Category: Bad Stuff

Broken phones, nuisance calls, security, bad stuff

RER B to CDG Terminal 2

For some time I have been thinking of writing a post while on the move, to see what that might bring to the page. Hardly original, the idea is somewhat out of my wheelhouse, if for no other reason than the fact that I truly loathe typing anything longer than a text message on a virtual keyboard. Not that I have some kind of a hoity-toity “They aren’t true keyboards” attitude (though I do, and they aren’t), but as a touch typist who has been clocked at 120 wpm (words-per-minute, for the acronym challenged) I find it wickedly frustrating to have to look at the keys to form the words that are in my head…not to mention slow down said head to capture the whatnot those words form. Still, being a staunch proponent of digital progress (mostly), for you, friend reader, I will endure. And perhaps even have a little fun, too.

I first thought to try my hand at mobile writing with the no-longer-so-recent (February) announcement that Microsoft was offering an iOS7 version of their Office 365 applications for free. As the Guv’nor of two iOS7-cursed devices (the iPhone 4 I whinge here about replacing on a somewhat regular basis, and an iPad Mini pass-me-down), this news pricked my eyes, and I quickly grabbed up the apps for both Word and Excel. I didn’t fire ’em up for use right away — AppleKory and my keyboard hadn’t left the building, so why bother? — but I was content knowing I had the apps, for…well, whenever.

One day shortly thereafter, it was whenever. I was at Cafè Lomi, just sitting there watching the wheels go ’round and ’round (I really love to watch them roll), when I thought I’d go all mobile-writer-guy on the good visitors of trefor.net. I pulled iPadKory from my bag, coded it, and punched the icon for Word. Nice looking app. Opens straight to a New Document page, serving up all kinds of document templates, such as Brochure, Invoice, Proposal…School Newsletter. Colorful. Friendly. Microsofty.

I punch New Blank Document. I get a Word-looking page with a orange bar near the top that reads Read-Only. To create and edit, activate with an eligible Office 365 subscription.

Hmm. That doesn’t sound very free. Or friendly. I do happen to have an Outlook.com account, though, so maybe it wants that (though I was already thinking how lost the casual first-time user without such an account would react on seeing the top-screen note). I punch Activate, which leads immediately to a Subscription dialogue. All of a sudden I am no longer having fun. In for a penny, though, right? I follow the path of dialogue windows, employing my Outlook.com credentials as needed, until I am finally staring at Buy a Subscription. I only need to shell out $99.99 a year to use my sweet new free Office 365 iOS7 application!

Disillusioned, discouraged, and feeling just plain ‘dissed, I slapped iPadKory shut, threw it in my bag, and left for home. “I didn’t really want to write a post on a tablet using a virtual keyboard anyway. Phooey.” And the Word app? Deleted, with prejudice (except, that is, for my reinstalling it today to check my memory for this post and to grab screenshots).

And that is where it all would have stayed — at “Phooey.” — had Google not made their own announcement of a free Google Docs app a couple of weeks back. Of course, I immediately DL’ed the app, and this time I launched it forthwith to make sure it could actually be put to some use.

Voila, enablement. And as for writing on the run and virtual keyboards? Well, I made it this far…

Saturday Snapshot (10-May-2014)

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Monday, 12 May, 2014
No Comments on Saturday Snapshot (10-May-2014)

Corner anyone in France and ask them what the first thing is that comes to mind when they think of Normandy. Will they answer “The cream/butter/cheese/crepes/Calvados!”? Maybe. Will they answer “D-Day!” or “French liberation!” Uh…probably not. “Le Mont St. Michel”? I’d be shocked. No, the first word that typically comes to the lips of any self-respecting French person in association with Normandy is “rain”.

Of course, for the purpose of this website and its primary intended audience, all French person enunciations are translated into English. Glad to get that out in front here. OK, continuing…

Yes, Normandy is notorious for being one extremely rainy place, and not without good reason. I cannot offer any statistics (and it isn’t as if anyone reading my words here would really want to trudge through them, anyway), but after nearly 8 years of part-time residency in Pays d’Auge — Normandy’s finest area, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise — I can say with authority that anyone coming to the region unprepared to deal with the wet stuff has their head in the clouds.

Oh, don’t be afraid to laugh. Sure, that crack was a little on-the-nose, but that doesn’t mean it is undeserving of your smile. Really, is it wrong that so much of why I enjoy writing is the opportunities it presents for entertaining myself?

My Missus and I planned to head over to the regular Saturday farmer’s market in Lisieux, and no grey skies or drizzly misty rain or unseasonal May temps (for non-Normandy France places, anyway) was going to keep us from doing so. There were Orbecs to be had — reason enough to throw on a slicker — and other delectables as well. Fresh-pressed apple juice..cream so magical it should come with its own fairy tale..a tub of those remarkable slow-cooked potatoes with lardon that make me want to do handstands, somersaults, cartwheels, and other gymnastic acts I no longer have any hope of completing. We would not be daunted.

Arriving in Lisieux, My Missus headed to a parking lot in which we usually have success, and slipped our tiny rental car into the last visible spot, skirting just ahead of some noodnik who was just a little too interested in his phone at just the wrong moment. Survival of the fittest, baby. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that our rental was an itty-bitty Fiat Panda on this day, a “car” that wouldn’t survive collision with a good-sized rodent let alone any vehicle on the road.) So soon enough we were walking — singing? — in the rain, the market in our sights.

Overcast skies and dark clouds are lousy conditions under which to take photos (color photos, anyway), so at first I figured I wouldn’t be adding to my collection of market photos. Still, I had our Olympus TG-1 in tow (a “tough” camera, a possession of my father-in-law’s that My Missus came to when he passed on about a year ago) and megapixels are really cheap, so I resolved to snap, just to see where my eye fell on such a day. Tentative at first — no matter how alive and colorful a bunch of radishes seems, there would be better Saturdays for that kind of image — I shortly found myself firing at every marginally interesting umbrella that fell within view.

Only once before can I recall spending more than a minute-and-a-half considering umbrellas, that being back in the first semester of my first year of university (1983, nosy reader) when I wrote a one-page essay for an Introduction to Creative Writing class on the necessity of having one on a rainy night walking around midtown Manhattan (lest one fall victim to those in the hands of others). I have owned umbrellas, of course (though I don’t think I’ve actually ever paid for one), and I have never had a bone to pick with one (though I never think to grab one when leaving my dwelling on a rainy day), but other than that long-ago-lost five-paragraph throw-down I have never paid them much mind. Perhaps, then, this is why all of a sudden on a rainy Saturday Normandy morning I was finding umbrellas to be so devastatingly curious.

At first I just waited for the umbrellas to come my way, content with serendipity’s role. Before much time at all had passed, though, I was on the hunt, leaving My Missus to take care of our market needs.

“That one is boring so I won’t bother.” “That one must’ve come from some trade show or other.” “Wow! that is one big-ass umbrella!” “Strange the high percentage of mostly-broken umbrellas people seem content to continue putting to (hardly good) use.” “I wonder, is the fact that her umbrella matches her purse and shoes intended or a just happy accident of fate?” “Funny how I don’t know what My Missus’s umbrella looks like…I wonder if she is wondering where I am?”

