There’s an on-off, local, real-time, online war unfolding between users of Sentech’s new MyWireless service and the company itself.
From the looks of it, users have been getting immensely lousy speeds (below 56k modem levels) for some time. Sentech itself has a tiger by the tail, given that it seems to have a lot of very IT-literate customers online, fighting for the service they’re paying for.
The media, not surprisingly, given Sentech’s muscle, haven’t mentioned this at all, which tells you something about the lack of real consumer journalism locally, given the media blitz of advertising for the MyWireless product.
To view the ongoing struggle between MyWireless customers and Sentech, do some browsing — before signing a 24-month contract — through the 60-odd pages of warfare (and some compliments) and very useful insights at the independently run MyWireless Customer Forum.
For a taste of the warfare, you might want to look at Slow Speeds, then Taking the War to Sentech HQ and Taking the War More Public.
The forum is one of the best ways for prospective and current MyWireless customers to get a real-time glimpse of how this new 24/7 internet technology is working out. Go watch. At R650 a month for the basic package, it’s still cheaper than anything Telkom is offering.
When worlds collide: so what happens when you have a washing machine that isn’t quite working, some technical computer skills and the insane urge to link your PC to the washing machine? Be very, very afraid and hide your socks as you head to Computer Meets Washing Machine.
The art of making a link using a wildly tacky or insulting url, and then linking it to an official site that is unaware that it’s been made a laughing stock of, continues. See what happens when you go to “Jam Rag” as an example.
Cartoon time, and here’s a rather stupid flash cartoon for you folks with bandwidth and a Ninja fetish.
Or maybe you’d prefer some odd e-mailable (is that a real word?) “hypnotise your friends by e-mail” applets — at Hypnotize Your Friends.
Way-too-much-time-on-their-hands department: what’s worse than being trapped in a room when you’re tired and someone wants to read you his or her poetry? Not much — unless you’re part of a sleep-deprivation experiment and there’s a webcam watching your every exhausted move: Webcam.
And in the way-too-much-money-to-spend section: if you were in the United States, you could get a phone call from a real, live celebrity for just $20. Of course when I say “celebrities” I mean the third-tier rank of poor slobs who never really made it big, or whose careers never quite took off. Go stare at the list of rather humiliated individuals who’re now reduced to whoring themselves for small change, at Celebrity Phone Calls.
For those of you clever types who realise that eating dead flesh is perhaps not the cleverest, most hygenic or normal thing for a species to be doing, why not take a look through the assorted posts and offerings at The Veggie Board. (Yes, I’m a vegetarian, and yes, I believe I’m morally superior to and healthier than you because of it. He pauses to light another cigarette.) Welcome to the complex, contradictory reality we all live in. As a side thought, what’s the liquid that contains a guaranteed quantity of pus, blood and excrement, which is marketed and sold without this fact being pointed out? Go find out just how much “white blood cells” (also known as “pus”) you’ve drunk today at Not Milk.
And speaking of pus (and how often do you get the chance to speak of it in a public place, after all?) one of the growing fears as we slide closer and closer to the next US elections is that US President George Bush and his cronies realise that they’re going to have to manufacture another September 11 for him to win the sympathy of the public and thus the election. Read the thought-provoking Beware the Administration Backed into a Corner.
The machinations are already beginning — note this news story about Bush and Dick Cheney attempting to enlist support from tax-exempt congregations. Read An Astonishing Abuse of Religion.
Life imitates art. Recall the hero in the climate-change movie, butting heads with a moron vice-president over climate change? In the latest of bizarre moves by the Bush administration, it has clamped down on a website dealing with climate change, created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Read The Day after Tomorrow Never Dies. And to get a taste of the new US, read the rather creepy story of a UK Journalist Detained in LA.
Unlike here in South Africa, where political debate degenerates rapidly into one side kicking the other in the ‘nads, or falling back on racial prejudices, in the US they do tend to allow each other the right to be completely opposing in their viewpoints. (Something to do with being civilised and democratic, perhaps.) Either way, look at opposing views clash at Opinion Duel.
Then you’ll recall the very strange news item from a week or two back, showing that the US contractor who ended up decapitated on video was linked to the September 11 hijackers. So here’s another highly suspicious September 11-related occurrence. A dentist who met the hijackers (and reported them, a year before the event, to the FBI) is in hospital and on life support after falling ill in a manner suggestive of poisoning. Read The Dentist Who Met 911 Hijackers.
You might also be interested to know that apparently the digital watermarks on one of the cameras used in the Abu Ghraib “prisoner abuse” controversy and the Nick Berg beheading video are the same. If it’s true, this means that the same camera filmed both — and Americans themselves sawed off the head of the man who went from being a vagrant (and purchaser of the September 11 hijackers’ airline tickets) to being an “independent contractor” in Iraq. Read through the links and news items at US Civilian in Iraq.
Goodies to steal, look at or just use for wallpaper: go browse through the best pix from magazines, photographers and agencies at Photo Annual 2004.
And staying with photographs, there are some amazing pix to be grabbed at this next site (one of my favourites is of the light plane on a dusty airfield in Africa whose wing shadow has attracted an entire pride of lions). And the assorted “redneck” alarm pix are also something to behold. Go look through Unusual Photographs for Your Enjoyment.
Gear change: for the newbie paranormal fans among you, who wouldn’t know the Montauk Project from Operation Paperclip, go browse through the basic starting points of a wide range of odd, dark and generally strange subjects at Shadowlands.
Finally, longtime Monty Python fans will recall the insane arguments from the Holy Grail movie where a tricky question — to avoid being thrown off a bridge to certain death — involved knowing the speeds of an “unladen” swallow. Well, Python fans who happen to have learned a little about aerodynamics have set up a site to sort out this important question. If you’re lucky and clever enough to remember the deep problem of being asked the flight speeds of various birds (usually when clutching coconuts) then go find out once and for all at Estimating The Air Speed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow.
Until the next time, if Sentech death squads don’t get me.