Christopher Pearson, and remind me to tell you young 'uns about Beta and its complete relevance to wireless and the NBN ...

(Above: random cartoons inspired by Christopher Pearson. Do you really need to read Christopher Pearson? Isn't he a total and useless distraction? More xkcd to distract you here).

Hack 1: The Daily.

Minion 1: A lot of people think it could save newspapers

Hack 2: This could be a game changer.

Rupert Murdoch: It's the end of the laptop.

Minion 2: You are confident of that?

Rupert Murdoch: ... yes well it's portable.

Stephen Colbert: Yes, the Daily is portable, unlike a laptop. Evidently Murdoch has the upper body strength of a cricket ...

And the understanding of computers and the online world of a gnat. And don't get the pond started on My Space, its decline and fall.

Oh it's always good to start the weekend with the comedy stylings of News Corp, but please, no correspondence on the incredible lower and upper body and crunching jaw strength of warrior crickets, or next thing you know we'll be off to the Flower and Bird market on Xizang Nanlu in downtown Shanghai (Fighting won't bug these crickets. Yes it's worth a visit).

Now on to serious News Corp business.

Last week you will recall that Kevin Rudd, in an insatiable power hungry mood, was about to resign so he could begin running the black helicopter program for the United States. And so Tony Abbott would ascend to power and save the antipodes from the NBN.

Or so Christopher Pearson seemed to think.

Now read on ... as this week we learn that the lover of the Latin mass is not only a scientific expert in climate change at a level that boggles the mind, but as Conroy left clutching at straws over broadband demonstrates, he's an instant, just mix gruel with water to get really dumb porridge, expert in the new world of the full to overflowing intertubes ...

On the evidence therein Pearson probably drew up the business plans for the music industry, the book industry, the movie industry, and in particular Blockbuster, Borders, and Angus and Robertson, and was personal adviser to modernising Gerry Harvey's online strategies ...

Now the pond has no love for Senator Stephen Conroy - his great big internet filter is a threat lurking just out of sight, still not killed off, just indefinitely deferred, and with all the charm of an Egyptian, Iranian or Chinese government taking a chain saw to the cables - but up against Pearson, Conroy is a visionary.

So how does Pearson conclude his piece?

... there always seems to be a phase in the unravelling of a government program when it is simply overtaken by events. For NBN Co, it has been the past three weeks. It needs radical surgery and Conroy will have to be replaced.

Let's just polish that up shall we:

... there always seems to be a phase in the unravelling of a commentariat commentator when he and the Latin mass are simply overtaken by events. For Christopher Pearson, it has been his latest column. It needs radical surgery and Pearson will have to be replaced.

Yes, that reads well. And it entirely covers Pearson's carry on about wireless connectivity and how it will do over fibre optic, wherein he second hand quotes sundry experts, while revealing he doesn't have a clue about the way wireless works in big cities in the real world.

Instead he spends his time trashing said fibre optic, and praising Barack Obama for his cheap assed wireless solution for the States. Yes, whenever the Americans, home of innovation, seek a cheap assed solution, you can be sure the commentariat will suddenly discover a love of liberals .... (and yet it's been a long time since they were the fastest coconut in the tree, as this report on the United States' broadband speeds, especially compared to South Korea, reveals here).

You know you're dealing with a complete and utter goose when you read something like this:

There are plausible arguments that with the present state of the technology, for Australia it's not a case of either fibre or wireless but of them complementing one another in a mix yet to be determined and fibre is likely to be the best solution for backhaul.

Fibre is likely to be the best solution for backhaul? Plausible arguments? Likely?

Oh I know Pearson only flung together the sentence so he could use the word 'backhaul' and sound technical, but it's the use of the word 'likely' that reveals a complete and utter goose at work.

There's no 'likely' to it. As anyone with the barest clue of how wireless works would know.

Here's how you use the word 'likely' in a technical sentence. It's likely that Christopher Pearson is a complete and utter goose.

Here's how Pearson uses the word:

On Tuesday, as Telstra prepared to unveil its upgraded mobile network, there were reports that a government-commissioned review had found the growing popularity of wireless internet was likely to have an adverse influence on the economics of the NBN.

Uh huh. Likely ...

So Pearson is doing the business plan for Telstra these days. Let's hope he does a better job on Big Pond than previous incumbents, as it bleeds cash, to the point where they're likely to get into bed with Foxtel, a hopelessly compromised solution - since Foxtel trying to do Netflix is at complete odds with its current closed shop business model - and so the shining example of Netflix goes missing yet again in the antipodes ...

But I digress, as Pearson does his very best to parrot experts talking about wireless, and even attempts a version of the 'four anys' - any content, anywhere on any device at any time - to prove that he's down wit the latest in wireless connectivity and mobility.

Pearson is of course just the latest in a long conga line of pundits in The Australian determined to do down fibre optic and the NBN, and hail wireless as the solution.

