BT Bullshit

Well, it seems I was right.  According to a recent news story, the latest BT broadband TV advert has been banned because it was deemed misleading.

Oddly, only seventeen complaints were lodged.  This’ll no doubt be one from each of BT’s competitors and probably none from the broadband using public. This is rather worrying as it clearly shows either the internet using public are completely ignorant of what is and isn’t reasonably possible in terms of broadband service or that they are aware and don’t really give a fuck.

Well people,  it’s your money, so WISE UP.

I believe in Broadband.

I’ve just read an article on the BBC Technology web page regarding broadband speeds meted out to users, under the title of:

UK ‘misled’ on broadband speeds, says Ofcom report (give it a click to read the article)

Well all I can say is ‘no shit, Sherlock’.

As someone who has seen broadband ‘develop’, (if thats what you can call it), in Lincolnshire I can assure ‘the BT spokesman’, who clearly has his head up his own arse; people largely DO NOT get what they pay for.

The best system in Lincolnshire for broadband transmission is cable.  Now owned by Virgin.  It is robust and usually offers upwards of 75% of what people are promised when they sign up.  Personally, I sometimes get 7 of my 10 meg service but usually it’s less.   ADSL customers, however, in my experience rarely get half of what they are told when they sign up and it’s usually a LOT less.

I am staggered that the average broadband speed is 5.2 meg.  What that indicated to me is that a few people are on VERY high download speeds while the rest of us can’t muster a couple of meg.

The article goes on to indicate that there are all sorts of reasons why broadband  speeds are not whats quoted.  I can’t be bothered to go into those reasons but it’s enough to say that if these ISP money grabbing twats were more open about their supply failings and stopped giving premium service users broadband at the expense of average use users we’d all be better off.

In my opinion, NEVER believe what your ISP tells you your download speed will be.  When all your kit arrives (after your jumped ship to get a better deal) test it straight away.  If  speeds are not what they claim, complain STRAIGHT AWAY.  Expect all technical support to be none existent (if it’s ok, then you’re on to a winner) and always renegotiate your contract at the earliest convenience.

Dell, yet again…

I recently rang Dell requesting a replacement power supply for an Optiplex desktop machine.  They provided me with a phone number to, which I assumed, was their hardware sales division.  After purchasing the PSU for a total of £74 delivered I discovered that the new power supply made more noise than the one I was replacing.

Rather put out, I contacted the company (Upgrade Options of Tilford in Surrey) who informed me that Dell do not have a spares (‘and legacy parts’) division and items like the PSU were in fact, refurbished items.

So for £70 quid I get a used part that performs worse than the part I’m replacing.  I wonder how many other manufacturers do a similar thing.  Dell make a lot of bespoke (i.e, non standard) component based machines, parts of which can only be acquired from Dell.  By comparison the cost to replace a generic power supply from an ATX case would be about a tenner.

The moral of the story is; if you do buy a Dell expect to spend considerably more money on replacement parts, that are not new than you would for a standard ATX build PC.  Looking at the cost equivalent, you’d be better off putting that kind of money towards a new machine that towards the old Dell.

Once again, I simply cannot see why anyone would want to buy a Dell.

Crap Components Cause Consternation. Or some such.

Dell are back in the news again.  Dell are quick to point out that the (knowingly???) faulty components they were using a few years ago also affected other PC suppliers it goes to highlight the fact that your IT hardware supplier generally gets all his parts from the supplier with the lowest cost.

Now we all know that cheap = cheerful (unless it packs up repeatedly and has to get changed out under warranty) then you’d rightfully be pissed off.  “But Dell machines aren’t cheap!” I hear you cry.  “And aren’t they supposed to be one of the best manufacturers?”  Well, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.

And for Dell sympathisers who think I’ve got it in for them:  News of Foxconn employees throwing themselves out of windows due to overwork and under-pay highlights just how avaricious these shyster IT hardware suppliers are.  “Who the fuck are Foxconn” you say.  Foxconn are far east manufacturers of  nasty OEM motherboards (among other bits) that last, if you’re lucky, until just after the warranty runs out.   Motherboards that you wouldn’t use yourself if they were the last board manufacturer in the world.   But perfectly fine if your company is called Apple and you want to fit them to your flagship £400 i-Pad.

So while you’re swanking around with your new top-of-the-range yuppy i-Pad, some of the people who assembled it are throwing themselves out of windows.   But people are dying on the streets of Africa every day so it’s not likely to make you lose any sleep is it?

Brooker takes a Swipe at games.