The mind, once focused, can be a powerful, dangerous, slippery place, indeed, and there are puddles everywhere!

Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
3 Comments on Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

What the lone acronym in “VoIP Week” does NOT represent.

As a longtime fan of Marvel’s super hero comic books — 40 years and happily counting — I find myself quite satisfied with the persisting Hollywood trend of putting these Fantastic! Incredible! Amazing! Uncanny! Mighty! characters on the Silver Surfer…er, silver screen. And almost as much fun as seeing these wonders brought to life is the narrative means used to tie them all together, that being the oh-so-shadowy government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., which as acronyms go is one heckuva Marvel-ous mouthful (originally “Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division”, then changed in 1991 to “Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate”…both way-cool).

S.H.I.E.L.D.

So what does all of this have to do with VoIP? Well, as great acronyms go absolutely nothing, as S.H.I.E.L.D. is way-cool while V-o-I-P is decidedly not. In fact, though the meaning behind V-o-I-P — Voice over Internet Protocol — is a cause célèbre, worthy of consideration, contemplation, conjecture, and cockeyed optimism, the “word” verbalized evokes images of a thick liquid dripping onto a badly-tuned piece of tin poised alongside a carnival microphone.

Say it with me. Or better yet, don’t.

As awful an acronym as V-o-I-P is, one has to wonder how it came to stick as the most common reference term for the technology it represents. Could it be that as bad as it is, V-o-I-P is actually the best of a really bad bunch? Let’s see…

		IPT (IP Telephony)? Difficult double-consonant at the end, and perhaps too easy to rhyme with “gypped”…
		IT (Internet Telephony)? Taken.
		VoBB (Voice over Broadband? Again, like IPT, too easy to set a negative rhyme to.
		BT (Broadband Telephony)? Taken.
		BPS (Broadband Phone Service)? Proves that an ugly-sounding acronym is better than one with absolutely nothing going for it.

OK, so maybe I am no longer wondering how V-o-I-P took hold in the tech-y lexicon. After all, nature abhors a vacuum and all that (Horror vacui!). Also, sadly, nothing better was in the ether (evidenced above), and it isn’t as if the average man-on-the-street is going to say “Voice over Internet Protocol” every time they need to refer to the concept (of course, there is no way said average man-on-the-street is ever going to comfortably use the acronymic word “VoIP” either, but let’s not get bogged down in reality’s messy details). Still, it sure would be nice to be able to lay blame for V-o-I-P at someone’s keyboard, but unlike the massive majority of Internet-based whatever-and-whatsis there is absolutely nobody out there laying claim to originating — starting? envisioning? founding? — the term. Even if we could force somebody to take responsibility for this *four-letter-word* of a four-letter acronym, though, a proper punishment could never be levied as any attempt to do so would likely raise the ire of the Kids from C.A.P.E.R.^*

At this point the Marvel-literate among you might be gasping (Gasp!) for me to return to espousing on and praising the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those of you not in-the-know who have hung on this far). It is “VoIP Week” at trefor.net, however, and other than their diametrically opposed acronym quality no other useful correlation can be made between S.H.I.E.L.D. and V-o-I-P (other than the fact, that is, that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents likely make extensive and heretofore unknown — and way-cool — use of VoIP technology). Still, you can’t beat a good opening.

^*The Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody, Regardless

VoIP Week Posts:

Business online safety security voip

Voice Fraud – You Need to Act!

Post author By Simon Woodhead
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
1 Comment on Voice Fraud – You Need to Act!

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP guest contributor Simon Woodhead, CEO of wholesale voice provider Simwood.

In February, we published VoIP Fraud Analysis, a white paper that details Simwood’s three years of operating a Honeypot, coloured in by many years of real-world experience servicing wholesale voice clients of all sizes and seeing them compromised. Our research has been very well received in official circles from OFCOM to ACPO, at industry events comprising scarily competent people, and we’ve since been able to compare notes with others in darkened rooms who study this for a living. Of course, I won’t repeat the full content of the white paper here — and it certainly wouldn’t be appropriate to do so — but I will be glad to share a few observations from it.

VoIP fraud — an estimated $46bn a year problem — has come as no surprise to anyone, and as we’ve run through the mechanism of attack the majority of people in the audience have seen at least parts of the behaviour we describe in the wild. If we were describing other kinds of crime most people would be looking in from outside, but VoIP fraud is pervasive and everyone in the industry has seen it at some level. Similarly, nobody has questioned the solutions proposed; some of which are unique to Simwood though they can be employed by any provider on almost any equipment. Despite this, people remain reluctant to act and, dare I say, a little complacent. It is somebody else’s problem until it is their problem, and by then it may very well be too late. Remember, $46bn is the estimated measure of the good guys’ incompetence…the bad guys’ intent is infinite and, as we’ve seen, can quite literally put a provider out of business in just hours.

The sad fact is that the bad guys are becoming far more professional. Gone are the days of script-kiddy intruding with such blunt force that it was apparent as a DoS attack. They are still there, of course, and can still be very effective in breaching completely unprepared networks, but the serious people — the professionals — are…well, professional. There’s no impatience or fervour to their attacks and they do their homework very very well. Their reconnaissance is unobservable to those not looking out for it at the packet level, and their early compromise testing is lost amongst legitimate call traffic for those unaware of the test numbers identified. Then they wait, patiently.

Christmas 2013 was a busy time for us with almost every night seeing one of our customer’s end-users compromised. Actually, we saw the same customers compromised repeatedly night after night, as the bad guys had identified a specific vulnerability present in the equipment they’d deployed to their end-user businesses. Where the customers were ISPs (with a defined block of IP addresses containing customer equipment) the attackers had been able to identify a list of similar targets on their network vulnerable to the same attack. This would have taken a long time and a lot of patience, before striking when eyes were furthest from the ball. On every single occasion we identified the incident, proactively made contact with our customers to advise and help resolve the incident. The attackers left quietly, knowing they had a long list of other targets and could come back later. They did, every night for the Christmas period.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a “VoIP” problem. Many incidents are targeted and exploit non-VoIP technologies (e.g., those present by virtue of traditional PBXs being retro-fitted with IP capability) while many others are at other levels altogether, such as the http interface of CPE or provider admin systems. The traffic may pass over VoIP as a consequence, but in many cases once the VoIP side of it has been contained it will then pass over traditional phone lines connected to the same equipment. It must be an anxious time waiting for the CPS invoices afterwards!

My point here is not to scare you, but to highlight two trends: (1) providers are becoming more complacent, and (2) attackers are becoming more professional. A destructive combination, indeed, and one that is sure to end in more tears. Attackers are not going to become less capable and less professional, so the only option is for providers to be less complacent and to — this is critical — take action. Very few if any are doing everything they could, whereas others dismissively rely on techniques that may help but are incomplete and therefore give false confidence. The bad guys can turn on an attack at any point after the reconnaissance is complete, and if you think they cannot then how will you notice and be able to react when they do?

