PigBlog

They’re at it again then.

The politicians, despite being met with indifference over the wholesale filtering of domestic Internet connections, our right honourable overlords now wish to promote “good, clean, wi-fi” in public spaces.

Whatever the fuck that means. No porn, maybe? The conspiracy theory types will say this is just the thin end of the wedge for censorship. We could have all sorts of content considered ‘unclean’.

I’ve already discussed that providing wi-fi for public access can be hard, and this is a further obstacle. It’s unclear what the term “wi-fi provider” defines- it could be anything from the biggies like BT Openzone down to my local friendly garage or pub who have chucked a Netgear domestic router in for customers to use.

I’ve already said how hard it is to do filtering properly, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

It’s a bit easier to do on a larger scale, with some enterprise-grade hardware and a subscription, but this costs thousands of pounds a year, and still isn’t 100% accurate.

The domestic routers a lot of small potential wi-fi providers use are the same sort of stuff we all use at home. Here’s my router’s filtering setup page:

A typical domestic router’s filtering setup: dependent on manual entries. Click to embiggen.

It’s reliant on maintaining a list of dodgy sites and entering them. Other routers can block based on DNS hostnames, but this, once again, relies on manually keyed blacklists. This is not going to encourage the provision of free wif-fi if people have to stump up time and money, or face legal problems if they don’t.

Here’s a wild idea: if you’re a parent, talk to your kids about the content available on the Internet (the chances being, if they’re teenagers, they can probably teach you a thing or two). Don’t devolve parenting to tech, and if you really have to, do it on the device, where you have control.

Given the poor weather, with heavy snow, recently, it’s not surprising that gritting has come to many people’s attention, and, as BrownhillsBob comments on his 365 tumblr, there’s some real nastiness and misinformation.

I’ve lost count of the number of people insisting every side road is gritted, and that Walsall MBC haven’t gritted main roads, and blaming the council for their own shortcomings as drivers.

Let’s get some things straight:

* Walsall MBC do many things badly. They also so some things well; bin collections and gritting are things they do well most of the time.

* Despite the bullshit perpetrated by some, Walsall MBC’s gritters were out and about on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (18-20 Jan). I saw them around Walsall Wood on several occasions, on one occasion coming by just in time to help free a truck stuck on Walsall Wood canal bridge.

* On Sunday morning, the A461 was slightly slippery, but perfectly passable for a clumsy twat like me to drive a car I drive rarely on summer tyres without hitting anything, or even coming close. I’m no driving god (by a long shot) but the usual technique of leaving a lot of room, maintaining momentum where possible, and using the controls gently seems to work.

* Generally, you have a choice to drive or not. If you’re unable to control a vehicle in slippery conditions, well… don’t. Your 4×4 won’t beat physics, either, as won’t those winter tyres I keep banging on about (but both will help, and having winter tyres on a 4×4 will shock most people). It’s your responsibility to drive safely, within reasonable margins- so if it’s snowy or icy, you should expect slippy roads, and drive to the conditions, expecting others to slide. Alternatively, you could just make up “facts”, accuse the council of “dereliction of duty”, and complain. If it’s life or death, then it’s pretty certain you’ll have had some driver training. If your usual route isn’t gritted, choose an alternative that is.

* Grit isn’t magic. It lowers the freezing point with salt, and aids grip and breaks up ice and snow with the actual gritty bits. To do this, it needs time, and crucially, some traffic to grind it in. Additionally, it can only cope with a certain amount of snow.

* Gritting resources are finite. There are only so many staff and trucks, and a lot of roads.

I’ll gladly lay into Walsall MBC online (and I’ve done so before), but this is just silly. The gritting teams are doing a good job.

Less than 24 hours have elapsed since yesterday’s rant about the 4G hype and already there’s some bullshit piece in tonight’s Express and Star showing the cutting-edge, well researched, informative and technically accurate that publication has an unenviable reputation for, saying that the lack of 4G will cost the UK economy £120 million, according to “a study” (and then it fails to mention who commissioned the study [edit- reading the article again, Ebay commisiioned it], or any data whatsoever). It then quotes Ebay as saying that “slow connection speeds, payments timing out, and network reliability” were barriers that would be “effectively eliminated by 4G”

From the Express and Star, 31-10-2012. Unmitigated bollocks.
Click to embiggen.