You have to love BBC’s Charlie Brooker.  He who takes a satirical, nay cynical dig at news fodder takes a swipe at video or computer games, as we now call them.

In what I consider a well-balanced if not zestful critique of all things After-Hours R n R, Gameswipe is well worth a watch so long as you’re not to afraid of the odd expletive.

As a computer gamer of some experience, who started out on the Spectrum’s Elite back in the mid 80′s I don’t think Gamewipe made the following points very clearly, if at all:

Firstly, computer games are the new TV.  Back in their day, games were solitary experiences where you would while the wee hours trying to elevate yourself to the next level and would only appear from behind the screen when you needed food or a piss.  While this is still largely the case, there are tens, hundreds and even thousands of other gamers doing it at the same time.  Online gaming now enables community and cooperative play that was impossible 10 years ago (well it was possible to play on a dial-up connection but broadband has provided the ability to communicate {or deride} other players in real-time thus enabling friendships to develop with real individuals just as if they were playing alongside you in the room.

Frankly, since the advent of on-line gameplay, stand-alone gaming seem rather pointless- unless it is a stand-alone game.  Unless you are bereft of any social skills whatsoever why would you play alone when you can play alongside so many like-minded individuals?  And I don’t mean nerds.  Gaming is big business and everyone’s playing.  Here are some stats.

Secondly, give people the opportunity to act like arseholes and they will.  It’s simply human nature.  Computer games give people the ability to suspend their moral judgment and simply fuck about.  Let me give you two examples:

1. Doom.  Much berated at the time due to, ahem, graphic violence, gore, blood, gore and more blood.  Some people seem to get offended by the virtual representation of alien creatures being mutilated in a computer game.  I don’t.  In open-ended games, kind of like GTA, you are a gangster character and as such are expected to ‘pop a few caps’ and ‘split a few wigs’.  Frankly, I’m perfectly happy to let criminals run around shooting each other in spectacular gory detail until there are none left.  Now, with open-enders game designers have to replicate the real world otherwise the game feels wooden and unreal; game appeal soon fades, gets a poor review and fails to sell. So we end up with comercial successes like the GTA franchise.  Que the arsehole, however, who discovers the simple pleasure of mowing down pedestrians or mugging prostitutes for their money.  And here the game mechanics and the do-gooders both break down.  The game mechanics do reflect real life possibilities without the moral reprehension- yes you’re going to get shot dead by the AI feds.  If you indiscriminately killed a few coppers in real life you wouldn’t have a game-save to fall back on.  So, just like in real life, if you give people the opportunity to act like arseholes, they will.
2. The Greifer.  A griefer is someone who generally uses game mechanics (or lack of) to piss off as many people as possible.  These are the people who in real life let their dog shit on the playing field without clearing it up or who park their 4×4 on zig-zag lines or at junctions.  The kind of people who beat old grannies half to death for a few quid to fuel a skag habit.  Computer games attract these retards because society has turned their back on them.  Warcraft and Eve gamers will know exactly what I mean.

The computer game came of age ages ago. The game player demographic has vastly changed but sadly games that imitate real life seem to be big sellers.   There will always be retards who play because there will always be retards.  It’s a simple law of averages.

This Septic Isle

Where, oh, where do I begin with this one…

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357829/robin-hood-tweet-bomber-convicted

So where does that put my ramblings on blog:  …Rumours that 6 Music and the Asian Network could be under the cosh beggars belief.  If the Muslims of the world needed any excuse to bomb the BBC headquarters then jacking the Asian Network must be it…..

Does anyone want to grass me up or shall I just hand myself in?

Everybody Say Cheese.

The Edimax IC-1510wg.  Say cheese alright.

A few years back I.P cameras were a bit of a hot mod for computer users who liked to try out the latest hardware.  Hot on the heels of wireless networking these over priced but potentially useful beauties offered cable less surveillance and home security cheaper than CCTV systems with the added benefit of uploading camera footage direct to a remote and secure server.

A number of  proprietary network hardware vendors climbed the bandwagon and launched an array of kit with prices to match features and functionality.

A few years later and a mature IT product is left failing to live up to its potential in terms of usage or performance.  Presumably, one would think the design boffs’ spotting a dead duck when they saw one moved on the next ‘next big thing in IT’ leaving this kwacker to rest in peace.

Now it would be unfair to condemn all IP cameras to the same critical fate but they seem to fall into two categories: really expensive IP cameras, and really cheap nasty ones.  Que, the Edimax IC-1510wg.

