Red dust, bushfires, earthquakes, high winds and massive hail stones are just some of the wacky weather Aussie’s have been dealing with. It caused disruptions everywhere, getting to work, traffic, the airport, etc. Weather and medical alerts were issued to those suffering from asthma. Wind gusts of up to 65 km/h caused damage to homes and public property. Is it the apocalypse?

A new draft regulation could have your Internet service provider watching your activities. In an attempt to do their part at minimizing zombie computer activity the new rules would have Internet cut off for those malware infected pc’s. So if you notice you’ve been cut off, perhaps it would be a good idea to scan for viruses. Thousands of home pc’s are infected without their users knowing about it and proceed to spam out ads about Viagra and other phishing tactics. On the one hand it attempts to police people’s computers for them. On the other is stepping into the boundaries of people’s homes and passing the responsibilities to the ISP. That’s a problem since very little exists in terms of ethics, procedures for those working for ISP’s. Who’s to say that employees of these service providers won’t take things into their own hands and prematurely cut off people’s Internet? One step closer to a totalitarian society.

In today’s economic environment everyone’s looking to cut back. Cell phone companies are no different. The “free” services which were previously included in your monthly subscription are now pay services. You’re getting even less service than you paid for yesterday. Additional fees for paper statements and in person billing is just another sign of cost cutting measures. It’s certainly not fair.

The services which should be included and were included for many years is now suddenly “extra” and “costly” to companies. What did they do before? They are happy to take our money but when it comes to actually providing the service you pay for it’s quite another story. On top of this they hide behind the guise of “going green” and “saving the planet”, it’s all a front for them to save money and cut back services. It’s a ripoff and it’s not acceptable. If you’re going to cut back on service you should provide another alternative instead. Like a free month of service, free texting, voicemail, something, anything an incentive to switch and not simply, BAM $2 for paper billing, too bad. So much for customer service.