The solutions are often simple and free, however they require a willingness to implement and generally bring many other benefits. By way of example, the vast majority of providers operate SIP on UDP 5060 because that is the out-of-the-box behaviour, whilst you’d struggle to find equipment nowadays that doesn’t support TLS. Not only are TLS endpoints far less common targets, but TLS and SRTP also give end users the privacy I think they already expect they have. Similarly, billing more frequently and getting as close to real-time as possible not only enables fraud monitoring but provides massive operational and commercial benefits too. Your carrier monitoring and enforcing fraud controls on your wholesale account, safely away from your network, is by far the most effective preventative measure, and some of us do that to varying degrees.

There are many more solutions contained in the Simwood VoIP Fraud Analysis white paper, and we urge you to implement them, and also to lean on your carrier to help you to do so. Please note that in all the “Christmas” examples it was we the carrier — not our customers — who noticed end-user compromise.

The key take-away I want to leave you with is that if you are having no trouble sleeping at night because you believe it can’t/won’t happen to you, then you really need to act now. Your network may already be compromised, with eyes awaiting your being off the ball, perhaps over a coming Bank Holiday.

VoIP Week Posts:

broken gear End User phones

Day 8 without the SGS4 – all callers are anonymous and Spitfire-less posts

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 4 May, 2014
1 Comment on Day 8 without the SGS4 – all callers are anonymous and Spitfire-less posts

There is light at the end of the dark tunnel of phonelessness. Emails have been received:

(from the insurance people) Good news, Your mobile phone has been repaired and is on its way back to you by our courier DPD.
Kind Regards,The Repair Team.

(from the courier) Your Lifestyle Services Group order is due to be delivered on Tuesday 6th May by DPD. Please ensure that someone is available to sign for your delivery. Lifestyle Services Group

(from the insurance people) Good Evening,Your handset has been repaired and will be despatched within three working days by courier and will need to be signed for.Kind Regards,The Mobile Phone Insurance Claims Team

This is indeed good news although the third email also mentioned that I “should receive a text or email from DPD confirming your one hour delivery window”. The text didn’t provide me with that window and I have a meeting in town that morning so I could miss them. Will have to look into that one.

In my Day 5 without a phone post I mentioned that screen size and response time were the two main factors going against the Galaxy Mini. A few more days and I now realise that the fact that I don’t have my address book in the phone is a real nuisance. I don’t know who is calling or anyone’s number when I want to call them. Now I could stick my Google credentials in and get all that but it will confuse the phone as it already has Kid4’s info in and I don’t want to mess it about. To all intents and purposes I’m treating it as a good old fashioned mobile phone (a GOFMP – the POT of the mobile world).

Perhaps more significantly is the lack of a camera. Yesterday I spent the day at the Lincoln RFC grand opening with former club captain and TV sports anchorman John Inverdale cutting the tape. There were loads of photo opportunities. Blokes struggling to play rugby again having hung up their boots years ago for example. It was a hot day!

We also had the best Spitfire flypast it has ever been my privilege to see. We get these a fair bit in Lincolnshire as the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is based here. I often find mysef running out of the hause to look up to the sky when a Spit or the Lanc flies past. Yesterday we knew exactly when the plane was due and it duly arrived to order. It flew in low as if on an attack run. Did this three times then after the last waggled its wings and off it went. The Spitfire was low enough to very easily read the wing markings and would have been a perffect photo or video opportunity for sharing with (avid) readers of the trefor.net weekend section.

Alas this was not to be as I will not get my SGS4 back until Tuesday. As you know.

It has to be said I miss my phone. I realise that there was once a time when we walked the earth without such appendages. People will say it didn’t seem to harm us but consider this. Average life expectancy has gradually increased during my own lifetime. This will be down to a combination of many factors and some of these factors will involve the mobile phone.

I’m not talking about a device I can use to make phone calls on the go. I’m taking about the all singing all dancing computer I use to track my walk times to work, send highly relevant and often amusing tweets and Instant Messages to friends around the globe, monitor the movement of shipping across the maritime world, post interesting blog articles from wherever I am, read the papers, send and receive emails, mark emails as spam (:)), translate menus into a recognisable language, check my finances, help me find a destination when I’m on my way somewhere for the first time, find train times, book train tickets, plan holidays, serve as a timer for the perfect poached egg, find bbq recipes, watch TV, get involved in video hangouts, research business opportunities and contacts, take photos and make videos. I’d better stop. The list is endless. I do it all from my mobile phone. Making phone calls is a very minor part of its functionality.

I have missed my phone. The one thing I haven’t missed is checking the damn thing every other minute to see if there has been an update! Nevertheless I am very much looking forward to getting it back which will, I’m told, be sometime on Tuesday. Hooray

Yours

Seriously mixed up of Lincoln

Follow the broken SGS4 screen saga and other related posts:

Day 5 without the broken SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen
Day 3 without a phone
First night without a phone
Mobile phone insurance claims
This iPhone is dead

Bad Stuff End User fun stuff media obsolescence travel

Two Hours and 55 Minutes

I have 39 versions of the song “April in Paris” in my digital music library. The earliest recording is an Artie Shaw track from 1940 and the most recent is by Wynton Marsalis from his 1987 “Standards, Volume One” release, with many seminal versions threading in-between, delivered by a staggering array of artists that range from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald to Nirvana (OK, that isn’t true…just checking wakefulness out there)…er, Blossom Dearie. Of course, considering “April in Paris”‘s status as a 20th Century classic and the size of my jazz collection, I shouldn’t be surprised that I have 39 versions of the song, and yet seeing them all before me on my monitor (the result of an iTunes search) is really just a couple of steps shy of astonishing.

If 14+ years ago someone had asked me when I first moved to Paris in 1999 (August — not April) “How many versions of “April in Paris” do you have in your music collection?”, I could not have answered the question with any kind of accuracy or authority. Not without taking hours to thumb through my 2000+ CDs with a notepad and pen at hand, anyway.

		I never knew the charm of spring I never met it face to face I never new my heart could sing I never missed a warm embrace

broken gear End User phones

Day 5 without the SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 1 May, 2014
3 Comments on Day 5 without the SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen

Almost sounds as if I’m someone talking about being in rehab when I say it’s day 5 without the phone. I still find myself picking up the temporary replacement, the Galaxy Mini, as if I’m about to use it to access twitter and my other regular internet haunts. I don’t use it for anything other than voice and sms.

Kid4, whose phone the Mini is, has now adopted Kid3’s old but cracked GalaxyS3. Kid3 in turn is using my Nokia Lumia 920 which he seems happy with (must get it from his mum – I never got on with Windows Phone). Kid4 walks around clutching the S3 in a way that he never did with the Galaxy Mini.

I asked him what was better about the S3 compared with the Mini and the answer was “bigger screen and more responsive”. I think that, in a nutshell, is also my perception. Although for me the S3 is old tech it is still better than a small fistful of a phone because it is more usable. Handset manufacturers have been pushing the boundaries of screen size because clearly the punters prefer bigger.

The limitation is the size of people’s hands and their thumbspan, if such a term exists (if it doesn’t it does now). The responsiveness of the phone is a combination of the design, processor and software, and its speed of access to the outside world, ie the internet. Using the SGS4 over 4G as opposed to 3G is generally a much better experience.

