Karoo Part 3?

Now that the meetings with our ISP, Karoo, are back on again we are once again back in the loop, so to speak. They are giving us information that we can share with the general public as well as some information we cannot due to what they call 'company secrets'. That is a contentious issue in and of itself which I will touch on later.

At this time KC, a telephone company that is also the Karoo mother ship. are upgrading their network in readiness for ADSL2+. At the last meeting we was given a date of 28th July 2008 for the big turn on date. Apparently, they had had some problems during their internal trials that showed that those on extended reach, >8km from the nearest exchange, where getting suboptimal performance. Quite why they where surprised by this only they know. Still, they where surprised and the big turn on date was missed. The reason for this delay, one can assume, is while they attempt to find a workaround for these >8km away folk.

We all know the dangers attached to assuming but as they had told us of this 'glitch' and they have since gone very quiet the assumption is not a big leap to make as to why they are affectively in a stop state.

One would think that a local telephone company serving local people, and surrounding areas, would not have any exchanges >8km away from a customers property. As they are serving Kingston upon Hull and surrounding areas the land coverage is quite large. They have many exchange boxes dotted around the city but one has to realise the telephone cables do not run in a line of sight fashion. So, while your house may be 1.5km from an exchange the telephone line, snaking underground, could be 2.3km in length or more. So, because they have expanded outwards from their heartland it is not beyond the realms of probability that these people >8km from their nearest exchange are those living on the outside edge of the city boundary. Those on the East side of the city also have fewer exchanges then those on the West side so those in East Hull also have longer telepnone to exchange lines. Again, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a few are >8km from their nearest exchange.

They have told us that very few customers will attain the full 24Mb that ADSL2+ technology offers. Instead, they said, the vast majority of customers will see download speeds in the region of 15-20Mb. Some, unfortunately, will be below that lower mark in the 10-15Mb range. However, anything above the current limitation has got to be a good thing so even if you are one of the unlucky ones and only get around the 12Mb mark I would not complain. They have said that there will be a few customers that will not benefit at all from ADSL2+ so for those very unlucky ones rather than make them suffer with slower speeds they will keep open the ADSL1 links. Yes, I know they use hardware with a fall back but for the sake of keeping things simple the basic premise is how I describe.

Karoo, being a KC sibling as they are, have probably inherited the known cautiousness of its mother. They have also probably inherited the wall secretive ssilence that KC are known the world over for. This wall of silence goes someway to explaining why they have cut off all contact with us. Also this act of silence allows all manner of rumours to start and fester, such as "it is not on because they have fucked up as usual." or "it is not on because their techs have no idea how to do it." and so on. These are two sch comments gaining traction on various forums already.

They have already stated that it is those on the new package sets that are getting ADSL2+ first so why can they not turn it on and sort out any problems once customers are up and running? This plan of action makes much more sense than trying to sort of niggling issues when the overall internal network is not saturated. It makes perfect sense to allow as many customers as possible on so that they can see how the set-up works when in full use, well as full as they have customers anyway.

Since our last meeting they have gone very quiet. So, where they are within the upgrade cycle and what now in the official turn on date is any body's guess. The status page within the control panel shows only that during the summer months they will be upgrading the network and that customers will have two forced disconnection. The status article reads more like an advert for the new packages than it does to inform customers of what is happening. Much more imprtant to customers is the current status of the upgrades. A daily digest of a few words would go a long long way to giving customers who care about such things a much better idea of what is going on and what the current status is. Bt then, this is Karoo we are talking about, who give out as little information as they possible can. In days of yore this would have been good enough but todays customers are more demanding. Todays customers want information. Which is why I suggested they set up a general public accessible blog. They said they would do that but like everything else within the KC umbrella, whether we will actually see a blog is something only the <insert your deity here> knows.

Customers all over the city have seen the disconnect/reconnect cycle they said would happen so what is stopping them turning it on? I don't know. I do know that giving out a date then missing that date and saying absolutely nothing about why they missed that date is not a good thing to do regarding customer relations. It fosters bad customer relations.

Come on Karoo. Pull your fingers out and let us customers enjoy the benefits ADSL2+ offers.

Not at all surprising.

Many web sites offer the chance to email for more information. This is particularly true of many commercial and most of the bigger web sites. But is anyone in the slightest surprised when correspondence to these info@ email addresses go unanswered? I am not.

The Hull County Council web site is one such web site that in my findings rarely answers emails send to their info@ email address. Not surprisingly it can be located on the 'Contact Us' page. In relation to the info@ email address on that page under the heading of Email it says "You can email, remembering to include your name and address so we can process your request, either directly to the service you are trying to
access, or via the council's main inbox." Nowhere does it say "All emails to this address will be wilfully ignored. So, it is with some expectation that any emails sent to that address will get at the very least some sign that it was read. Better, of course, would be a reply that had something to do with the question but that is obviously asking too much of our hard working council workers who's wages are paid out of the fund extorted from the people who email them!

