that matter, anyone in the Coalition) – for the Nobel Prize in Physics, and recognition as the brightest scientific mind in history if they can pull this one off!

Hell, it would even enable Star Trek style inter-galactic space warp travel – so I wish them good luck with it!

“Ploughing $50 billion into the NBN – most of which will be spent digging trenches and laying pipes – at a time when reconstruction after natural diasters and a once-in-a-century mining boom compete for resources is a guaranteed way to ensure taxpayers do not receive value for money.”

FALSE – the deal between Telstra and NBN Co for access to EXISTING ducts and conduits – (which most analysts agree is almost certain to meet with Telstra shareholder approval) – will largely eliminate the need for the digging of trenches and the laying of pipes for street level work.

These pipes and ducts have existed in the most part, for sixty years.

“What we do know now, after intense pressure from the opposition, is the reluctant admission by the Labor government that households will have to foot the bill to connect the cable from the road to the home.”

FALSE – any homeowner who chooses not to have the “road to the home” cable installed at the time of the initial rollout in their street will have to pay for someone to come back and do it at a later time, but EVERY Australian premise in an area to be served by fibre will have the chance to have this done during the initial rollout at zero cost to themselves. Free. Zero. Zilch.

This is the so-called opt-in/opt-out debate which clearly the Member for Macquarie does not understand, has chosen to ignore, or hasn’t even bothered to research.

“What we do know now, after the spotlight of public scrutiny was shone harshly by the coalition on the Labor Party, is the plan to dig up our roads and freeways, city and suburban streets, footpaths and utilities trenches to lay the cable.”

FALSE – they’re digging up freeways? I would challenge the Member for Macquarie to show us any single road – (freeway or city/suburban road) – that is planned to be dug up. Where is the information supporting this statement?

Even if it is required – (there will probably be isolated examples of minor roads) – will NBN Co not restore them?

As for footpaths? Some might be briefly closed for public safety while workers are active in areas, but “dug up”? Some might – (or might not) – get damaged during works – but as happens now, any contractor performing public works that damages other public infrastructure, must restore that infrastructure to its original condition.

“A resident of Bilpin, Kylie Docker, contacted me, seeking an answer to the question: who will pay the cost of connection from the road to the front door? Kylie lives on acreage and the family home is a long distance from the road.”

MISINFORMED – nobody will be paying the cost of installing a cable connection from the “road to the front door” of Kylie Docker’s house.

Anyone living on “acreage” that is “a long distance from the road” will not see their NBN connection served by fibre.

The town of Bilpin is situated in NSW’s Blue Mountains, approximately 90 kilometres from Sydney. A quick look at NBN Co’s published coverage information for New South Wales does not list Bilpin inside the fibre coverage area. It’s not even in the wireless coverage area, meaning it gets satellite coverage.

No “road to the front door” cabling for anyone in Bilpin, Ms Markus! Bilpin is getting satellite coverage. This information is freely and publicly available. I managed to look it up in less than thirty seconds – I’m sure you could have too.

“The NBN will initially be a stand-alone wholesale provider that provides layer-2 bitstream services to retail service providers who in turn provide services to end customers. It is not allowed or set up to do retail. How then is the NBN allowed to supply network services to gas, water and electricity utilities, transport operators and road authorities—even though the provision of such services to these entities is an existing and valuable business opportunity for Telstra, Optus and other carriers? Is this selective retail creep?”

MISINFORMED – this is just a complete facepalm. Telstra, Optus and other carriers will still provide such services to utility companies, just as they do now. Currently they wholesale from Telstra Wholesale – (as distinct from Telstra) – and sell to the utilities.

In the NBN world, they’ll wholesale from NBN Co instead.

So what was the point of this statement? Nothing technically changes. Things will be cheaper, faster, and less open to market manipulation by the dominant, incumbent wholesaler, but you get that.

I respect the Federal Opposition’s right to oppose anything and everything they choose to in parliament – but seriously, folks – check out some of your facts first?

Ms Markus, you’re now on record forever – (in Hansard) – as making some truly ridiculous and inaccurate statements. I sincerely hope that you’re proud of them!

Whether or not any of us is a supporter of the NBN, I think we as the Australian people would be much better served by some fair and reasonable debate based on facts, rather than the spewing out of inaccurate, and misinformed spin!

Where do they get such dumb ideas?

UPDATE: This article has been republished with permission over at Delimiter.com.au.