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In this Issue:

• Featured Site - Australia Wide Lending & Property Investment
• Is 42 no longer Telstra's answer to everything?
• Pipe joins iiNet in filter blackout
• CommSec fined $55K for spamming
• Hacker attacks Victorian servers
• Quotes of the Day

Featured Site  

Australia Wide Lending & Property Investment

Australia Wide Lending & Property Investment is a Mortgage Broking firm with a lender panel in excess of 30 lenders including the Big Four Banks, regional banks, Building Society’s and Credit Unions. Our team provides a one on one service to assist with the purchase or your new property or to refinance an existing loan and provide debt consolidation services. Our client base consists of First Home Buyers, Investors and Business Owners each with finance packages tailored to their needs.

Our Property Investment division assists our clients with an end to end investment property strategy from arranging finance to finding a suitable property, providing access to our panel solicitor, finding a managing agent for your property and setting up depreciation schedules and negative gearing benefit. Our aim is to help our clients build wealth and an income stream for retirement.
Visit the Australia Wide Lending & Property website...

Is 42 no longer Telstra's answer to everything?  

With all this discussion about the pros and cons of wireless broadband, it was interesting to see Telstra bring to the market a new wireless broadband modem that the company has labelled as "Australia's fastest" especially since it already released a faster modem a year ago.

The new Telstra Elite Mobile Broadband Card, Telstra announced in an enthusiastic press release over the weekend, offers download speeds of "up to 8Mbps". The company has even qualified those claims with the fine-print disclaimer that there may be "typical customer download speeds of 550Kbps to 3Mbps in other coverage areas".

Interesting to see these numbers bandied about, since Telstra has been spruiking the network's 42Mbps maximum speed for years as an example of why Next G is ready to take over the world of Australian broadband. This was a central pillar of Telstra's Next G public image under the guidance of Sol Trujillo, who railroaded through Next G's construction and until his last day remained determined to put an air gap between that network and those of its rivals. ZDNet Australian Jan 2010. more >>>

Pipe joins iiNet in filter blackout  

Pipe Networks has joined ISP iiNet and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in an online protest against the Federal Government plans to filter the internet by blocking "refused classification" material.

Pipe Networks CEO Bevan Slattery published an email he sent to staff on broadband website Whirlpool.

"This campaign is being run to bring attention to the stupidity of the governments proposed filtering plan," Slattery said.

The company joins a number of websites protesting against the filtering plan. Websites participating are using a piece of JavaScript code to "blackout" their website. It notifies a person browsing a site with the code inserted about what the government plans to filter.

The code has already surpassed 300,000 views on websites it has been inserted on, according to the Great Australian Internet Blackout Twitter account.

The news comes on the back of claims by the Sex Party that "small-breasted" women in their early 20's would not be able to take a picture of themselves naked and then upload it to the internet without it being classified "refused classification", the type of content the government plans to block.

"This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year," wrote Australian Sex Party spokesperson Fiona Patten on the party's blog. ZDNet Australian Jan 2010. more >>>

CommSec fined $55K for spamming  

Commonwealth Bank subsidiary CommSec has been slapped on the wrist by the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA) after complaints that it had been sending unwanted messages to customers.

ACMA said that CommSec had satisfactorily undertaken actions to rectify the alleged problems. The securities subsidiary was fined $55,000.

ACMA commenced investigations following complaints from customers and identified that there were no options to "unsubscribe" from email campaigns conducted by CommSec in January, February and March of last year. The investment and securities subsidiary also allegedly continued to send its customers electronic messages even after they had withdrawn consent, which is in direct violation of the Spam Act.

"ACMA expects that Australian businesses take note of this outcome," ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said in a statement.

"Under the Spam Act, every person has the right to unsubscribe from receiving commercial electronic messages and to have that request acted on effectively and quickly. The failure to act on a request can result in significant penalties if a business is found to have breached the Act," said Chapman.

The Spam Act also requires that all commercial electronic messages allow users to unsubscribe.
ZDNet Australia Feb 2010. more >>>

Hacker attacks Victorian servers   

Victorian Police has confirmed that it is currently investigating attacks on Melbourne-hosted servers, as reports surface of a hacker named "Ghost Buster" targeting businesses to protest assaults on Indians in Australia.

"The Victoria Police e-crime squad is investigating reports of alleged hacking of a number of different business servers hosted in Melbourne. The ongoing investigation is in its infancy and it would be inappropriate to comment any further," Victoria Police said in a statement.

Although no businesses have been named, ABC Radio's Jon Faine reported that a Melbourne construction business had suffered an attack on its computer servers.

The construction company was reportedly aware of three other businesses and a defence organisation that had experienced the same attack. It cost the construction company around $100,000 to restore data and fix its computer network, according to the report.

The business told the radio program that "Ghost Buster" had left a message on computer servers stating, "Hello!!! Your servers [sic] data have been compromised by Ghost Buster and have been encrypted. If you want your data back you need to contact me... Stop racial attack against Indian people. If you don't then we will be hacking you [sic] f*ing Australian servers everyday. Have a nice day."

ZDNet Australia Feb 2010. more >>>

Quotes of the Day  

Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible. Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978)

The best way out is always through. Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), What Is Man? (1906)

Walking isn't a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage. Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

Brought to you by The Quotations Page

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