Openness.

This is another work-in-progress note.

The various governments of the so called Western world waffle on about  openness.

Some more than others but the general diatribe goes something like "One of the government's objectives is openness so that the people know what is going on and how we arrive at any given subject.". This means that what a given country's government do that directly or indirectly impact on the people they are supposedly representing will be done is a way that the people can see and what is happening regarding whatever it is that the governemt is concerned with or about. Now, I am very big on openness and open standards so I tend to try and keep up with such matters within my own  government and I urge you to do the same within your own as the definition of the word 'openness' is not what you think is it. This is especially true when defined by our governments.

A perfect example of this is with Internet blocklists. Blocklists are URL's that the are blocked by ISP's. In England this list is edited and held by a none government organisation called the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Anyone can send these none official people a URL that they find objectionable. This  request is then scrutinised and if found to hit some hidden definition it is then added to the blocklist which is then picked up by the various ISP's operating within the U.K. Not such a bad thing you may think and it would not be except for two things.

One) The IWF is not a government department. It consists of ordinary people who supposedly make decisions on what is and what is not a naughty URL based on both  what they have on their web site and also the personal tastes of the individual which cannot be avoided.

Two)  The blocklist created, edited and  held by the IWF cannot be seen by anyone outside of the ISP's administrators and those within the IWF itself. It is a hidden list of URL's that holds who knows what.

The first thing mentioned is not so bad until one thinks about it.

It is getting worse.

It is getting worse and with more and more MS Windows users taking up some flavour of a Linux distribution, usually one of the Ubuntu flavour, we are seeing more and more top posting in the Linux Usenet groups. If you are nterested in checking my statement then just take a look at the last few days in alt.os.linux.ubuntu (Google groups didn't used to take this particular group but I think recently they started taking it).

Things are made worse by google groups as those using it see that the text they are replying to is below where the cursor starts. They  see this and immediately start writing which is exactly how MS Outlook (and MS derivative of) does it without the quotefix patch that forces MS Outlook to do things properly by putting the cursor after the replied to text.

For us old time stalwarts of Usenet there is nothing worse than top posting. Nowadays, those using google groups to post to Usenet suffer the same fate as those top posters.

Google does not care one bit about such things. Many, including myself, have complained time and time again about how they are doing it but thus far we have all been ignored and it is not google themselves who suffer is it those using their services. Many thousands of long time Usenet users, like myself, simply block (commonly known as plonking) ALL google groups using post irregardless of what that post is about and irregarless of who posted it. Of course, there are some using google groups who post properly but because of the blanket googlegroups plonk many are doing those who try to do things correctly are caught in the dragnet.

Those using MS Outlook, and derivatives of it, and not using the quotefix patch mentioned above are also automatically put in the SHUT YA FACE bin.

Myself and many other long time Usenet using people use proper news readers that do things correctly and have thousands of options to cover every possible need when using Usenet so setting up blanket plonk rules is simple. Remember this, in abstract terms if you top post you score 9999 on the scale (0 - 10000). If you are using google groups you score 9999. If you use google groups and top post you score the full 10000. Both those scores of 9999 and 10000 mean PLONK. I and many others will never see what you post to Usenet.

Now you are aware consider what you are doing and correct your actions. Who knows, if you do that you may just find your way out of many peoples bozo bins. Maybe. Then again, maybe it is too late and no matter whether you correct your actions or not you will forever remain in that bozo bin.

For many of us Usenet died a long time ago when MS operating systems (OS) became the dominant desktop OS and those using it started their top posting habits. We still use it but the shine has rubbed of it. Now google with their google groups have infiltrated Usenet and brought along with it more top posing fools this made Usenet a dull place to visit. The blame lays firmly with possibly the two biggest companies on this earth.

The decline of "News" sites.

Back when the Internet was but a fledgling mini beast waiting to explode on everyone the so called News web sites that have no dead tree parent soon became apparent in the eyes and minds of those with a technological bent.

Some have long since disappeared but some of those that where at the begining or came along just after are still around. Some of those still around are the worse for wear while the rest plod along as happy and snappy as ever. Those that are the worse for wear are surely to go the way of the Dodo like many before them.

For me it is sad to see formerly glorious News web sites, of the more technical flavour, fail to attract what once was a loyal readership. It is easy from a reader point of view to see those that are failing. The web site displays less advertisements. The user comment sections lay relatively empty. The  forum, should they have one, sees less and less by way of posts.  Their News  stories get evermore boring and shorter and often offer less by way of journalism and more by way of sarcastic commentary. Their head honcho moves onto  something else, usually a competing offering. Those five things are the main things that signify when a News web site is dying. Another thing is they get less and less by way of worthy submissions. But then again many of these News  web sites carry articles by the same person using a multitude of monikers so this one is harder to spot.

A new breed of, usually, Web 2.0 enabled News web sites make some of the longer standing News web sites look by comparison old and jaded as if those in charge are fast running out of ideas. While I am not an overly impressed with this whole Web 2.0 thing one has to agree, even if you hate it as much as i do, that it does make for some better looking web sites.

