[CCC News] Assorted News 25 - See the E-Bike Tuesday.

Mon Nov 2 00:52:44 AEDT 2009

*In this edition:*
*
Quick Update

*    See the E-Bike Tuesday night.
    Update on Microsoft's Free Antivirus
    Short Rant on Greed.
    DIE-alup.
    Windows 7 is out :)
    In the Holiday Mood - KeyBored.

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*See the E-Bike Tuesday.

*A couple of newsletters ago I hinted that I was installing an electric 
bike kit that weekend. A surprising number of my customers are 
alternative energy / green types, and others are prolific bike riders, 
so I have chatted with a few people about it. One of them has invited me 
to show it at some "open forum" thing in Armidale on Tuesday night, 
where there will be a display of electric cars and bikes. ( More info on 
this event is at http://transitiontowns.org/ArmidaleNSW/ArmidaleNSW )

So, if you'd like to see what $429 buys you in the electric bike 
conversion kit department, or to check out what people with more money 
than me have been up to with their electric cars, drop in to the Kent 
House carpark at 6:30 Tuesday night.

It will probably be on the back of the Bluebird all Tuesday so you might 
also see it in the main street of Guyra.

My review of the kit itself is at http://auzzie.net/files/ebike-info.pdf

Oh, and if you'd like to see a 9kg easyish to carry bike in a bag that 
costs $3,500 and is illegal in Australia due to our slightly backward 
laws on these things, check out http://www.yikebike.com/site/home

I was considering selling the bike kit as a retailer, but have decided 
against it due to possible legal liability if someone installs it poorly 
then blames me! However, it's an opportunity if anyone is interested in 
it :) The nearest rivals in Armidale are double the cost.

*Update on Microsoft's free Anti Virus.

*I see AVG's up to their usual tricks, trying to force users into yet 
another new version of their now rather slow program. So a reminder that 
there is a free one from Microsoft, and a free one from Avast. Last 
newsletter I praised the Microsoft one for being a good product. It is 
:) But the one downside with it that has come to light is the size of 
some of its update files. They can be in excess 30MB every few weeks; so 
if you're on a really slow connection this could be an issue. Avast 
updates are much smaller but of course they require the 12 monthly free 
registration.

Microsoft Security Essentials is at 
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
Avast is at http://www.avast.com/

*Short Rant on Greed.

*Last week, a customer was caught in a booby trap that was set by 
Microsoft back in the year 2000. (Subsequently removed in 2003) This 
trap is that if you store more than 2GB of email in Outlook 2000, it 
will crash; taking your mail with it. (In this case, about 17,000 emails.)

I've heard of this glitch in the past, but most people have upgraded to 
newer versions of office since then; so I'd never actually enountered it 
first hand until this day.

Microsoft fortunately had a solution that was supposed to work, but was 
a bit hit and miss and quite time consuming to run. There were many 
other companies peddling solutions to this problem as well; and for some 
reason they were almost all identically priced at $49.99 US, with a 
couple up as high as $250+

It annoys me somewhat when people do this. My opinion is: If you 
consider how vast the world is; if you create some simple tool that can 
do the job, sell it for a small amount and you'll make it back on 
volume, and for the greater good of humanity. If instead you stick a 
high to ridiculous price on your software, people will just go straight 
to mininova.org or thepiratebay.org and solve their needs that way.

This practice has at last caught up with the likes of NavMan and Garmin, 
with Google now announcing that their newest mobiles will include fully 
functioning turn-by-turn navigation GPS built in for free. NavMan in 
particular I'm glad to see now suffering as their update price of $160 
for new maps can not be thought of as anything other than a rort.

*Windows 7 is out :)

*For those of you who have been holding off buying a new computer 
because you couldn't stand Vista, the good news is that Windows 7 is 
out. It uses about half the memory of Vista, and is not really all that 
much different to XP. The main difference is that the task bar now has 
buttons instead of long tags. I have it on my laptop so if you'd like a 
preview, flag me down :) As per the 'greed' article above, however, it's 
a bit overpriced to upgrade from XP and Vista.
*
DIE-al up.

*I received a notice last week from M2 Wholesale that advises that I am 
no longer commercially viable for them and that I have 90 days left 
before our contract terminates.

What this means is that I will soon cease offering dialup internet 
services under my own brand. Instead, I will be migrating the service 
and customer balances over to another company, Beagle Internet. They 
have some of the best rates going for dialup, are active and well 
respected in the whirlpool.net.au community, and because they are also 
an M2 Wholesale customer they can take over the operation seamlessly. 
They have offered to maintain the same accounting methods as Auzzie 
Internet for the migrating customers - accepting cheque payments and not 
expiring credit.

Auzzie Internet started as a dialup business in November 1997 charging 
$2 per hour for Internet service in Bourke, NSW. At its peak it had 24 
lines. (22 at 33.6k and 2 at 2.4k for prolific chatters) The dialup 
service was outsourced to KBS Internet around 2002 when wide area 
numbers were introduced. KBS was taken over by WCG (Wholesale 
Communications Group) who in turn was taken over by M2 Wholesale. At 
this point we're now down to just 6 lines.

Please note that this only affects dialup customers. Wireless Internet, 
ADSL and Web Hosting is not affected :)

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*KeyBored*

Christmas and the holidays are coming soon. The next newsletter will 
contain a collection of things to keep you amused!

To get started, here's two "Piano" programs. The first, C-Magic's 
Virtual Piano requires no downloads to play. Just go to 
http://www.cmagics.com/beta/piano/

Now, if you want to play the competition, you'll need to download 
"KeyBored" instead. (Although it might drive you mad heheheh.)

Free from http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y1zwtzzwhyk (You will 
need to unzip it and run keybored.exe) Only tested on XP. Then, open 
Notepad or Word or a blank email and type away :)

Once you have KeyBored running, you can then learn to play the songs at 
http://keybored.wikidot.com/system:keybored-songs by typing the letters.

The First person to reply to this email with the correct name of the 
following song (which is not in that list) wins $20 and their name in 
the next newsletter :)

hhhgfhh z
hhhhhghj z
jjjhgjj z
jjjjkjh v
hhhgfhh v
hhhjkj m
lklkj kjkjh gggjhgf

Cheers, Mike.

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http://auzzie.net/cccblog/

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-- 
Cool Country Consulting & Auzzie Internet
http://www.auzzie.net/ccc
MSN: michael at auzzie.net
Tel: 02 6775 0239
Fax: 02 8212 9582
Mob: 0427 644 825
Skype: cccons
Yahoo: lispbourke
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