This is starting to look like a Daily Mash Story with bold assertions, quotes from imaginary experts, and meaningless, unqualified stats.

I’m now drowning in bullshit. As my dear friend Andy points out there’s so much marketing crap here, and as a tech who is asked to provide solutions to people who read this shit, it’s wearing very thin.

Does the lack of mobile internet really cost sales? Maybe a few. A smartphone is a crappy way to browse Amazon or Ebay, with small screens and no proper keyboard. I’m sure a smartphone app will improve this, as would using a tablet, which may well have mobile data capability, but £120 million? really? Will people not just wait until they’re at home/work/Starbucks?

If 3G was actually available everywhere, it would do just fine for present-day Internet shopping, being about as fast as many people’s fixed-line ADSL. Of course given time, bandwidth requirements will rise: the Internet of the 90s coped on 33.6-56Kbit/sec, whereas now even 10 times that seems sluggish, so we will need 4G one day, and yes, installation should start now, but it’s not a requirement right now, and a good job too, because it will take a good while.

4G will not magically fix poor coverage, and will, trust me, cost a lot of money to implement.

I do find the tech industry very frustrating: the false promises, the use of tech terms as (inaccurate) buzzwords, the assumption that a “new” technology will magically make everything rosy. The shiny adverts, and the shiny-suited salesmen that perpetuate the myths. It must be very confusing for those of us that don’t have a deeply cynical view…

This morning’s BBC breakfast was full of hype for the launch of 4G data. In theory this sounds great: mobile data has changed our world, from smartphones and tablets to remote telemetry, data logging, and security applications without the need for cabling. We can, at least in theory, stream movies or music, read our email, telework, and tweet a load of shite from anywhere. The networks are now crowing about their superfast performance, their fibre backbones, and anything else they can spin into saying how great they are.

One problem: this is all still radio. Radio needs masts, and residents hate masts, even before the electrosensitivity loonies get going. Without masts, and even with them sometimes, depending on environment, coverage suffers. Plus of course, masts, and the backhaul all cost cash too.

This means that, practically, in some areas, the current 3G/2G connectivity is non-existent or so slow to be practically useless: down the road in WS9 9LR coverage is so poor for Vodafone that voice calls and SMS messages barely work, and data is unusable. Walsall Wood may not be a huge metropolis, but it’s not a rural backwater either, and the same applies to suburban Pelsall and Rushall, where you can find similar holes.

I was complaining about this seven years ago, when 3G data was a niche product.

If you go into the centre of Birmingham, you can easily see 3Mbit/sec: faster than some home broadband, and fast enough to run an entire office from (trust me, I have done it), but outside the city, coverage can have some huge holes: this is why, for example, NXWM’s trial of wi-fi on buses didn’t catch on: the only way to backhaul the data from the bus is over 3G, and by the time you have a busful of people, and the router keeps dropping out, it becomes painful- the same applies to the West Coast Main Line, and that has a fixed route.

In summary: Phone networks: stop bullshitting us. Cut the shiny marketing, bullshit about fibre optics and other tech terms littering the adverts: just make the existing 3G service work before you try to flog us the replacement. Let me be able to tweet bollocks from the pub, or fire up my VPN from a house in Pelsall that doesn’t have broadband.

NB: I’m only picking on Vodafone here because I have more experience of them, and because they’re ‘Best Network’ of the year as voted by Mobile Choice Consumer Awards. They all have the same problems, in different places.

Something struck me the other day: I’ve become almost obbsessive about communicating online, in one form or another: I buy online almost whenever I can, because I detest brick-and-mortar shops.

I bank online, manage my household energy accounts online, talk to people online. At work, I prefer communication by email, and the thought of someone phoning up “for a chat” fills me with dread, to be honest. Phone converstations, even with my better half, are short, and convey information mostly.

I suppose this is to be expected in one way: the nature of my work often lends itself to email, and email is a great medium to queue things: stuff can be dealt with at a good moment, rather than interrupting thoughts. It’s a great medium for facts too. Of course, it has it’s problems, and I’m probably painfully more aware of them than many people.