So, it is with a heavy heart that, while not mentioning any names, I wave a fond farewell to the, apparently (based on the totally none scietific method mention above), soon to disappear Technology News web site i have  read for years.

And so it goes.

Karoo WiFi.

Is as much of a joke amongst local people as their ADSL2 offerings. Karoo WiFi is available as part of ones contact with them but what they don't tell you is where their access points are. They are in fact extremely limited as their access points are mainly only avaiable in Queens Gardens on the edge of the town shopping are. Queens Gardens itself covers some 1000 square yards of space but the Karoo WiFi offering only covers approximately half of that. Excellent stuff that we locals have come to expect for our monopolistic telephone company.

In other news regarding my, and others, ongoing efforts to get Karoo, and therefore the companies Daddy company, to improve their dismal ADSL2 offerings they are now engaging in lies. Outright, unadulterated lies. They have been found to be fiddling their user inputs on whether or not people consider their flagship (Ha!) offering good or bad. How was this found out? Well, simply put there are moles within and these moles  are telling me that there are internal IP's showing as being from within their customer ranks. Of course, no-one outside the company ever sees a posting IP address nor do they see  headers of the emails that have been supposedly sent in from 'customers' who have praised the service offering .While it can be easily refuted by the company I will go with what the moles have said as that would be a typical compny thing to do. There will be some who will say I am bias against them but that misses the point entirely. The fact that they are reduced to doing something like this belies the fact that they consider their offering any good.

In further news the latest gaff from them is that when emailing an individual within their ranks one got back and auto-response email that had within it the claim that the email had not been read and 'helpfully' pointed one to a blanket email address where ones email is sure to get lost amongst the noise of other people complaining. Laughingly, once it was pointed out to them that this practice, or more precisely the line that said that the email had not been read was illegal they have now quietly dropped that part, and that line in particular, of their auto-response emails.

As a company they are terrible. As a provider of Internet connectivity they are terrible. In Customer Service they are terrible. In every conceivable way they are terrible. One has to wonder what with their share price dropping through the floor just how much longer they can stay away from a total buy-out. The problem with that however is who exactly could or would buy them out and if a company did would they be any better than what we suffer now? i mean, the only way they  could possibly improve the actual service is by redoing their ancient copper lines or by installing fibre to the home. Both of these are an expensive exercise which would would take a lot of money to implement which KC certainly do not have and it is unlikely, if a buyer even bothered to buy them out, would have either. As an aside who would I complain about! Seriously, no company is perfect in every way but to fail customers so specularly in every possible way as they do is astounding.

My moles have told me that while FTTH was tauted by a previous contact as being very very soon it is now firmly on the back burner as finances get ever tighter and is likely to stay on the back burner for the foreseeable future.

The Intenets hidden joke.

If there is one single web site that causes none Microsoft laden administrators, and some hardened Microsoft  administrators, to laugh out loud is is "Shields Up!" from grc.com.

The sheer scale of hyperbole on there aimed not at seasoned professionals but at the all American everyday common and garden Microsoft Windows users is simply stunning. Every facet of that web site is designed and created to scare the Hell out of  Microsoft Windows users. Take a look at  a snippet of text taken from within the "Shields Up!" process and you will see exactly what I see and that is pure unadulterated hyperbole.

"Solicited TCP Packets: RECEIVED (FAILED) — As detailed in the port report below, one or more of your system's ports actively responded to our deliberate attempts to establish a
connection. It is generally possible to increase your system's security by hiding it from the probes of potentially hostile hackers. Please see the details presented by the specific port links below, as well as the various resources on this site, and in our extremely helpful and active user  community." (any and all links removed to protect the innocent).

Now, I run a Usenet news service so of course 1 port is open otherwise noone would be able to connect to it and what is the use of a server if that be the case? So, that said I fail, with huge red banners proclaiming my failure. This is ridiculous but surely scares the uninitiated. If the average person sees something on a web site self proclaimed as the leader in all things security related says you failed the most basic of ping tests what are they going to do? Panic. That is what and that is what Mr Gibson wants them to do.

Some will say that the web site is not aimed at battle hardened administrators but that itself belies what the web site is all about and that after all is securing a connection. All over the site, which is designed in such a way as to scare people, he makes claims  and points out what people should do and some of that advice is plain wrong or if not wrong then ill-advised. As an example he states that to achieve true stealth mode one should disable pings. This is bad practice for anyone connected to the Internet be it via a router or a modem within a computer. A ping test ensures that the Internet runs  smoothly, by turning off pings it creates the illusion that there are huge black holes all over the place when in fact  the computer or router is sitting there connected to the Internet.

Hyperbole is what it is all about. The information a tools available should be taken and used with a large  dollop of salt. We seasoned and in some cases, mine included,  professionals know to ignore  the advice given. It would be better for the whole Internet is the web site did not exist but it does and while it does we will continue to laugh.

