Today I read an article at thestar.com.my on a proposed new law that will enable Internet Service Providers (ISP) to suspend or terminate Internet accounts of P2P users. The article calls it the end of “free-and-easy” days of illegal downloading of music and movies. Time and time again I have mentioned that news writers should get their fucking facts right and this time it is no exception. The “free-and-easy” days of illegal downloading ended a long time ago.

As far back as I can think, piracy will always have a sentimental value with me. Back in the day with my trustee 33.6k dialup I would be downloading mp3’s with Napster. Even the mention of Napster gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Downloading one mp3 with 64 or 128kbps bit rate would take me some 40 minutes back then. I managed to hit about 200 mp3’s back then which was pretty awesome among my friends.

After Napster got shutdown I switched to a few different P2P softwares namely Audio Galaxy, Kazaa, Morpheus and finally LimeWire. Kazaa is probably one name that pirates never want to hear about, because if you have used it before you definitely been spammed by the Gator Network. Kazaa brings back some really fucked up memories.

Then out came the bastard brainchild of Bram Cohen, BitTorrent. Fuck downloading single tracks, hello full albums. By this time I had substituted my shitty 33.6k dialup for an ADSL 1mbps. I deleted my entire collection and started re-downloading entire albums. This was a dream come true. I was downloading everything, music, games, movies, softwares, you name it, I’m downloading it. And that was when I came up with a the term, Downloading the Internet. People would ask me what my hobby was and I would say “I’m downloading the Internet”. I had an addiction and it was downloading. I am a download junkie.

One fine day sometime in the year 2006 the submarine cable in Taiwan got fucked and we lost our International connection for a good 2 or 3 weeks. This should be around end of 2006 if I’m not mistaken because I remember I just downloaded Football Manager 2007 and they normally launch the new edition of FM sometime in October. I could have got my dates wrong because I was down with Dengue for the second time and I was all doped up on painkillers. I’ve got Dengue a total of 3 times now, the latest case I was admitted to hospital with a platelet count of 20 out of the normal 150. If your platelets drop to 0, you fucking die. That’s another story for another day.

When the International connection was restored, that was when I noticed I was getting shitty ass speeds at around 5 to 20kbps in total. My normal speeds were 100kbps with my 1mpbs connection. There are reports that bandwidth shaping or Torrent Throttling as it was known, happened earlier in certain parts of Kuala Lumpur. So this my friends, was when the “free-and-easy” days of illegal downloading ended.

So will this proposed new law be implemented? You bet your ass it will. Why? Because it benefits Tm.net. They want us to use their service and they offer unstable high bandwidth at ridiculously stable high prices but they don’t really want us to use it. At least not for downloading illegal shit they claim. The question however is, when will they impose this new law? It’s anybody’s guess, I would think not anytime soon cause they are lazy asses. I’m not even going to touch on the sort of fucking service they offer, you can read about it Unifi here and bandwidth congestion here. Some of you cunts are gonna ask me why I’m using Streamyx if I hate them so much, and the answer is because I do not have a choice. To make it simple for you to understand would be the same reason why you keep fucking the same old ugly bitch, because you don’t have a choice.

Is it a crime to download pirated shit? It seems the only people affected by it are the people that are filthy rich. The most pirated software would have to be Microsoft Windows I think, I’m not sure, but I don’t see Bill Gates living in a bungalow. He lives in a fucking palace. Recently the highest snatched movie is Inception. Do you see Leornado DiCaprio crying because he doesn’t have enough money? Have you heard of a saying “We’re going to disband because we are losing money because of piracy”. You don’t see Bono charging appearance fees when he’s appearing in WWF advertisements do you? The real crime are the ridiculous prices they charge for original shit.

I hate paying for original shit because they are all censored. I can’t even fucking find a decent copy of Marilyn Manson. So what am I supposed to do? Buy songs from Amazon? The acceptable bitrate standard right now is 192kbps. This is based off the lowest standards allowed in main private music trackers like What.cd. No I’m not a member of What.cd and I do not have an invite. The acceptable bitrate for me is 320kbps and above. Anything less than 320kbps is shit. I’ve heard that Amazon sell 192kbps bitrate mp3’s. I could be wrong, so if you bought any mp3’s from Amazon, do let us know of the quality.

So who are the crooks here? The downloaders? The DVD/VCD peddlers on the streets? Personally I despise those guys. P2P is sharing. Those fuckers are making money out of this shit and it is wrong. So if there was anybody that should get busted first, I always believe that it should be them. Clear them out, then start coming after the downloaders. But then again, Torrents are already being blocked by the ISPs, not only in Malaysia but around the world. So what seems to be the issue?

People are always coming up with ways to bypass throttling. Relakks a Swedish VPN provider provided a VPN service that could bypass traffic shaping. It worked well for about 3 months when I was using the free trial service. Just as the trial promotion ended I paid for a whole years subscription, my ISP decided that it would be a good idea to entirely shape the Relakks VPN.

So what is the current situation? There are reports that the MPAA and RIAA have infiltrated torrent trackers to upload fake torrents to catch downloaders. This has caused the torrent trackers to become stricter. Certain private tracker memberships can only be obtained by getting an invite from a current member or admins. Some require you to be interviewed by the admins.

There are tons of individuals and companies around the world providing solutions to encrypt connections and bypass traffic shaping. There are server providers in the UK and Luxembourg providing seedbox services. Wouldn’t it be easier and better to shut those guys down than to bust our ass? Wouldn’t shutting down the private torrent tracker hosters in the Ukraine be more effective?

Pirates will always be pirates. But hey, I’m a law abiding citizen. If you like the software, movie or music, support them by buying it.

P.S If anybody can hook me up with a SceneAccess invite it would be very much appreciated. It will only be used for informational purposes only… really!

Yesterday I blogged about Streamyx being assholes here and today I read this article at thestar.com.my and I was laughing my ass off. Streamyx must really think we are stupid or something. Some of us are pretty stupid but that’s maybe because we have no idea what kinda bullshit they are pulling. Lets have a look at their awesome HSBB package:

5 Mbps – 60 GB monthly download quota
10 Mbps – 90 GB monthly download quota
20 Mbps – 120 GB monthly download quota

If you think monthly quotas are fucked up, they made it even more fucked up by having daily quotas out of the monthly quotas. I’m assuming the quotas are divided by 30 days or 31 days. So that would make it:

5 Mbps – 2 GB download quota per day
10 Mbps 3 GB download quota per day
20 Mbps – 4 GB download quota per day

If you think that’s fucked up, they made it EVEN MORE FUCKED UP, if you exceed your download quota per day they throttle your speed to 10% of the bandwidth you are paying for. So if you exceed your quota this is what you will get:

5 Mbps – 500 Kbps
10 Mbps – 1 Mbps
20 Mbps – 2 Mbps

This is all I have to say:

LOLWTFLMAOBBQWTFROLFCOPTER

There is nothing that I need to say further. You can clearly see how fucking stupid they are. Those a fucking ridiculous package. If you don’t think so let me do the math for you ok. Educate yourself. With blazing speeds you still want to watch normal DVD movies and normal 320p YouTube movies? No way, I would want to watch HD movies.

A HD movie is about 4 GB and above for a standard timed movie. 4 fucking GB’s. You can even fucking finish downloading that movie in a day. You need 2 days for the 5 Mbps, 2 days for the 10 Mbps and a day for the 20 Mbps. Then once you are done downloading your shit, all you can do is watch that movie because the speeds you get then will be so fucked up you can’t do shit.

If you think that’s not half as bad, let me just calculate for you how many hours of fun you can have with your HSBB crap. Now assuming you totally utilize your bandwidth, why bother having high speed Internet if you cant utilize the speed right? This calculation is also based on your maximum quota at full speed:

5 Mbps – 2 GB quota full speed download = 1 hour and 2 minutes
10 Mbps – 3 GB quota full speed download = 47 minutes 59 seconds
20 Mbps – 4 GB quota full speed download = 34 minutes

*All speeds and time assumed with 20% overhead

I’m lost for words really. I don’t know what else to say except that this is bullshit. They increase the speeds in 2x multipliers but they increase the quota by 1. Their marketing team is really fucking smart. I’m looking for a job by the way, why don’t they hire me and I’ll make the Rakyat happy. TM Nut might go bust, but I’ll guaranty they will be the most loved ISP in Malaysia.