Seriously. it bugs me when people ignore emails but when the council does it it becomes annoying.

Fibre in Hull (and elsewhere)

It is fairly well known that countrywide there is lots of unused fibre in the ground. Every City, major and minor, every town, large and small, every village. They are all, just about, connected by fibre. So, who owns this fibre? Only a few companies. What are the chances of ne strands of fibre being laid, underground or overground? Small, very small. So, whoever builds a business based around fibre connections must either do it themselves (unlikely) or forge partnerships with those who own the currently laid fibre (possible). However, I cannot see this happening in the current economic climate.

While using google.co.uk to search for anything at all to do with Internet services, it was with great interest that I read this URL. My own feelings about that particular URL is to instinctively distrust it. Well, not the URL but the person involved.

If it is the same person I had the misfortune to work with some years ago on a not to different project then my instincts will be correct. If it is not then all can say is I wouldn't trust a company that claims what they are claiming. What they are claiming is outlandish at best. It is not unknown for a small minor, very minor, company to grow a body into something much larger but to do that requires a guile that I never saw in this person.

If they are sucessful then good on them for making it so. However, i have my doubts. As is usual for these types of companies they are aiming squarely for the business market which is a folly only they can explain. If they did home customer connections for their fibre offerings then there is no reason why a block of houses cannot pay for a fibre connection, subject to agreements between those house dwellers of course, which will offset the costs of installation. But this company immediately limits themselves by chopping off a large number of potential customers. As I said, folly.

If they were to change tack and offer these, at this time, mythical fibre connections to the home market then I, for one, would seek out partners and go for it. Indeed, i may well go for it myself alone. But, due to various misgiving I will not be contacting this company. I run a business from home but I am not a Limited company and this gives ISP's the willies when I ask for a home telephone line and a business class ADSL service. In fact, i recently asked for this very thing from our incumbant telephone and ISP here in Kingston upon Hull but they couldn't catagorise me into their little slots so could only offer me a business class service for both landline and Internet. I am taking this further up the legal chain to the E.U. who interestingly have requested I provide a lot more information on my request to my ISP and their response. It will probably takes years before something is decided but the very fact the E.U. telephony commissioner has asked I provide them with more and specific information tells me something will happen in this area.

In the case of that particular URL I find it interesting but nothing more.

Overweight? Consider this.

I have mentioned it before on this blog that if one takes a look at photographs from the late 1800's and early 1900's in Britain, America, Australia, Ireland etc you will see lots of 'plump' people, mostly women who at that time were considered beautiful if plump. Skinny women were scorned. Men, however, used to be the workers and if those workers worked in a factory or in a strenuous job then invariably they were slim. Most in those days were hungry which also accounted for the slim men. Even then there was plump men about.

Look at various countries and one will see plump people are the norm and always have been the norm. This obsession with ridiculous figures such as being 13 to 31kg overweight is a problem is utter rubbish.

The British and American obsession with weight is dangerous. It is dangerous simply because if, as they want, everyone is slim then we run the risk of people dying. They will die because this obsession demand they eat less or that they eat more fruit and less meat etc.

It is not rocket science to see this happening. Let us take a look at say Congo. The Congolese people, women especially, are genetically plump people. Even in other countries that do not eat the so called Western diet the people are genictally plump. The world over it is the same.

British people are not genetically slim people. They never have been and probably never will be, unless those with the obsession of making everyone the world over slim win which bring us right back to what I said earlier about people dying. Because the Americans are, in the main, from British stock they too are not genetically slim people by nature.

Much of todays science about what we eat and how we eat and how we exercise, or not etc is so much hot air we are in danger of walking blind on these issues.

People the world over have been genetically overweight since time began. Not everyone, obviously, sits in that category but the vast majority of people do. Whether they be a few kilograms overweight or a few 10's overweight makes no difference. It has always been that way.

Incase you think otherwise after reading the above I am neither overweight nor underweight. Nor is any of my immediate family nor my extended family. Infact, we have never had a family member going back to the earliest photograph
we have (date stamped 1864) except for the wife of my great great Grandfather who was a plump women. I just abhor this obsession touted by so called experts as it is utter bunkum at every level.

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.

Distribution surfers.

A distribution surfer is a person who flits from whatever he/she was using to the perceived latest and greatest distribution, usually a different one It has nothing to do with the merit of. It has nothing to do with anything really except the fact that the new is distribution is...well...new.