I suppose it serves a purpose for the paranoid but other than that I see no reason for its existence unless of course it is meant to be a joke in which case the joke is on us.

Be careful out there.

Do you use the BBC web site?

I do. in fact I spend a lot of time on it visiting all the various bits dotted around it. Some hidden from immediate view while others are displayed in prominent and semi-prominent links.

My reason for asking is that I feel that some of it could be vastly improved. Take something like this as an example. Am I the only one who dislikes how they display each entry backwards to how people normally read? The entries on that page, as it is everywhere such things are displayed, start at the bottom with that first entry. As each successive entry is added they go up above the previous one until the last one which is at the top. It simply does make for a natural reading style.

Why they do it this way only they know as I have asked, via email, several times with no reply so it would seem that:
1) I will never know who made the decision to do such things backwards
2) I will never know why whoever it was that made that decision made it
and
3) I will never know why or who decided such a backwards reading style was a good idea.

Simply put it is not. There is, to me anyway, nothing more annoying than finding an article, or several articles as these things are, well, mini articles anyway, like this then realising it is coming to a close or has already closed and having to scroll down through several other days worth to start reading at the bottom. Some of such articles can be several days worth so scrolling takes a while. It is frankly bloody annoying not to mention arse-backwards.

I am aware that there are many, possibly  thousands, of people who start reading on day one and return as each successive days worth of text is added so to them  it may seem right and proper as it is laid out. To those people, and to the BBC, I say there are probably many more thousands, if not millions, who find such pages by accident many months after whatever it is the article covers who then find they can only read the various days worth of text by scrolling first down to the bottom, reading a page which means scrolling up to find that days start then down again as one reads a days worth of text then up to the next days start and so on. Down, up, down up, down up. It absolutely makes no sense.

So, BBC, if you see this then please for the love of all things correct turn these types of daily  articles the right way up. Then those the read the daily articles can read them as normal and those of us who find such daily added articles can read them as normal too.

Karoo - A shot in the arm.

A while ago I mentioned taking our fight with the incumbent broadband provider for our area to the E.U. This is gathering pace since I set things in motion.

Of course, once I had blurted it out in an email to them they immediately cut off all level of contact. Total and utter silence is what is coming from their end. Even legal and proper questions to Customer Services go unanswered. Not  surprising I guess but slightly annoying for reasons I shall now explain.

They have both an AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) and a venerable T&C (Terms and Conditions), like all companies as small as they are they try to cover every conceivable angle in as few words as possible while wrapping the whole thing up in big words. This creates documents that are at best ambiguous and at worse have no legal standing in a court of Law. They know this, of course, but the hope is that your average person never looks at said documents so that when your  average person crosses whatever line they, the company, can point at some ambiguous section and cut off said user. Over the years I have taken several steps to address the ambiguous nature of these documents all to no avail. Now the E.U. is on their tail and they too agree the  documents are too ambiguous and should  therefore be made more legible by your average person.

As to what action the E.U. can and will take I am not allowed to say in detail. What I can say is that the organisation will be looked into. That much is a given. What  will come of it I do not know but as they, Karoo, have annoyed me to this level I do not care as long as it costs them money and they are inconvenienced to the max.

Microsft versus Linux

Or more correctly, a Linux based distribution.

As Microsoft's stranglehold on both operating system installs and bundled installs falls we always see a rise in anti-Linux propaganda. This manifests itself across the full spectrum of user access which includes, Usenet, Web based forums and other media. It is tempting to think of these anti-Linux  protagonists as simple Microsoft shills who are paid by Microsoft to propagate as much propaganda as they can across the wide Internet, but, I do not think of that as while it is possible I do not think it true.

No. The problem comes when people try a Linux based distribution and automatically think in Microsoft Windows terms without realising the years, in some cased, of Microsoft Windows learning helps nobody when moving to a Linux based distribution. For a start, a Linux based distribution, of which there are many, is a real operating system designed from the ground up to be secure and multi-user. Microsoft Windows on the other hand is a mass of added on later bits and pieces who primery aim is ease of use. This ease of use forgoes the security that a Linux based operating system was designed around. Sure, there are many other differences, as well as many similarities, but to expect to move across platform and carry across all the baggage one learnt is simply madness.

Whenever I have recommended people move away from the  corporate craziness that signifies a closed source operating system, such as one from Microsoft, to the  standards compliant world, and open systems, that signify a Linux based platform one of the first things I install into them is that it is basically nothing at all like Microsoft Windows and to expect something totally new. The second thing i instill into their minds is to think and work in different ways than they may have worked for years. Lastly, I instill into them that what they will experience is a whole new world.

Some make it, some do not. More and more are making the switch and more and more are  enjoying it. And it is that which is now, more than ever before, frightening Microsoft and the Microsoft loving harcore who cannot handle, nor comprehend, why more and more people and businesses are moving away to a better world that makes up the whole open system that is the Linux based platform and it is those who   spread the FUD we see all over the Internet.

Karoo say "We don't care".

No surprise there then.

