he is the single largest donator in the world, he pushes causes, gives insane amounts of money to AIDS research. he is a good person as much as many will have distain for his business practices.
So if I steal lots of money from people, give a portion to charity and pocket the rest that makes me a good person?
He definatly used unethical tactics to get where he was, but once he got where he did, he chose to do some good too. Bill deserves the knighthood.
Has he done more good than damage? I don't believe so.
If you go and make your fortune by destroying thousands of other people's businesses by unethical abuses of your position and then give away a fraction of that money to charity, should you be rewarded? I'd say not.
No. I never said he deserved it, in fact, I said I don't think he does. Is the real problem here that he is a criminal, or that the justice department let him off?
I'm not sure if whether or not he is (found to be) a criminal matters a lot in this case. I am inclined to say that *my* personal opinion is that Bill's business practices are exceptionally unethical and doing some good things whiles continuing to be unethical doesn't get him off the hook. Note that you can be unethical without being a criminal and you can be a criminal without being unethical so I'm not sure that the justice department's decision is relevent in this case.
The judgement of how ethical someone is varies from person to person, but my *personal* opinion is that because of the practices I perceive as unethical, I don't believe he should be getting an "award".
I should also point out that if the UK government hadn't blown massive amounts of money on MS software then maybe they could equal or exceed the amount of money given to charity by Bill.
How do you propose distributing the latest patches to oems to distributors to retailers in a timely manner? A pc can sit in a box for weeks or months from time of packaging to time of purchase. How many patches can MS release during that time?
For generic patches this is a problem, but for something as major as SP2 I don't see it as a massive issue. Also, MS have used their market position to force OEMs to do all sorts of nasty things, why can't they use that same marketting position to force the OEMs to burn a copy or recent patches onto CD when they sell a PC? (Hell, even if they did a new CD every 3-6 months, it'd still be better than nothing). MS could provide the OEMs with blank CD-Rs pre-printed with pretty MS labels so it even looks like an official MS CD when the OEM burns it.
Say you leave it to the retailer to pass out a free CD with patches with every box. Do they get a fresh shipment of CD's weekly? Who pays for the shipping on those?
See above - MS don't need to ship pre-pressed CDs to all OEMs, they can ship blank pre-printed CD-Rs and let the OEMs burn an image to the discs themselves (distributing CD images to OEMs every few months shouldn't be rocket science for a company who wants every one in the known universe to download SP2 over the internet).
Slow internet connection - not much you can do about that with any update, these days. Go over to your buddy's house with cable and download the files there.
I honestly don't have an answer to this, but like it or not people still do use slow connections. A good start (and this goes for linux distributions too so listen up!) would be to separate out the security updates from the bugfixes so people can get the more important updates without expending time and bandwidth on minor bugfixes - why does someone need to download the new all singing, all dancing DRM'd version of media player when they do a security update?
My parents have a Windows 2000 box and dial up over a 33k6 pay-per-minute connection (they only use the internet for email and a small amount of web surfing). I haven't bothered to do any auto-updates system on their box because trying to download updates over a modem is a waste of time - I've simply firewalled the hell out of the machine and made sure they don't use any MS software on it to access the internet.
And sorry, but popping over to a mate's house with a CD every month for the latest patch isn't something you'll convince many people to do. I also know people in rural areas where DSL is just plain not available, so those people would have to have mates outside their area but within reasonable driving distance who also have DSL - thats just not a feasable solution.
However, if you are competent enough to see what services are running, you can turn them off.
Having seen how many millions of services are on by default on Win2k Advanced Server and the cryptic names they have which don't tell you WTF they actually *do* I'd argue that it's not that easy.
You've obviously never seen a default red hat 7 installation.:)
Umm, with respect, Red Hat 7.0 was released in 2000 - you cannot compare Red Hat 7.0 and XP, by doing so you're no better than the people who are comparing Fedora Core 3 against windows 2000 and declaring that it proves fedora is more secure than windows. (Yes, fedora is probably more secure than windows but the way to prove it isn't be comparing it against a non-current system).
I am not arguing in Windows's favour, I am just arguing for a fair comparison.
