Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Why Are Withheld Numbers Allowed?
It's Me!
Recently I started to receive a series of silent telephone calls. Sometimes the caller would ring off as soon as I answered. On other occasions it would be some time before my line cleared. It’s happened to me before as it has to most of us. What makes me angry though is when you dial 1471 and find out that the caller was from a withheld number.
At one time I’d have assumed – no, correction – I’d have known that it was a deranged ex-girlfriend but not any more. I’ve cleared all that sort of dross out of my life. Now it could be one of those dreadful automated telemarketing computers which all sorts of otherwise reputable companies seem to think are an acceptable business tool. I don’t. I think they’re pretty much akin to an offensive weapon.
But why, oh why are withheld numbers allowed at all?
What possible reason or excuse can there be for allowing anyone to make anonymous telephone calls? We have the technology. Caller ID is now virtually universal. What possible justification can there be for anyone to hide the number they’re calling from? If they’re initiating the communication, whoever they are, why should they be able to hide their identity?
So I thought I’d take advantage of BT’s “Anonymous Caller Rejection” service. Now, I’m probably going to have to cancel it because so many people are having difficulty getting through to me.
First it was my electricity supplier. Then it was a government department that I was doing some writing for. Then it was my MP’s secretary who comes from the doctors’ receptionists charm school and was quite affronted, told me off even, that my phone won’t accept anonymous calls.
Sorry, Wrong Number!
Just what is it that makes these (mostly) rational people and organisations think it is acceptable to contact me anonymously? Would they send me anonymous letters or emails or arrive at my door and refuse to identify themselves?
No, of course they wouldn’t. It would be entirely wrong and it is entirely wrong to use anonymous or withheld telephone numbers too.
Generally I’m opposed to laws. We have far too many already but in this instance we should legislate. It’s ridiculous, deceptive, dishonest and unnecessary yet many of our biggest organisations and institutions do it as matter of course.
It’s unacceptable and it should be stopped. Ban withheld numbers now!
Facebook – It’s A Snide, Snide World
I don’t know the name of the geek from Facebook who said that he wanted everyone on the planet to become a member of his website but he follows Adolf, Joseph, Benito, Francisco and other tyrants in having ambitions that must be thwarted at all costs.
Let me be clear, yes, you can find me on Facebook. It’s true, with nearly half a billion members it is difficult to ignore it. I use it to publicise this blog to as wide an audience as possible. You can call me a hypocrite if you want but I don’t and won’t participate in the snide, puerile and thoroughly unhealthy relationships and lifestyle that it promotes.
Is This The Real Life Or Is It Just Fantasy?
If there are nearly a half a billion members on the site there must be at least a billion virtually identical photographs that consist of two or three faces (usually inane blondes at a party) pressed together cheek to cheek with vile grimaces or smiles. If it’s supposed to be about individuals why does everyone look exactly the same, talk exactly the same and behave exactly the same?
There are now an extraordinary number of sad, dysfunctional people who live their life, vicariously and actually, on Facebook. This, I believe, should be of great concern to all of us. More than that, the site encourages behaviour that is dishonest, underhand and snide. It’s not a force for good. It’s a force for evil. It’s a perversion and abuse of the internet, probably mankind’s greatest ever invention.
You know the sort of person who’d rather text than make a phone call? It’s often very dishonest communication, the ideal way for a coward to make excuses, lie or deceive. It’s said that 80% of communication is non-verbal and you certainly get a lot of that extra meaning over the phone. You get none at all by text. It’s just the bare, badly, carelessly or deceptively chosen words. Facebook goes even further, it encourages members to post messages and pictures so that they’re seen by third parties as well. In fact, often the message or picture is posted mainly for their benefit, to embarass or annoy. This is the real wickedness. It’s already led to murders and countless, countless, arguments and disputes which have ended in violence. Of course, it depends on you. You or your friends can behave badly through any medium or face to face. The point is Facebook encourages you to be snide. It’s not nice.
I don’t know what the answer is. I certainly wouldn’t be encouraging children to use it. For many it’s already become a substitute for real life. Its most well known deficiency is the way it makes you collect an ever greater quantity of friends with no regard whatsoever for quality. My sons and all their real world friends have in excess of 1,000 Facebook friends. I have 24 so that must make me – what?
There’s no doubt that there are business opportunities presented by Facebook. With that many members there’s bound to be. In that context it’s not surprising that Cheryl Cole has 1,698,477 friends. Mind you, Paul Macartney only has 11!
So I’ll be staying on Facebook but I won’t be participating in it. I think it should have a big warning flash up on the screen every time you log in: “GET A LIFE”
UEA Offline To Email
Leaks like A Sieve
We all know how indiscreet certain people at the University Of East Anglia’s Climate Change Unit were recently. Not only was the content of their emails outrageous, dishonest and reprehensible but their email system was so insecure that it resembled a sort of digital colander.
Now, in a classic, public sector, knee jerk overreaction, it is virtually impossible to get an email through to UEA. My son, Richard, is there doing a law conversion course after graduating in PPE last year. Every email I send him is bounced back to me as “unacceptable content”.
It’s only the sort of correspondence that might pass between any father and son. There’s no cocaine deals, terrorist plots, child porn, not even any attempt to falsify information on which the future of the world might depend. I did send him the latest draft of my novel which I think did have the odd swear word in it. Dear me, I think that must be it! Trouble is I don’t think Amazon or WH Smith accept novels these days without swear words in them.