At what is quickly turning out to be our final words with Stvve (the middleman between KC and us) it can clearly be read how much they really "care" about their customers. The following excerpts are from an email that hit my in box a couple of days ago. Since then, not a word has been said on the various things we raised from the aforementioned email. All spelling errors have been left in place. One thing we have absolutely no power over is the basic educational level of the people at KC.

Gems such as this:

Ø  Why does the cold night air affect it so much considering they are
underground? Bad cabling? Or rather poor, broken, damaged cabling?
 

Highly likely, although all the remote and physical checks have come
back within acceptable tolerances. Again shot (sic) of tearing up streets to
reaplce (sic) all the cables, this will not change until fibre is rolled out
to the curb/customer premises.

Ø  You are now convinced there is an error somewhere along our line from
exchange to house, and possibly in the house?

It is likely yes and that is why I have asked for engineer to move your
line. This should have happened by now and you shoud have been
contacted. I am finding out why you haven't.

(I am still waiting)

Since the email came in from which the above was taken there has been no more contact from them. A sure sign indeed that they truly do not care about what their customers  say and are actively doing nothing to improve their service offerings.

They are so desperate to be seen as a good caring company they have plastered all manner of lies, misconceptions and general bilge all over their customer facing web site. On there they espouse about a company promise when the reality is, as I have found out, they do not care on iota.

Over the course of the last 18 months they have increased telephone charges. It was once  said that the Hull City telephone network was the envy of the U.K., back when B.T. ruled over all, that no longer applies as the prices we are forced to pay are now so high there are some, pensioners in particular, who can no longer afford such a basic amenity. Some of those have now ditched their landlines in favour of a mobile telephone simply because they have found it cheaper to do so. They have introduced ADSL2+ (we pay the highest service fees of all ISP customers in the U.K.) with no thought given to what is an aging network of copper and how that would limit the customer experience. ADSL was a solid service which people where happy to use een with the DPI slowdowns of an evening. ADSL2+ however has seen a huge rise in disconnections/reconnections and an overall speed (throughput) drop.

Care about customers? Karoo? No they do not. They have gone from the peoples company to a money grabbing  corporation so fast they do not realise the damage they are doing to the good people of this city. Ignore what their web site says   as in the main it is utter bunkum.

People in high places.

People in high places, in this case Mr Ashley Highfield (okay, maybe not so high as in the publics view), should never offer up their views as there is always someone, somewhere who can spot bullshit when seen. And so it is with his BBC article on their blog, that isn't a blog, here.

In that article he tries to compare Ubuntu and MS Windows XP. I say try because anyone who tries, or has tried, to do exactly the same they always fall into the same traps. The single biggest trap is to directly compare any Linux based distribution with any Microsoft OS because they are not the same for what should be obvious reasons.

Further, they always do the comparison with MS Windows as the benchmark which means that the Linux based  distribution is at an immediate disadvantage. How so? Well,  hardware manufacturers almost always code a driver for their hardware and that driver is almost always MS Windows based. All the various Linux based distributions play catch up in this area so it is never a surprise to those of us who use  a Linux based distribution and have used one since 1992.

So, right there is the first problem.  Other problems are with 3rd party add on software such as Skype. Skype was written first and foremost for the MS  Windows platform and later they cobbled together something for  that ran on Linux. This puts the Linux  flavour of Skype at an immediate disadvantage again.

Here we have someone who by his own words played with ubuntu. He never said he was serious about installing and using it. These two points are not as far apart as they may seem at first glance. He then starts to blame Ubuntu for problems that have nothing to do with the Linux based solution but are in fact down to the web site designers blocking out, or at best a semi-functional web site, the millions of users of the Linux platform.

People such as he should know better but once again we read someone who has not the faintest clue espousing on something he knows nothing about. It is maddening for us advocates to have to read such rubbish.

Usage caps.

Usage caps on ADSL and other such services are fast becoming the norm all over the world. Our ISP Karoo, the only ISP in town that offers ADSL services, is one such company. However, we find that our caps are some of the lowest on offer. Our ISP offers a 3 teir service. Low, Mid and High. Low = 2GB, Mid = 10GB and High = 75GB. Not very good for the Internet as it stands right now with people streaming movies from all over the place.

2GB for the Low service is useless for anyone except those who do no more than occasional web browsing and email. Say the old girl down the street who uses the Internet to keep in touch with her daughter and sons and grandchildren. It is not meant to be used as a catch all all-you-can-eat type service so 2GB might just fit that model. however, with  flash embedded in just about all major web sites nowadays and such as the BBC with their embedded sound and video's that 2GB is soon going to run out. Move up a service says the ISP if that happens but movng up a service may prove too much fr the purse so is out of the question for such people. They end up paying an extra 2 UKP  per GB instead.

10GB is not enough either as that target is easily reached. Again, move up a service shouts the ISP and the same financial constrains apply.