With a device so awesome in its rubbishness it’s difficult to decide where to begin.  At £50 one may think it is cheap.  And in the general scheme of things, you’d be right.  But a web cam can be bought for a fiver, retail.  A wireless router for £15 likewise.  So if it were possible to solder the wires of one to the other that’d be £20 quid, then.  So now it’s not looking that cheap.  And it is a cheap IP camera.

It has a 0.3 mega pix sensor.  Now, those of you who use a digital camera (and I guess that’s most people, these days) might wonder if I’ve made a typographical error.  Don’t I mean 3 mega pix?  Er, no.  The image quality on this baby is so piss poor that, as a surveillance cam, you might be able to identify what colour cat is crapping on your nicely mown lawn but you are not going to be spotting any car number plates as they pass by in splendid blur-O-motion.  If you can manage to get the exposure settings anywhere near (and I couldn’t) you might be able to identify what colour the car actually was.

So as a surveillance camera how does it perform.  Well, as you might expect, suitably badly.  The camera’s video stream only functions with Internet Explorer which is a major drawback seen as IE is on a nosedive.  On that point alone the device is pretty well made obsolete.

When you do eventually get it set up on your network which is another major bind, particularly for those people who have their nets properly set up because the cameras IP is on the 192.168.2.xxx sub net.  Thats the default for Belking router kit and no other.  So if you are unfortunate enough to be using a Belkin router then you’ll love this IP camera!  For the rest of us, you’ll have to re-config your IP addresses just to re-config your camera IP to your network.  And my camera default IP, according to the manual, wasnt what it actually was.  clearly some twat at the factory was having a joke.

So, where was I? Oh, yes.  So when you finally get the video streaming on the worlds worst browser you can then set up the motion capture.  I couldn’t get it to capture an image, even on the most sensitive settings.  That included cars and people moving past the window.  I did, however, manage to get a pile of captured images of the camera automatically  resetting the exposure settings, all in a very  fetching pink over-expose.  And there’s no exposure ‘reset-to-default’ so I guess i’m stuck with it.

I could go on but this camera doesn’t deserve the effort required to condemn it.  So in  summary:  it, like all other Edimax hardware I’ve ever used is utter rubbish.  Avoid.

Addendum:

Well, after putting the camera through it’s paces last night I can confirm that it is still rubbish.  The image sensor is far too light-sensitive.  In cloudless daylight (yes we did have one this year) the image was massively over exposed even using auto exposure.  When over exposed you will get a white image or a pink one depending on how over exposed it is. I discovered that with the addition of an optical filter (well, my sunglasses) the image becomes almost useful.

Before...

After…

So, providing you’re happy to faff around with it you’ll be fine.  Or just use it a dusk when it’s actually quite a good (relatively speaking) image.

Motion capture is still inadequate.  I did manage to capture some movement although small objects (like cats) were not recorded and there are plenty of those around her, I can tell you.  Objects that were captured included a transit van driving past and people walking close to the camera.  In distance all objects captured were at about 10-20 feet away.  Nothing else was captured.

The pedestal base does not fit a camera tripod, either.  The manufacturer clearly saw it fixed to a wall (screws and rawl plugs are provided).

If you are thinking about some covert operations and disguising the camera in a box note that it does generate some heat.  Anyone thinking about burying it under a pile of clothes as part of some depraved shag-cam arrangement may find it bursting into flames well before the denouement of the exercise.  Or maybe not.

More Internet Explorer Issues.

The irony of Microsoft having to recognise there are other browser choices available (now displayed when you install Internet Explorer 8 ) played out this week as a flurry of IE8 related bad behavior surfaces days after this months Patch-Tuesday.

While I concede this may simply be coincidence, rashes of faults this close to the update cycle rarely are.    Faced with improperly opening windows, random shut downs and white screens Internet Explorer sufferers are faced with running Last-Resort, sorry, system-restore or simply putting up with it.  Interestingly, this seems focussed around XP users.

So for all those people whose’s IE browser worked fine last week but now does all sorts of weird things you can either wait for Microsoft to fix the patch or you can change browser, altogether.  For those of you who don’t know what a browser is; google the words, ‘Firefox’, ‘Safari’, ‘Opera’ or even ‘internet explorer alternative’, that’s if you can.

Microsoft  make the decision to switch a bit of a no-brainer, thanks to the latest cock-up.  What are you waiting for?  Switch from IE now.

DELL=DOH!

Another whammy from Dell this rant.  In fact it’s a double whammy.

1.  Flagship Dell model the XPS.  Recently called to repair a XPS with (among other things) a duff CD drive.  Now unfortunate XPS owners will already know that these delightful IT instruments come with optical media drives with an internal ejection system and not the tried and trusted tray mechanism that we all recognise as being standard technology for over 20 years.