I am informed, via email channels, that my S4 is now in the hands of the repairers and expect it to be dispatched within three working days. That must mean I get it next Wednesday which will be good timing because I’m off to London on Thursday and won’t want to carry any baggage aka Chromebook – lightweight baggage though that may be.

I have generally tended to have three sorts of problems with my phones: something wrong with the USBport/charging mechanism, broken screen and recently a software issue that destroys the micro SD card. One assumes that the latter will get fixed with revisions of software. The USB issue would go away if I used contactless charging. I don’t know where that tech is at. Does anyone use it?

The broken screen could be solved by using cheap disposable screens that don’t necessarily have to be part of the actual phone itself. I assume Bluetooth has the bandwidth to manage the interaction between screen and processor. I’ve discussed this before and the more I think about it the more obvious it is.

Why do we need to bother taking the phone out of our pocket or bag? It would be much safer there. Less likely to get left on the table at the cafe and less likely to get smashed or dropped into a bucket of water.

The one scenario where this probably doesn’t work is when I’m using the phone as a camera. In this case I’ll need a bit screen on the handset. There has to be a way to make it work. I use the camera a lot.

Come next Wednesday I doubt Kid4 will want his Galaxy Mini back. It looks destined for a drawer. I will hopefully have a perfectly serviceable S4 back from the menders and move forward with a nagging doubt that what I really want is a native Android phone without Samsung software clutter but with a detachable disposable screen and a great camera with at least 10x optical zoom, though 20x would be better.

There ya go…

Engineer security

Oops – was that the red button? Nuclear near uses

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 30 April, 2014
No Comments on Oops – was that the red button? Nuclear near uses

Following last week’s post in which we discussed the precautions taken by Nominet to withstand nuclear attack we beginning to realise how sensible this was.

A Chatham House Report Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy describes thirteen incidents of near nuclear use. It’s almost like reading the notes used in preparation for a James Bond movie with words like “failed coup”, “Kashmir standoff” and “Operation Anadyr”. A tale of espionage, conflict escalation and mistaken identity. In fact it’s nearer to Johnny English and Austin Powers than James bond with stories like the president leaving the secret launch codes in his trousers pocket when they were sent to the dry cleaners.

The worry is that in a world you would think totally foolproof the causes include faulty computer chip, technical error and exercise scenario tape causing a nuclear alert.

The Chatham House report names and shames those involved – you could easily have guessed:

country	times involved in near nuclear use
US of A	4
Russkis	6
us (ie United Kingdom)	1
India	2
Pakistan	2
Israel	1

It’s quite pleasing to note that we, the UK, have only been involved in one incident. We are obviously far more reliable than the Yanks or the Russins. Innit. You must also forgive me for lapsing into the language of Hollywood when describing some of the countries involved. I ws born when the cold war was still in full swing – “my name is Harry Palmer and I work for the government for thirty pound a week”.

All I can say is, that as someone working in the internet industry, I’m glad the network was designed to be nuclear bomb proof and that Nominet have taken precautions…

broken gear End User phones

Day 3 without a phone #broken #SGS4

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 29 April, 2014
3 Comments on Day 3 without a phone #broken #SGS4

This is my third day without a phone. It isn’t completely true to say that as in Kid4’s Samsung Galaxy Mini I do have a means of making phone calls. It just isn’t much use for anything else and even as a mobile telephone it has limits – the battery life is totally pants. I’m sure I could buy a phone that was just used as a phone without needing to even think of charging it more than once a week.

Although I normally use social media channels for communications more than voice, funnily enough I did use the Galaxy Mini a fair bit yesterday. Kids needing to talk, me needing to phone accountants & Mrs Davies for who social media is something she just uses by proxy. ie asks me to do it.

The email from the menders with instructions on where to send the broken SGS4 arrived whilst I was in the office yesterday. It has some sort of voucher for me to include when sending the phone away for repair. Not having a printer in the office I emailed it to the one at home and the voucher was waiting for me when I got home together with the form for the school trip that had needed handing in that morning but had taken quite some time to get from Anne’s iPad onto the paper.

So this morning on my way in I am swinging by the Post Office to send the phone off by registered post. It should take another week or so, if they hold to the SLA. That’s one phone charge for a phone or seven for a Samsung Galaxy Mini. It’s no wonder Kid4 wants an iPhone! My brain tells me to hold back on that one though I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do it.

Today is supposed to be the launch date of the Samsung Galaxy K – the version of the S5 with an optical zoom camera. I may yet be tempted but will wait and see. Votch zis space.

First night without a phone
Mobile phone insurance claims
This iPhone is dead

broadband Engineer engineering piracy

Broadband traffic management – a thing of the past? #UKNOF28

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 25 April, 2014
5 Comments on Broadband traffic management – a thing of the past? #UKNOF28

Broadband traffic management, once an essential tool in an ISPs toolkit is beinsed less and less as the cost of bandwidth decreases.

Broadband traffic management seems to have been ditched some time ago by the big ISPs. I may be behind the times here. Had a conversation with a couple of senior tech guys at major UK ISPs who told me they had dropped traffic management up to two years ago.

Traffic management at an ISP is basically where the network employs Deep Packet Inspection kit to examine the type of traffic. Bandwidth hogging protocols such as P2P would be throttled at peak times. They did this to save on costs and to improve the experience for other users. A peer to peer protocol will use all the available bandwidth on a broadband line. It only takes a few users to clog up the backhaul of an ISP.

When DPI was originally deployed P2P traffic represented up to 65% of network traffic. DPI equipment was expensive, didn’t scale well and at the higher end of ISP size never provided a return on investment.

Now with the DPI kit switched off the “problem” P2P traffic remains at the same level in real terms but now represents only 4% of total traffic, the majority being video services such as Netflix and YouTube (I assume). One ISP told me that when they switched off traffic management they saw a little blip in traffic volume but it was negligible in the great scheme of things.

This is quite interesting when considered in relation to the “piracy” debate. Although copyright infringing downloads may well be at the same level of a few years ago is it valid to say that people are increasingly resorting to the use of legal/paid for services instead? If so it makes the whole Digital Economy Act farce even more farcial.

Loads of DEAct related posts here if you want to take a look.

Bad Stuff End User H/W

Apple, Do Us a Solid

Late one Saturday afternoon in the spring of 2009 I lived out a fantasy, one that I know is shared in one form or another by just about anyone who has ever sat down in front of a computer keyboard. On that unforgettable day I placed a Dell laptop computer that had caused me no small amount of angst, frustration and tsuris (Yiddish word…look it up) under the back left wheel of the car I was driving and repeatedly ran over it until it could be repurposed as a post-modern art installation piece entitled “Android Roadkill”.

True story^*. Ultimate catharsis achieved.

On that glorious sunny day I recall for a scant second trying to imagine putting AppleKory under-wheel in the same manner, and I think I actually shuddered at the thought. I simply could not fathom laying any harm to my beloved MacBook, the first computer with which I had ever felt a sense of affection. To borrow scandalously from “Jerry Macguire”, AppleKory completed me. I had her set up in a way that reflected who I am, the way I work and play, the things I like, my interests, my hobbies, my compulsions, my obsessions, and she made my fingers tingle when I ran them over her chassis. Everything on my AppleKory had to be smart, sharp, efficient, clean, and…perfect.

