menu.

I’ve just added a list of 24 Jack Bauer Facts to the jokes section of my web site (the first update in a while). Highlights include:

• When Kim Bauer lost her virginity, Jack found it and put it back.
• Once, someone tried to tell Jack Bauer a “knock knock” joke. Jack Bauer found out who was there, who they worked for, and where the god damned bomb was.
• The city of Los Angeles once named a street after Jack Bauer in gratitude for his saving the city several times, but they had to rename it after people kept dying when they tried to cross the street. No one crosses Jack Bauer and lives.

If you like them check out the full list. If not, I don’t know what to tell you. Go watch 24.

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with my ISP. Their speeds are pretty good (I think, anyway) and their culture (if you like) or their philosophy, is great. I like the wee touches like their community forum and blog and I love their geographic (01) phone numbers for support. I’ve never had to use them so I don’t know how good they are once you’re actually on the phone, but at least you don’t have to worry about the cost. 0p a minute works fine for me.

I know I always mention it, largely because it’s my only real complaint, but I do hate the peak-time usage limit of 8GB per month*. I understand bandwidth costs them money and I know I can get more for a relatively low cost either through additional bandwidth bundles, pay-as-you-go or a £5 package upgrade, but I don’t really fancy any of those options. It would seem I’m just expecting too much, but it does leave me feeling content or happy with the product, rather than delighted. I’ve suggested extending the unmetered/unlimited usage ‘off-peak’ period (currently midnight to 8am) through to 10am or midday, but it doesn’t seem likely (cost reasons, apparently).

I blame the big providers for spreading the myth of unlimited usage (while growing ever tighter in their so-called “fair use” policies). They’ve clearly set my expectations too high because Plus.net have come out top in a customer satisfaction survey of the UK’s top 10 ISPs; it’s always nice to have your choices reaffirmed. Bigger names like AOL, Orange, Tesco and BT didn’t come off quite so well.

I have also sent a strongly worded complaint to Broadband Choices regarding their unforgivable (they’re supposedly a consumer site after all) use of the headline figures provided by these companies (like BT’s infernal £8.95/month bullshit) instead of the actual charges. I find that behaviour scummy, but unsurprising, when the companies trying to sell you their own product do it (caveat emptor and all that) but for a self-proclaimed consumer site to take them at face value (possibly something to do with their affiliate/referral fees?) is a disgrace.

* Since the time of writing the peak time usage limit has increased to 15GB - which is much better. I still do the majority of downloading at night, but don’t need to worry if I decide to lie in at the weekend and let it run til noon or have to download the odd large file during the day.

I’d set up my 1.x installation of b2Evolution to use a custom HTML title in the format:

<title>[Post/Page name - ] Blog name</title>

On installing 2.4, however, I noticed that the default title is just the post/page name if it exists and the blog name if it doesn’t (i.e. for the posts list). This was based on a function call to a function called request_title. Google didn’t tell me much about this function (not the 2.x version anyway) so I went hunting and found the function in the file: \inc\_core\_template.funcs.php

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OK, so Gates denies ever saying the infamous line “640K software is all the memory anybody would ever need on a computer,” but I still think it’s the best illustration of the pitfalls of making predictions about the future-proofness of a technology.

Discussing the impending inclusion of IPv6 records in the internet’s root servers the BBC’s technology news proclaims today:

Under IPv6 an effectively inexhaustible pool of addresses becomes available.

I haven’t studied the matter in any great detail but surely that’s a very bold claim.

Some time ago now I mentioned that I was leaving Tiscali’s awful broadband service behind and joining Plus.Net on a 90-day trial instead and at that time I promised to give my thoughts on my new ISP after a few weeks. Well I’m coming to the end of my second full month with Plus.Net so figured my review was overdue (and I know people are dying to find out what I think of Plus.Net).

Summary
Speed: “Up to” 8Mb/s
Usage: 8GB 15GB (plus unlimited usage from 00:00 to 08:00 every day)

Plus.Net and their Service

Overall I’m quite pleased with the service. The first month went off swimmingly; my broadband speed ended up somewhere around 6,000 kb/s download and 375kb/s upload according to SpeedTest.net. My ADSL modem says it’s synced at about 8,000KB/s so everything’s looking good. I’ve been pleased with the speeds, haven’t noticed any service interruptions and billing seems to have been hassle-free.

Overall I like the company too. I like the reassurance I get from knowing I can contact them without using a rip-off 0870/0871 number like Tiscali’s if I can’t quickly resolve any matter that might arise by using their forums. I also like the fact that they don’t use scummy Tiscali/BT-type marketing of “From £4.99 a month” with tiny small-print hidden away somewhere informing you that that only applies to the first 3 months of an 18-month contract!

