BBC.co.uk does it again.

In this article on the bbc.co.uk web site we see once again the underlaying knowledge is sorely lacking. They lable the, by now ancient, Anarchists' Cookbook  a 'terrorist manual'.

At a risk of being tagged by the all seeing police state which Great Britain has become as a terrorist myself I put Anarchist Cookbook into google and once passed the obligatory adverts the first hit returned was on Wikipedia. It says there that it first appeared  circa 1971. And just to show how easy it is, even now, to download the Cookbook, at the end of the Wikipedia link it leads you to here.

Not exactly hard to find is it. Though as the FAQ on that web site says the original Cookbook cannot be downloaded anymore there are several other similar Cookbooks available some of which can be downloaded from there.

Anyone who has traveled since 1971 through Fidonet, the early none WWW based Internet through to its modern WWW equivalent, the all singing all dancing Web2.0 based Internet, knows that that 'Cookbook' has been around for years. I do not know when it first surfaced nor if it is still being added to or updated in any way as I have not seen a copy of it for at least 10 or more years. It has probably been around for 30 years or so.

I cannot remember when I first came upon it, suffice it to say it was uploaded to my BBS (old style BBS not its modern meaning) which I ran from 1977 until 1997 or so. Having taken a quick look at it, as all good SysOps did when something had been uploaded to their BBS, it became clear very quickly that while the information held within was aimed at doing things considered illegal there was not much aside from  homemade bomb making, that would lead to anyone getting hurt. Sure, telephone companies would (more on that later) but as everyone considered them money grabbing thieves they were considered fair game.

If you never lived through the days before the Internet existed or the days before Broadband access then it is hard to think of such things as 'phreaking'. Phreaking allowed one to play a tune, usually using a penny whistle (also known as a tin whistle), which fooled the telephone exchange which then allowed one to make a free telephone call. If you get it right you could fool the exchange to allow a free call to be made and also to 'dial' the number for you. All considered clever stuff back in those days Modern telephony systems are no longer prone to being fooled in such a manner. There are, or perhaps were, many such olde worlde things in the Anarchists' Cookbook that the BBC author called a 'terrorists manual', that bare no use in the modern technologically laden world. Whether this has changed and such things within it removed i have no idea as i have not seen a copy of the Cookbook for years.


This basic lack of in-depth writing is proliferating all across the
news reporting media. Be they an on-line  place or part of the dying
dead tree newspaper brigade. One can see it everywhere one reads the
news. It is as alarming as it is appalling.

Do the BBC consider everyone who reads their articles to be under 10 years old? On reading some articles the answer would appear to be a resounding yes. It is this appalling lack of both quality and knowledge that has infiltrated the BBC in the last couple of years that makes reading such a joy and irritant at the same time. The BBC of course will say that it was the police who made such comments and all they were doing was reporting the news. But that in and of itself is no excuse.

Perhaps because those who write such articles are a new breed they do not know such things have been available for 30 or more years but surely in that case it would make perfect sense, as well as add some credibility to the author, to seek out some information on it? Is that really asking too much of a modern reporter that they do some very basic sleuthing so that they do not appear amateurish?

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 11)

On each FORCED reconnection due to unsettled weather conditions our sync rate gets lower and lower.

The only thing that is constant is the fact that the sync rate gets lower.

ADSL2+ is a waste of time on the ancient copper network (from house to exchange) here.

Karoo run fibre almost everywhere else so why can't they replace the aging copper that is left and give us users the at least the speeds they claimed from ADSL2+? Only they know the answer to that one but I can speculate.

They KNOW ADSL2+ is poor and they KNOW how to fix it so that everyone will get a nice speed bump but they WON'T do it. They STOCK refuse to do it. why? Because if they did a part of the company would disappear.

Karoo's stock is dropping faster than rain from a black cloud. The company is dying and they know it. They are ripe for the picking but we users do not want that to happen because if it did the cost of both telephone calls and braodband access would go up.

They know that to replace the ancient copper here is the way to go so why don't they just get on and do it?

Huge monetary figures.

I have long been amused when I read articles such as this one where they tout  figures of $2 trillion and $5 trillion. If, like me, such figures make you gasp in amazement as much as the induce a thought of incredulity then they will also invoke thoughts of utter disbelief.

It appears to me that people such as scientists, be they scientist of nature or scientists of medicine, in fact irellevant of doctrine, use such huge and ultimately useless  numbers as a way of backing up their often outlandish claims. Look closely at that referenced article and then try to understand the underlaying ideology behind it. Do you reach the same  conclusion as I do?