I still say, you buy an OS, you pull down the latest updates
Yeah, doesn't help when you get cracked whilest pulling down the updates though does it? (Yes, yes, I know you can ask MS for a SP2 CD but really, shouldn't that be bundled with the OS, even if it's just a CD taped to the outside of the box?)
I thought XP tried to durring install anyways?
Doesn't help if you're on a pay-per-minute dialup connection.
Not really. To borrow from linux: RTFM. Of course M here really means Internet.
Well the difference here is that under linux you have to be clueful enough to turn a service (potential security hole) on, whereas under windows you have to know what you're doing to close a security hole.
Compare: [Linux] I need the web service turned on to do my job so I'll spend a few minutes finding out how to do it. [Windows] I don't need that web service on... but hey, it's not really doing me any harm at the moment so I can't be arsed to work out how to turn it off.
MS will provide SP2 on CD, all you have to do is ask. Got net access, fire up that firewall and download it. Its not like you have to go and buy XP + SP2 if you're running XP + SP1, it's a free update. How long has SP2 been out now?
I think you're missing the point - if I don't apply updates to a machine for 2 months I don't expect it to suddenly be *that* vulnerable to attack, and what's worse is that MS are saying that's to be expected.
While there may be tangible benefits from competition by nations in space exploration, there are certainly benefits from cooperation as some recent explorations have shown, particularly Cassini/Huygens. Two nations with $10 billion each can do projects together that are impossible alone.
Yes, until you throw politics into the mix. The politicians make themselves look much better to the masses when they say "we're going to do X before " rather than "We're going to spend a lump of money helping to do X".
Given a fixed amount of money then cooperation is better, but if you're in competition with your enemies then the politicians are more inclined to throw masses of money at the project. What's better? a couple of nations throwing $10m each into a common project, or both those nations throwing $30m each into doing the same thing as eachother?
Maybe because there are dozens of major apps and thousands of games avalible for Windows that just don't exist for Linux?
The games I will give you, but there are often equivalent (and free) apps for linux. Personally I haven't used Windows for years - Linux has all the applications I need (both for home and work), costs me nothing and is much less of a headache than Windows when things go wrong. Whenever I ask people why they need Windows, 95% of the time I will get back "because Linux doesn't run the latest games" - a valid answer but it just reenforces my belief that Windows is a toy operating system. And besides, if you're going to spend lots on Windows, why don't you just buy a console to play your games on instead?
In the second, there are those who turned off (or had a "helpful" tech turn off) their automatic updates and have no idea how to update their system.
This isn't an entirely stupid thing to do - if someone is on a pay-per-minute dialup connection, they don't *want* to be automatically downloading hundreds of megabytes of updates. (Especially if a lot of those updates are to add stuff they don't need/want - i.e. DRM for Media Player, etc).
If normal users understood that direct connections to the net were bad, they'd all buy routers, they'd consider firewalls, probably ones configured to block all but MSN, E-mail and web access, and we'd live in a considerably more worm free world.
I think you are giving many users far too much credit. 90% of the cases where I have to deal with customers who have misconfigured their mail server as a spam relay, I get a response similar to "Yeah, I know that's really insecure and lets spammers use it, but it was [easier to set up]/[only going to be like that for a few weeks]/[not as if I was telling the spammers the open relay was there]" (delete as appropriate).
The point is that these people *knew* that what they were doing was really stupid, but were doing it anyway because they couldn't be bothered to be secure. Of course it always comes back to bite them in the ass when their server falls over with several million spams in the mail relay queue and a completely saturated ADSL connection.
I can just tell you that having seen how many services are listening for connections from anywhere by default on a Win2k box, *I* would never want to plug one into the internet directly. And yeah, I know you can disable those services, but it would take a degree in rocket science to figure out which you need or don't need within a sane amount of time. (Turn off the wrong service and your box stops working right)
The other thing is, I don't use any Microsoft products other than Windows itself, really. Third-party chat, Eudora for e-mail, Firefox and Opera for browsing, WordPerfect and OpenOffice for all the office-style needs, etc etc.
I'm not seeing anything here that can't be done as well or better under Linux - why use Windows at all?