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This is my message: Avoid paying for things using PayPal or Google Checkout.  It’s always a good idea to pay for anything you buy online by credit card, so you get protection under the Consumer Credit Act if anything goes wrong.

I won’t pretend to like ebay (owners of PayPal) but I do have a soft spot for Google. Nevertheless, there are very good reasons why you should avoid using Google Checkout and even more to avoid using PayPal.

The main one is that they are middle-men, adding another layer of complexity to your transaction. For an example, look at dabs.com, now owned by BT (and with the poor customer service you’d expect of a BT company),  or ebuyer.com, online computer & electronics retailers . They both accept payment via PayPal, Google Checkout and their own checkout.

When you pay directly by credit card (ie using the company’s own checkout) the company requests the money from whoever handles their credit card payments, who request it from your bank.

When you pay by PayPal, PayPal request the money from whoever handles their credit card payments, who request it from your bank and then pass it on to the retailer. This has 2 implications; it could lead to higher prices in the long term, and it’s riskier for you in the immediate term.

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Shareaza, a popular file-sharing application that allows users to access Gnutella, Gnutella 2, ED2K (eDonkey) and BitTorrent networks has been hijacked by a company aiming to spread malware throughout the internet. The Shareaza.com site had been down since 22nd October 2007, however since 20th December, the domain has been hosting a scam site. Straight away you can tell something fishy is going on by the copyright notice on Shareaza.com:

© 1999-2008 Discordia Ltd. All rights reserved. See our Privacy Policy & License Agreement.

Users should be aware that Shareaza was always an open-source community project and so no company should have copyright to the web site and certainly “all rights reserved” looks out of place. Worst of all, the bastards changed the flag on the English language icon from a Union Jack to an American flag!

Shareaza Client Compromised - ShareazaV4.exe

It’s not just the web site that’s been compromised though. Somehow this Discordia crowd, who may (or may not) be a front for the French equivalent of the RIAA, have managed to use their ownership of the Shareaza.com domain to manipulate the update notification feature of Shareaza so that on opening the client users of Shareaza 2.3.0.0 and below are advised that a new version has been released and given the option to upgrade to version 4. Cleverly the message advises users to check the hijacked Shareaza.com site for further information. This version 4 (ShareazaV4.exe) is not a new version of Shareaza and should not be downloaded under any circumstances. Instead, users should upgrade to 2.3.0.1 from the real Shareaza site on Sourceforge (the filename is Shareaza_2.3.1.0_Win32.exe, though a x64 version is also available on the project site). This new version eliminates the aforementioned upgrade notice.

the software on offer from the hijacked site although labeled “ShareazaV4.exe”, is not Shareaza at all but likely a clone of the new malware infested iMesh/Bearshare client and should not be downloaded under any circumstances. Once installed, the software wants to install a search bar and make contact with a central server.
“Wildcard”

Breaking the Law

It turns out the owner of the Shareaza.com domain sold it to New York-based Discordia ltd who are using it to promote a file-sharing application that installs all sorts of other applications (including third-party ones) on an infected system. There have been claims that the Discordia software hosted at Shareaza.com is illegal and breaks the terms of the GPL, the licence under which genuine versions of Shareaza are released, as well as violating the United States’ Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Hopefully the Shareaza community can win their legal challenge, however they are loose-knit and may find it difficult to organise. Initially I wondered if they should give up and rebrand altogether, possibly the path of least resistance. Doing that, however, would not only be allowing the vermin at Discordia to walk all over them, but it could also leave them open to the same action again. Incidentally, Discordia is the Roman goddess of strife. I’m sure that’s not a coincidence.

I just hope this post helps spread the word. See also the forum discussions by Shareaza users on the Shareaza.com Takeover over at ShareazaSecurity.be.

On Wednesday 12th December I placed an order with OddsNPods.co.uk, whom I’d come across during a price comparison using Google. That was my first mistake. The item was a Christmas present for my girlfriend and I believed that by ordering almost 2 weeks before Christmas I was giving them plenty of time to dispatch before the last posting date (they say they post at the latest the end of the next working day).

By Friday I was starting to get worried that my order was still “Awaiting Dispatch” so sent a message via their contact form (ticking the “Urgent” box). On Monday morning still nothing so I called the number on their web site to be greeted by a foreign-sounding lady.