My conclusion of it is that to claim such outlandish figures against something that is not ultimately measurable makes the effort used to collate and process such data utterly futile. The commonman, and woman, cannot comprehend such huge numbers. This has been, err, scientifically and mathematically, proven so why do these people persist in producing such huge figures? They do it because their ultimate goal is to garner ever more money from Governments the world over. They are not aimed at Joe and Jane in the streets. So one has to wonder why the BBC produces such articles.

I suppose the BBC's aim to to educate and inform (yes, yes, I know they often do not get the mix right but let us forget that for now) and by producing such articles they are doing exactly that. But, that does not help Joe and Jane comprehend such numbers. So, ultimately the article is wasted material on the intended target audience. Wasted because as ones brain struggles to comprehend such huge numbers what follows is not stored in ones brain.

We are seeing such figures on a daily basis now with the banking mess that is hitting the world's countries but that does not help the common person to comprehend such numbers. Instead the common person who walks and works in the everyday street simply ignores the numbers and tries to carry on as they always have carried on never caring about such numbers.

Madness. It is all unadulterated, unmitigated madness.

ISP speeds (a rant by any other name).

Whether actual speeds or publicity speeds are getting ever faster. Except here in Hull where ADSL2+ is a mess of slow sync and throughput speeds for the vast majority of customers. Our incumbent ISP claims, but never gives out actual provable figures, that their home customers are happy with ADSL2+. They will not provide any figures to back up that claim though not even to us, us being those of us who were supposedly on a monthly scheduled meetings with them.

Virgin Media have announced plans for a 50Mbit/sec service. How many of their customers will acheive anywhere close to that remains to be seen, but the fact they are publically declaring such speeds is admirable. Our ISP touts  service improvements then fails miserably on the  actual  giving part of that service, ADSL2+ is one such example. Okay, Virgin Media are a cable company probably using DOSIS3 9or whatever it is called) but the simple fact they talk to their customers via various news outlets is in stark contrast to how our ISP operates.

Many times our ISP  replies to  questions with the boilerplate reply of "That is being tested." which actually means "We have no idea what you are talking about.". Our ISP's technical people are a joke beyond the pale. Anything that goes outside of their abilities is immediately debunked as "not being worth the effort".

There are many people who offer up free advice to our ISP's technical people and those people offering up that advice known that of which they speak but, without fail you can bet your last penny that our ISP's technical people will not have the  abilities  nor brain power to do what it is that was asked of them.

Whether this is due to the limitations of the software used or is because those technical people have never dared to venture beyond the absolute basics or even if they are simply stuck in their ways not wanting to try and find out what sort of power the software they use provides is all open to debate. My own feelings and thoughts on the matter is that it is a mix of the first two.

To give an example. We asked them about offering their users, home users, multiple IP's as standard on their top tier service but what came back from that  request was both astounding and mystifying. The reply said "We cannot offeer multiple IP's because it would create too much work." Imagine that! Technical people   saying so and so would be too much work to implement.

There is a whole list of such replies that  seriously impacts peoples thoughts on their technical prowess.

Not that long ago I set up an ISP. The basic setup took under an hour to do. Over all the time taken from start to a fully fledged ISP setup was 52 hours. And here we have our incumbent ISP claiming something was too much work to setup. Simply amazing!

But back to speeds. With just about every ISP offering   40Mbit/sec plus it seems we users in this city with our incumbent ISP as the    provider will be stuck with slow speeds for years to come. It seriously impacts the beiief of their customers in the ISP ability to do anything beyond the absolute basics to provide a connection. They are stale. They are old hat. They are simply rubbish at every level possible.

Due to how they have handled us in recent weeks, the ignoring of emails, it is my remit now to make life for as many people within the company as uncomfortable as possible. I have instigated an E.U. investigation into their Hull operations. Particularly in what they charge other ISP's, be they  one already out there or new startups, with realtion to LLU or sharing of cabinets. I have contacted OFcom, the relevant E.U. departments (!2 in all) and am in the process of using the contacts I have within the newspaper industry to get the word out.

We are suffering here from a crap service. A service that is fixable but whether they have the ability within is open to debate. I have had to do this sort of thing before and I have no qualms in doing it again.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 10)

With the local people here getting evermore annoyed at slow sync speeds I read this article with some alarm and amusement. If, as that article says, the main backbone trunks have capacity to spare and the usage of is getting cheaper by the hour and the so called 'last mile' is the only bottleneck to a good consumer experience then one really has to wonder why such as our incumbent ISP lacks the relevant ideas and plans on gaining the upper hand for local customers by getting rid of that last bit of copper.

