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Apple Apologist Deletes Discussion Post

2011-09-13T17:56:00.000+01:00

Apple fans get a bit touchy when Windows users criticise their beloved Macs - I know, because I am one of them. But when, after two months of misery, I posted a response in the following thread, the post was deleted for containing 'Non-constructive rants or complaints':

Lion Flaky, Frequent Reboots

If there weren't thousands of posts on the discussions complaining of just what a pile of shite Lion is, it might not be so funny that officious fanboys feel that they have to resort to censorship.

My post:

Welcome to Club Disillusioned.

I have been using Macs for 27 years and I have never experienced such a frustrating couple of months. Every day, I am having to put up with problems which are being experienced by many others who have posted on here.

You will encounter a disperate band of Lion Problem Deniers who, lucky for them, don't have any issues - maybe they only use their Macs to watch YouTube videos and check their e-mail and don't have important work which is being jeopardised by an unco-operating system like Lion.

Installing it is the biggest regret in 27 years of Mac use. I hate it. I never had such a consistently slow, unstable, clunky, broken down computer in my life (including the pre-Mac years using a BBC Micro B and a Dragon 32). The SBBoD is a constant feature and every time I see it, I anticipate the relevant application or Finder to crash and I am sick to death of having to reboot just to get the WiFi working again. And Safari is just one massive bug with an icon and a .app suffix.

I have reinstalled Lion over a dozen times and look on here daily to seek out new, untried remedies - so, please don't suggest I zap the PRAM, repair disk permissions or any of the numerous other oft repeated tips!

If I hadn't had my escape back to Snow Leopard cut off by Time Machine being dysfunctional for a month and then destroying my Snow Leopard backups, I would not be lurking on here looking for answers!

The Experience Machine: The Above Average Driver Fallacy

2011-09-09T14:33:00.000+01:00

In Radio 4's new series, The Philosopher's Arms, Dr David Geaney once more trotted out the truism about how ridiculous it is that the majority of drivers consider themselves to be better than average. If it hadn't been said in a forum for people to publicly flex their superior intellect, I would not be concerned but to hear the audience superciliously tittering was much too irritating for me to keep quiet.

This pompous myth can easily be exposed as a fallacy.

In its simplest form, if there were a total of ten drivers and nine were of, say, level 10 ability and one was level 0, the average would be 9, so nine out of the ten drivers would indeed be above average.

OK, so what if the levels were not so extreme? If nine were of level 6 ability and one was level 1, the average would be 5.5, so nine out of the ten drivers would still be above average.

But with tighter figures, it is also true, if there were four drivers with level 4 driving skills and six with level 6, the average would be 5.2, so still most drivers would be above average.

Unfortunately, the world seems to be run by people who falsely believe themselves to be of above average intellect. And this kind of sleight of hand has been frequently used expediently to massage statistics.

Covert Vaccination, Hobson's Choice and the Myth of Infinite Growth

2011-09-09T12:37:00.000+01:00

Since the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination controversy, I have always wondered why it was necessary to have a triple vaccine in one injection, why those who objected to it could not opt for individual jabs. The issue seems to have been kicked into the long grass but it remains unknown whether Prime Minister of the day, Tony Blair, allowed his own children to have the MMR injection as he refused to answer any questions on the subject - though anybody with a modicum of analytical thought would deduce that had his children received MMR vaccinations, he would surely have said so in order to persuade other parents of its 'safety'.

MMR was an issue which, given that it was a dilemma faced by all parents of young children, was hugely controversial. But much less well known is another covert multiple vaccination programme which I only discovered literally by accident.

A couple of weeks ago I hacked into my hand with an axe whilst chopping wood. It was a bad cut which needed medical attention. I had the wound stitched up and was asked when I had last received an anti-tetanus injection. I could not remember but consultation of my medical records revealed that it was fifteen years ago and I was advised that given that the implement may not have been clean I should have the injection.

It was not until the needle was about to go in that I was told that the injection also contained diphtheria and polio vaccines. Under the circumstances, I don't think that I was in a good position to make a rational decision and was given the injection which I now know is referred to as Td/IPV. I had diphtheria and polio vaccines when I was a child but there is, apparently, no alternative. Had I been less anxious about the immediate situation, I would not have consented.