We see it all to often in newsgroups and forums where a user has a problem with something not because that something created the problem but because the underlaying cause is the differences in approach to how their previous distribution did things. In the minds of these distribution surfers all distributions should be the same. But, the simple fact is there are almost as many differences in the underlay structures as there are distributions. Trying to get that simple thing across to them is difficult at best and damn near impossible at worse.

Taking as many newsgroups as I do and reading the many forums I do it soon becomes clear the names and on-line nicks that belong to a given distribution surfer. Take as an example Slackware, that venerable distribution that has for years defied the impending doom calls and Ubuntu. Slackware 12.1 came out just before Ubuntu 8.04 (which has recently morphed into 8.04.1). Looking around at the newsgroups when Slackware was released we saw a sudden increase in users, some of which held new names/tags/handles. Then Ubuntu came out and most of those new names disappeared and popped into view on the Ubuntu newsgroup as well as on Ubuntu's main forum. That defines perfectly what a distribution surfer is and what one does as each distribution releases a new version.

Slackware, Debian, Redhat (now Fedora for none business users) and to some extent SuSe and Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) have been around for years and years and are still as relevant in todays Linux distributions world as they where 10 or so years ago. Even though during all those years many other distributions have popped up and in some cases those newer ones have surpassed those older ones where take up by users is concerned. It is not that that is annoying though. It is those damned distribution surfers that annoy the jiggery out of us old timers. Why in the name of $DEITY will they not settle on one distribution and learn it properly?

It boggles the mind it does.

Slackware has rudimentary package management and does not do dependacy tracking, long may it stay that way. Debian does both but because of that has other problems, such as application or library conflicts. Redhat (Fedora), SuSe and Mandriva all do both but uses RPM, which, in Microsoft parlence, if you have ever suffered from a registry botch that stops your system from booting then you will know what RPM Hell means. Because Slackware is much more basic, adhering to the age old KISS principle it is less, much much less likely to be rendered unbootable unless the $USER of that box does something utterly stupid. Because of this simple fact Slackware will probably still be with us in 20 years from now.

If there is a good thing about all this it is that the surfer will invariably return to a good solid distribution eventually as their heads get mauled by the differences between them. But then, this brings its own annoyances such as when they come back they start shouting about how this distribution or that one has so and so so why doesn't this one?

Bloody distribution surfers should be banned from ever running a distribution if they move base more than 4 times in one year or if they are seen or heard to write or utter the words 'Distribution X has so and so, why doesn't distribution Y' once.

Kneejerk reactions.

Is what the present government is all about. Just about every law they have dreamed up and implemented has resulted from kneeejerk reactions. And so the same can be said for the latest government reaction to the spate of knife related crime that has in recent times hit parts of this once proud and fine country.

The government insist on closing the stable door after the horses have bolted. They do this level of law implementing on anything they touch. The issues with knife crime go a lot deeper than some of our youth carrying a knife. As per usual for this present government they deem the issues to be the result not the cause. It is but a tiny fraction of our youth base that are 1) Doing the crime and 2) Ending up dead because of 1. This government is daemonising all our youth because of a few. They are, as always, sending out the wrong signals. They are pandering to those who feel they are threatened by the youthful few when in actual fact they are as far removed from the problem areas as the youth are from the hallowed halls of Westminster. But that does not stop our government from implementing new laws to close the stable doors after the horses have bolted.

I do not know what the answer to knife related crime is. I have some ideas though. The result of it is often times death. But why do our youth deem it necessary to carry a knife in the first place? That question is a hard one because no one really knows the extent of the problem. Sure they know where the problem areas are but they have no idea in relation to the entire country. I reckon the problem starts in the primary school years. Education is the key to the answers not using a hammer to crack a nut as this government insists on doing. Because of a few problem areas all youth will be tarred with the same brush. Considering we the people entrusted this government with running this once proud and fine country we should be ashamed at their answers to the problems modern life faces.

Knifes have always been with us. From the turn of last century through to modern times. People have always carried knifes and people have always used knifes. Unfortunately, people have always died because of knifes. It does not take a rocket scientists brain to work out that the issues have been with us for many tens of years and that current deaths from knifes crimes while shocking are nothing more than a blip on the spreadsheet.

If this government, indeed any future government, really wanted to stop or even cut down knife related crime they would not entrust our police to do it. No. Our police have too many powers already. Giving them mandate to further intrude into the lives of our youth is just plain wrong and sends out all the wrong signals. It further installs into those few of our youth that is legitimises what they do. Instead they should be aiming to shock our youth at the primary school age. How they would do this is not my place to guess but it is certainly doable. While this method will do little to nothing about the present generation of youth it will impact on the next generation. So, instead of yet another kneejerk reaction to what the newspapers say is happening the plan would seem to indicate that the government has for once come up with a thoughtful plan of action.

Is this too much to ask from the people we elected to govern instead of rule? Probably.