75GB may seem on the face of things to be plenty but as I am founding out it is not. I use a binary Linux  distribution and keep my system in sync with that distributions -current branch which can have upwards of 4GB updates a week. That equates to 16GB a month which leaves me with 59GB to share amongst the whole family. We have 4 main computers, my wifes, my 2 elder boys and mine all share the connection, and the cap. My wife and one of the boys both use Ubuntu which has plenty of updates in any given month. Neither can or do use the Internet at the free from caps times of midnight until 8am so they do their system updates during the day when the cap counts are in force. So, they get around 10GB each of updates per month which is another 20GB to add to the 16GB I use and that is before any normal usage patterns are applied. Now we have 39GB left to do all the normal things people do on the Internet.

Normal things my wife and son do is watch the BBC;s iplayer, watch and listen to some youtube, do web browsing which means waitching and listening to videos and sound on such web sites as the BBC and other news based web sites. My wife and 2 boys have what can be termed normal usage patterns. It does not take long during the month to see that 75GB being gobbled up.

Put simply for the top service for home users 75GB is restrictive at best and simplynot enough at worse. KAroo, of course, don't care as for each 1GB over the limit one goes they get 1 UKP. A nice steady income for them on top of the already inflated price we have to pay for access.

If one looks at the various other ISP's caps in the U.K. and the U.S.A. it soon becomes clear we are suffering the lowest caps on offer. After much discussion with Karoo they fail misreably on the customer services front as they simple will not raise the caps, certainly not while people are going over the caps on their chosen service. Some people do not even know they are on a capped service and some of those do not realise they pay even more on top of their normal service fees. It does not matter how many emails the ISP sends out signifying the fact a cap is being reached.

No matter how Karoo spins it the usage caps on all 3 home customer services are too low. They however, like every other area of their services they suck at, do not care about their customers as long as the money keeps rolling in. The biggest shame of all this is that we customers have no where else to go. We are stuck paying inflated prices and we are stuck we severely limited usage caps whether we like it or not.

If another ISP was to come into our service area and offer a set of better services AT THE SAME PRICE we currently pay, even though they prices are way too high, people would jump ship faster than one can say BYE BYE KAROO and of those customers who know no better those of us that do will ensure they move with us. So come on you other ISP's give us the competition we here in Hull so desperately crave so we can rid ourselves of the greed that signifies what Kcom/Karoo are all about.

A defunct ISP.

Is what Karoo is in all but name. Their share prices, due in part to the so called credit crunch and also in part to boardroom incompetence, are getting lower and lower with each passing day. They have a slow and aging network of twisted pair (telephone) cabling through which they are forcing ADSL2+. From the 3500+ people that have contacted me it can be clearly demonstrated that the ADSL2+ experiment is a failure of massive proportions.

Of course, Karoo take heart in the fact that a few say to them that they are happy with their connections but those 3500+ people, who make up a sizable chunk of their customer base and includes home as well as business users, show the level of discontent amongst their customer base.

All of this makes it not impossible that during the coming two years we shall see some other ISP/telephone company come into Hull and for Karoo to fall away as a nasty memory. But would that be a good thing? I say no. Better the devil you know and all that.

My ISP's lack of speed.

This will probably not be the last blog i do about my ISP but even though it is about my ISP is does not sit comfortably in the 'My ISP and ASDL2+ (part X)' series so it has a different subject title.

Recently, it became very clear that our ISP, Karoo, have no intentions of trying to improve sync and connection speeds on their ADSL2+ services. After several months of trying to get them to do various things that would provide for better sync and connection speeds the following excerpt from an email from Steve 'The Head of Infrastructure' nationwide.

"At present this is all we can offer but we are still looking at other options available to us and that includes working with Alcatel, as we have been since we implemented ADSL2+."

Which, knowing him as I do, is as good as saying "We fucked up over ADSL2+ and we know it, but at this time we can do nothing about the problems.".

There is no shame in admitting defeat but that is simply beyond Steve so, as always, he wraps it up in words. He became very good at  question dodging. He rarely gave up information that would allow us to peek beyond the words spoken. His biggest problem when talking with customer representatives, as we are/were was that he could never get his head out of the boardroom. Time and time again he sat firmly on the side of his paymasters promising so and so would be done but nothing ever got started. He was to all intents and purposes Karoo's lying machine and on occasion he played that role so well we didn't see it. Most of the time though we did see through it and when we did we tried to get behind the veil. In the end He Who Must Not Be Mentioned had had enough and left the  fold. Then that email, from which I took the excerpt, came in  and Steve left the fold. This left me with nowhere to go and nothing to do so it made sense for me to cut the baggage free and so I did.  After several months of promises we have absolutely nothing to show for our endeavours.
 
As I have commented in various blog posts here at AnnoyedFolk there are several ways they can, at the very least, galvanise public support here in Hull but, as was not unexpected, they have chosen, with no explanation whatsoever, to ignore those options. It has to be said that if those options where given up as a solution then only a very small minority of customers would be able to use them. Karoo call this minority "Power Users". But those Power Users could help those not within that group to utilises those options so everyone  could, in theory at least, benefit from the options. But it would appear, allowing those options is beyond Karoo technicians (which is amazing really as other ISP's within the U.K. do it with great benefits to their customers) and because of that little technicality  ADSL2+ will never improve here.

