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Archive for the ‘Things That Piss Me Off’ Category

TTPMO: Virgin Broadband are all asses

Jun 29th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , ,
1 comment

Well I’m writing this from the wordpress for iPhone application, as I currently do not have Internet access (apart from GPRS). I moved into a new house yesterday, with my lovely girlfriend Emma.

Last week I contacted Virgin Broadband’s “Home Movers Team” to inform that I was about to move house. I spoke to a very kind lady called Katherine l, who told me hat she would arrange for my service to be cut off from my old property in the morning and it to be connected in the afternoon. She also found that the previous tenants had not ended their contract, so she would get that sorted and call me if there were any problems. Simple aye?? Unfortunately not so.

Yesterday early afternoon I called Virgin’s “Quick Activation” team to get everything going. It seams I was with wrong team, so the put me through to Customer Support who spoke to me q while and put me back again.

Apparently Katherine never did anything, my service was still connected to my old flat, and the previous tenants service had no been removed. So the “man from India” (no racial slight intended) told me he “would submit the form, and contact me most quickly when he had the response from the requested form he had sent just now”.

An hours worth of phone calls later and I am told that the property has no Virgin Service (so what did they waste my morning disconnecting) and they must send round an engineer. Regardless of the fact that I have already connected everything and just need them to “flick the switch”. So I get Internet on Wednesday, and intend to get at least a months refund on Thursday once I speak to their complaints department!!!

Sorry if this post rambled but it’s hard to type a good one via an iPhone!!

UPDATE: Virgin Media tweeted back at me!! They said,

@jamesakadamingo Really sorry about the problems James, moving house is stressful enough. Do get in touch if you need further help. ST

I will get in contact with them, and see what ST can do to stop me being angry!!

Oh and look it’s a virgin service point in my flat how did thy get there, maybe it was ALREADY here?!?!

1 Comment »

Bye Bye Facebook! Deleting my account

May 9th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , ,
2 comments

Well it has now happened, I have deleted my @Facebook account (and yes I am aware how fitting it is for me to use facebook’s @twitter address!). There are a few factors which have driven me to this, some more basic than others. In recent weeks I realised that I was only using facebook for one purpose, and that was the events features. All I did was check if my friends were holding a party or a pub trip and then log off.  One thing that I did notice each time that I logged in was the shear amount of rubbish that was in my news feed, why would I care if so and so only needed two more bricks to build their barn!! Add the fact that people were always bulk inviting me to their bands gig on the other side of the country and I got fed up!

The bigger issue of course is (or now was!) their stance on history, I really dont want every website I visit to know everything about me just because I happened to be logged into facebook at the time. There is also the issue regarding  the “facebook-positive”, and yes I did just coin that term. On facebook (and for that matter any site which uses facebook) you can only “like” something, you can’t dislike it. As such with facebook’s iFrames (seariously iFrames in this day and age!), any website I visit is instantly “liked” and “liked” even more if I choose to click the “like” button.

So the process of actually deleting my account! A quick search of the internet gave me enough impotus to actually delete all my data before I even deleted my account! It appears that facebook does not actually delete your data when you close the account, it simply lies dormant on their servers. As such I removed all traces of my facebook life first:

Remove two Email addresses (having to type my password each time!)

  • Set up a fake email and add it to FB allowing me to delete my other email address (another two password inputs!)
  • Remove my Mobile Number.
  • Remove all 37 applications that somehow had found their way into my profile.
  • Trash the content of my profile page (including my picture!).
  • Delete all my likes and dislikes (three clicks for each one!!).
  • Remove my contact information.
  • Delete my photo albums.
  • Delete my links and notes.

I started the process at 15:30 and finished 63 minutes later, every action I took to delete something was slow, and many times facebook just crashed out and I had to login again. So not a quick fix.

The last few stages were easyier, however I did like the “please don’t leave us” page.  It picked three friends and told me how much they would miss me, needless to say it didn’t stop me from leaving!  Following that I got a simple captcha and another password request, I was amused to see the captcha text it was rather fitting.

Leaving Facebook Captcha

Leaving Facebook Captcha

All in all leaving facebook wasn’t that hard, taking the extra precaution of removing all my data too a little longer but should be worth it.

Now I just need someone to re-create facebook’s events system via twitter and all will be sorted! Perhaps I could write it myself!

2 Comments »

TTPMO: The Digital Economy Bill

Mar 28th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags:
No comments

The UK Digital Economy Bill has passed through the Lords, and is now waiting to be passed into law.  Most notably, it is currently not slated for a debate in the House, and appears that it will simply be rushed through before the election (which must happen in the next few months).