Don’t fall for their bullshit. Spread the word. We don’t need fast Internet for surfing and YouTube. With that sort of quota we can’t even host our own servers at home. With the fucking bottlenecks and congested lines we are not moving forward, we are just moving backwards. And with disgruntled customers like myself, all I have to say is fuck you Streamyx.

Streamyx people are laughing at all you UniFi subscribers cause UniFi actually means U-NaiVe. Don’t be naive, it’s bullshit.

Nowadays we hear a lot about HSBB in Malaysia. So what is HSBB? It stands for High Speed Broad Band. Cool eh? It’s a whooping 10Mbps! 10 freaking megabits per second. Wow awesome… you can download porn faster than you can cum! Wait, so who is supplying the HSBB? It’s no other than TM NUT TM NET! You know what I think about HSBB? This is what I think about HSBB…

← SHOW SPOILER →

Now why would I say that? First of all since they started talking about all this HSBB crap, my 4Mbps have been suffering, suffering so much that my brother that just bought himself a new computer gorged his eyes out and bled to death because he couldn’t play his online game.

Any long time user of Streamyx will agree that the service is fucking horrible. The after sales is even worse. The technical team can’t tell the difference between a Local connection and an International connection. Let me give you an example:

Fawked: Hi my Internet is slow.
Streamyx Technical Support: Please make sure your pc got no virus and spyware.
Fawked: I just reformatted my pc it’s clean.
Streamyx Technical Support: Please check and see that your modem is working correctly.
Fawked: My router is working correctly cause I never changed anything.
Streamyx Technical Support: Ok we will move into troubleshooting phase. Have you tried a direct connection?
Fawked: … I already tried that.
Streamyx Technical Support: I don’t see any problem then, you can go online no?
Fawked: Yes I can, but I can’t get my 4Mbps speed I’m paying for.

THIS IS WHEN THEY LAY THE TRAP

Streamyx Technical Support: Oh I see… to test your speed please go to http://speedtest.streamyx.com.my/

They must really think I’m a dumb ass mother fucker. But just for argument sake, I did a test at 9.43pm, in other words, super fucking peak time when Malaysians go online. I recorded this test and it’s no fucking bullshit. Just watch.

Can you fucking believe the download speed?  1000 kbps, 700 kbps and 900 kbps. That’s an average download speed of 866 kbps. In other words its 6.933 Mbps! Wow, my 4 Mbps connection is actually a HSBB connection? No fucking way.

That’s some fucking insane speeds beyond anybodies imagination. But lets get real ok? I was testing my speed against their server. Why don’t I test my fucking speed against my Gigabit local area network? I would get a trillion kbps download speed. Anyway this is how the conversation will go:

Fawked: I got 1000 kbps download speed which is impossible.
Streamyx Technical Support: Why is it impossible? We give you good service more than you pay for.
Fawked: Because at 4 Mbps my MAX download speed is only 500 kbps
Streamyx Technical Support: How did you get 500 kbps

Your download speed calculation:

4 Mbps = 4000 / 8 = 500 kbps download speed but you will probably get around 475 kbps
2 Mbps = 2000 / 8 = 250 kbps download speed but you will probably get around 225 kbps
1 Mbps = 1000 / 8 = 125 kbps download speed but you will probably get around 115 kbps
512 kbps = 512 kbps / 8 = 64 kbps download speed but you will probably get around 50 kbps

Try it out at 2am in the morning or 8am in the morning when Malaysians are asleep, you will probably max out your download speeds at those times.

Why do we need fast internet speeds? To download shit right? Again and again I have mentioned we only need 128 kbps to surf the net. Why do we need faster speeds?

Download torrents = Streamyx throttle torrents to very very low speeds or none at all because it cripples their servers. Their excuse, torrents are for pirates. Partially true.
Read and send emails: Was doing it fine with my 33.6 kbps back at the old dial up days.
Read blogs = I was reading blogs fine when I had my 512 kbps connection.
Watch YouTube = I could watch YouTube just fine with my 1 Mbps connection at 4am in the morning when the lines are clear.

So why the fuck do we need high speed Internet? Are we getting what we are paying for? Are we aware of the bullshit that they keep throwing at us? Making us pay more money for the bullshit speeds that they are offering? Bull fucking shit. What high speed internet? We pay for the speed but only really get to use a fraction of the promised speed.