Hpowever I do find the countless ‘death of email‘ articles frustrating, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

I find companies that don’t enable online communication very frustrating: I don’t want to talk to your representative (or anyone, for that matter): I don’t want you to try to sell me crap I don’t want, I don’t want to be called sir, and thanked every 5 minute for my call by someone in a remote call centre who doesn’t actually care. Most of all, I want to do stuff when I think of it, quickly and efficiently, be that whatever time or day of the week. If I want a chat, I’ll meet a friend in a pub, thanks.

This week has seen one organisation that are reluctant to handle email (an NHS department), but do so with a tone that suggests this is a bit too hard, and one that simply doesn’t respond (an insurance company), so now I’ll have to spend a lunchtime talking to people I don’t want to, in an open-plan office…

I realise I’m sounding like the stereotypical uncommunicative geek here, but people that know me in real life will (hopefully) confirm that I do like to talk, preferably in a pub. I do seem pretty phone-averse though: am I odd in this respect?

I’d be interested to hear any other thoughts on this, though I realise my data will be skewed here: people reading this are more likely to favour electronic communications.

Anyway: back to the death of email. This is widely predicted by a certain class of social media consultant (specifically, the ones that are full of shit: you may wish to peruse this article, as it prompted this post). Email is still the business ‘killer app’, the basic form of ID on the Internet, and the best way to get a wide range of information to a small number of recipients. For a good analogy, think of the ‘paperless office’ widely predicted not so long ago. It’s bullshit. Social media has it’s place, but it’s intrusive, disjointed, immature (technology wise), and in the control of US corporations to one degree or another.

My prediction: email will last another 30 years, at minimum, in a recognisable form: It’s existed in a recogniseable form already since around 1965. So will the written word, the printed word, and the telephone (despite the fact that landline use is declining, and teenagers seem to communicate entirely by SMS). Fax will probably die sooner, but it still has legal significance that email does not. Thoughts anyone?

An article caught my eye in Friday (June 22)’s Express and Star. It mentions that market traders will be offered free rent to compensate for being turfed off their pitches when the Olympic flame passes by.

Unnamed “council bosses” are quoted as saying that traders are

“at odds with the feel-good factor of the rest of the country”.

Now, I realise that this could be the E+S tolling, but hell, I’ll bite.

I’m absolutely sick to death of the “feel good factor” being touted this year: the forced jollity, the celebration of our country spending billions on a huge sporting event that I’m not remotely interested in, and we cannot afford while we busily cut public services like care to the bone, the similar celebration of the richest woman in the world being paid by us to sit and wave, and the continued support of a bunch of serial thugs and adulterers paid millions to kick a ball up and down a pitch and demonstrate just what a worthless waste of skin they all are.

I’m sick of the mindless, sheep-like ‘patriotism’ that seems to think this country is still the head of a huge empire rather than an inconsequential island that has been consistently let down by a succession of idiot politicians. There is still stuff to be proud of, we don’t rule the waves any more. Get a grip.

But most of all, I’m sick of the attitude that basically says “Shut up. Look at all of these things. Shut up, watch the celebrations, pretend everything is lovely. Enjoy a McDonalds (Olyimpic and Euro 2012 Sponsors!), drink a Carlsberg. But mostly, shut up. Let the Olympic flame, the bloody football, and the inbred, incredibly rich scroungers from the state annoy you, steal your money, put missiles on your roof, ruin your livelihood, disrupt your life, maybe even your health. Just make sure you comply and enjoy it, like a good subject. Enjoyment is mandatory.

[edit]

I’ve now read Saturday’s paper, and noticed that the route of the Olympic flame is getting a clean up.

Clean-up for region before Olympic Torch arrives

Saturday 23rd June 2012, 5:00PM BST.
Clean-up for region before Olympic Torch arrives

Street-cleaning, grass-cutting and litter-picking are being stepped up as councils give the region a deep clean ahead of the Olympic Torch’s visit.

The whole route travelled by the iconic flame will have been spruced up by the time it passes through South Staffordshire and the Black Country next weekend.

In other words, we can all live with dirty, unkempt streets normally, but if someone is carrying a £2000 publicly-funded blowtorch down the road, we’ll clean it.

For some years now, I’ve been a great fan of Lenovo PCs, especially laptops: the build quality is good, and the price not obscene. However, there’s one aspect I’ve discovered today that makes me less happy, though it would seem that HP and others are not above the same tickery.