There is something deeply worrying that treatments are being bundled together in such a way. Not only does it seem unnecessary but it is a question of trust - not in the practitioners who are merely dispensing the only treatments they have at their disposal - but in a one size fits all pharmaculture, reminiscent, for me, of the sealed replaceable unit system of maintenance which was being introduced in the 1980s, that, for example, back then when a washer was worn out on my bike's gear changer rendering it unusable, I had to have the whole lever assemble replaced. But the gear assemble was integral with the brake assembly. Furthermore, they were only sold as a left and right pair. The company, Shimano, no longer supplied those gear/brake units (though the bike was only two years old), so, had it not been for a bike mechanic finding an old lever in a drawer, it could have meant buying a new bike. This adds a different perspective to the old adage, 'for the want of a nail, a war was lost'.

Is this a symptom of greed, laziness, arrogance, contempt or what? It fits very comfortably in my perceived scheme of mankind's oversized footprint trampling on everything in its path. It is, in itself, an illness but not one with a cure - for the concept of infinite growth of the economy is supremely sacred and the fabric of civilisation ostensibly depends on the its foolish belief in the myth.

OSX 10.7 Lion: A sign that Apple has overreached

2011-09-06T13:37:00.002+01:00

On its website, Apple describes the latest operating system thus:

OS X Lion
The world's most advanced operating system advances even further.

At a rough guess, I'd say that about 20% of those who have installed Lion, if asked, would disagree with that statement. There are a few new user interface features which are a bit fun to use but with them came a torrent of problems and I'd bet that most of the 20% would gladly go back to Snow Leopard - if only it were possible. But I wonder how many are in the position that I am in, that my route back to Snow Leopard has been cut off by a Time Machine failure meaning that all my backups are now only Lion compatible and to return to Snow Leopard I would have to sacrifice my e-mail archive - which for reasons I won't go into, it wholly unacceptable.

I have a feeling that this could turn into a lengthy rant, so maybe I should make a preliminary bulleted statement to save any unnecessary bickering of the variety that has become a plague on Apple's Discussion pages:

I am not an Apple newby, I have been using Macs since 1984. I have owned six and with them I have been through every Mac operating system.
My current Mac is a MacBook Pro 17" Dual Core 2.66GHz 500GB (>250GB free) 8GB RAM so it is not underpowered to run on OS X 10.7 Lion.
I have re-installed Lion at least a dozen times by various means.
I have tried every procedure I know of and which has been suggested on Apple's discussions - numerous times with little or no noticeable results.

I have had many problems with OS X 10.7 Lion since I installed it.

I spent hours every day for weeks trying to find answers on the Apple Discussions pages and I have tried everything suggested. I haven't seen any posts where any of the issues I have been experiencing have been properly fixed.

I note that as of this moment there are over 20000 threads about Lion - just over two months since its release, compared with just under 85000 for Snow Leopard which has been out for over two years. Admittedly, many threads concern the novel ways which Lion is installed, but even so, I mean come on! Almost a quarter of the threads in a twelfth of the time? That's three time what might be expected.

There are many threads covering the same topics and I have tried everything in my armoury as well as every suggestion. I have given up asking for any more technical support from well meaning people who are simply repeating the same suggestions ad nauseam to a growing number of people who are getting increasingly fed up.

There are people who have had positive Lion experiences and people who have had bad Lion experiences. I only read the same repeated suggestions from people with good Lion experiences - I am yet to read of anybody who has had a bad Lion experience and has fixed it. And by bad, I don't mean that they can't get used to natural scroll direction and needed to be show how to change it in the System Preferences. I mean bad like startup still taking several minutes and applications being unresponsive for about ten minutes after first hitting the power button.

I just want to list the problems I have had and which I am still having nearly after over two weeks and having re-installed Lion several times by different means, App Store, Utilities Partition, burned DVD, re-download. Fixed permissions, ran disk utility, reset the PRAM, reset SMC, cleaned caches, booted in Safe Mode etc. etc. not just once or twice but many times each. I do not have restore windows selected and I always deselect 'Reopen windows when logging back in'. I have allowed Spotlight to fully complete its indexing on every installation - the last few installations I have completely left it alone for an hour or however long it took.

