Off the air with a wire loose

Cable TV and internet are at the mercy of wires and wiring. Last week my internet went down. Google Chrome was unresponsive. Then some of the cable TV stations started to pixilate in front of our eyes. Virgin Media was called, via some outpost in India. I often deal with Indian call centres. Mostly they are staffed by willingly patient types, but the English is very much out of the 1940's. Whatever is thought in the UK I can definitely state that it is my opinion that British English and Indian English have significant differences, especially over the telephone. I often feel like Tony Hancock in the Radio Ham, when he was talking to It Is Are Not Raining Here and declaiming "Phew! This is hard work". Anyway, back to the cable. It transpires in was a loose connection probably due to shoddy workmanship by the last cable tweaker (in the opinion of the cable tweaker that came this time).

All this makes me think how vulnerable we all are in this internet age. Get the system down and you might as well be on Mars as people think you are in hiding. I bank online (couldn't do that), buy tickets online (couldn't do that). Can't check email. It's quite alarming.

If society moves more to a system of online payments, no cheques any more, then we can be at the mercy of just one provider. Choice doesn't come into it. But I'm told it's progress.

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A sign of The Times

The Times is no longer available online for free. Murdoch's minions have decided to use the pay-as-you-read method. There is a free period but you still have to "register". Do I want Murdoch knowing my business? I think I'll give him a miss for now, but as they say, never say never. But the thought of helping this anti-British mogul is never appealing. "You British can be such...." and so on!

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Internet woes!

I'm beginning to realise the internet is a mixed blessing, or rather a curate's egg. On Wednesday it was all down and out for me. Virgin Media were operating on the cables or something. I really think the system is overloaded. Some nights it's virtually impossible to get on. Traffic is the problem apparently. It's a bit like gridlock on a motorway. The M25 comes to mind.

I had a nice chat with Sanjay in India. He thought my wireless problems were down to the kind of weather we get in England. I'm not so convinced. Maybe it's the moon. I'll ask Lunar Jim to fix it. I'm off the wireless now, partly because I'm told my little office has a big radiator in it and this can affect the router. Are routers any better than transistor radios? I remember sticking a coathanger aerial into my transistor and attaching it to a radiator in order to hear Radio Caroline loud and clear. I got that tip from a know-it-all. I need a know-it-all now!

Is Sanjay right? Is the radiator reasoning right? Or is the system just not keeping up with demand? It seems OK now as I'm typing away, but what about tomorrow? Another day, I suppose.

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Big Sister is watching you!

The government's wonderfully worded Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will make available our emails to any public body which makes a lawful request for them. From March all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year. On BBC Breakfast News this was discussed. Some naive emailer responded with the classic "if you haven't done anything illegal what have you to hide" line. But this is stupidy of the first degree.

As the Earl of Northesk, a Conservative peer on the House of Lords science and technology committee, says "This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life. People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to about 500 public authorities". He is very right. This is not about some avunculur schoolmaster looking out for his pupils, or a priest taking in information of a sensitive nature and not revealing it to third parties. This is about simple data with not a lot of clarity (no content will be revealed, yet!) being washed around Whitehall for transient ministers and contract staff in government agencies to wade through. What exactly they will make of it I do not know.

Emails can be sent to anybody. Are we to ask about the moral fibre of every recipient of the emails we send out? I'm waiting for the knock on the door because some person the police or security service is interviewing has me on their email list. It's absurd nonsense. This will tell them nothing. I suspect it is more about securing data for their own purposes. It will waste time weeding out all the people who "haven't done anything illegal so haven't anything to hide".

The Earl of Northesk also says "Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it, it's very difficult to recover." Hear, hear to that!

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Birmingham bans unbelieving web browsing!

Birmingham City Council has got itself into a mess over website viewing by its staff. It's OK to view the antics of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the assembled bishops at the Lambeth Conference but not that of a group of druids or a coven of witches. The council has a Bluecoat Software computer system which allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

It doesn't mean anything at all. If a heathen is temporarily interested in Catholic doctrines is that any different from a Catholic glancing into a site about the paranormal? Not at all. This is just about a council that's been sold a computer system that sounded good when the rep blurted out the details. Probably no questions were asked, so they got no answers. It's par for the course in modern UK.

A city council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage policy for staff". It added, "We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage. The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons." Does it need such a gobbledegook statement. No, it doesn't. Just a simple policy of no viewing sites which are deemed inappropriate.