How in the world can Microsoft say something they were selling two months ago is "out of date"?
Yeah, I would say that the comments from MS themselves are pretty damning there - that they would expect an OS they were selling 2 months ago to be completely riddled with holes to the point that it's cracked within 18 minutes of being connected.
Putting a box with almost 4 year old unpatched OS is stupid and should not have been included in the test.
I don't think it's stupid to do this, but it should only be done if you're doing the same with other systems. I find a lot of these honeypot test reports do not test comparable operating systems. What they should be including in the test is:
1. Fully patched up Windows against fully patched up Linux 2. Windows against linux, both patched to the latest patches that were around 3 months ago. 3. Windows vs. Linux patched up to 6 month old patch level. 4. 1 year old 5. 2 years old 6. 4 years old 7. 8 years old
By doing this you are comparing systems from identical eras (and yes, I think you do need to go to 8 years old, like it or not there are some morons who are using 8 year old unpatched systems... and also it'll be kinda interesting to see if they're actually still getting attacked).
I do still think, however, that Linux will come out way less vulnerable than the windows from the same era for 2 reasons: 1. the userbase (or maybe the number of clueless users) is larger on Windows, so it attracts more cracks, especially (semi)automated ones. 2. Open systems tend to get patches released reasonably soon after an exploit is found whereas microsoft have a habit of leaving it until it's actually being exploited in the wild before releasing a patch - again, not much point in writing a worm for linux systems if 99% of them are already patched anyway.
Here in the UK the opposite is completely true - I used to have cable from NTL but I gave up in the end because they were so bad:
1. In August 2000 I phoned NTL to arrange an installation of telephone and cable TV. The wiring was already in from the previous owner of my flat but I was told that they couldn't do the installation for 6 weeks (first sign I should have given up right there). I also checked on the availability of a cable modem and was told that the current service was analogue but they were upgrading the whole network in my area to digital in November 2000 so it'd be available then. They also refused to do the installation on a weekend so I had to take half a day off work (I didn't really see this as a huge problem at the time).
2. On the arranged installation date the engineer showed up, plugged the analogue cable decoder into the existing wire (that worked ok), tested the phone line and told me he was just going down the the multiplexer to reconnect it. He never returned (second sign I shoudl have given up). I phoned up their support line, waiting in the queue for 90 minutes before being told that my phone line hadn't been connected because they needed to upgrade the multiplexer first (they had already had 6 weeks notice that they were installing the line!). They said it would be 3 months until they did the upgrade! (third sign)
3. Eventually the phone line was connected (they tried to make me take anouther day off work for that but I managed to convince them that they *would* do a weekend install), but the network upgrade to digital never happened and I eventually decided to save money by switching my Demon dialup internet connection to an NTL one since they did unmetered dialup. I was told that this wasn't available in my area.
4. Whenever you needed to phone them you would end up having to wait in the phone queue for 60 - 90 minutes and 75% of the time they would then just hang up the call (I have since been told by people who work in NTL call centres that the line-managers do that when the calls aren't being answered quickly enough, since if they don't meet their quota of answered calls they lose their bonus pay - picking up and immediately dropping a call counds as an answered call).
5. The cable TV connection would break for several hours at a time not infrequently.
6. The analogue cable TV connection broadcast everything in 4:3 ratio - if it was a 16:9 channel they chopped the sides off the picture. I have a 16:9 TV so I'm left with a choice: chop the top and bottom off to make it 16:9 again (you lose way too much of the picture), squash the picture to make it 16:9 (ugh, distortion) or live with it in 4:3 ratio and big black bars down the side of the screen.
6. Eventually in 2002 (well over a year after the promised digital upgrade) I gave up, dropped the NTL phone line and TV and switched to Sky Digital satellite TV, a BT phone line and a PlusNet DSL internet connection. BT connected the phone line within 12 hours.
7. Sky only very rarely goes out (usually due to bad weather - happens maybe once a year for a few minutes)
8. If I need to phone Sky, BT or PlusNet they pick up the phone almost immediately
9. PlusNet's service is almost flawless (I know many people who use NTL cable modems and they are always having outages). I also get a subnet of real IP addresses and am allowed to run services on my DSL connection with PlusNet's blessing (NTL won't give you a static IP and their AUP explicitly disallows you from running services on it). The DSL connection almost never goes down.