For my math-challenged readers, 2009 was five years ago. A lot can change in five years.

Two complete system replacements later (as well as a component upgrade on my current AppleKory that for all intents and purposes should be considered a full system replacement), I still get my MacBook with great tenderness whenever I go to to backpack her. Today, however, that is more due to care and concern for my cyber-life than any lingering finger tingle. Not that I would describe her as delicate or fragile. No, from a hardware perspective this AppleKory — my third, a 2011-issue MacBook Pro 13″ — is as sturdy a piece of computer hardware as any I can imagine. I find it fortunate, though, that she spends the vast majority of her time in her now time-worn position at the left of my keyboard and not on the move, because these days from a functionality perspective that ol’ Apple “solid” feel is a growing-more-distant memory.

That Apple “solid” feel. I think more than anything else it is what drew me to make the move back to Apple in 2008, and also what kept me there. And I am not just referring to the build quality (though, that too, yes, yes), but a computer you could actually close the lid on and put into a bag, and then take out of a bag and lift the lid on (lather, rinse, repeat) repeatedly without worrying for a moment about…well, about anything. She’d go to sleep, she would jump straight back out of sleep rarin’ to go, and do it all over and over again (lather, rinse, repeat). WiFi up, connections restored, software still in RAM and ready to resume function. Every time. Every. Time.

At one point not all that long ago I thought that Apple was amiss in not using the following dead-effective — and truthful — advertising slogan to sell their computers: “Apple. It just works.” And though this quality does become assumed over time, I would be willing to wager substantial clams that for anyone who has moved from the wonderful world of Windows into Apple OSX it really is something you never quite take for granted. That said, whereas with Windows I was always pleasantly surprised when things worked as expected, with Apple — fair or not — I am always bitterly disappointed when they do not.

Remember the good ol’ Aughts, when things were so uncomplicated. I wish I could go back there again…and everything would be the same…

I cannot say the love affair is over, but to borrow a favorite idiom: Today the AppleKory that I once thought could do anything and everything often has trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. Want to whistle while you work, with a little help from your onboard speakers? Not a problem as long as you don’t mind your tracks skipping with each change in your CPU usage. Like to channel your music through your Hi-fi, system-connected via Apple Express connected to your Wi-Fi? Might work today..might not. Keep more than three tabs open in your browser at any given moment? Beachball. Edit photos in iPhoto with iTunes open at the same time? Beachball. Work in Google Docs while occasionally hopping over to TweetDeck to see what you are (not) missing? Beachball. Copying a file from one system to another with anything else open whatsoever? Beachball. Beachball. Beachball.

A feeble argument can be made — and has been made — for laying AppleKory’s problems at her own feet (whereas Dell Technical Support’s favorite solution has long been “Reinstall Windows.”, Apple’s “Upgrade to a new system.” is far more cheeky and charming, capitalistically speaking). As a Technical Writer, however, with over 20+ years experience in hardware and software (read: born system troubleshooter) I am able to spot a trend, and the abundant evidence shows (and is echoed in copious Googling and Binging search results) that the loss of that Apple “solid” feel is at least as much the fault of Apple’s more recent OSX iterations and their traditionally half-baked software.

With the release of Snow Leopard, the seventh iteration of OSX, instead of the usual New-Feature-This-New-Feature-That Apple impressively went against trend by targeting improved performance, greater resource efficiency, and the reduction of OSX’s memory footprint (and they lowered the price to an unheard-of-at-the-time US$29, too, to increase adoption). I remember being deeply impressed by this tack, and perhaps even more impressed by the Snow Leopard OSX experience. Subsequent iterations, though — Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks — have seen Apple returning to the featuring of features (while trumpeting the stability stuff), and today the company is very much in need of a “Snow Mavericks” release designed to bring back the “solid”. Lest I start daydreaming about taking AppleKory for a ride in my car.

^*In the interest of full transparency I need to mention that the slain Dell computer was at the bottom of a short stack of client-provided laptops that I have used and set aside over the years as each new one came down the pike, one that had lost every shred of possible value save for doorstop (and I have plenty of those). For the ever-curious, the systems that comprise said stack are all EOL (End of Life, and thus not deemed worth the cost of return), not legally mine (which explains why I didn’t eBay ’em and pocket wads of cash), and creaky lame (I am the Jerry Lee Lewis of computer keyboards).

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Bad Stuff End User H/W

Sandy, Baby, Our Two Worlds Will Be One

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Tuesday, 22 April, 2014
No Comments on Sandy, Baby, Our Two Worlds Will Be One

Anyone who has ever spent more than 5 consecutive minutes using a Windows PC knows well the hourglass, that ubiquitous symbol that the cursor morphs into when the system is processing and cannot take further input. Users of PCs loaded with various other operating systems know the hourglass, too (a buncha different flavors of UNIX, for example), though they encounter it far less often. Annoying when it lingers on-screen for more than just a second or two, the hourglass does offer a sensical message, that being that some time will need to pass before you cursor changes back to an arrow and your system is usable once again.

The Apple Mac operating system — though UNIX-based — does not display an hourglass in place of the cursor when it needs time to catch up with the user. No, what OSX offers is a spinning beachball (or, as perceived by some, a pinwheel), which is a lot more fun than a staid old hourglass! Beachballs are found…at the beach! Thus, a delay in system reponsiveness is to be regarded not as a period of necessary waiting but as an opportunity for colorful fun! Beach = fun! And therein lies a clear view into the mindset of Apple versus all of the other schmoes out there looking to drive your personal computing experience.

	Windows, UNIX flavors:		“Yeah, we know this is taking up some of your valuable time.”
	Apple OSX		“It isn’t our fault if you cannot see the fun in this delay.”

Goofy grins and ability to have fun aside, when I inched my way back to an Apple computer in March of 2008 I did not see many beachballs. Sure, they would pop into view from time to time, but they were colorful (hourglasses, at that time at least, came only in black and white) and just when you found yourself noticing them they were gone. “How pleasant.”, I found myself thinking. “Not at all what I am used to!”

End User spam

616 spam comments in 24 hrs

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 20 April, 2014
1 Comment on 616 spam comments in 24 hrs

Just done a bit of an experiment. I deleted a load of spam comments from the blog yesterday at 6am and this morning gone back in and counted the little critters again. In just over 24 hours I’ve picked up another 606 spam comments. There may be some legit ones in there but they ain’t gonna be seen amongst the dross (sorry yawl).

It’s basically around 25 spam comments an hour. We never see spam emails any more, at least not when using gmail. This isn’t entirely true as I do get crap from “seo experts” who address me as “Hi” and quote the “can spam act” in the footer. They always get labelled as spam (may have mentioned this before but it’s an ongoing situation).

I’m sure the 25 spam comments an hour far exceeds the rate of spam emails when we used to get them. Although this spam is mostly captured (Akismet) you do have to occasionally remember to permanently delete it or it would start filling up the server.

In the way you used to get quotes about the size of the global email spam problem it would be interesting to look at the equivalent stats for comments.

The pics below show zero comments initially then 616 a day later. There is something very satisfying about pressing the “empty spam” button. It’s a bit like driving down a clear motorway when there is a 10 mile tailback going the other way.

