Y BT Internet connection has been faulty since the beginning of this year. I have spent no less than about 10 hours speaking to support representatives in an offshore call centre, all of whom go through the script and a list of steps that “test” the connection, never mind if a dozen people before them ran the same tests. I have been polite but assertive, especially after these issues persisted for months. But never ever did they send out an engineer (meaning, a UK-based person paid at UK rates) to address the issue. At one stage they sent out a replacement router, but unsurprisingly this did not resolve the problem.

Imagine having a flaky connection when you work from home (in the employment sense). Calls are dropping, SSH sessions are dropping, IRC logging and conversations are choppy, and even Web browsing is very erratic. Imagine this going on for about 4 months. Imagine having your ISP refusing to just fix the issue by sending an actual person to the site for investigation.

My issue have been escalated internally numerous times and I have just spoke to their manager about it. No compensation can ever recover or make up for the time and work lost due to BT’s systemic incompetence. But wait, it gets worse. Not only is BT too ‘cheap’ (must increase shareholders value!) to send out an engineer; it is unable to even follow up with calls that it promises to make. The automated phone reminder which says they would call works correctly, even phoning me to wake me up at 7 AM on a Sunday. But the actual representative ‘forgets’ to call. Oops. I guess the customer does not matter enough to inform. If the customer stays home for a 2-hour time slot allocated for a call, they can just be left out in the cold, right? Well, that’s BT.

My issues with BT were serious back in 2011 when they were unable to simply set up my connection, incurring weeks in delay. I should have taken the hint and taken my money elsewhere, but BT has a monopoly on the lines. So I stayed with BT, only after their cancellations department was very insistent and successfully persuaded me to give them another chance. They also compensated me which was an admission of guilt more than it was a compensation for all the time lost and the agonising experience lasing weeks.

BT’s issues are not technical. BT’s issues are systemic. The company assumes its customers are dumb. It insists on running simple tests rather than addressing low-level issues that have been ongoing for months. It would rather have you suffer for days and talking to poorly-paid employees than send out a person who — through direct physical contact with the infrastructure — can probably remediate the issue immediately.

BT is not a company that cares about people. It cares only about money to the extent where it forgets what customers actually mean and why bad service will give them bad reputation and discourage new customers from joining,

Today, after months of bad service, BT said they would send an engineer (at long last!) to my house, but only in two days from now (I stood firm on quick action), meaning that I would suffer from faulty connection for a couple more days until I go on vacation (Monday). I also need to wait at home for a five-hour time slot on Saturday. Great, eh? See how much bad service from BT impacts one’s life on a daily basis.

If you never relied on BT for anything, do yourself a favour and never do. BT doesn’t care about people, it will take your money and run up a tree, then tell you that you must be dumb and the fault must not be theirs. You are just a fool with his/her money…

LEXA data is not an accurate measure of site popularity (see my views from 2005 and from 2006), but trends as judged by Alexa can sometimes — especially for large sites — indicate if a site is going mainstream or going away. With statistically-meaningful deviations from the baselines it is now fair to say that Twitter has jumped the shark. The amount of communication I get in that site is definitely not increasing and it seems to be turning more and more into a hub for celebrities, perhaps because 140 characters are enough for them or their PR agents to communicate with. Many former Twitterers seem to be logging in less (some never at all), or reading less, certainly communicating less in the comments — something which is also a growing issue in Facebook and Google Plus, less so in JoinDiaspora, which is my favourite social network these days.

have become exceedingly concerned about a trend that I’ve been watching in recent years, especially after the great transfer of wealth, aka “economic meltdown”. Whistleblowers are ferociously attacked, sites are being gagged, and bank accounts get forzen for those who do effective activism against a corrupt banking system which is now clawing away people’s savings. Last night I changed my avatar in all social networks to a photo of me covering my mouth. As we approach a class war like never seen before we must fight for the right to free speech. Without it, only the plutocrats get to popularise their points of view.

ITTLE, CONCISE, but completely new presentation about work that I did in 2010-2011. Cardiac Stress Analysis in 4-D is the title (PDF, ODF).