Last night I was listening to the This Week in Google (TWiG) Pod cast with Leo Laporte, he had a guest speaker by the name of Kevin Marks who managed to turn the conversation over to the Digital Economy Bill (deBill).  They made some comparisons between what Lord Mandelson wishes to enact and what the Chinese Government are currently doing in China.  Britain previously made it clear that it believes China are breaking the Human Rights of its citizens, so why is the British Government thinking about similar things?

Before anyone does the “Literal Web” on me, and claims that I am making brash statements comparing a democratic country with a corrupt maoist regime, that is not what I am doing!

The point I am making is that there are proposed laws being put into effect via the deBill that would allow a future member of Government (Sec of State) to do the sort of things that China are doing.  An example being that in Xinjiang China, after a local ethics riot internet access and international phone calls were disconnected for six months. Even now Xinjiang can only access a watered down internet, and send only a few text messages a day!  The comparison with deBill is:

  • (1) The Secretary of State may direct OFCOM to—
  • (a) assess whether one or more technical obligations should be imposed on internet service providers;
  • (b) take steps to prepare for the obligations;
  • (c) provide a report on the assessment or steps to the Secretary of State.
  • (2) A “technical obligation”, in relation to an internet service provider, is an obligation for the provider to take a technical measure against some or all relevant subscribers to its service for the purpose of preventing or reducing infringement of copyright by means of the internet.
  • (3) A “technical measure” is a measure that—
  • (a) limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber;
  • (b) prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use;
  • (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or
  • (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way.

Anyway before I rant to much, I suggest that any interested partys read Kevin Marks blog post on the subject.

http://epeus.blogspot.com/2010/03/bpis-china-like-clauses-in-digital.html

http://epeus.blogspot.com/2009/10/baron-mandelson-and-magna-carta.html

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TTPMO: eBooks verses Printed Books

Feb 20th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: , , , ,
1 comment

Recently in the press we have heard about the “print media”, such as books and news papers, bringing out charging systems for their online content.  For example the New York Times is reported to be bringing in a charging structure for 2011 <cite>.

Authors have recently been provided with a workable and accessible system for their printed works to be made available on like, that system is commonly known as the eBook.  The open eBook format can be read by many different devices from the iPhone to the humble PC (with all the eBook readers in-between).  It is very easy for one to create an eBook, there are many pieces of software (such as Stanza) which can take text and save it to the ePub format.

Many websites have appeared almost overnight providing the ability to download a new release in eBook format,  for a price.  My problem here, and the thing That Pisses Me Off, is the price difference.  Yesterday I decided that I wanted to buy a copy of Dan Brown’s latest work “The Lost Symbol”, I decided that I would buy it in eBook format.  My reasoning for this was that I always have my iPhone (and as such Stanza) with me, so I can read the book whenever I have a spare moment.  So I started with Google, and found my way to a few sites selling the eBook.  What I found shocked me.

The Lost Symbol eBook pricing

The Price difference between an eBook and a Printed book

  • Amazon US  - Book: $12.00 (£7.75)  |  eBook: $14.09 (£9.91)
  • Waterstones – Book: £9.49  |  eBook: £13.58
  • WHSmiths – Book: £9.49  |  eBook: £13.48
  • Barnes & Nobel – Book: £28.20 (£18.23)  |  eBook: $9.60 (£6.20)

I was under the impression (wrongly!) that an eBook would be cheaper than a printed book. It does make sense that it would be, as surely the process of me purchasing a printed work would cost more?  I will point out that B&N were cheaper, but they won’t sell eBooks to the UK.

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1 Comment »

TTPMO: Cadbury and Kraft Foods

Feb 14th
Posted by: jamesakadamingo | Tags: ,
3 comments

Welcome to another TTPMO (Things that piss me off) post.

As anyone from Bristol will know, KRAFT foods have recently taken over Cadbury Chocolate. For those who live in a cave and do not know who KRAFT or Cadbury are, I will take a moment to explain.

Cadbury Chocolate Bar

Cadbury Dairy Milk the best known Cadbury product.

Kraft are the second largest food and beverage maker in the world (after Nestle), and are the biggest food or beverage producer in the USA. They sell products in more than 155 Countries worldwide, with gross revenue of $42.2Billion (that’s around £26.9Billion at the time of writing) and over 98,000 employees. Some of their best known brands are “Philadelphia”, “Maxwell House” and “Oreo”.

Cadbury are a a UK based confectionery maker, the second largest in the world after Mars/Wrigley. Their gross revenue is £5,384Million. Their best known product is the Dairy Milk Bar.

Before the Kraft take over Cadbury announced its intention to close its factory near Bristol. However Kraft said it would do its best to keep it open, if the takeover bid was accepted. Surprise surprise, the second that they signed the contract, the announcement that the factory would continue to close was made. That is the first thing that pisses me off, a large number of good men and women will now lose their jobs, whilst UK based produce moves to Europe (again!).
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3 Comments »