I wonder what the clickthrough rate for a spam comment is. Must be infinitesimally small. You would have to be paticularly stupid to click on one of the links.

Tags Akismet, comments, spam

Bad Stuff End User H/W

A peck? Nay, a bushel!

Yesterday in Apocalypse Then, I wrote that having shifted from Mac to Windows upon starting a technical writing gig with TEA (Texas Education Agency) in 1993 that for the next fifteen years I paid “…nary a thought…to Apple and their Mac OS whatever-number.” Well, memory is a cagey, amorphous, and deceitful beast — one that tends to spit out incongruent detail at just the moment when you think you have recollection locked down — because the truth is that I did have one more go-round with Cupertino-designed computers before the big shun took hold.

I decided not long before leaving the U.S. to spend 1994 in Europe that I would use my Apple connections to get a good deal on a PowerBook 165 that I could take along. How novel it would be, I thought, to hostel-hop Europe with a laptop computer in my backpack! I could use it to keep a journal! I’d send emails (CompuServe — I was and forever will remain 72124,3441 — supposedly had modem access phone numbers everywhere)!

The longstoryshort? During the period I spent in the U.K. working for London Underground Limited at the start of my adventure I came to realize the ridiculous reality of moving about with a 6.8 lbs. computer in my pack. Sixteen countries, no less than 3 electrical outlet interfaces to consider, probably a like number of modular connector interfaces, and for what? So I could self-satsifying type instead of write, all while cavalierly pinning a “Stupid Guy with Expensive Toys for the Taking” target on my good self?

Before leaving the U.K. to begin the backpacking half of my year in Europe I offloaded the PowerBook 165 on a London University student for an amount that translated to nearly twice what I originally paid (and the kid still made out like a bandit, as the same system was selling new in the U.K. for a good deal more). Generous guy in other ways, too, as he clued me into Iain M. Banks’s Consider Phlebus. Some things just work out.

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An Open Letter to Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE

Post author By Peter Farmer
Post date Friday, 18 April, 2014
2 Comments on An Open Letter to Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE

Hi Olaf.

I hope you don’t mind the informal start to my letter as, after all, your company’s recent one to me regarding an increase in the price for my package from EE was as equally informal (I’ve popped a copy of it in the gallery below, though I’m sure you already know all about it).

Before I start, I will admit that you have a contractual basis from which to make the change detailed in the letter, and can mount a robust (albeit one open to challenge) argument about regulatory compliance. That isn’t quite the point, though.

First, I’d like to draw your particular attention to the line that says “RPI (Retail Price Index) is a measure of inflation, which directly affects the cost to run our service.”

Interesting. And I’d like to point out a few things to you which would suggest that you are mistaken.

RPI, as a measure of inflation, is now largely discredited. Anyone in the know, including your sector’s regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), is migrating to the use of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Have a look at Ofcom’s discussion in paragraph 3.155 onwards of the Wholesale Local Access Review.
Some debate exists on whether wages over the last 12 months have tracked CPI (which is lower than RPI, by the way); it somewhat depends on which decile you find yourself in. Considering this data from the BBC, I suspect you and your executive are OK but a substantial number of EE staff may not be. Unless, of course, you gave them all a CPI-busting wage increase of the RPI figure. Did you?
A substantial part of your business is your mobile phone customers calling landlines: 01 and 02 numbers. As a result of a European Union Recommendation some time ago, Ofcom lowered the termination rates on 1st January 2014 for these calls by around RPI (this review was started before the Office of National Statistics drove the final nail into the RPI coffin) minus 87% — a net 84% reduction in that cost to your business. Funny, but I don’t recall getting a reduction in my line rental or other charges, so I assume you’ve kept this windfall, yes? See Table 1.1 of the Final Statement in the 2013 Wholesale Narrowband Market Review for information.
The Treasury estimated that the 4G spectrum auction would raise around £3.5bn. In reality, it raised £2.34bn, so there’s a £1.1bn saving there for the mobile industry against a reasonable market expectation; thus, rationally-speaking, EE must have forward-priced its 4G services expecting to outlay a market value for spectrum, resulting in further savings on your part. Is this true?

I am sure you can see at this point why I have a problem believing you when you say that RPI (or CPI) has had a direct affect on your entire business; unless in spite of what I have cited above there is a cost that has risen so disproportionately high that it means the average cost increase is the same as the RPI? What could that cost be…perhaps Kevin Bacon’s fees?

Bad Stuff End User H/W

Apocalypse Then

I will start with a question, and feel free to answer simply by raising your hand. Have any of you out there who have read this far ever felt a near-overwhelming bloodlust with regard to a PC, wanting to hoist it over your head and smash it at your feet (or, even better, on the pavement or sidewalk or other surface of sufficient unforgivingness many stories below an open window)? Or harbored visions of a cataclysmic reckoning descending upon the good folks at Microsoft who develop, market, and directly financially benefit from the Windows operating systems? Ever fantasize about the painful and public (oh-so-public) limb-from-limb rending of someone somewhere who in some way had nth degree of responsibilty for your facing the Blue Screen of Death?

OK. Hands down. Really, I was just asking rhetorical questions. Enthusiasm is always nice, though. And appreciated.

PCs running some flavor or other of Windows. Man. I distinctly recall entering that world back in 1993, and begrudgingly doing so…for money.

As a first-year technical writer just starting to dry off the space behind my ears, at the time I was working my first post-entry-level contract for Apple Sales and Support in Austin, working solo to document the company’s PowerBook Problem Resolution Process (really, it was called that)…for $10 an hour. I had visions — Heck, I had plans! — to save up enough dosh to take the following year off to live/work/travel in Europe, and yet in June of that year I was working a gig that was just managing to cover rent and gas. But it was Apple! PowerBook-era Apple! At-the-precipice-of-cratering Apple, but still Apple! And I felt comfortable and warm and safe in the Mac OS and that clanky Claris software (MacWrite! MacDraw!). For $10 an hour.

Around that time a programmer type with whom I had some acquaintance (and who really liked my cooking) told me that he could help me latch on at the Texas Education Agency for a great deal more than I was making at Apple. He didn’t quote numbers, but he was sure the rate would be at least double the amount of pennies I was yanking down at Apple. And the TEA offices were just down the street from my my digs at the time (small unshared detail up to this point: Apple’s Austin campus was out in the sticks), too. Government contract! Double the money! Wicked-short commute! One caveat, though…I would have to work in…Windows.

Windows-XP-Exception-1024x574

And so I instigated a personal sea change in my day-to-day. For a 150% income bump my cyber soul was bought and paid for. From The Beatles to the ‘Stones. And that is the way it was for the next 15 years, through the year I did end up spending in Europe (London Underground Limited, Safety Directorate, in 1994…a Windows shop), through career stints at Dell and IBM, the first Internet bubble, and the first 7 years of my freelance career. Windows this, Windows that, nothing but Windows (OK, a little Unix on the side, but that was just for fun and profit), and nary a thought paid to Apple and their Mac OS whatever-number. Was I “happy” in the Windows world? Did it matter? Being adept at Windows was essential for my work…necessary to ensure my income. Lucrative, baby!