Laptops are less stndard than a desktop PC, but always the great advantage of the PC platform over a Mac has been the openish nature of it: hardware is semi-standardised, drivers are available. This is also often the downfall: the fact that you can shove in any bit of hardware means you then run the gauntlet of dodgy drivers, but that is your choice.

So, then, when my other half’s Lenovo laptop stopped connecting to wireless and then bluescreened, after testing the obvious first thing, I suspected the wireless adaptor. It’s a Mini-PCIe card, so an easy swap, and a quick look on ebay found that a card with the same Broadcom chipset was very cheap.

It takes a while to arrive, from Hong Kong though

Once installed, dissapointment awaits:


Unauthorised network card is plugged in. Power off and remove the Mini-PCI card.


Get this: the BIOS looks at the ID of the card, and unless it’s one of the ones deemed acceptable for that model, the computer won’t boot. Even though the card is compatible in every other way (and, in this case, identical except for the ID), only a limited range of Lenovo-branded cards will work- sometimes not even ones from another Lenovo model. This really isn’t on: it’s deliberatley closing something just because you can: this behaviour would be expected from Apple: it’s one of the ways they keep stability, by using a limited range of approved, tested hardware- but it just goes to show that big, evil tech firms always are and always will be that way.

Off to Ebay again for a secondhand genuine part then… I did consider flashing the BIOS with a modified one, but there’s a risk of bricking the laptop, and the download links for this model seem to have gone.

Anyone who knows me will know my dislike of marketing: the art of disguising what you are selling, hiding the true meaning of words, and bullshitting. Selling stuff no-one wants, at least some of the time. I’m too direct for this sort of fluff.

Marketing brings you crap like this, for example.

This time, what’s set me off is SEO, or specifically, a bottom-feeder idiot spammer.

Now, SEO and indeed Internet marketing done well can be a great thing for a commercial site, as explored by Stu on his blog here. Stu has a commercial website and approached people to help.
(more…)

Now that we’re back to GMT and dark nights, one of my standard complaints comes back to the forefront: the non-use or misuse of lights on the road. Every journey sees at least one problem, ranging from the merely annoying to the very dangerous.

I’ll start with the cyclists, because there’s only one comment to make: if you wear dark clothing, no hi-viz, and have no lights on a dark evening commute when it’s pissing down you are practically invisible. If you’re lucky your rear reflector or pedal reflectors might get picked up in the headlamps. Think about this when you’re on the road surrounded by 1.5 ton metal boxes that might kill you. This means all 3 of you I (just about) saw between Aldridge & Walsall Wood on Friday.

Now the car drivers. Many, many more things here, so we’ll need a list.

1. Sidelights are for parking with. Not for driving. Cars now have electrical systems that can cope with headlights: it is not the 1950s any more. While it is legal to use sidelights on a streetlit road with a speed limit of 30mph or less, it’s stupid to do so. Idiots like you are the reason we ended up with the aptly named Dim-Dip for a while.

2. If it’s dark, misty, rainy, or visibility is otherwise impaired, how about using headlights? That oh-so popular silver colour lots of cars are blends nicely with grey, dark murky mornings otherwise. Idiots like you are why we’re saddled with DRLs on new cars, which are not to be confused with….

3. Front Foglights do not make you look cool, and they glare off wet roads when there isn’t fog. Oh, and rear ones are not neccesary in a traffic queue, or if it’s a bit wet. Both are for when visibility is less than 100m.

4. If you have a blown bulb, fix it. It’s not hard. Halfords ‘technicians’ can do it. Putting your one remaining headlamp on to main beam does not compensate.

Rant over…..

People who know me will know I’m a bit of a petrolhead. I’ve been accused of being a “boy racer“, and in fact, may appear so (in my bog-standard, automatic[ish] diesel hatchback…] given some of the things I’ll say on the subject of speed, speed limits, and speeding.

I’ll come out and say it: everyone speeds sometimes. Anyone that doesn’t is probably dawdling along with a big queue of frustration behind them.

Why? Because some speed limits are set far too low, in the name of safety, when safe does not just mean the number on a stick. Time and time again, the ‘speed kills’ mantra is trotted out, and the words will be uttered ‘but I was only doing 30′ by people who have just had an RTA.
(more…)