Reluctantly, I even removed my Windows partition - though I don't regret that now - but it was there for a reason. That was one of the main causes of installation problems that I had read about but it had not affected my installation. Anyway, I did two further Lion installations after that and it made zero difference.

My inventory:

Slow startup, three minutes plus. The only way I have managed to reduce this my ten seconds was to turn off automatic login so that I didn't have to type my password.
Can't use any applications for up to ten minutes after startup - constant spinning beach ball of death (SBBoD).
Slow finder, frequent SBBoD when opening windows - windows are empty for up to thirty seconds.
Slow scrolling. Just occasionally but extremely annoying. Sometimes it takes about thirty seconds to close a window.
MacBook Pro gets very hot. I have had to buy a gizmo for it to sit on to allow more air to flow under it. It was never this hot under Snow Leopard.
Save dialogue boxes also slow - also don't show folder content for up to thirty seconds.
Frequent drops in WiFi - evident either as lost connection to server alerts or the new look Safari cannot connect page informing me that I am not connected to the internet.
Video frequently freezing in QT and VLC. Strange garbled images when going to full screen - bits of desktop mangled up with bits of screensaver - incidentally, I selected Higher performance graphics in the Energy Saver preference pane but that didn't make a difference and seems to reset itself on every reboot.
General video performance.
My MacBook Pro does not go to sleep as per the settings in Energy Saver. It only sleeps when I shut the lid and never if I leave it open.
Battery life is greatly reduced, probably due to the last point.
Time Machine almost always active, mainly because it takes so long to start and cleanup but a 12MB backup can take 45 minutes. Then 15 minutes later it starts again.
Many frequently visited web pages no longer look the same, particularly pages with embedded YouTube videos and images in frames, as much as half the video image is obscured. I have revisited with other browsers and they look fine.
Launchpad appearing empty with the words Looking for applications for ages after every reboot.
Anything to do with Flash and Safari is messed up. YouTube controls don't work properly and they have the same odd behaviour in other things like Google NASDAQ graphs - the cursor is 'sticky'. This doesn't happen in Firefox.
Pages randomly reloading - especially when using more than one tab. Very, very annoying when filling in forms etc. and you have to start again from scratch.
Typing often freezes for several seconds, mainly in Safari but also in Text Edit.

Not to mention the Mail fiasco on my first installation. I lost everything and had to manually import everything from a backup.

Since reading about problems other people were experiencing several weeks ago, I have also noticed the following problems have started:

Desktop icons arbitrarily shifting to the right of the desktop after restarting.
Random full zooming of pages in Safari.
Safari plug-in failure on pages with embedded YouTube videos.

And I am finding it more and more necessary to reboot because something isn't right, e.g:

Applications not working correctly even after being relaunched.
WiFi completely inoperative.
Permanent SBBoD.

And I haven't the inclination to even start on the new 'features' which cannot be disabled.

So, are Apple going to fix it? There was a half hearted attempt with 10.7.1 released a couple of weeks ago which was supposed to address the WiFi issues but improvement was minimal. I had an e-mail from an Apple engineer (I assume he was an engineer) regarding the WiFi issue who asked me to run Apple's Capture Data application and send the results back, which I did. I received a further e-mail from somebody else requesting that I uninstall a number of applications which I do not have installed and carry out various actions which were irrelevant, e.g. related to network security - I live in the middle of nowhere and do not need any security on my network - everything is MAC controlled.

Eventually, I was invited to the Apple Software Customer Seeding Project which would allow me to try experimental software - as if Lion wasn't already an experiment which was out of control - with the caveat that, 'We do not recommend installing pre-release software on personal-critical and/or business-critical systems.'

There is no doubt that for many, probably mainly inexperienced, users who don't ask much from their Macs, Lion is a pretty funky enhancement to an expensive toy. There are evidently a lot of experienced users who are experiencing few if any issues - but of this group there are an irritating number who seem to act as volunteer freelance Apple groupies and troll the discussion pages telling Lion sufferers that they are in isolation and that the problem has nothing to do with Apple. I am pretty sick of these arrogant, smug, supercilious, haughty, overbearing, lordly, egotistical, supremos (or assholes for short) one of whom was nicely told, 'You're being an apologist with the attitude of a Fox TV reporter.'