Bad Stuff End User online safety security

Heartbleed – a pain in the proverbial

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 10 April, 2014
4 Comments on Heartbleed – a pain in the proverbial

Big fuss doing the rounds over the Heartbleed bug. Google it. Every man and his dog¹ is saying it is really bad and offering advice which basically says change your passwords oh and btw it might not make sense to change it yet because your specific service might not have patched their SSL.

Now this is the problem. I have 75 sets of credentials for accessing online services. Each one has a complex and unique password. It’s going to take hours to change them all.

A few are more important than others, Google and banking for example. I checked Lloyds Bank. There are no notifications on their website. No advice. No words of comfort saying “don’t worry Tref you are ok son”. Now I can’t believe that a bank like Lloyds with presumably a huge security team hasn’t got it covered.

I checked them using LastPass and got the message “A Server header was not reported, you should assume this site could be vulnerable.” Now this may be because the site is vulnerable or it may be that Lloyds has its website nailed down so that services such as LastPass can’t ping it for information. Not being an expert in this field I don’t know.

Maybe I don’t need to worry about it anyway. Lloyds uses 2 factor authentication. Is that affected? Hmm. No idea.

I read about tech so picked up the Heartbleed story. My dad doesn’t read this stuff. He is 80. He reads the sports pages, the political news and, oh I don’t know, headlines from 1956. Anything really but not news about Heartbleed. Yeeeeoooooooowwwwnggg – right over his head. He probably doesn’t even know most passwords he has created. Probably a majority of the population will be in the same boat.

A lot of people out there will be oblivious to Heartbleed, oblivious to whether their services are affected and oblivious as to whether they need to do anything about it. What’s to do?

I’d envisage each of the 75 services I have an username and password with will be wanting to send me an email advising me of a course of action. Not received one yet…

SD card unexpectedly removed SGS4

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 5 April, 2014
7 Comments on SD card unexpectedly removed SGS4

It’s not looking good. Just had notification on Samsung Galaxy S4 that “SD card unexpectedly removed”. This is the same message I was getting before the last SD card was wiped.

If we recall, the SGS4 was launched on 26th April 2013. This means that my SGS4 is less than 1 year old¹ and it looks a if it is about to destroy a second SD card. Notwithstanding the fact that the phone is less than a year old and it is already my second SGS4. My first had a faulty USB socket.

Frankly this is totally unacceptable. These are very expensive devices. The reliability is atrocious. I am going to take this up with Samsung as a point of principle. Stay tuned…

¹ in fact I got it on 13th May 2013.

broken gear End User

This is a broken badminton racket

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 5 April, 2014
3 Comments on This is a broken badminton racket

Born in a factory somewhere in the manufacturing world of a design by Carlton this badminton racket survived only two outings before it met an untimely end. We shall shed no tears. Mourn not. We have to move on. There is nothing to be gained by dwelling on what may have been. It is what it is. It is no more.

RIP Carlton KINESIS. Length 670mm, frame weight 86g, balance even, flex medium. Delivered on a Monday, smashed on the following Saturday.

broken gear End User mobile apps storage backup & dr

Credit where credit is due – Windows 7 networking

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 4 April, 2014
No Comments on Credit where credit is due – Windows 7 networking

Yesterday my SD card blew up on the Samsung Galaxy S4. Not literally of course otherwise the nature of this post would be different. It would probably be ringed with a thick black border mourning the passing of one of the brightest prospects ever to have graced the Morning Star. Either that or it would be quite short as I might well have been typing one handed having been removed from the operating theatre via intensive care to a big ward where I would have felt quite out of place being young and full of life.

Last night I spent some time on the Netgear ReadyNAS retrieving files. Except

broken gear End User phones

Content of SD card appears to have been wiped on Samsung Galaxy S4

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 3 April, 2014
3 Comments on Content of SD card appears to have been wiped on Samsung Galaxy S4

As an additional note to my previous post it would appear that all the content on my SD card has been wiped. I’ll have to check it when I get home in case it is just the phone not seeing it. It’s not just the music but around 1,200 photos and videos.

Is this a problem? Nooo. It is an irritation because I’ll have to reload the music from my NAS box backup. The photos will also be safe on the NAS box and also in Google+ (I’ve checked). Doesn’t engender confidence though.

At the same time I said yes to a Samsung software update and now some of the cookies have disappeared. I’m having to re-enter credentials on Twitter though not on Facebook or LinkedIn. Odd. Must be having a bad hair day. I need a haircut anyway. Perhaps I’ll nip out this pm and get it done:).

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SD card unexpectedly removed from Samsung Galaxy S4

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 3 April, 2014
6 Comments on SD card unexpectedly removed from Samsung Galaxy S4

I’m getting a message from my Samsung Galaxy S4 saying SD card unexpectedly removed.

My thought go something like this. “Omg not more hardware problems with a Samsung Galaxy.” In the past I’ve had a plethora of USB connector problems, “water damage” problems (not!), screen problems. I’ve even had an SD card problem where I hard to replace the SD card becasue it was corrupting some of my photos including some imporatant ones with the kids at a Test match at Trent Bridge.

Now it looks like another but different SD card problem looming. I’m not naturally a pessimist but nowadays Samsung phones seem to do that to me. I’ve gone from a big fan, principally because they were the main alternative to me becoming an Apple zombie, to looking forward to when I have to change to a Nexus.

Reality is that all these gadgets are probably made in the same factories, looking down on a rice field somewhere where the a green eyed yellow idol casts its shadow¹. I doubt there is much difference in reliability between brands.

The point is that whilst they tend to only last a year or two these devices are not cheap throwaway gadgets. They typically cost four or five hundred pounds each (doing a quick conversion that’s four or five hundred dollars to American readers).

They must think we are mugs. Or zombies. We probably are. There is no point in fighting it. Yes master.

It has to evolve to the way the Chromebook is going. Devices have to be cheap enough for it not to matter if they break, drown, are lost or stolen. You might think that mobile phones are already a commodity but at he high end and at those prices I’m not sure that is accurate despite the fact that the devices are manufactured in very high volumes.

I guess the problem there is that one you move to just competing on price you have to find other markets to grow your business but it will inevitably happen in the mobile word and perhaps the sooner it does the better. They are already finding it hard to introduce new ideas whenever a new model is launched so innovation must be slowing down. Bring on the disposable mobile phone and beam me up Scotty².

Broken Cashpoint/ATM #Bitcoin & the cashless society

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 1 April, 2014
1 Comment on Broken Cashpoint/ATM #Bitcoin & the cashless society

This morning on my way in to work I bumped into Tom, kid3’s piano teacher. He reassured me that kid3 was doing very well which is good. We chatted for a bit as we walked along and went our separate ways.

Had I had to drive to work I would not have bumped into Tom. Nor would I have seen this notice over the ~~ATM~~ cashpoint outside Lloyds Bank. Now the vandalised cashpoint was not any particular inconvenience. The dusty old fiver in my wallet will do me for some time yet.

This does make you think about how much life is left in the “real” money game. The only place I absolutely need cash now is London, where not many taxis take cards or the Morning Star pub where Ness the landlady has a shiver running down her spine every time someone mentions “plastic”.

