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• Advertisements are no less irritating when they're for American cars (and, in the run up to the Festival of Chastity on Feb 14, diamonds).
• Don Henley only had one hit in the 80s - Boys of Summer.  Michael Jackson, however, had dozens, and they're all awful.
• Any Whitney Houston at all is too much.
• The all-new 2008 Scion TC appears to be some kind of vehicle.  Gosh.
• You can upgrade to a Premium version of SkyFM for mumble dollars a month, and not get the ads.  You still get Whitney Houston, however, so it's probably not worth it.
• The only reason to stay tuned is because occasionally Phil Collins's In The Air Tonight will come up on the rotation.  I love that song.  Gods only know why, since everything else he ever did was total pants.
• Ditto Simple Minds' Don't You Forget About Me, which I love primarily because The Breakfast Club was the equal-best movie made in the 80s (along with Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
• Every now and then the music will skip, which suggests someone's actually playing physical CDs rather than just ripping the lot at high bitrates and sending them across the tubes.  Odd.
• Their CD collection is fairly sparse, too, because I've only been listening on and off for a few days and most of what I'm hearing is repeats.
• Interestingly, the ads are all in American accents, except the ads for SkyFM premium, which is in pure Nigellaese.  Is this a cultural-expectation thing ("Brit chicks are classy") or an artefact of demographics?
  

Meanwhile, Digitally Imported Radio has a Chillout channel that's pretty good for programming to.  Still has ads, but fewer of them.  No Whitney so far, so they're a net win.

ETA: Literally ten seconds after I edited this to include the picture above, guess what came up on rotation?  Spooky!

Incidentally, I just wanted to say: when it comes to debugging tools, Internode's streaming radio can't be beat.  Turn it on, chill out and get In The Zone.  Shiny!

(Although their all-80s channel would be improved with less Milli Vanilli.)

Received just now from Internode, in response to my question about Winston Conroy's Ministry of Truth:

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your support request with Internode.

As of January 20, we will have to comply with the new internet censorship laws as they will be mandatory.

You may be already aware that you are able to opt out of being censored.

At this point in time we do not have any specifics about being able to opt out.

We would suggest that when January 20 arrives, that you hang onto this ticket and just state that you do not wish to be apart of the internet censorship.

If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please reply to this email or contact our Helpdesk by phone on 1300 788 233.

Kind regards,

Greg
Customer Support Officer

I like that he's calling it what it is -- censorship -- and taking it seriously. Another point for Internode, and a black mark against the Iced Vo-Vo Empire.

When I grow up, I want to be Robbie McGregor. He’s the voice of King Wally Otto in the Soundproof Booth on Roy & HG’s This Sporting Life, and formerly the lewd and lascivious voiceover man on SBS TV who makes Adult Themes sound like something irresistible. Frankly, he could make the phonebook sound like a dozen naked altos in a spa full of caramel sauce. And what’s the reason I mention him? Because he’s also the “on hold” voice for Internode’s phone support! So any time anything goes wrong, I get to hear the man who puts the “vice” into “parental advice”. Woo!

It appears our new connection to teh intartubes has come through, kicking TPG off the line. The modem hasn’t arrived yet, but the technical person I spoke to (who speaks english - what luxury!) says we can use our old one until it does. So while I’m waiting for databases to copy over here at work, I’ll take my Beloved through the necessary steps to set things up over the phone, and she’ll be able to get back to her relentless internet addiction. Yay!

Edited to add: One short phone call later, it’s all working.  The Beloved is net-enabled, and Internode are damn good.

Crossposted from fLog.

Dateline: a couple of minutes ago.  My mobile phone rings.  It’s Internode, my soon-to-be ISP.  They’ve noted that I ordered a new ADSL2 modem to go along with my upgrade to their service from my soon-to-be-ex ISP, but I’ll need to pay for it.  Would I be available to pay for that now, if they put me through to the accounts department?  “Sure!” I say.  They put me through.  A nice polite fellow takes down my credit card details and quotes me a receipt number.  Have a nice day, he says.

He then hangs up the phone and forwards my details to his mafia masters.  Shortly afterward, my credit card gets maxed out, and my identity is stolen for use by Ukrainian kitten stranglers.

… Or it would be, or could be, if I were careless and unlucky.  Here’s what really happened:

Dateline: a couple of minutes ago.  My mobile phone rings.  It’s Internode, my soon-to-be ISP.  They’ve noted that I ordered a new ADSL2 modem to go along with my upgrade to their service from my soon-to-be-ex ISP, but I’ll need to pay for it.  Would I be available to pay for that now, if they put me through to the accounts department? “Of course not!” I say.  You could be anyone!  I’m sure I mentioned my plans to change to Internode on at least one public blog comment in the last few days.  If you’re really from Internode, prove it: send me an email with the details for your payments website, and I’ll pay there, happily.

This is not rocket science.  Security Through Sincerity, as I call it, is freakishly common.  I got a call from the Commonwealth Bank, if you can believe it, asking me to quote them all sorts of details about my identity and account so they could talk to me about it.  They wouldn’t prove who they were by (a) giving me a phone number I could call them on, or (b) telling me something only the bank would know about my account, because that would be a security breach!  I told them to go stick their heads in a pig.  But the best bit is that, not long after, they sent a form letter to all their customers, proudly announcing that their security measures were being beefed up, and reassuring us that all future cold callers would identify themselves by, in effect, saying they were from the Commonwealth Bank.

No doubt they would do so very sincerely, so we’d know it was true.

It’s alarming that banks and ISPs aren’t checking their processes.  A lot of people trust the voice on the other end of the phone, forgetting that it’s not hard to put clues together and deduce personal information about pretty much anyone.  Perhaps they feel a little silly, even impolite, questioning these people, all of whom presumably know what they’re doing.  The result is, of course, identity theft and fraud, and a lot of people left out of pocket while the Black Hats prosper.

The only solution is for those big businesses to audit and improve their policies, and kick up an almighty fuss about their competitors who don’t follow suit.  All else being reasonably equal, I’ll happily move to a service provider that understands this sort of simple concept.  Sadly, they’re pretty sparse.

Meanwhile, a happy ending: Internode sent me an email with identifying details that only they know.  I logged on to their accounts website and paid for the modem.  No worries.

Crossposted from fLog.