Instead of “increasing” speeds, how about maintaining and making sure the users get the speeds they are paying for.

What the fuck are any of you going to do with a HSBB 10 Mbps? Read blogs? It will load so fucking fast the words will fall off your monitor. Play games? Your character will move so fucking fast, your character will fall off the edge of your screen. We could do all this shit with 2 Mbps if we truly got those speeds.

Another issue is the upload speed. At 4 Mbps I only get 512 kbps upload. If I had 4 Mbps up stream and down stream I could host my own web server. I could host my own IRC server. If I had 10 Mbps up stream and down stream I could host my own blog and my friendSSSSSS blogsSSSSSS and host my own gaming server.

Having a Streamyx 4 Mbps download speed with 512 kbps upload is like having a Ferrari with no wheels. The sound only gempak but your car won’t be going anywhere. Below is a video on the TRUE SPEEDS WE ARE GETTING (all tests were done within minutes of each other):

Tests from Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore only shows I have 2 Mbps during super peak hours. Now lets see how it fairs in the US where most of the websites we visit are at.

1st test I got was 0.23 Mbps, second test it didn’t even bother to move. How ridiculous is that? Maybe YouTube will do better? Lets try YouTube then, hopefully we can watch some videos. That’s why most of us got the Internet for anyway, to watch YouTube.

I was trying to watch a normal YouTube video and it won’t even load. I didn’t even bother to watch the HD version of the video. At the end of the video it demonstrated the poor downloading speed of the videos. Averaging about 30 kbps. 30 kbps is equivalent to about 0.25 Mbps as shown in the USA speed test above. And finally this is the conversation you will get when you call the Streamyx Technical Support people:

Streamyx Technical Support: Test from http://speedtest.streamyx.com.my/ does show you have 4 Mbps.
Fawked: That is local.
Streamyx Technical Support: Still it’s 4 Mbps.
Fawked: But speeds to other servers like YouTube is slow.

Streamyx Technical Support: That’s because their server is lagging, not Streamyx.

That is the lamest and dumbest fucking excuse ever. What the fuck am I going to do with a 4 Mbps to local Malaysian servers? Watch Bluehyppo? For fucks sake. Wake up. Below is a video I made while watching YouTube at 2.32am in the morning when most Malaysians are sleeping:

Oh wow guess what, I was downloading some torrent and I could stream YouTube faster than Speedy Gonzalez. You can give us 100 Mbps download speeds but if we only get 0.25 Mbps during most of the day and 512 Mbps upload speeds you might as well don’t give us shit. Do you know what the fucking problem is? Streamyx knows what the fucking problem is they just won’t admit it. So I’m gonna say it.

They can roll out their HSBB DSBB OSBB FUBB CIBB 10MB 100MB EVEN 10000MB line it don’t fucking matter. Cause the problem is, they can’t handle the amount of users they have. They want more users than they can handle. They roll out new shit to get more customers.

A simple example would be a fucking mini bus, you remember those little cute pink busses? They could sit about lets say 30 people. But they used to cramp that shit up to like a thousand. Then they modify the mini bus with bigger exhaust and engine and say the bus can take you to your destination faster. Then they try and cramp 2 thousand people into it. But the bus gets too heavy and cramped, you still don’t reach your destination fast enough. Why the fuck they do that? 1 word says it all:

GREED. MOTHER FUCKING GREED.

They go like:

“Lets roll out high speed Internet and charge these assholes a bomb. They are too stupid to know the difference anyway. Our 100Mb backbone is supposed to only have 25 users, but we’ll put 100 users on it to maximise profit. We will just call it fair usage. The idiots can read all about it here http://www.streamyx.com.my/customer_care/customer_care.php?id=customer_care_fair_usage_policy”

At the end of the day what we get is pure shit. They sold us a fucking Ferrari without wheels. You think the car can go fast, but in fact its going no where. It’s like having the hottest chick of your dreams naked and waiting for you to fuck her only to find you cant get your dick to stand.

Do I have a choice? No I don’t. Do you have a choice? No you don’t. You either just take the package, shut the fuck up or fuck off. The Internet is an integral part of my daily life and our only ISP has forced itself on me and I feel violated.