ATER this month Rianne and I will celebrate half a year of marriage. So far we’ve never had a fight; we look forward to a life-long marriage. She supports everything that I do and it is mutual.

have bought a Google-branded ASUS device. It’s nice, but also not nice, depending on how one assesses it. As a technology rights person, it spooks me. The device is a privacy bomb. Everyone here ought to know that I’m a huge Android proponent and I wrote thousands of articles about it, tweeted about it nearly 10,000 times, and owned some Android-based gear before. On three separate occasions Google also tried hiring me, so my attitude towards Google is everything but negative. When it comes to privacy, it’s another matter altogether.

Like the Creative kit I bought on the very same day, this tablet works perfectly well out of the box. No complaints about the packaging, the components, etc. I love the USB charger. the tablet’s materials, the speed (essential for the decent voice recognition), and the screen, even though it takes a while getting used to, having moved from tablets twice this size.

To precede this informal review with a few words, all my complaints are about lock-down and spying. “Good hardware, ultra-crap privacy” is how I would summarise it. And this is where Google pushes computing. Subsidized hardware in exchange for lock-in is the business model.

The good points about this tablet are numerous. Good camera, quad-core processor with a nice package that’s metallic and quite light overall are only some of the many selling points.

The bad points are that it is too small (I prefer my other tablet, a 10.1-inch tablet), too limited, and also not so perfectly put together. No camera application installed by default to utilise the camera, which is a massive mistake. Development options are not present in Settings. Rooting not welcomed or made simple, either. But these are side issues.

Privacy is a total nightmare, trying to grab hold of the user’s identity all the time. Identify is demanded from the user even when not required, e.g. when going to native E-mail and even when opening a browser or trying to watch the image/video gallery. The purpose of this device is merely to drive data, traffic, and money to Google, thus it must be subsidised accordingly. Fair enough, but at what cost? Sure, Google uses this as a business recruiter without much pretense. The privacy issue has no excuses though. The first thing the tablet tries to do when switched on is insist very strongly on finding a wireless connection. it’s hard to even start using the tablet without completing this stage.

Google Play’s insistence on having a GMail account it also noteworthy. Google is making it hard to supply fake details. A real name is needed, but fake one can be given if one tries hard enough to find anonymity. Many widgets that give away location and such stuff by default make it easier for Google to guess who’s who. The insistence on geo-tracking is scary, but not as scary as remote backup of all the data, even private stuff (history on the Web, bookmarks, geo-location upon surfing, etc.). It is much worse than in my 4.0 tablet where these settings were inside the browser where toggling off was still needed. Well, now the browser reports clicks over the address bar, to name just one issue. The platform does not provide privacy at all. It is a lesson in how to get it all wrong on privacy.

Every Google Nexus 7 review should focus on privacy issues because that is what subsidies the hardware. The Nexus 7 has amazing hardware, but it’s extremely locked down such that not even development is available in it. It’s just a Google absorption vehicle. Chromebook Pixel must be similar, but it can boot into Ubuntu and Linux Mint, just like a real laptop, at least giving the option to everyone, so I recommended it today to someone who had planned to buy a MacBook Pro.

To summary, let it be repeated. The Nexus7 is SHOCKINGLY privacy-infringing in every conceivable way (more than I could ever imagine). It is not for everyone. I mean, a Google Plus account, which has absolutely nothing to do with the process followed in setting up Google Play, is being almost force-fed. The Nexus 7 has grotesque behaviour of tying. Want to install new software? Must open a GMail account, pushed to open G+ account too. The Nexus 7 can hardly even be started (from boxed state) without a wireless connection. I had to opt out from 10+ spying features one by one. Want to issue a voice command in Nexus7 ? Google will record everything. Open Gallery? Linked to Google cloud by default. Google even insists on remotely-controlled backup of entire tablet, not just bookmarks, history, photos, addresses… which is just shocking.

Google taught me how deep a privacy intrusion can get. And Nexus is where it all happens. Now I just try to undo the damage Google has done to a ‘vanilla’ Android installation. At least the hardware was cheap for its worth!

ulian Assange engages with John Pilger in conversation regarding Wikileaks. The privatisation of censorship is one of the first subjects to be addressed. It’s how the West and capitalist societies suppress speech. (Source)