Where has the notion of trust and responsibility gone? Surely not into the brains of a corporation-sponsored computer! We've seen what can happen to computers when in the hands of civil servants and local government officers.

If a child protection officer views an inappropriate site, is the software so sophiscated as to think "Umm, he's looking at that for his job and not his kicks"? I don't think so. Birmingham City Council is facing a possible lawsuit from the National Secular Society. I'd like to see them try, not because I support their views generally, but because they have a point here.

Birmingham should think again.

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Pakistan sabotages YouTube website!

The Pakistani Government, ever aware of those against it and ever aware of the world outside, has seemingly had a hand in blocking access to the popular YouTube website because of content deemed offensive to Islam. Apparently the authorities were upset about the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many. That was some time ago. Why now? Is the President trying some sort of charm offensive to stay in power?

One report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the ban. Whatever it is, the Pakistani high command does itself no favours in peddling some sort of homemade Sharia law in the hope of frightening internet users. Decent Muslims won't be downloading the stuff anyway. It's more likely to be curious stooges in a back office in Islamabad!

Censorship like this does no good. It just fuels controversy, intrigue, and conspiracy theories. What plonkers!

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UK orders broadband future review

The government has said it will review the future of broadband internet in the UK amid calls that it should help firms pay for installing new infrastructure. I welcome this, although it has been given a lukewarm reception by some "analysts". Ian Watt is head of fixed-line research at Enders Analysis. He says that "the business case for next generation access is weak, Virgin Media already has a high speed network and Sky has a strong hold of the premium content that users might actually pay for". In other words, it's all working fairly well now.

Is Mr. Watt on the side of the providers or the users, or is he trying to be an honest piggy in the middle? I ask, because internet provision in the UK can be clouded in mystery. A mystery as to why it doesn't always work!!

It's easy for those using the old phone lines. Send a few pulses down the line and hope for the best. Those at the very end get "dodgy plus", those nearer the telephone exchange get by OK. If a user is tempted to complain, they get told "have you checked your computer?".

I would suggest that Virgin Media (on cable) and Sky (on satellite) can almost guarantee a reasonable service, but it does go wrong on occasions.

The truth is that the capacity does not allow for download optimum, which is all users downloading mega files at once. It's always going to be touch and go. Look at the internet traffic like motorway traffic. Being stuck on the M42 watching a plane land at Birmingham Airport and thinking of your holidays is very much like be stuck on a premium line phone call involved in a "dialogue" with your service provider!

The review should look carefully at whether the ISPs are conning us, giving us a good service or are just plain incompetent! We need to know.

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BNP's website 'the most popular in politics'

This doesn't surprise me, as the BNP is a source of morbid curiosity to some and excitable outrage to others. But they can't help themselves but take a look. However, this group is not the main section that gives the party 51% of all political party hits in the UK.

The BNP has achieved a popular internet base because it has a professional-looking site with interactive information on it. Taking a look in no way suggests support or admiration. Whatever one's view of this party, it has done something that no other British Nationalist party has done, and that is to get large numbers of votes (last Euro elections) and to get over 50 councillors elected (including in my own backyard of Solihull!).

I occasionally view the site, not because I'm overawed with Nick Griffin and his crew, but because I'm keen to see what they're up to. You can't oppose a political doctrine if you don't know what you're opposing. The New Labour poncy approach of high-faluting distancing does no favours. In fact, it causes a lot of the problems.

Direct challenge on policy works. Making martyrs of them, like bogus trials, certainly doesn't!

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Call centres in India disrupted - good news or bad?

Internet services have been disrupted in large parts of the Middle East and India following damage to two undersea cables in the Mediterranean. Apparently call centres in India can't call anybody because their internet instructions are all out of whack! So we could have a week free from persistent phone calls from people speaking in perfect 1940's Standard English. "Sorry, what was that again?".

That's the good news. It also means that bloggers from the Middle East are mainly offline. That puts the likes of Osama Bin Laden in the isolation cave, which is good, but prevents the truth tellers from getting online, which is bad.

The bad news also is that trade and commerce will be badly affected. Not what we want in these global credit crunch days. Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry said it would probably take several days for internet services to return to normal following the disruption on Wednesday. Emergency teams were trying to find alternative communication routes, including satellites. The ministry's Rafaat Hindy said, "Despite this being an international cable affecting many Gulf and Arab countries, we are closest to it and so we have a lot of responsibility."

"We are working as fast as we can." He should come and see the guys at Network Rail!

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