The E.U. complaint (re)started last week is gaining ground. This morning I received an email which basically asked me to all the data I have, less any identifcation bits such as names and IP addressed, from the various people who sent me such information. This I did straight away. I had already compiled such information in anticipation of such an email coming in so it was a simple case of replying and attaching the data.

Where does this go now? At this stage I don't know. What I do know is the complaint is gathering pace and we now have traction within the E.U. so something may be done. When that will be however is open to question. The E.U. council are not known for their speed but at least the complaint is on its way which means that we may see something happening before we realise it.

They ask me if I wanted them to contact our ISP so they could put their side of the story. Knowing how our ISP lies consistantly about just about everything to do with their network I requested that at this stage I would rather they did not. So, unless they read this blog series or any of the emails I have sent them over the last 14 or so days they will, for now, remain blistfully unware of what is actually happening.

Fun times indeed.

My ISP and ADSL2+ (part 9)

And so after many none replied to emails to 3 separate departments at our incumbent ISP I have renewed the E.U. complaint started a year or so ago.

There is much interest in the U.K. ISP situation within the E.U. with none being more closely watched than our incumbent ISP. To renew the complaint all it took was an email to the E.U. department handling such things. Once that email was received and processed a person within that department was assigned to the complaint. Once this stage has passed it is then a simple case of getting them back up to speed from where the complaint was left.

As I keep emails for years and years (some go back to 1988 and are in fact fidonet to email messages but I digress) all I had to do was give them the email headers and date stamps then they did whatever they do and retrieved all the relevant documents at their end which they sent back to me after further verification to make sure I was the one who started the complaint procedure. For my end all I needed to do was search through my email archives and locate all the relevant emails as well as the original case number(s).

The procedure is now (re)started in earnest. I have been tasked with gathering as much data as I can from both my router logs (stored on a log server located  somewhere in our house) as well as  data directly off the router. Apparently, they will use my line as an example of everyone else. Further, I have emails from various people around the city and with a bit of identification scrubbing the data some sent to me can also be sent. There is other stuff they have requested I do which I will do and send to them.

Going on the contact had so far (6 days excluding Saturday and Sunday) they seem to be very conscious about the lack of true speeds throughout the U.K. and within that target demo graph Hull itself. From what they have said they have give or take a few, 1000 people around the U.K. involved with their probing and of those 6  reside in Hull itself.

This is going to be very interesting. Knowing, as I do, how the E.U. complaint procedure works will alow me to leverage those procedures to my own advantage

The last time  our incumbent ISP pissed me off  to this extent It ended up with our incumbent ISP MD contacting OFcom (or whatever name they used back then - circa 1999) who sent me a letter protecting the then MD from further proof I was providing about that subject matter. Shortly after i had received that our incumbent ISP saw sense and implemented what had been under discussion. I was left with a ban from posting to the then ISP controlled news groups which really wasn't such a bad ban anyway. I wonder if the MD will use his, or rather the companies, monies to protect them this time around?

They will surely learn that this person still has the same teeth as he had back then and I will use whatever the E.U. law allows in an effort that will hopefully benefit everyone connecting via our incumbent ISP.

They will rue the day that they pissed me off enough to do this. I can and will, as much as one person can, make life very uncomfortable for them.

Countries and banks.

With ever more countries around the world,from the U.S.A. to little Denmark underwriting or buying out banks thereby nationalising them the world is heading for a socialist government.

Previous to this banking nightmare the Western World was a free world. The U.S.A. was a free(ish) country. And yet, today we have many of the worlds biggest banks being bankrolled by various governments. This is the world slowly but surely moving in a socialist fashion to a true socialist world.

In the years previous to this happening governments around the Western World including the U.S.A. slowly eroded whatever freedoms their people had. Some, closed or severely limited their borders to stop illegal and some legal foreigners from entering. They systematically installed cameras to watch over their people. All in the name of security of course but watch over their people they did.

Further, they gave their police forces unprecedented powers to stop and search their citizens. Again, all in the name of security.

But, what all this means is that the various governments of the Western World have curtailed whatever freedoms their citizens had and now we find those same governments that eroded their citizens freedoms are now placing those citizens in years of debt to save a few already rich people who are owners of the various banks.

The few get richer and richer while the rest of us suffer possibly years of hardship.

A true socialist world we now live in.