This has been described as Apple's Windows Vista moment - though having never been so close to a Windows computer to have experienced what it was that provoked the comparison, I can only speculate that it is not a compliment. But for me, it signals a moment when, after years of being in the wilderness and maintaining the worthy status of the choice of creative professionals, the hubris of finding themselves at the top of the heap, with allegedly more money than the US Government, Apple thought it could deliver a half baked product and get away with it.

Where are spammers getting my address? Answer...

2011-08-17T13:02:00.000+01:00

For about ten years, I have been very cautious when submitting my e-mail address anywhere. But thanks to careless friends who submitted my address to 'free greetings card' sites not realising that they were simply collecting addresses to spam and 'get a free iPhone' offers which require you to 'invite friends' to share more 'free goodies', I am the lucky recipient of about 300 spam e-mails per day. Fortunately, my e-mail provider filters most of them out for me but I still have to go through the filter daily just in case there has been a filter error.

One cardinal rule has been that when giving an e-mail address, I always give a unique address for the site I am on, e.g. when I submitted my address on the BBC website, I used the address bbc@*mysubdomain*.fsnet.co.uk - thus if I start getting spam sent to this address, I know where the spammers got my e-mail address.

To date, the address which get the most spam were the addresses I registered with the now defunct www.talkabloutgovernment.com who did the blindingly dumb thing of publishing all their members' e-mail addresses on the site without warning. Only once the spammers had harvested the addresses did they warn their members that they did this - though they never thought to stop doing it. About 40% of the spam I get originated from this site. Their stupidity has blighted the e-mail experience of everybody who registered with them. Now they are gone.

The next highest contributor, by a considerable margin, is The Independent newspaper's website, on which I registered using the e-mail address indi@*mysubdomain*.fsnet.co.uk. Easily 5% of the spam I get is sent to this address. I contacted The Independent's IT manager to warn them that their e-mail database had been compromised. They claim to have consulted the relevant person and simply I subsequently received a denial that this could possibly have happened - yet the feedback loop I created for the purpose proves that it did.

Another prominent perpetrator of this carelessness is the site www.americasarmy.com (a subsidiary, I believe, of the US Department of Defense) on which I registered out of curiosity in 2003 to see what brainwashing computer war games they were creating to normalise the art of mass slaughter. This was a slow burner but a couple of months ago, I received my first spam e-mail originating from this registration.

There are others, mainly small businesses with webmasters who, in all likelihood, double up as secretaries or delivery drivers who probably don't know what they are doing but others are sites which may well have sold their databases for profit

JustHost.com stole my money

2011-08-13T16:45:00.002+01:00

Firstly, just in case JustHost.com read this feeling litigious, dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal defines stealing as:

to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force

That clarified, I took out a hosting agreement with JustHost.com on 18th August 2009. I paid 47.52 by PayPal for two years webhosting which was renewable every two years thenceforth at the same rate. The confirmtion e-mail I received states:

You have successfully signed up for a subscription to Just Host Hosting / Domain Package using PayPal.

Your first subscription payment, for 47.52 GBP, has already been sent to Just Host Ltd..

----------------------------------------------------------------
Subscription Details
----------------------------------------------------------------

Date of Sign Up: 18 Aug. 2009
Subscription Name: Just Host Hosting / Domain Package
Subscription Number: S-8EY290936******** (my asterisks)

Subscription Terms:
£47.52 GBP for the first 2 years

Then £47.52 GBP for each 2 years

On 1st August 2011, I closed my PayPal account.

On 11th August, one week before the renewal was due, I received an invoice for £174.75 for the next two years and that the amount was automatically deducted from my debit card.

I checked with my bank, and sure enough, the amount had been charged to my account.

There are so many problems here that it is difficult to know where to begin.

The agreement I took out was for £47.52 per two years renewable. It is unacceptable to increase the amount without consulting the customer, especially when the increase is by a factor of almost four.

The agreement was via my PayPal account which was closed.

The amount invoiced was charged to my debit card without authority.

The charge to my debit card was one week before the date of the invoice.

I have tried to contact JustHost to find out what they are playing at but the staff on their 'live chat' refused to discuss billing or account issues, nobody answers the telephone, instead all billing and account enquiries are instructed to be submitted by e-mail and all e-mails receive automated garbage responses which show that no human has ever cast their eyes on them.

Don't let the young woman with her hand to her ear in a listening gesture fool you, JustHost.com don't want to hear your problems, especially when it comes to getting the money back which they have stolen from you.

And to be clear, JustHost.com, if you or your lawyers are reading this (which is highly unlikely, admittedly), you had no right to take £174,75 from my account and you did not have my permission. You did so secretly, in that by the time that you informed me that you were going to take it, you had already done so. And given that I was not given any option to refuse payment, it was done so by force. You stole it. JustHost.com stole my money.

Unlimited Web Use and other lies by Vodafone and Mobile Phones Direct

2009-10-29T12:56:00.000Z

Having been lied to by Orange, regarding the removal of a cap on my broadband connection if I took out a mobile phone contract (see: The future is Orange - unfortunately), I managed to get the contract annulled by contacting OfCom and CISAS.

I then found a contract with Vodafone via a company called Mobile Phones Direct. The contract was £34.25 per month for 24 months with a Nokia N97 and included 700 cross network minutes, 250 text messages and unlimited web use - I asked both Mobile Phones Direct for a copy of the contract in writing to verify the plan but neither company provided anything.

When the phone arrived it was in a sealed box which stated that it could only be returned within seven days if the seal on the box was not broken. I actually pondered for a while before I eventually did so.

From the moment I started to try to use the phone there were problems. There was rarely a good signal, incoming calls would disconnect as soon as I tried to answer them and the phone would not start up. There was actually a vast catalogue of problems which I (and many other people) posted on the Vodafone and Nokia website forums including there being no means of getting Music onto the phone from a Mac (the Nokia Multimedia Transfer application for Mac was not compatible with Nokia's flagship phone!).

Within the first couple of days I had a courtesy call from Vodafone (which was barely audible due to a whistling sound) during which I said I was having a lot of problems with the phone. I understood from the Vodaphone representative that I had a week to return the phone - but having read that firmware updates cured most (if not all) of the issues I was facing, I decided to wait until new firmware was issued for the product code of my N97.

I also discovered that 'unlimited web use' was subject to a 'fair use' policy which actually meant that it was limited to 500Mb per month. Given that the phone is touted as being a multimedia platform with built in YouTube application, 500Mb would be extremely limited!

The next couple of weeks was a procession of problems during which time I contacted both Mobile Phones Direct and Vodafone - each referring me back to the other and both telling me that I could no longer return the phone as it was no longer within seven days of its receipt.

The phone had to be returned to factory settings (a complete reset) on three occasions - losing all data (phone numbers, photos etc.) and I was becoming extremely concerned that I neither company would offer me support for a phone which worked less than half of the time it was switched on.

At one point, I had a call from Vodafone but it was only for a customer survey. I was brutally honest. A few days later, I had a call from a customer services at Vodafone asking why I was so unhappy. I explained all but was offered no solution. I said I just wanted to return the phone but was told that that was not possible after seven days.

Eventually, Mobile Phones Direct offered to replace the phone but by this time I was sick to death of the phone, the contract, Mobile Phones Direct and Vodafone. I said I wanted to return the phone and end the contract as I did not feel that either company had been honest with me or offered me anything approaching a reasonable level of support. I was told that that was not possible as I had now gone beyond the 28 days during which the phone could have been returned. This enraged me because I had already been told that:

a) The phone could not be returned if the seal on the box was broken
b) The phone could only be returned within seven days (by both Vodafone and Mobile Phones Direct)
c) That the phone could only be returned within 14 days (by Vodafone)
I decided that the only thing to do was return the phone to Mobile Phones Direct, cancel my direct debit and pursue the battle from the other side of the line if either company wanted to take issue with me.

Mobile Phones Direct then returned the phone but I refused to accept it. It bounced its way back and forth from them to me until it finally rested at their premises in Southampton.

I then received a bill from Vodafone stating that they had charged me £704.37 for cancelling the contract early:

I went away for a couple of weeks and came back to another bill. This time for £1,410.24:

I phoned Vodafone to discuss this and they admitted that they had charged me twice for the alleged 'early cancellation of the contract' - although, in reality, the contract was not honoured or even valid if the terms were ambiguous.

I stated quite adamantly that I believed that Vodafone and Mobile Phones Direct had been less than honest in their promotion of the contract and had been totalally dishonest regarding the terms and conditions insofar as the period during which the phone could be returned. I stated that during the month I had been in possession of the phone I had been able to use the phone in its most fundamental capacity (i.e. merely to make phone calls and send text messages) about half of the time and I was only prepared to pay half a month's line rental.

Since then, Vodafone have set the dogs on me. I have been hounded by phone calls from a debt collection agency called capQuest who now seek to recover a total of £1,510.24:

I had, perhaps naively, believed that Vodafone and/or Mobile Phones Direct would accept that they had acted less than honestly and fell woefully short in their customer support and would write this off as a lesson in how not to try to deceive customers and how not to neglect to provide an adequate level of support.

The next step will be to contact OfCom and CISAS once more. Dealing with any company who make offers they cannot or will not honour is an increasingly hazardous pursuit - but Vodafone and Mobile Phones Direct have proven themselves to be exemplars of mendacity!

Blackpool Illuminations - The Green Light Green Wash

2009-09-07T16:40:00.001+01:00

Anybody visiting Blackpool would struggle to recognise anything of any environmental value but it isn't through lack of effort by their public relations department. You'd think you were entering a satellite of the Machynlleth Centre for Alternative Technology .

Take Blackpool's Illuminations, its biggest tourist attraction the switching on of which the Blackpool Gazette claims 100,000 people attended. One of the first tableaux the visitor to the 'lights' will see is The Green Machine.

This, by its own definition, is a 34m tableau entirely lit by 24v LED lamps which reduces power consumption by 82%.

Five photo voltaic solar panels charge five sets of batteries during the day to power the tableau at night.

Very commendable!

But at 34m (112ft) The Green Machine is just a tiny part of the five miles of light pollution produced in the name of tourism every year. It was first launched in 2006, three years ago, during which time there has been no visible progress in rolling out the sustainable technology it boasts to the rest of the spectacle. It could be asserted that it is positioned at the start of a north/south journey through the lights in order to exaggerate the environmental credentials.

But as can be seen from the images below, there is more than just the environmental boasts of the technology worthy of scrutiny. What exactly is this Green Machine trying to say? The message is totally incoherent - it's as if a focus group comprising of kindergarten kids was asked what they thought of when they heard the words 'environmental bullshit'.

What on earth have vitamins A, B, C, D and E (extinghuished) got to do with the environment? Fruit and Veg, Carbohydrates? Dairy? Fish? All cobbled together with pointless buzz words like Hazardous Waste and 100% Recyclable.

The total result is a dazzling fountain of hogwash.

How to lose friends without really trying - Part One: Alcohol

2009-06-25T13:15:00.000+01:00

If a drunk driver kills a child who runs out between two parked cars, nobody would question their guilt. Their drunkenness at the wheel would be a crime in itself. Their reactions would be impaired by their intoxication.

Somebody who thinks that it is a good idea to have a swim in the sea when they have had a few too many is not likely to have much sympathy from the lifeboat men who risk their lives to save them. If they drown, it may sound callous, but they will have been a victim of their own stupidity. As the late, great Bill Hicks said of the apocryphal person who, having taken LSD, jumped from the roof of a building thinking they could fly, what a dick! If they thought they could fly, why not take off from the ground.

Now, without wanting want to make this personal, if somebody's reasoning is affected because they have debilitated themselves with alcohol (or any other substance) and mishear what somebody says, then completely fly off the handle and launch into a personal attack, it would seem unreasonable to most level-headed people that the person who misheard might expect an apology from the speaker for saying something completely innocent.

If you looked a bit like somebody who had stolen my car and then I see you when I am drunk and beat you up, should you apologise to me for having some resemblance to the thief?

This is why I stopped drinking and avoid being around people who are drunk. Unfortunately, it isn't always possible to avoid situations where people are drinking beyond their capacity - some people cannot enjoy themselves without exceeding their limits. As a result, I am faced with the probability of losing a friend because another person expects me to apologise for saying something which they thought they heard. To atone would not only be dishonest but it would acquiesce to their drunken irrationality. Is it better to go to prison for something you haven't done or plead guilty to avoid a custodial sentence?

Pensioners pay for digital revolution

2009-06-17T00:18:00.000+01:00

The UK Culture secretary has just announced that the expansion of the country's broadband service will be paid for with a 50p per month levy on home phone lines.

Whilst that may seem like small potatoes to a household with a digital home hub but pensioners who are least likely to make heavy bandwidth demands - if they have internet access at all (I can think of plenty that I know personally) are proportionally going to have to contribute more than anybody.

This looks like just another skimming poll tax, albeit small. If the government really believes in a market economy (as their neo-Thatcherite leadership have continued to ram down our throats on the Iron Lady's behalf) then the finance for this infrastructure development should come from the companies who have been profiting from the frequently abysmal service they have been providing.

The hidden cost of ID cards - and driving licenses

2009-06-16T12:43:00.000+01:00

It was a bit late in life that I eventually passed my driving test. The reasons were complicated. A bit of renegade environmentalism, a bit of personal economics and a bit of fear. By the time I passed the photo license had been introduced and as much as I may have objected to having one there was no visible national resistance - as there is against ID cards now.

Ten years down the line and I have just received a license renewal form. I have to provide a new photo - even though the photo on the license is so small (22mm x 17mm) and foggy (it looks like it was printed on a first generation inkjet printer) and that I any wrinkles I may have accumulated are clearly invisible. I had no hair then and I have not been using any hair restorer nor have I resorted to follicle implants.

I don't remember being told (when I wasn't given the choice about having a photo license) that it was going to have to be renewed every ten years - nor, more significantly, that it was going to cost £20 every time.

I've long cautioned about objecting to the introduction of ID cards on the grounds of cost - it would be so simple to placate such objections by simply saying that instead of charging £100 they can be had for £25. Many objectors would then say, 'actually, that sounds quite reasonable' and roll over to be shafted by the tool of the police state under the impression that they were getting a bargain.

But it should be noted by those who may not object to an affordable tyranny that it may well be unknowingly sold to them on the never-never.

The future is Orange - unfortunately

2009-05-30T18:32:00.000+01:00

I've had a mobile phone with Orange one way or another since about 1997 and I was one of Freeserve's original customers back in 1998 - Freeserve being taken over by Wanadoo in 2000 which was then acquired by Orange in 2006.

In recent years, as an Orange mobile customer, I was entitled to a free broadband service. Due to my heavy internet use, in 2008 my broadband connection was capped between 6.00pm and midnight to 50k/s - there later transpired some confusion with conflicting letters saying that the cap had been lifted and that it had not. Regardless, the cap remained.

When my mobile contract expired and having had some problems with a broken phone which neither Orange, Nokia or Phones4U were prepared to address, I decided to move my mobile phone and broadband to O2 and phoned Orange to inform them of my intention to leave.

Their loyalty department offered me a competitive mobile phone deal which entitled me to a discounted unlimited broadband service. I pointed out that I was being capped on my free broadband connection and said that I would accept the deal so long as the cap was lifted - I accepted that my free broadband connection had been capped but I wasn't prepared to pay for a capped service. The Orange representative assured me that the cap would be lifted within 7 to 10 days.

A month later, the cap was still evident. I phoned Orange to complain. On my first attempt I found myself talking to somebody in a call centre in Asia who didn't understand my situation at all and first of all said that my connection was slow because it is busier at those times and then told me that the cap was there for legal reasons. I gave up and tried again, managing to speak to somebody who assured me that the cap would be lifted very soon and that I should contact them when it was lifted to receive a refund for the period when it was in place.

Three months into my contract the cap remained. I tried again to speak to somebody at Orange and eventually spoke to somebody else who repeated the promise that the cap would eventually be lifted but having reached a point of exasperation I used the Orange website contact form to inform them that unless the situation was dealt with within a week I would take the issue to OfCom. Having heard nothing for a week, that is what I did.

OfCom informed me that as the terms agreed on the phone had not been met, I would be entitled to terminate my contract. They gave me a reference number and a high level support phone number at Orange. When I then phoned Orange with this information, they assured me that it would be addressed immediately and that somebody would reply within 24 hours.

Needless to say, nobody at Orange did contact me within 24 hours so five days later I phoned them again. They said that somebody would phone me back within a few hours and this time they did. They informed me that there was no way that under any circumstances the cap could be lifted. They agreed to refund me for the 3 months plus which I had paid for the capped broadband service. When I challenged them that my mobile phone contract was taken out on the strength of their promise I was passed on to their mobile phone division who basically stated that the two departments were unconnected and that if I attempted to terminate my contract, I would be charged for the 14 months plus which remained or I would have to pay the full retail price of the handset - a Nokia 5800 (another story entirely).

