Who ever thought that Qantas might become a world-leading airline? OK, so I’m typing this from the Qantas Domestic Terminal at Perth Airport on free WiFi, but as Engadget reports, starting next year Qantas is going to offer Wifi + Power on A380’s and refitted 747s. Touchwood it’s the entire 747 fleet given about half of Qantas’ flights to the Eastern States out of Perth are on 747’s. Still got a book for today though, but I cant wait for next year 🙂

An important question though: I wonder how much Qantas will charge for data? This is Qantas after all, I just cant see it being cheap, but hey, if it’s $50 or $100 on a long flight it would be well worth it.

TUAW has the latest on the quest to unlock the iPhone; apparently it will now work with pre-paid AT&T/ Cingular phone cards.

I’ll be in the States this time next week, and I’m seriously considering buying an iPhone, but the difference between dreaming and buying is still the ability to use it when I get home again…well to be more clear the ability to insert my Optus simcard in it and be able to make calls (AT&T global roaming rates are even worse than Optus’ rates so AT&T isn’t really a good option for me). Of course I could just use it as a glorified iPod, but I already own one of those. Hopefully some one will crack it in the next week, here’s crossing my fingers anyway 🙂

A fair bit of feedback on some recent posts. It reminded me that going on a puritanical save the world by highlighting wrongs binge isn’t always a good thing, people in glass houses etc…

Matt Mullenweg

I found an email from Matt Mullenweg in my spam box re the post on WordPress and the crackdown on sponsored templates.

Matt is pissed, and probably rightly so. The post in retrospect was unnecessarily personal and it wasn’t called for; she who must be obeyed asked me a very good question: would I like to have that written about me? One should never mess with she who must be obeyed, she is all wise and always right. So sorry Matt, it went too far.

However without taking away from the personal apology, I still believe you’re wrong. Your email stated that people were abusing sponsored templates by stuffing them with spam, but here’s the beef: in Australia Aboriginal people commit crimes at a higher rate than non-indigenous Australian’s, for memory the crime rate amongst African American’s is probably similar as a percetage of the population as well: would the solution therefore be to lock all black people up? You see Matt, you’re punishing a pile of good people for the actions of a small number of bad people; blanket solutions are rarely ever the right answer.

The link thing is still silly as well: you can’t ask people to not include links on their templates then stuff your own links on every install of WordPress, no matter how justified you think you are in doing so; it’s an all or nothing thing, and not practicing what you preach to others does make you look like a hypocrite, but in a nice, non-personal attack way 🙂

Ars Technica

Got an email from Ars re my post on their linking policies. They point out that the case I highlighted was an oversight, and that they regularly link out (and provided examples). I still see a lot of Ars stuff without sources, indeed I’ve seen stories on stuff I’ve written at TechCrunch appear as a stand alone story on Ars two days later without links. However on the basis of the email I’m willing to accept that on the whole they are at least trying. Perhaps they could try harder, as indeed we all could, and there are times where you get a tip from a reader which doesn’t come sourced, meaning that you don’t know that it’s come from elsewhere; even I’ve been in that situation a couple of times.

So apologies to Ars. If it’s any help, I only noticed because it’s one of my regular reads, and a bloody good read most of the time at that.

Happy

OK, my lets right the wrongs of the world purge is over for now. Promises that I”ll be good again 🙂

News.com.au reports that Optus is joining Telstra in adding uploads to monthly cap limits, and that others may also start counting uploads.

As much as I despise the Australian ISP industry for having caps to start with, when in the US ISP’s are mostly all you can eat concerns, it does make sense that if we’re essentially paying for downloads, ISP’s should count uploads as well.

But here’s the problem: upload speeds from Australian ISP’s suck.

Take my provider for example. I get a 2mps download but only a 256kps upload speed, roughly 10 times the difference. Telstra Bigpong plans are similar, most only provide a 256kps upload speed, although for memory some may be as low as 128kps.

If I’m going to have to pay indirectly for uploading stuff to the web, the same money I’m proportionately paying for downloads, then simply I demand the same upload speed as I have for downloads. That would be the only fair and equitable solution, particularly when companies are quick to advertise their download speeds, but you’ve got to find the upload speeds in the fine print. Given that I’m a fairly regular uploader it would also make my life a whole lot easier as well.