Overall we do enjoy slightly better sync and connection rates than, say, BT but the demographic is much different. So different in fact that one cannot make suitable comparisons even given exact same line lengths and  exact same DSLAMS in use etc etc. Here, because Karoo's service offerings serve only Hull and surrounding areas they have a much tighter service area. Because of that they should be able to consistantly provide for higher sync and connection rates. Some areas of the City have copper cabling older than 40 years which does not help matters.

But enough on the technicalities and back to the   throwing in of the towel. My own personal thoughts as to why Steve has done this is that his paymasters told him to do it. It is widely known that the MD and I do not get on so my thoughts on this matter turn to that and I believe the word was sent down to rid ourselves of this problem and Steve being the opitomy of a company man  duly agreed.

Another reason could have been that Steve  could not provide the answers we were so desperately seeking therefore he felt it was time to let things go and leave it in a state of limbo. Yet another reason could have been that I have too much knowledge for them and because of that I scare them which led to the     dropping of the ball.

Whatever the reason for his sudden capitulation this is not the end. Far from it. I have other, powerful avenues that I can take our grumbles to and it is those avenues I have spent the last few days since Steve's 'I quit' email exploring them. Right now I have more faith in the E.U.'s ability to  affect change here than I do via change from within.

At the end of the day Karoo, being a subset of KCom, is a company with shareholders and anything that needs to have money spent on it to fix whatever is broke (and there is a LOT broken) would need to get passed their money grubbing shareholders before those filter feeders at the bottom get a chance to  affect that change. In these dodgy share times I cannot see that happening. We need high speed Internet as much as anyone else in the country.

It will never happen while the current trend within the KCom company is one of damage mitigation and skimp and save at all costs in all areas.

KCom are doomed and those  from the boardroom know it. It is only a matter of time.

Kcom and Karoo.

Kcom the incumbent telephone company here in Hull and its ISP spin off Karoo are technologically so far behind the other ISP's that proliferate around the U.K. they are fast becoming a bigger joke than they were last year.

They use relatively new DSLAMS but their back end servers often fail and twisted pair cable runs are mostly 20 or more years old. If you are stupid enough to use their proxy servers you are guaranteed to run into problems more times than not. Their back end servers that sift through what you do on-line so the data can be sold to third parties often fail. In the last year or so we have suffered outages of between 24 and 14 hours on 3 separate occasions. They have no backup servers. No redundancy whatsoever. They are a cost cutting operation. They have not invested much in new stuff for years. As for cable runs well, the best that can be said about them is they work. Slowly, but work. Just.

Look at the state of ADSL2+ in this city. Ignore what KCom and/or Karoo say about it as they often lie about statistics and it is a well known fact that those who say they are happy with the service are those who are technologically lacking in skills. There are thousands of people suffering from poor connection rates. Piss poor throughput rates and it can all be put down to 1 or 2 things. 1) Lack of exchanges. 2) Long, poorly routed, twisted pair cabling. Cable runs  that where laid early last century and new runs bolted on as the city grew in size. Back then of course there was no Internet so they laid cable willy nilly which results in this Internet age with piss poor sync rates and throughput speeds.

Almost every area of this city suffers from old copper cabling. Almost every area of this city suffers from long lines (from house to exchange). Some areas suffer what they call 'dead' exchanges which are then routed out to real exchange which can be several miles away from the 'dead' exchange. It is a mess. Worse still is the fact they are doing nothing whatsoever about it.

It is quite simply take it or leave it. As there are no other ISP's in this city it is impossibly difficult to go eslewhere.  Those who do not understand the telephony situation in this city often say "Go to another ISP"  which is impossible to do here.

If another ISP came here and did not use the Kcom network of piss poor cabling nor use their exchanges but did in fact set up their own autonamous network then people and businesses would jump ship in a heartbeat. But they will not come here and neither will they invest in a new network simply because of some believed loyalty to Kcom and Karoo which frankly does not exist amogst the rank and file of this city.

The people and businesses of this city are crying out for a real high speed connection. If there is someone out there with money to burn and they set up a high speed fibre network and charged reasonable rates for the connection they are guaranteed to succeed in taking  thousands, 10's of thousands, 100's of thousands of customers.

Kcom and Karoo can't see this simple fact. If they can see it they are doing nothing whatsover about it. Last I heard they where  doing a feasibility study  about fibre but the fact of the matter is if it will cost then money they  will not do it. They are a shadow of the company that once served Hull only. In those long since gone days they where a company to proud of. Since they expanded into a, don't laugh, world wide company they have forgotten about their long suffering roots. Telephony in this city is so poor now they are the biggest joke this city can offer.