Happily there's more sensible reporting available, so rather than be driven into a fury by Pearson's stupidity, let's revert to Bernard Keane's Wireless obsession gets in the way on broadband thus:

So, an independent report compliments NBN Co’s Corporate Plan, finds its key assumptions to be “in line with a range of available domestic and international benchmarks” and tells the government the plan is a reasonable basis for making decisions about NBN Co.

How do you think it was reported?

Well, I don’t need to tell you how the taxpayer-subsidised Australian covered it.

The taxpayer-subsidised Australian. Oh I love it, and yet so true ...

Well there's no need to summarise the rest of Keane's piece, since he's only a click away on the intertubes, but effectively let's summarise the implications of its content. Christopher Pearson is a complete and utter goose ...

And there are other scribblers for Crikey who get it, as you can find in Stilgherrian's Hosing down the hype on wireless internet technology. Here's the nub of it:

As Crikey has reported before, if you’re building a wireless network that’s used by everyone, and you want it to perform as well as fixed broadband, you need a wireless tower in every street.

As Stilgherrian points out, there's going to be plenty of short-term growth in wireless traffic. But just because it's the hot spot for growth doesn't make it the solution:

As Crikey has reported before, though, fixed broadband still does the real work. That’s not likely to change, given the different characteristics of fixed and mobile connections.

If you read Crikey, you end up with a more considered understanding of the NBN, fibre optic, wireless and the whole damn thing.

If you read The Australian, and Pearson, and other minions of Murdoch, and yes Fairfax too, home of that recycling plant for aged television product called smh.tv, you end up with what I now call 'tablet worship', roughly akin to the expectations of worshippers of the fat cow of old. As Colbert put it:

You buy the app and you get the convenience of using your ipad to read the news online but without the internet's annoying habit of being completely free.

It's being praised by everybody in the media that is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Back to Pearson for a final comedy styling:

One consequence of the US commitment to wireless is that it's bound to shift virtually all of the research and development dollars in one direction rather than the other.

Households that invested in Beta video systems in the 1980s will remember how it felt when, regardless of Beta's advantages, VHS's market domination rendered it obsolete.

Oh knock me down with a feather and tickle me to death. Research and development dollars all devoted to wireless. And he scribbles it with a straight face.

I know, I know, it also suggests the possibility that Pearson way back when invested in a Beta system. Says it all, really ... and it says a hell a lot about his age, his thought processes and his use of meaningless, irrelevant metaphors ...

Back to Keane for a much needed dash of the vision thingie:

The wireless obsession is a subset of the claim that something “faster” will come along to make the NBN redundant (that data travels along fibre at the speed of light is a mere detail — presumably there’ll be some sort of warp speed technology). It also reflects the mindset, still prevalent among many journalists, economists and politicians, that the only purpose of the NBN is for households to download movies and porn faster, when the industrial applications of superfast broadband — livestreaming of HD audio-visual content from local and overseas providers, cloud computing services, heavy data movers such as filmmakers and diagnostic imaging companies, education and health services — will drive the economics of the NBN.

In 20 years time these arguments over the NBN will look hilarious.

Actually Mr Keane, I have to disagree with you vehemently.

They look hilarious right now.

Oh and if you want another laugh, head off the lizard Oz sticking the knife into Fairfax in Fairfax Media faces online TV cost blowing out. It only drew three plaintive comments. Here they are:

Francis of Maitland
Our ADSL speed dropped from 2800 to 1200 after all the rain this month, making IView painful to impossible. After four dry days, the copper ducts have finally dried out and speed is back to normal. Roll on, NBN fibre!

Elbogrease of Wodonga
Stuck on 1.5mb streaming is out for me. Bring on the NBN, Wodonga need it now!

Mac Howard of Gold Coast
All this talk about IPTV is all well and good but many Australians can take little advantage of it because of low broadband speeds and download limits - which is why this newspaper's campaign against the NBN reveals an ignorance of what many citizens are experiencing.

Dream on possums, or perhaps read Christopher Pearson on the joys of wireless. You can manage that on dial up.

Disclosure: the pond makes its living thanks to broadband. Currently the pond has two desk tops, two portables and a tablet in the room (yes I know it's unseemly, but this is a disclosure and two of them are really old). Oh and a tablet, with wireless connectivity. Come to think of it they all have wireless connectivity. Because the house is wireless.

The portables are ... portable. And so, amazingly, is the tablet ...

But none of them carry The Daily. And they never will. Bring on the paywall that puts the likes of Pearson out of reach. And bring on the NBN ... without a giant one size fits all filter, puh-lease ...

And now thanks to Lord Byron, a Song for the Luddites, right up there with the Latin mass:

. . . Are you not near the Luddites? By the Lord! If there's a row, but I'll be among ye! How go on the weavers--the breakers of frames--the Lutherans of politics--the reformers?

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!

When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding-sheet
O'er the despot at our feet,
And dye it deep in the gore he has pour'd.

Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew
Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!

There's an amiable chanson for you--all impromptu. I have written it principally to shock your neighbour * * , who is all clergy and loyalty--mirth and innocence--milk and water. . . .

Thank you Lord Byron. Luddites rejoice at your poem. And finally, a cartoon: