Reading Groklaw is fun

February 27th, 2006

So I was reading about the latest round of stuff that happened with those people who do those things over at Groklaw. I felt like some amusement, so I headed over to the website of that other company. Look at the impressive new features in OpenServer 6:

  • File support up to 1 TB
  • Multi-processor support increased to 32 processors
  • Memory support up to 64 GB

Like, wow dudz. Such state of the art features. It’s not as if these have been in most other popular UNIX and UNIX-like Operating Systems for a bazillion years or anything…

Jon.

Heathrow Fun

February 27th, 2006

Photo: Adding insult to injury. A late train leaves Paddington on a Sunday night (as usual).

I’ve added a new category to my blog – “UK Annoyances”. That’s so you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to (I’ll figure out a cool way of spliting this out into sections later). Some of you are quite happy with this country and not as pissed off with things as I can be – but I’ve created this section for anyone who ever agreed with me that signage in the UK is designed to be confusing, that it’s not acceptable to expect bad service every time and that things could actually be better.

Heathrow Fun

Ticket to Brussels: 92.50GBP return.
Time inflight: 45 minutes.
Time spent being fucked over: 4.5 hours.
Spending more time in Heathrow: priceless.

There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else, there’s London Heathrow.

So, I got to Brussels airport (BRU) earlier. The gare central in Brussels might be ugly, but the train was exactly on time and got me to the airport right in time for my flight. Great. The flight was even on time (though it was the second BA flight this weekend and has helped me to confirm that I dislike them as much as the rest of One World) and got me to Heathrow within around 5 or 10 minutes of the anticipated time.

There then followed the typical “I’ve only got hand luggage but it still takes 40 minutes to get out of Heathrow” problem that seems to be unique to this one airport (even Mumbai was better. And that’s saying something). So I get out through the silly passport control stuff (they’ve now got one of those Iris systems that myself and others know to be a weakpoint stupid waste of time and effort – but I bet that’s a really good way for people to enter and leave the country with only a machine to stop them, and nobody was using it either) and into the lobby and debate the fact that I know I’m going to now have to go to the central bus station to get the Railair bus service to Reading (this I found out through imperical experimentation last time, while they were figuring out how to fuck it up even more.

They should just accept that Heathrow will forever not be “quite right” and it’s better to leave it alone than constantly “revamp it”. This means that almost every time I come into Heathrow they’ve done something slightly different – moved things around like supermarkets do, just to annoy regularly paying travellers. They love to leave little inadequate signage which is only usable if you follow the exact routes that they did when they printed it, and they hate the idea of redoing signs when it’s possible to leave the odd confusion around for good measure. I decided to risk going straight to the bus station on this occasion, since I had previously learned that there is a grand plan to centralise everything (you get dropped off at your terminal, but come back tired out and have to walk miles and take trains just to get the bus home again). I did this, stood in line and got a ticket. I was helpfully reminded how I’d just missed a bus but assured that there was another one “in 20 minutes”.

Except, there wasn’t. In this country, we don’t have clear signage with bus times clearly displayed at otherwise high tech bus ticket counters and there is some apparent need to guesstimate things (the timetable was available outside the bus station by the stop for said bus after I had bought the ticket but all of those wonderfully useful looking flat panel displays that seem to have such potential within the station building were of course not functional at the time). Of course, it being a Sunday evening and because I was trying to get a bus, they decided this would be the time when there would be a new timetable and a 1.5 hour random separation between services. So much for the “from Reading to Heathrow, we’ll get you there, Railair” jingle and 20 minute claims. Even Saddam was closer to that. But I disgress.

So, I decide to get a refund. Of course this requires at least 20 people and lots of “umming” and “ahhing” before the computer system (which invariably is overly complex for the purpose) is finally used to get me a cash refund – since they can’t refund my credit card for some reason. Fine. I decide to get a taxi. Except those are 80GBP from Heathrow (quite excessive), so I decided that I was too fucked off with Railair (it had become a matter of principle by this point) to sit and wait and got the train into London.

Normally, getting a train into London isn’t such a bad idea. There’s a Heathrow Express to London Paddington and I live in Reading, which is a major interchange from Paddington. Except on Sunday evenings (they regularly try to screw me over there, but I know about it). Tonight it was another “waiting for a member of train staff” (which always means the driver – I know it was because I was listening to their radio. It pisses me off that they can’t just admit that) after the train was already late and a medical emergency then delayed matters further. Still, our chirpy pal in the buffet car is happy to continually announce such wonderous services as might be obtained if I’d only be bothered to get out of my seat. I wasn’t. I sat there while an overnight train and some engineering works ahead of us delayed my journey still further.

Anyway, it’s 01:24 and I just got home. I landed at 08:50, got out of that hell hole at 21:40 and finally finished getting shafted by various transportation companies just a few minutes ago. All in all, I’m fucked off with public transportation and have decided it’s easier, faster and cheaper to just pay the 30GBP weekend parking rate next time. Yes, I’m going to get that driving license sorted out and just give in to the car.

Jon.

P.S. I’m not entirely wrong about some of the comments above. I’ve been bouncing some of the points raised here off friends in N.A. for a while now. Few of them would put up with this crap.

UK Internet Villain of the year

February 25th, 2006

The UK has been named Internet villain of the year. Hardly surprising really. See, in the US they snoop on citizens too but it sparks consitutional debate – in the UK people just sit and have a cup of tea and put up with this shit through a combination of collective apathy and a lack of a constitution to protect them.

On a more fundamental level this story simply points out two things:

  • The average person in the street has no understanding of technology
  • This can be abused to push the concept of it being possible to track all people equally

Those of us who do have brains know that the bad guys have many ways around this trivial logging but that it does terrible things for the liberty of the average person. For me, I’ll just not use my ISP mail servers (which are unreliable and shit anyway) and if that becomes a problem, I’ll setup an account with a non-UK provider to shovel my mail someplace the UK government can’t do their evil thang.

If you don’t think this is a problem, I suggest:

  • Buy a copy of The News Of The World
  • Turn on the “footy”
  • Watch Eastenders
  • Join millions who let this stuff happen around them

Jon.

Airport security (part II)

February 24th, 2006

So, I’m over in Brussels for the FOSDEM this weekend. I decided to fly because it was actually cheaper than taking the train.

I got to Heathrow Terminal 4 this afternoon to discover that they’re trialling millimeter wave scanning devices on random people. A sign stated that this was a trial and that you can elect for a full body search instead. Of course, I was randomly selected to be scanned by the machine and was compelled to decline their offer as they weren’t offering any guarantees as to:

  • Whether the machine is safe
  • More importantly, what happens to the images? Are they stored in a centralised retrival system from which any government whackjob with a ID Cards buttplug installed can come take a look at pictures of people naked?

No thanks. I’ll take the hand search, which I did. They were pretty ok about it (though my bag was searched with an ion scanner) and even went as far as to agree with me that there were too many open questions about the new machine (cunningly named the “Secure 1000″ – you can’t make this crap up). Until it’s illegal not to be anally probed and have an impression of your arse stored in a government database, I’ll just be saying no. You should too.

Jon.

Canadian music – Shaydid

February 22nd, 2006

I quite enjoyed hearing Shaydid perform at the Heart and Crown in Ottawa last February. In fact, I went along a couple of times that they were there and met some other fans too – Jen and Lisa invited me to go with them to Toronto last weekend but I had some book commitments that had to come first and put pay to that plan.

Anyway, I decided it was about time to order their CD – Wrong Again. It’s good stuff – and available right now for a very reasonable price over on their website. Go buy it now. I submitted an entry to freedb so that when you buy your copy, all that shiney track information is available to you. And remember, you want to buy a copy now.

Jon.

Arthritic joints

February 19th, 2006

I think I’ll get my left pinky properly looked at in due course. It’s really stopping me from playing some of the pieces that I want to play on the violin, though my technique is improving. Once I’ve picked up a car and settled over in Boston, I’ll get myself a tutor and see if I can work on the technique some more. But the finger will remain. I damaged it once and it’s not been quite the same since (fine for everyday use, just creaky if I push it too hard). It’s not worth having a surgical procedure carried out as that’ll possibly make it worse and would take me out of action for too long but there might be some gel or medication I can apply to help with my playing. In the meantime, I think it needs more exercise so I’ll see if I can find some good exercises for it while I’m travelling.

I figured out the fingering for “Running to the Light” by listening to the music and sitting with the violin. It’s in a horrible key, but it sounds good – I so need to brush up on my theory (Hannah “borrowed” my theory books a while ago – I’ll just pick up some more I think). But there’s plenty of time for this – I’ve already found one possible choir over in Littleton without putting any effort into that (thanks Jim) and would love to get my violin playing up to orchestra standard again – it’d be a bit of work to get there, but definately worth it.

I’m pulling an all nighter on Portability.

Jon.

Mailbox vs. 186K (continued)

February 19th, 2006

[UPDATE] I found the following quote on the Mailbox website (rofl):

“Mailbox prides itself on having a human face. We are and have always been a company where customers can call for assistance or advice and be sure of speaking to someone who will appreciate their problems and provide workable solutions.”

I had another ADSL drop out last night, which affected my ability to get useful work done. I’m not getting the warm and fuzzies from Mailbox any more. It’s just so damned frustrating and annoying – they used to be so good and had staff like Alex to go beyond the call of duty. Now, they’re just being annoying.

For your amusement, check out the Mailbox website section on ADSL Guide, where they recommend that you check out the forum for posts about them. It’s a shame most of those posts are now filled by people who feel like I do about the situation. 186K might want to remove that link – if they’re not planning on improving their service – I’d be embarrased to link to that now.

I sent them a letter, where I bluntly asked them if they’re going to get better or worse, except I wasn’t quite so nice about it this time. I’ll let you know what they say.

Jon.