Someone, any one, set up a fibre network. Use the cities extensive sewer system to route the fibre to homes and businesses. Use a route out to the wider Internet somewhere outside the city. No need at all to touch anything belonging to Kcom. Provide  real high speed services which the current piss poor ADSL2+ cannot provide, Offer Internet, telephone and TV via cable and the people would jump. It it so easy to envisage but finding someone to do it is the hard part. Which is a shame because I guarantee the people of this once magnificent city would jump ship tomorrow if the fibre network suddenly appeared.

The fact is that the long suffering people and businesses of this city are ready and primed to move elsewhere.

Is it just me or?

Is it just me or is the whole Web experience slowing down? Not by ISP's slowly but surely making connection speeds fall lower and lower through lack of anything approaching decent networks but by more and more usage of PHP and SQL?

Have you noticed how several of the so called main stream web sites hit URL after URL in your browsers taskbar? This transversal of URL and after URL usually includes several hits to various advertisements which plague the Internet web experience these days which all goes towards slowing down what eventually fils your browser window.

It is bad enough when a web site uses flash to display some minor image. None are more guilty of that particular practise than news services where when going to any single one of the so called main stream news web sites it can take from a minute to several minutes even on a 18Mbit plus  ADSL2 connection for the web site to fully load into the browser.

The whole web experience today is bad to piss poor but as the web sites themselves deliberately slow down the end result (what you see in your browser window) it is only going to succeed in people looking elsewhere as they struggle to find something that displays faster.

It does not matter if one is using Internet Explorer (though one must ask you why you are using that insecure monstrosity) or Safari or Firefox or any one of the many others that are available this slowdown thing affects everyone irregardless of browser in use. It is only going to get worse.

Google's front page shows what can be done but even that is slowly caving in to the ever more loaded pages.

The Internet experience.

Or  the Internet WEB experience as it stands today.

Being a staunch advocate of free software  tools (also known as FOSS) as I am I find it increasingly furstrating to see web pages the exclaim only Mircosoft 5.5 and above browsers can use this page and other such messages designed/created to help the user. Of course, that kind of help is no help and is simply caused because whoever created the web site was too lazy to design it properly using well established standards so that the web site works across all known browsers.

Then, of course, there are those designers that use closed source tools to design the web site with the associated lock-in those closed source tools have.

Too many companies hire Web developers who have never used any non-MS tools.  These people view W3C-compliant code as "nonstandard", and adamantly insist that Microsoft Malware Magnet is the One True Browser. That's the charitable interpretation.  I'm sure Microsoft never slips companies money or heavily-discounted software under the table in exchange for Web pages designed to look like crap on any browser that doesn't emulate MSIE's bugs, right?

Of course, what "Best viewed with MSIE 5.5 or higher" really means in
most cases is "I'm too lazy to test with any other browser."

Plus there are those designers that still use ActiveX controls within their web designs. ActiveX has been proven time and time again to be the single biggest hole in any browser ever but designers don't care about your security as long as they get paid for their creations.

I don't know how many web sites are left using such lock-in designs as it is would be almost impossible for me to seek each and every one out but I see enough of them during my daily web travels to know that some are old enough to have been created before Firefox and friends in the open source world came to be but there are some still being designed and it is those new ones that really have no excuse.

I lay the blame for all of these poorly designed web sites squarely on Microsoft.

Designing web site like this is a sure fire way to lose custom.

Our ISP.

By our I mean it in the sense that the ISP is in our city via our cities telephone system. We are somewhat unique in Kingston-upon-Hull in that we have our own telephone network totally separate from BT/Virgin etc from which the rest of the country benefits in a way we cannot. That benefit is if you hae problems with your current ISP you can simply jump ship and sign up elsewhere. You can do this as many times as there are iSP's available to you. It is that telephone company the provides the city's ADSL offerings. Apart from those ISP's that provide only dialup services and another that supposedly provides ADSL and one other that claims to be providing fibre based services (I say claims to be as I have yet to fine any installations done) our ISP being a child offspring offering ADSL  based services off the back of the telephone provider Mother ship is all we have here.

That being the case. When the ISP in question buggers things up or is, as any child can be, petulant or simply does not offer what customers, home customers in particular, want  then we have no other ISP to go to. Sure we could use 'mobile Internet' but that has problems of its own here, such as low signals which makes using mobile Internet something akin to the old, and now ancient, dialup services.

Right now, there are huge problems with the ISP's ADSL2+ offerings. All over the city, in every single exchange area, people are getting low sync (down) speeds. Lower, in some cases much lower, (down) sync speeds than they had on the older ADSL services. One always knows when they have a problem or two as they do not return emails. Emailing their technical support is a waste of time as they just trot out the company line. Emailing cutomer support is like pulling teeth with a spoon. I.E. something worth considering but once commonsense has kicked in the idea ia forgotten. apart from that, emailing customer support is a waste of time as they too trot out the company line, along with such gems as "have you changed your settings" which is fast becoming the watch word for the ISP's  customer service team. They are frankly a joke. Getting any information out of them is akin to getting water out of a stone. On occasions emailing them does return a decent result but when the shit hits the fan they hide away.