The trefor.net offices are in Sparkhouse at the University of Lincoln, right next to the Tower Bar and the Engine Shed. Being a student gaff the beer is very cheap but you always have to queue because all the students use cards and pay for drinks individually – a real bummer if there are ten of them in the “round”. A quick and comprehensive poll of the family student¹ reveals that the breed typically only carries a fiver² around in their pocket/wallet/purse/wad.

I still haven’t got round to setting up that Bitcoin wallet. That’ll be my next job. Hopefully my fiver will last until then.

Nuisance Ministers on Nuisance Calls

Post author By James Firth
Post date Monday, 31 March, 2014
20 Comments on Nuisance Ministers on Nuisance Calls

Forgive me but I don’t hold the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in very high regard when it comes to technology issues. It’s a very personal thing, dating back to the Digital Economy Act, their blinkered approach and refusal to listen to anyone who wasn’t an ageing rock star (or paid by an ageing rock star).

Culture Secretary Maria Miller trumpeted something over the weekend that, according to the substantial press coverage at least, should reduce the current high volume of unwanted marketing and other nuisance calls.

I’m confident the plans announced will do very little to reduce the deluge I currently get.

Why? Because spammers have shown themselves time and time again to give not a toss about rules and regulations.

For example, I signed up to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) years ago, and have recently re-added my numbers just in case. Little help it does.

To understand why one has to look at the economics. TPS is a for-profit money making service run by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).

The DMA charge to query its database – around £2,200 per annum, plus VAT. So from the start there is a disincentive for Joe Bloggs Marketing Co Ltd to use it. Better subcontract the calling overseas, with a paper requirement to check TPS and full deniability if their agents get busted calling my housebound, blind and painfully immobile 98-year-old grandmother an hour after she goes to bed of an evening.

The Solution

Is painfully simple. Put a legal requirement on on Telephone Service Providers (TSPs) via the forthcoming legislative overhaul of the Communications Bill to provide, free of charge, effective call blocking tools.

You see, TSPs like BT, Virgin Media, Sky and the rest actually make money from nuisance calls through so-called termination charges. They get paid for putting the nuisance call through to you, so there is little real incentive for anyone in the industry to tackle the problem.

Subscribers like you and I can pay, around £5 per month (£60 per year) for the privilege of having nuisance calls blocked at the exchange – but I see that as blackmail; I pay enough already to rent a phone line. My service provider is making money from the misery of a nation by accepting termination charges from marketeers who hound me 12 hours a day.

Now, if every telephone service provider was obliged through their operator’s license to provide a free and effective nuisance call blocking service then it would be a different story.

Exchange-level blocking is far more powerful than the little black boxes one can buy to filter calls before they hit your handset.

For example, if the call originates in the UK, even if the caller withholds their number, the exchange still knows the ID of the originating caller.

BT therefore, if you pay them for the privilege, provide a blocking service that allows users to dial a special code immediately after a “number withheld” call to block further calls from that number, without affecting calls from your local doctor’s surgery, who happens to withhold their number when calling me.

By the way, what I said above about spammers ignoring rules and regulations, a rule prevents a marketing company calling you withholding their number. Yet this goes on day in, day out.

So a legal obligation on all telephone service providers to provide free blocking tools like the one I described from BT. We’ll all use it if it’s free, and marketeers will have to find a new way to inflict their pain.

After all the current Government, as per the DCMS, is a big fan of free blocking (switched on by default) when it comes to web pornography and the like.

But Miller and Co at the DCMS are probably too busy slapping themselves on the back for the positive press over the weekend to listen to my advice. After all, a DCMS minister openly ignored my advice after inviting me to give it face to face.

James Firth

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London Book Fair 2014 – unsubscribe SPAM

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 11 March, 2014
No Comments on London Book Fair 2014 – unsubscribe SPAM

Yesterday I took delivery of a book: “History of the Welsh Baptists from the year 63 to 1770”. I had to refer to this post for the exact dates – I’m on my way to Manchester, the book is at home and the acknowledgement email cuts the title off at the number 6.

I’m happy enough with the book although the paper has a distinctive odour. Much of it is fictitious rubbish sourced from medieval tracts. It serves a purpose as I am interested in Welsh Baptists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries¹, particularly from the area between Caerfyrddin and Castell Newydd Emlyn 🙂

The book is a photocopy of an abbreviated English translation of an early Welsh text but it has done the job for me. It’s a print on demand job from India. The service was good.

This morning I woke up to an email from someone called

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The Copyright Enforcement Enigma

Post author By Peter Farmer
Post date Saturday, 8 March, 2014
No Comments on The Copyright Enforcement Enigma

When I was on a panel at the Eight Parliament and Internet Conference last year, I was approached afterwards by an academic – Monica Horten. We had a chat about a few things regulatory (notably ITSPA’s work in the field of Net Neutrality) and she mentioned she had written a book on copyright, called the Copyright Enforcement Enigma.

I eventually sourced a copy and then eventually read it (it took a while as there were quite a few on my bookcase I hadn’t read that had military hardware on the cover, you see). It’s quite an excellent romp through the beginnings of copyright, from printing presses and State censorship all the way through to recent European pronouncements on piracy and counteracting it, along with comparing and contrasting different national approaches to intellectual property.

I’ve always found that the view on copyright, intellectual property and piracy generally correlates strongly with political views. These range from “you can’t own an idea” on one end of the scale through to basic property and contract rights saying you should have the right to protect and exploit your creations. Obviously the debate around piracy tracks the political leanings with the preferred sanction often generally correlating with that political niche’s view on criminal sanctions and it is good to read a balanced and non-partisan approach to the topic; if it raises its head again I would suggest this book as a good refresher.

In any event, the primary legislation focusing on this issue today in the UK is the Digital Economy Act 2010, which covers the obligations on Internet Service Providers to restrict access of (or even disconnect) some users or some content depending on the will of the court at the time in the face of an army of barristers from various large entertainment companies. BT and TalkTalk sought a judicial review of the legislation as it had been accelerated through Parliament as a general election had been called, but lost. Then lost the Appeal. So there we have it, Ofcom are now front and centre in managing a lot of this stuff.

There’s one out though; if you are an Internet Service Provider with less than 400,000 subscribers, as it stands, you are not in scope for much of the legislation. I am surprised that so far this gaping loophole has not been exploited; after all, surely you could charge a substantial premium for Napster Broadband? A high bandwidth service that guarantees it will never exceed 399,999 subscribers? I am sure the regulator would soon move to close the loophole, but that takes time. And on that note, I am off to find some seed capital 😉

Google+ Peter Farmer

Tags copyright, piracy

ecommerce Engineer security

New Joules shop opens – queue remains calm, Bruce Schneier signs book

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 27 February, 2014
1 Comment on New Joules shop opens – queue remains calm, Bruce Schneier signs book

Could hardly contain my excitement walking to work this morning. A new shop has opened on Lincoln High Street!

I wouldn’t have notice were it not for the fact that a woman got in my way trying to take a photo of the queue. I too like to take photos (of queues) so I reversed in my tracks, whipped out my journalistic photo device and took two pics just to be on the safe side. David Bailey would have been confident with only taking one.

It’s unlikely I will be visiting this shop. It sells