10. In 2004 (i.e. almost 4 years after the promised digital upgrade), NTL came canvassing the area to say they now had digital services. They asked me what kind of internet connection I had and I replied "DSL
Actually, it's a bigger mistake than usual. London to Cardiff is only 152 miles. Even if you aim for the far side of Wales, London to Aberystwyth is 236 miles. Compare that with London to Sellafield at 311 miles...
At least Sellafield is in the same country as London though - the usual comments from the Americans would be similar to me saying "America? That's a little place in Torronto isn't it?":)
It's Sellafield who's lost the Plutonium, not London. I realise that most Americans are geographically challenged and that this is a smaller mistake than usual (When I was at University in Swansea, it was not infrequent for americans to say "Oh, you're in Wales... that's in London isn't it?").
If that's the price that must be paid, that's a bad thing? If that's the price I would happily pay it. Save the environment VS allowing people to surf. Tough choice.
The same arguement can be made against anything: Save the environment Vs. allowing people to drive cars? Tough choice...
Just because _you_ might not surf doesn't give you the right to destroy someone else's opportunity to do what they enjoy.
Does anyone ever have urgent business at a hydrographic office?
Yes actually. I use it frequently to get tide predictions so I know where's safe (or will have good conditions) to go windsurfing. Good job I'm not going sailing tomorrow or I'd be proper pissed at not being able to get that data.
We had a glossy in the mail today from Valor Telecom that scored a point for good old POTS. If the power goes out long enough that the battery in your VOIP cable box goes out, how would you call emergency services if you needed them??
If the power goes out and takes out the power to your PABX how would you call the emergency services? Unless you happen to have a phone that doesn't require any external power that's plugged into your office's PRI line of course...:)
(Or you could just use your cellphone - I'm sure *someone* in the office has one)
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he is the single largest donator in the world, he pushes causes, gives insane amounts of money to AIDS research. he is a good person as much as many will have distain for his business practices.
So if I steal lots of money from people, give a portion to charity and pocket the rest that makes me a good person?
He definatly used unethical tactics to get where he was, but once he got where he did, he chose to do some good too. Bill deserves the knighthood.
Has he done more good than damage? I don't believe so.
If you go and make your fortune by destroying thousands of other people's businesses by unethical abuses of your position and then give away a fraction of that money to charity, should you be rewarded? I'd say not.
No. I never said he deserved it, in fact, I said I don't think he does. Is the real problem here that he is a criminal, or that the justice department let him off?
I'm not sure if whether or not he is (found to be) a criminal matters a lot in this case. I am inclined to say that *my* personal opinion is that Bill's business practices are exceptionally unethical and doing some good things whiles continuing to be unethical doesn't get him off the hook. Note that you can be unethical without being a criminal and you can be a criminal without being unethical so I'm not sure that the justice department's decision is relevent in this case.
The judgement of how ethical someone is varies from person to person, but my *personal* opinion is that because of the practices I perceive as unethical, I don't believe he should be getting an "award".
I should also point out that if the UK government hadn't blown massive amounts of money on MS software then maybe they could equal or exceed the amount of money given to charity by Bill.
(Just my 2 pence worth)
I guess his knighthood is for services to insecurity or something then...
How do you propose distributing the latest patches to oems to distributors to retailers in a timely manner? A pc can sit in a box for weeks or months from time of packaging to time of purchase. How many patches can MS release during that time?
For generic patches this is a problem, but for something as major as SP2 I don't see it as a massive issue. Also, MS have used their market position to force OEMs to do all sorts of nasty things, why can't they use that same marketting position to force the OEMs to burn a copy or recent patches onto CD when they sell a PC? (Hell, even if they did a new CD every 3-6 months, it'd still be better than nothing). MS could provide the OEMs with blank CD-Rs pre-printed with pretty MS labels so it even looks like an official MS CD when the OEM burns it.
Say you leave it to the retailer to pass out a free CD with patches with every box. Do they get a fresh shipment of CD's weekly? Who pays for the shipping on those?