Join the Butuh La Streamyx Facebook group here.

The first thing I do when I wake up is get on my computer, even before my eyes can fully open, even before I take my morning piss, even before I brush my teeth. It’s been a habit for the past 15 years I think. I was checking my blog and this advertisement caught my eye:

I’m always interested in Streamyx promotions and upgrades. So I clicked my own ad. Yea so sue me, take that 0.000001 cent back! You can view their promotion page here. There are upgrade deals for Streamyx Combo packages and Streamyx Standard packages. Now why would I want to blog about the Internet Service Provider that I hate so much? Below is one of the few upgrade deals they are giving. There are many more upgrade deals here, but I’m only talking about the one I’m interested in.

What got me really interested was the price slash. The 4Mb package used to be RM250 or something like that I think. Now I can get it for RM130. Pretty sweet fucking deal if you ask me. The war is on between Streamyx and P1 Wimax. This is the shit I have been talking about for the past 10 years. We needed a fucking competitor in this ISP business and finally we do. All we need is a few more.

I was interested to know more so I called Streamyx up, twice. I always have to call them up twice and I can guaranty you, both times you will hear different things. The first time I called I chose to speak in English. The second time I called, I chose to speak in English again but some how they mixed my shit up and sent me to the Bahasa Malaysia speaking customer service people. No big deal, I’m a patriotic person. I can speak Bahasa Malaysia. But I felt I was speaking to the same person but with a different name. Today is a public holiday. It’s Hari Raya Haji. So I doubt they have more than 2 people working.

Basically if you want to upgrade your line, you have to go to the TM Point yourself and upgrade it. Don’t they know that people with Internet are lazy? Most don’t even go out and look for chicks to get laid, they just sit at home and watch porn. Girls do their shopping online; then find that they bought their clothes 2 sizes too small later.

I fucking hate going to TM Point, there is no TM Point near my fucking house. The nearest TM Point area is always jammed packed with cars and there’s no place to park. You can have speeds up to 4Mb but you can’t get a fucking decent IT fella to create you an automated system?

Then I saw the “REGISTER ONLINE NOW!” button. Could it be? Could I do it from the safety and comfort of my own home? This would be like a dream come true. I clicked it.

If I read correctly it says login to proceed with upgrade. So I happily do. What awaited me was shocking. I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes.

It stated that my current package is the Streamyx Basic 512k RM88 and I could only upgrade to a maximum of 1Mb. Their shit is broken; as usual. Nothing surprised me here. Their shit is always broken. So it looks like on Monday I would still have to go to a TM Point. The second lady I spoke to told me to bring only my IC and myself (the lady actually told me to bring myself, I think she was trying to make a joke). The first lady told me to bring only my first months bill. So I know for sure I have to bring myself, my IC and my bills cause their system is fucked. They would have to see my bill to know the real package I have.

I suspect the war between Streamyx and I will be reignited. They have the tendency to tell you they have upgraded your shit only for you to find that you get half or no upgrade at all. Currently I’m using a 1Mb plan but they upgraded my speed to 2Mb for 4 months free.

If you see the picture above, my 3com router detects that my line is a 2Mb. For those of you that don’t know 3com, its a very good brand. The price is a little bit on the high side but the router can go on for over a week of endless downloading without rebooting. You can’t say the same about other brands, after about 2 or 3 days of maximum downloading your shit hangs and you have to reboot the router. Another good brand would be Cisco’s Linksys. Below is my latest speed test:

I’m still 0.3Mb short of 2Mb but it’s alright. I average out at 1.75Mb which translates out to about 212.5Kbps download speed. To calculate your download speed just take your speed and divide it by 8. for a 2045Kbps line max download speed should be 2045/8 = 255Kbps. Or if you average about 50Kbps download speed then your line is 50*8 = 0.4Mb. If I upgrade my line to a 4Mb I will not settle for speeds less than 3.6Mb which should download my shit at 450Kbps. This is very important, Streamyx will tell you this crap they call time sharing or speed sharing or whatever. During peak hours you will get shitty speeds.

As a conclusion this is a pretty sweet deal in my opinion. But check your speed regularly and make sure you get what you pay for.