We are in discussions (as part of our normal monthly meetings) with said ISP in an effort to find out why their ADSL2+ is so crap.  So far they have trotted out  'line length'  and 'incompatible hardware (meaning modem/routers and plain modems) which is all well and good for the masses as an excuse but us more techincally aware people know that those are simple excuses. While they do obviously play a part in end user sync speeds in a city such as we are with its tightly setup network of cabling we do not believe  for one minute those are the cause of the low down sync speeds. They are not talking with yor average Joe here they are talking to two people that have years of network and telephony experience between them. So, while they can fob off a lot of folk they cannot as easily fob us two off. Of course there are those within our group that think they know everything and often times come up with utter bullshit but others know who they are so ignore them for what they are.

In the next day or so we should be finding out the waht, why and how come.

The Cloud

The Cloud is on-line software, otherwise known as SaaS (Software as a Service). Whatever your thoughts are on this subject mine are that it is the biggest pile of insecure twaddle ever to be invented.

I personally would never trust any company with what could conceivably be personal and sensitive documents. On-line storage for data is all well and good but a quick looked at the news web sites will reveal many of these places have been hacked at one point in time or another. Until such a time as they are impenetrably secure there is no way on this rotting Earth I would trust anyone with my personal documents. Even if they ever get the holy grail of being impenetrably secure I would still never use them.

Yahoo!, Amazon, Google are all involved in this. Thay all have their fingers, or should that be heads?, in the cloud. I cannot bring myself to trust any one of them. Google, Do no evil, are the worse offenders for collecting and storing all the personally identifiable information they can glean whenever you use their search service. Of course Google have much much more than search these days and whenever you use one of those Google services you give them more and more data about yourself. It is scary.

Microsoft, that peddler of the most insecure software, has recently started investing in suh services. This is the last company on Earth I would use. Their track record on security in their software operating system is abysmal at best and utterly shocking at worst. Why would any one think their track record in the could would be anything better? It will not be.

All these, and more, companies want you to use these services so that they can focre you to do away with computers that have storage. They are slowly moving towards that goal where you will no longer store files on a local machine but will instead have total reliance on the company in the cloud.

Let us not forget server outages. Once you are reliant on a given company and their servers disappear for hours, days on end (as recently happened at Amazon) then you are doomed as your company could lose millions because you cannot access the cloud.

Be you a company of a private citizen, trust this cloud at your peril. It will all end in acrimonious tears. Especially since Microsoft are now involved. Be afraid, be very afraid. You are dripping information about yourself all over the Internet. Until our collective governments grow a spine and stop this data mining then expect massive company or personal losses as one after another get breached and all data stolen. Before you realise it your clone somewhere in the world will have stolen everything you have.

Be scared. Be very very scared.

Do you?

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BBC V ISP's

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7336940.stm

In that article on the bbc web site it is quite plain the BBC have no intention of paying ISP any money. I have to say I agree with the BBC.

Why should the BBC pay for ISP negligence? The ISP's should have and should now do upgrade their networks to cope with demand. They surely saw the rise in on-line videos. Youtube is one such that delivers video's to users but I never heard the ISP's asking them for money so why now ask the BBC for money so the ISP's can upgrade their networks?

The rise of on-line video entertainment has been with us since before youtube existed. Youtube came along and that started a slight strain on ISP networks. Did they, the ISP's upgrade their pipes to cope? No. They let that one slide. Then the BBC opens its IPlayer service and people started using it. Apparently it is, unsurprisingly, popular. Suddenly the ISP's are faced with network overload. Is it the ISP's or the BBC who should pay for the network upgrades? Think about this for a minute.

You pay for network access.
The BBC pay for providing you with all their web sites.

Focus on that last one. As a content provider the BBC pay for Internet access just like or you and I do. Except the BBC pays millions a year for the privilege of serving you with the content which includes the IPlayer service.

Now focus on that first one. You pay for Internet access. Just like the BBC.

Google has many applications that make them a content provider. YouTube is a content provider. There are many such content providers out there but the greedy ISP's have never asked any single one for money to prop up their failing networks. Suddenly the BBC, a public content portal paid for with the TV license money overs a streaming service and suddenly they ISP networks are creaking so they automatically assume that because the BBC gets millions every year from the TV license that the BBC should pay, again, the ISP for allowing such services on their failing pipes.

In short. The BBC pay for the privilege of serving up their content which includes the BBC IPlayer. You, the user, pay your ISP for Internet access which includes the BBC web site which includes the BBC IPlayer. The ISP's want the BBC to pay them again for you, who have already paid for Internet access to access the BBC web site which includes the BBC IPlayer service who already pay for access which allows them to serve up content. So, the BBC end up paying twice and you, the user, once. Clear?

Quite how the ISP's expect even more money from the BBC is beyond comprehension.

For those using Karoo you may be pleased to know that while not unexpected they are at the forefront of the shouting at the BBC for more money. Not unexpected because Karoo are a greedy company who have some of the highest prices for ADSL in the U.K.