See above - MS don't need to ship pre-pressed CDs to all OEMs, they can ship blank pre-printed CD-Rs and let the OEMs burn an image to the discs themselves (distributing CD images to OEMs every few months shouldn't be rocket science for a company who wants every one in the known universe to download SP2 over the internet).
Slow internet connection - not much you can do about that with any update, these days. Go over to your buddy's house with cable and download the files there.
I honestly don't have an answer to this, but like it or not people still do use slow connections. A good start (and this goes for linux distributions too so listen up!) would be to separate out the security updates from the bugfixes so people can get the more important updates without expending time and bandwidth on minor bugfixes - why does someone need to download the new all singing, all dancing DRM'd version of media player when they do a security update?
My parents have a Windows 2000 box and dial up over a 33k6 pay-per-minute connection (they only use the internet for email and a small amount of web surfing). I haven't bothered to do any auto-updates system on their box because trying to download updates over a modem is a waste of time - I've simply firewalled the hell out of the machine and made sure they don't use any MS software on it to access the internet.
And sorry, but popping over to a mate's house with a CD every month for the latest patch isn't something you'll convince many people to do. I also know people in rural areas where DSL is just plain not available, so those people would have to have mates outside their area but within reasonable driving distance who also have DSL - thats just not a feasable solution.
However, if you are competent enough to see what services are running, you can turn them off.
Having seen how many millions of services are on by default on Win2k Advanced Server and the cryptic names they have which don't tell you WTF they actually *do* I'd argue that it's not that easy.
You've obviously never seen a default red hat 7 installation. :)
Umm, with respect, Red Hat 7.0 was released in 2000 - you cannot compare Red Hat 7.0 and XP, by doing so you're no better than the people who are comparing Fedora Core 3 against windows 2000 and declaring that it proves fedora is more secure than windows. (Yes, fedora is probably more secure than windows but the way to prove it isn't be comparing it against a non-current system).
I am not arguing in Windows's favour, I am just arguing for a fair comparison.
I still say, you buy an OS, you pull down the latest updates
Yeah, doesn't help when you get cracked whilest pulling down the updates though does it? (Yes, yes, I know you can ask MS for a SP2 CD but really, shouldn't that be bundled with the OS, even if it's just a CD taped to the outside of the box?)
I thought XP tried to durring install anyways?
Doesn't help if you're on a pay-per-minute dialup connection.
Not really. To borrow from linux: RTFM. Of course M here really means Internet.
Well the difference here is that under linux you have to be clueful enough to turn a service (potential security hole) on, whereas under windows you have to know what you're doing to close a security hole.
Compare:
[Linux] I need the web service turned on to do my job so I'll spend a few minutes finding out how to do it.
[Windows] I don't need that web service on... but hey, it's not really doing me any harm at the moment so I can't be arsed to work out how to turn it off.
MS will provide SP2 on CD, all you have to do is ask. Got net access, fire up that firewall and download it. Its not like you have to go and buy XP + SP2 if you're running XP + SP1, it's a free update. How long has SP2 been out now?
I think you're missing the point - if I don't apply updates to a machine for 2 months I don't expect it to suddenly be *that* vulnerable to attack, and what's worse is that MS are saying that's to be expected.
While there may be tangible benefits from competition by nations in space exploration, there are certainly benefits from cooperation as some recent explorations have shown, particularly Cassini/Huygens. Two nations with $10 billion each can do projects together that are impossible alone.
Yes, until you throw politics into the mix. The politicians make themselves look much better to the masses when they say "we're going to do X before " rather than "We're going to spend a lump of money helping to do X".
Given a fixed amount of money then cooperation is better, but if you're in competition with your enemies then the politicians are more inclined to throw masses of money at the project. What's better? a couple of nations throwing $10m each into a common project, or both those nations throwing $30m each into doing the same thing as eachother?
Maybe because there are dozens of major apps and thousands of games avalible for Windows that just don't exist for Linux?