Fortunately, Richard and I are super-duper, super-sophisticated hackers right at the leading edge of technology. We had a bright idea and used a different email address. Now why didn’t the Climate Change Unit think of that?
Rage Against My DRM Resolution
I have always sworn that I would never buy any DRM music. It’s a fundamentally flawed and immoral idea that if I pay for music I shouldn’t have the right to play it where, when and on what I want. It’s an idea that is doomed to failure. Even Steve Jobs, the gamekeeper turned poacher turned lord of the manor turned poacher has recognised that it has exactly the opposite effect to that intended and alienates customers too.
So what has caused me to break my resolution? The X Factor. It has to be bad that every Christmas the charts are hijacked by manufactured pop. I don’t count “Rage Against The Machine” as my favourite band but I spent 67p at Tesco’s online music store and got my DRM track.
You should join in too! See the Facebook campaign page and rage against The X Factor!
BBC Gives Tiscali The Kicking It Deserves
It was wonderful to see Tiscali exposed on Watchdog this evening. For years it has demonstrated itself to be a company to avoid. It is so clearly focused on profit rather than on customers that its death wish is about to be fulfilled.
When will the dumb suits that run businesses like this wake up to real life? This is a tale of greed and disrespect for consumers – just like the banks. The company has consumed itself with avarice and aspiration rather than delivering a service
Iomega – How To Lose Your Data
I’ve had two Iomega Storcenters now. The first was 1 TB and after about 18 months it failed for no reason I can understand and took nearly a terabyte of movies and backups with it. The second was 3 TB – yes, you may well ask, why did I do it again? That has failed now after about 12 months with about 2.5 terabytes of my data on it.
Iomega support is as useless now as it was the first time. I’d already tried everything they could suggest before I rang them. Being told in a thick French accent that the Iomega warranty does not cover any data loss and that I may want to contact a local data recovery expert just doesn’t do it for me. It leaves me extremely fed up.
The problem is these NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices are a RAID array of disks interrupted by a Linux subsystem so if anything goes wrong you’ve got no chance of using a Windows PC to do anything about it.
Having failed to learn my lesson the first time, now I know that I will never, ever even consider Iomega or NAS as a solution again. These are inevitable disasters in big shiny boxes just waiting to happen. I have seven SATA hard disks in my system that I can monitor and maintain under Windows. If the worst happens I know I can at least try to recover some of the data and will almost certainly succeed to some degree.
Stay well away from NAS.
Peter Reynolds 
Massive Outcry For Legal Cannabis On Your Freedom Website
with 5 comments
Your Freedom
The coalition government’s Your Freedom website has, according to Nick Clegg, been “helpful and really exciting”. It’s been going nearly a fortnight now and anyone who has tried to visit it will have their own experience of how popular and therefore slow and busy it is.
The single most remarkable thing about it though is the massive outcry for the legalisation of cannabis and an end to the war on drugs. I don’t believe that people’s opinions have suddenly changed. It’s just that they’ve been given a forum in which to express their views. If the government doesn’t do something about this issue now they’re going to look pretty stupid.
Your Choice
Mind you, during Obama’s transition, after the election but before the inauguration, he introduced the idea on his change.gov website. Legalisation of cannabis was the winning idea but it wasn’t adopted.
However, it is true that Obama has made big changes in favour of medical marijuana and that the war on drugs is clearly over.
The site itself is an object lesson in how not to set up an internet presence. The chosen technology is absolutely useless. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so bad. HMG could have achieved a much better result with an off-the-shelf WordPress blog just like this one. This is just another example of the now proven theory that anything the government does with IT will go wrong and cost a fortune. Who are the idiots who were employed to set up this site?
It is completely overloaded and incapabable of handling the traffic it generates.
The software used for adding comments is the worst I have ever seen anywhere on the web. When a commenter presses the “add comment” button there is no positive response. Given how totally overloaded the site is it can take several minutes for the post to appear. In the meantime, the commenter has pressed the button another four or five times before giving up. Multiple copies of comments appear and the system slows down even more.
The moderation policy is bizarre to say the least. It’s glaringly obvious that no thought at all was put into how to organise suggestions. Consequently, there are literally hundreds of ideas that are almost identical. Some of these are closed by the moderators and referred to another similar idea – but some aren’t. They’ve learned nothing from the petitions section of the No 10 website. It is just crazy!
There’s a strong suspicion of gerrymandering or tinkering with the posts, the votes and the comments. It may just be the chaos of the site itself but it feels wrong. There are dodgy things going on behind the scenes and protest is snuffed out.
Overall, I’d rather we had the site as it is than not have it at all. It’s just embarrassing though to see how bad it is.
It remains to be seen whether the government will take any notice. If not though they’ve made a rod for their own back.
Written by Peter Reynolds
July 14, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Posted in Consumerism, Politics, technology
Tagged with bad, blog, cannabis, change.gov, chaos, coalition, commenter, comments, crazy, dodgy, fortune, forum, gerrymandering, government, HMG, idiots, incapabable, internet, IT, legalisation, massive, medical marijuana, moderation, Nick Clegg, No 10 website, Obama, object lesson, off the shelf, opinions, outcrym, overloaded, popular, posts, protest, slow, snuffed out, software, suggestions, technology, tinkering, traffic, transition, useless, votes, war on drugs, web, website, winning, Wordpress, wrong, Your Freedom