So, in a nutshell, Orange retained me as a mobile phone customer by promising me that a limitation on my broadband service (then free ) would be removed if I also signed up for a home broadband package - when in fact they were not going to do so.

No firmware updates for the Nokia 5800 on Orange

2009-05-24T23:33:00.000+01:00

Orange customers with a Nokia 5800, product code 0576921 can expect a very long wait before Orange decide to release the latest firmware.

Nokia 5800 owners on other carriers have had access to version 21 of the phone's firmware as have some Orange customers but those with this product code seem to be told to go and whistle by Orange as they seem to be stuck with version 11. As people with version 11 firmware are discovering, some new software and new versions of software do not work on older versions of firmware.

The latest firmware (or software, as Nokia calls it on its site) can be checked by going to this page:

europe.nokia.com/A4577224

When contacted, Orange have variously said that it is Nokia's responsibility, that the phone is not compatible with the later versions of the firmware or that they don't know anything about it.

Nokia are quite unequivocal about it. In an e-mail reply to my enquiry, they state:

'With regard to your email, kindly note that software update availability is based on many things, including existing Nokia device firmware version, country, and operator. It may be due to one of these variables that your Nokia device isn't eligible for updates.

Please note that your mobile service provider, operator, or carrier may not have approved the latest Nokia device firmware available. Nokia produces many different variants of each product (for different countries and languages) and not all variants have the latest Nokia device firmware.'

Given that version 21 of the Nokia 5800 firmware is available for most other 5800 users and that it has been shown by some users with Nokia 5800s with the product code 0576921 who have changed the product code, and successfully installed and run the version 21 firmware, this is an issue entirely of Orange's making.

Heavy handed electricity suppliers (e-on) demanding payment for energy they haven't supplied

2009-03-23T12:55:00.000Z

I was awoken on Saturday (21st March) morning by somebody ringing the bell to my flat.

Via the intercom, I asked him who he was and he replied that he was from e-on and wanted to discuss my electricity supply so I went down to talk to him.

I asked him what it was about and he replied that it was regarding an unpaid bill - I asked what bill to which he responded by saying 33681 - as in, ‘three three six eight one’. I had just woken up and this meant nothing to me and I asked him to explain. He said it was an unpaid balance of £336.81. At which point I asked if he was winding me up.

I have never had my electricity supplied by e-on and my account with Southern Electric is fully paid up to date. However, he was quite insistent. I said I would get my Southern Electric bills to prove that they had been paid. I was still quite sleepy and hadn't realised that he was following me and he entered my flat. As he was there, I showed him my Southern Electric bills. I also showed him my electricity meter in the cellar but was quite emphatic that I owe e-on money and that I would have to pay e-on and recover the money from my supplier, Southern Electric.

He issued me with a letter entitled, ‘Notice of Intent to Apply for a Warrant of Entry’.

When I moved into the flat, the gas and electricity was supplied by London Energy who were taken over by EDF. In March 2008, I decided to look to see if I could get my gas and electricity cheaper elsewhere. I found a supplier called Ebico who operated with Southern Electric and had very competitive rates - so I contacted them and asked them to change my supply.

For the following year, I got and paid for bills from Southern Electric for gas and electricity - though at some point I got bills from British Gas also claiming to be my gas supplier but that was a mix up with the meter serial number.

I have all official correspondence for at least two years. In all that time I have not had any bills or other correspondence from e-on. Southern Electric are quite certain that they are my supplier. But not only that, the amount which e-on claim I owe them is almost twice what I have already paid Southern Electricity for the same amount of electricity.

How can an energy supplier turn up out of the blue and claim that you owe them money when you have been paying another supplier?

If they are so adamant that they are my supplier, how come they haven't sent a bill in over a year? Bills are issued quarterly so the latest I should have received my first bill was June 2008.

If they are so adamant that they are my supplier, how come they haven't contacted me about the unpaid bills before now?

Any other supplier would have disconnected the supply well before the unpaid bills amounted to a year's worth of electricity.