The games I will give you, but there are often equivalent (and free) apps for linux. Personally I haven't used Windows for years - Linux has all the applications I need (both for home and work), costs me nothing and is much less of a headache than Windows when things go wrong. Whenever I ask people why they need Windows, 95% of the time I will get back "because Linux doesn't run the latest games" - a valid answer but it just reenforces my belief that Windows is a toy operating system. And besides, if you're going to spend lots on Windows, why don't you just buy a console to play your games on instead?
In the second, there are those who turned off (or had a "helpful" tech turn off) their automatic updates and have no idea how to update their system.
This isn't an entirely stupid thing to do - if someone is on a pay-per-minute dialup connection, they don't *want* to be automatically downloading hundreds of megabytes of updates. (Especially if a lot of those updates are to add stuff they don't need/want - i.e. DRM for Media Player, etc).
If normal users understood that direct connections to the net were bad, they'd all buy routers, they'd consider firewalls, probably ones configured to block all but MSN, E-mail and web access, and we'd live in a considerably more worm free world.
I think you are giving many users far too much credit. 90% of the cases where I have to deal with customers who have misconfigured their mail server as a spam relay, I get a response similar to "Yeah, I know that's really insecure and lets spammers use it, but it was [easier to set up]/[only going to be like that for a few weeks]/[not as if I was telling the spammers the open relay was there]" (delete as appropriate).
The point is that these people *knew* that what they were doing was really stupid, but were doing it anyway because they couldn't be bothered to be secure. Of course it always comes back to bite them in the ass when their server falls over with several million spams in the mail relay queue and a completely saturated ADSL connection.
I can just tell you that having seen how many services are listening for connections from anywhere by default on a Win2k box, *I* would never want to plug one into the internet directly. And yeah, I know you can disable those services, but it would take a degree in rocket science to figure out which you need or don't need within a sane amount of time. (Turn off the wrong service and your box stops working right)
The other thing is, I don't use any Microsoft products other than Windows itself, really. Third-party chat, Eudora for e-mail, Firefox and Opera for browsing, WordPerfect and OpenOffice for all the office-style needs, etc etc.
I'm not seeing anything here that can't be done as well or better under Linux - why use Windows at all?
How in the world can Microsoft say something they were selling two months ago is "out of date"?
Yeah, I would say that the comments from MS themselves are pretty damning there - that they would expect an OS they were selling 2 months ago to be completely riddled with holes to the point that it's cracked within 18 minutes of being connected.
Putting a box with almost 4 year old unpatched OS is stupid and should not have been included in the test.
I don't think it's stupid to do this, but it should only be done if you're doing the same with other systems. I find a lot of these honeypot test reports do not test comparable operating systems. What they should be including in the test is:
1. Fully patched up Windows against fully patched up Linux
2. Windows against linux, both patched to the latest patches that were around 3 months ago.
3. Windows vs. Linux patched up to 6 month old patch level.
4. 1 year old
5. 2 years old
6. 4 years old
7. 8 years old
By doing this you are comparing systems from identical eras (and yes, I think you do need to go to 8 years old, like it or not there are some morons who are using 8 year old unpatched systems... and also it'll be kinda interesting to see if they're actually still getting attacked).
I do still think, however, that Linux will come out way less vulnerable than the windows from the same era for 2 reasons: 1. the userbase (or maybe the number of clueless users) is larger on Windows, so it attracts more cracks, especially (semi)automated ones. 2. Open systems tend to get patches released reasonably soon after an exploit is found whereas microsoft have a habit of leaving it until it's actually being exploited in the wild before releasing a patch - again, not much point in writing a worm for linux systems if 99% of them are already patched anyway.
Don't the platters rust?
Windows doesn't usually seem to have the "working" bit...
Here in the UK the opposite is completely true - I used to have cable from NTL but I gave up in the end because they were so bad:
1. In August 2000 I phoned NTL to arrange an installation of telephone and cable TV. The wiring was already in from the previous owner of my flat but I was told that they couldn't do the installation for 6 weeks (first sign I should have given up right there). I also checked on the availability of a cable modem and was told that the current service was analogue but they were upgrading the whole network in my area to digital in November 2000 so it'd be available then. They also refused to do the installation on a weekend so I had to take half a day off work (I didn't really see this as a huge problem at the time).