“Hello?” she said. Puzzled by the lack of a company-branded welcome, I went on to say I was calling about an order that hadn’t been dispatched to find out what was going on.

“What company are you calling?” she asked.

Getting suspicious now I asked her “What company is this?”

“I can’t tell you that information.”

WHAT?! Alarm bells were ringing now. I asked if this was OddsNPods and she said “No, it’s a different company,” although it didn’t sound like a company at all.

A quick google search revealed that OddsNPods were related to DataKits.co.uk, a company with whom some people had previously had problems (despite a supposedly good rating on Kelkoo). The WHOIS for OddsNPods revealed they were indeed part of DataKits but had hidden their phone number from the whois results because “The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.”

I fired off an email to their email address (bypassing the online form this time), telling them if I’d heard nothing by the end of today I’d be taking matters up with my credit-card company, and then fired another email off to Nominet telling them to update their WHOIS entry (they’ve since done this and now show the address of OddsNPods.co.uk as: 9 Frensham Road, Southsea, Hampshire, PO4 8AD, which seems to be a residential address to me).

As of11:53 their web site seems to be down.

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/tmp/mysql.sock’ (11) in /home/oddsnpod/public_html/includes/functions/database.php on line 19
Unable to connect to database server!

Not reassuring!

Anyway, come Tuesday afternoon (pretty much a week after I placed the order) I finally heard back and they asked if I still wanted it. I said if they could send it out first class the following day to go ahead with the order and they did. It arrived on Friday, safely in time for Christmas. It seems it’s not a scam after all but this “company” has serious customer service issues. Despite their good prices I’d think twice.

I have found what appears to be the Best Page in the Universe.

(Thanks to user arotabi at the second best page).

After a long time looking I’ve finally left Tiscali with whom I had broadband and phone for over 2 years and I can’t believe I lasted that long.

Terrible Tiscali

For the last 6 months (probably a lot longer) I’ve not been able to do anything but basic web browsing and emails from mid-afternoon until about midnight, each and every day. This means no Peer-2-Peer downloads (I couldn’t use the BBC iPlayer, for example, and I’m fairly sure Channel 4’s On Demand service uses the same technology). It means no online gaming on my PlayStation 2 or, more recently, my Nintendo Wii. For other users it seems they have problems with PC gaming.

I’d be a little annoyed that Tiscali offered me “unlimited” 2MB broadband and then deliberately restricted the speeds during peak times. I’d be quite a lot more annoyed that they weren’t even honest about it at first, denying that they used traffic-shaping. But the fact that their traffic shaping stops me from using a lot of these services altogether (they say it’s a problem, I’m not sure whether it might be deliberate) is an outrage. Tiscali’s forums have seen reports flooding in from other users being affected and yet this has been ongoing for months.

As if that’s not bad enough, Tiscali “customer service” staff don’t want to know. In fact, Tiscali don’t even want you to contact them, so they make you call a rip-off 0871 number. This would be fine if I needed advice about what to plug in where to get my broadband going, but why should I line their pockets by calling their premium rate number to report a network problem that they have caused?

Pastures New - PlusNet

Anyway, as of Wednesday, I’m out. I’m now with Plus net on a 90-day trial (offer runs until 20/12/07), so we’ll see how that goes. At least they’re honest about their traffic-shaping and say that they limit speeds from P2P software during peak hours. That I can live with, as long as it’s not blocked altogether. They also have an 01 geographic number so I know I can phone them if I have a problem and not run up a big phone bill doing so. Since it’s a trial, if their traffic-shaping is anything like as broke as Tiscali’s I know I can leave without penalty. My main worry is that their 8GB package won’t be enough since it covers both uploads and downloads during the day (8am to midnight). Hopefully I can get any big downloads I need done overnight (downloads from midnight to 8AM are unlimited - they don’t count towards your allowance) and even if I can’t, I can find out without worrying about being stuck in a 12-month contract thanks to their trial offer.

This probably sounds a bit like an advertorial (I would get a referral bonus if anyone did sign up from my site) but the whole thing all sounds a bit too good to be true, when you factor in that you can get a free Static IP and a user survey by Uswitch.com rated them number 1 on customer satisfaction as well.

I’ve only starting with Plus.net 2 days ago and the speeds don’t seem tremendous (but still better than the 1.5-ish Mb/s I was getting with Tiscali) so I can’t say too much about my own experience yet, but as a company they’re already looking a whole lot better than Tiscali. I’ll post a follow-up after I’ve had a couple of weeks to find out how good they are.

If you decide to sign up, please make sure and tell them you were recommended by “ferson” (no quotes). Cheers.