So the boffins at Dell, keen to demonstrate their intelligence use this trayless design for reasons best left to them to explain.  Queue the expected issue of CD’s and DVD’s that wont eject using the nifty touch sensitive button the DB’s also added to the design.  No problem, I hear you say.  Just use My Computer to soft eject the tray.  Great.  Except when you cannot start the operating system.  ‘Well, what about the little eject hole where you push a pin in?’ What hole.  The design doesn’t incorporate one.

So if you’ve got an unbootable PC and need the installation CD to repair your O/S then your are well and truly stuffed.  I hear you say ‘well the CD tray is knackered, get Dell to fix it’.  As it was under warranty, they did.  6 months later it went again.  Now it’s isn’t.

Enter PC repair man.  After disassembling the laptop to remove the stranded CD from the drive I discover the drive is, in fact, working perfectly.  The problem is the ‘signal’ (electronic, or lack of) from their rather stylish touch sensitive eject button.

To add to the irony of it all the CD unit itself comes with it’s own eject button which the Boff’s design covers completely.  So, after drilling the hole back in the place where deDell removed it in  the first place this user now has a CD tray that works and ejects.

Moral of the story: DON’T FIX SHIT THAT ISN’T BROKEN.

And No.2

A Dell Inspiron (I think; can’t remember, it’s been a busy week).

You remember the old days when mobile phones were crap and you’d put it in your pocket then it would randomly dial every number in it’s memory until you’d no credit left?  Yeah me too.  I  swore only ever have a clam after that.

Then some smart Phone Boffin said ‘lets make a phone with a number lock so they don’t keep ringing people up when the phone’s in your pocket.  No, better still, let’s design one with a switch instead!’.  Visualise that Eurika sort of a moment.

Well, laptops have had that oh, since, well; EVER.  Like some design features are so fucking obvious we’ve always had ‘em.

So when it comes to wireless functions on a laptop you’d expect them to be turn on and offable.  And, so they are.  Any design boffin would use a switch (good idea) and put it in a position which cannot be accidentally switched OFF if you pick the laptop up or move it about.  No fucking chance.  Or, if they are too dim to do that well what about a ‘soft switch’ which uses a key combination on the keyboard to activate and deactivate the wireless hardware?  Still with me?

Well, the majority of laptops I have seen use a combination of Function keys (thats the ‘F’ keys) along the top row of the keyboard which also are used for shortcut commands and a (usually blue marked) key.  This effectively stops you pressing the number 2 key and accidentally turning your wi/fi hardware off.

Now the muppets at Dell have obviously been on Microsofts ‘let’s mess about with things that people have always done this way because it’s sensible and do it this way ‘cos we think we’re clever’ design course, because this on/off keystroke has now been switched so that turning the hardware off becomes the primary keystroke and the F2 key becomes the secondary function.  So what, I hear you say?  Well if you accidently slip off the No2 key and catch the F2 key without realising you turn your wireless off.  One early Sunday morning it took me half an hour to realise what Dell have done.  Look at an old 6400 inspiron and then look at a new one.  Storm in a teacup?  Buy a new 6400 for your next laptop and see how long it takes you to realise you’ve switched your wireless off and that email you’re writing isn’t going anywhere.

Moral of the story: DON’T FIX SHIT THAT ISN’T BROKEN.

Dell: your designers are ARSES.  As a reseller for Dell (who gets a 10% discount on all purchases, no less) I still cannot think of one single reason why I’d buy a Dell.

Auntie’s agony ante.

I’m as insensed as Phil Jupitus regarding the BBC’s announcement to cut back some services.

Now I’m no fan of the BBC’s business methods and you can consider this rant as a ‘not wholly researched comment in a none Core IT area’ but it’s piqued me nonetheless.

Rumours that 6 Music and the Asian Network could be under the cosh beggars belief.  If the Muslims of the world needed any excuse to bomb the BBC headquarters then jacking the Asian Network must be it.

Personally I’ll post the dg a shit bomb of my own for doing it to Six.

If the Twats Without a Clue at the beeb want to save some money then have a go at these cost cutting measures:

1. REDUCE your iPlayer content-  STOP all HD content (including the films)

2.Remove the TALLENTLESS cretins currently airing on radio1 and reinstall the 6 Music DJ’s to their rightful positions

3. Re-evaluate what the FUCK radio 3 is for.

Yeah, I know it’s a bit on the limit but as a none licence payer yet accesser of all iPlayer content even I must have a say.  Touch 6 Music and there’ll be trouble.