2. On the arranged installation date the engineer showed up, plugged the analogue cable decoder into the existing wire (that worked ok), tested the phone line and told me he was just going down the the multiplexer to reconnect it. He never returned (second sign I shoudl have given up). I phoned up their support line, waiting in the queue for 90 minutes before being told that my phone line hadn't been connected because they needed to upgrade the multiplexer first (they had already had 6 weeks notice that they were installing the line!). They said it would be 3 months until they did the upgrade! (third sign)
3. Eventually the phone line was connected (they tried to make me take anouther day off work for that but I managed to convince them that they *would* do a weekend install), but the network upgrade to digital never happened and I eventually decided to save money by switching my Demon dialup internet connection to an NTL one since they did unmetered dialup. I was told that this wasn't available in my area.
4. Whenever you needed to phone them you would end up having to wait in the phone queue for 60 - 90 minutes and 75% of the time they would then just hang up the call (I have since been told by people who work in NTL call centres that the line-managers do that when the calls aren't being answered quickly enough, since if they don't meet their quota of answered calls they lose their bonus pay - picking up and immediately dropping a call counds as an answered call).
5. The cable TV connection would break for several hours at a time not infrequently.
6. The analogue cable TV connection broadcast everything in 4:3 ratio - if it was a 16:9 channel they chopped the sides off the picture. I have a 16:9 TV so I'm left with a choice: chop the top and bottom off to make it 16:9 again (you lose way too much of the picture), squash the picture to make it 16:9 (ugh, distortion) or live with it in 4:3 ratio and big black bars down the side of the screen.
6. Eventually in 2002 (well over a year after the promised digital upgrade) I gave up, dropped the NTL phone line and TV and switched to Sky Digital satellite TV, a BT phone line and a PlusNet DSL internet connection. BT connected the phone line within 12 hours.
7. Sky only very rarely goes out (usually due to bad weather - happens maybe once a year for a few minutes)
8. If I need to phone Sky, BT or PlusNet they pick up the phone almost immediately
9. PlusNet's service is almost flawless (I know many people who use NTL cable modems and they are always having outages). I also get a subnet of real IP addresses and am allowed to run services on my DSL connection with PlusNet's blessing (NTL won't give you a static IP and their AUP explicitly disallows you from running services on it). The DSL connection almost never goes down.
10. In 2004 (i.e. almost 4 years after the promised digital upgrade), NTL came canvassing the area to say they now had digital services. They asked me what kind of internet connection I had and I replied "DSL
Actually, it's a bigger mistake than usual. London to Cardiff is only 152 miles. Even if you aim for the far side of Wales, London to Aberystwyth is 236 miles. Compare that with London to Sellafield at 311 miles...
:)
At least Sellafield is in the same country as London though - the usual comments from the Americans would be similar to me saying "America? That's a little place in Torronto isn't it?"
It's Sellafield who's lost the Plutonium, not London. I realise that most Americans are geographically challenged and that this is a smaller mistake than usual (When I was at University in Swansea, it was not infrequent for americans to say "Oh, you're in Wales... that's in London isn't it?").
If that's the price that must be paid, that's a bad thing? If that's the price I would happily pay it. Save the environment VS allowing people to surf. Tough choice.
The same arguement can be made against anything: Save the environment Vs. allowing people to drive cars? Tough choice...
Just because _you_ might not surf doesn't give you the right to destroy someone else's opportunity to do what they enjoy.
Does anyone ever have urgent business at a hydrographic office?
Yes actually. I use it frequently to get tide predictions so I know where's safe (or will have good conditions) to go windsurfing. Good job I'm not going sailing tomorrow or I'd be proper pissed at not being able to get that data.
We had a glossy in the mail today from Valor Telecom that scored a point for good old POTS. If the power goes out long enough that the battery in your VOIP cable box goes out, how would you call emergency services if you needed them??
:)
If the power goes out and takes out the power to your PABX how would you call the emergency services? Unless you happen to have a phone that doesn't require any external power that's plugged into your office's PRI line of course...
(Or you could just use your cellphone - I'm sure *someone* in the office has one)