B3ta does it again with the "Internet Simulator"

Keep an eye on Grokker from Groxis and Find Tools coming for connecting information. Dan Gillmor. But we need more sophisticated methods for gathering, massaging and making connections among all the pieces of information that enter our lives each day -- everything from e-mail to Web pages to phone numbers and more. So when I see useful tools, I pay attention. [thanks, Tomalak's Realm] 

Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log : : Smart City Telecom offers free WiFi in Walt Disney town Celebration, Fla. to DSL customers Interesting approach by an ADSL broadband vendor. Sign up to "Home'n'Roam and as well as the home Broadband access you also get free WiFi access at participating outlets. This particular company is heavily involved in WiFI and supplies systems for conferences so they already have the tech. But they're putting hotspots into public space around their ADSL coverage area. They've also got an enlightened attitude to allowing their ADSL subscribers to install WiFi themselves with cheap hardware from the same company.

This seems like a natural for BT. I wonder if their terms of reference allow them to cross subsidize Openworld with OpenZone? I also think this a natural for widening the coverage of OpenZone by having a franchise model where low performance access is available from customers who share their ADSL.

An email I have received suggested that I'm spending too much time knocking Microsoft and supporting Open Source. So:-

Question: Do you think I support Microsoft or Open Source?

The answer actually tells me much more about you than about me. I have been very careful to sit on the fence in the middle as I don't actually have a strong opinion either way. But I do have a tendency to take opposing stances in arguments and to poke fun at hubris and stupidity. So when talking to Microsoft supporters I'll point out that there's lots of good work being done outside Microsoft and especially in the Open source area and they really ought to take a look. When talking to Open Source fanatics (and all too often they are fanatical to the point of being rabid) I'll point out that we live in a Microsoft world and actually Microsoft is churning out vast quantities of pretty good code and they really ought to take a look.

So the answer is actually both and neither. I use and have used a large amount of Microsoft software and although I occasionally curse it, it's done me proud. I also use and have used a large amount of open source software both on MS operating systems and on Linux. And it's generally served me well, although all too often the documentation is obscure and hard to understand.

So if you're a Microsoft person and think that I'm firmly in the Open Source camp because I complain about the wilder absurdities of both MS and MS software, you're wrong. And if you think I'm firmly in the Microsoft camp because I complain that Linux and Linux software is too damn hard, you're also wrong.

An email I have received suggested that I'm spending too much time knocking Microsoft and supporting Open Source. So:-

Question: Do you think I support Microsoft or Open Source?

The answer actually tells me much more about you than about me. I have been very careful to sit on the fence in the middle as I don't actually have a strong opinion either way. But I do have a tendency to take opposing stances in arguments and to poke fun at hubris and stupidity. So when talking to Microsoft supporters I'll point out that there's lots of good work being done outside Microsoft and especially in the Open source area and they really ought to take a look. When talking to Open Source fanatics (and all too often they are fanatical to the point of being rabid) I'll point out that we live in a Microsoft world and actually Microsoft is churning out vast quantities of pretty good code and they really ought to take a look.

So the answer is actually both and neither. I use and have used a large amount of Microsoft software and although I occasionally curse it, it's done me proud. I also use and have used a large amount of open source software both on MS operating systems and on Linux. And it's generally served me well, although all too often the documentation is obscure and hard to understand.

So if you're a Microsoft person and think that I'm firmly in the Open Source camp because I complain about the wilder absurdities of both MS and MS software, you're wrong. And if you think I'm firmly in the Microsoft camp because I complain that Linux and Linux software is too damn hard, you're also wrong.

CustomerRespect.com: "[T]he report found that 37 percent of Fortune 100 companies offered no reply to a general inquiry submitted to their Web site, despite offering either an online form or email contact details for inquiries." [thanks, Werblog]

The cluetrain stopped at their station, but nobody got on.

Samizdata.net - Big Brother is watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002 Beautiful, ironic but somewhat scary posters have started appearing in London produced by London Transport. "Secure beneath the watchful eyes". "CCTV and Metropolitan police on buses are just two ways we're making your journey more secure". The poster has been so well done that concensus is that it's a subtle joke at London transport's expense by the graphic artist. However if you find the levels of surveillance in the UK scary, then you'll like Wired's article on "Routes of least surveillance" and this article on blinding CCTV cameras with a laser pointer. You'll probably also want to support Captain Gatso and his campaign to neutralize Gatso speed cameras with paint and tyre/petrol necklaces.

From the "how do they do that" desk; Googlism.

As I'm far too intelligent for my own good :) I've always been tickled by one of those stupid statistics. "50% of all people are of below average intelligence."! So then we get to what that actually means in terms of IQ scores in which an IQ of 100 is supposedly average. The stupidest person in my school had an IQ of 110 and I remember just how stupid they were. At Cambridge I guess the stupidest were more like 125 or 130 and some of them could be pretty dumb despite that.

So what are we to make of the story doing the rounds and reported by John Simpson on the BBC; that Clinton has an IQ of 186 and George Dubya Bush has an IQ of 91. Shurely Shome Mishtake! Because if it's true, it's too scary to contemplate. Although Clinton's score undoubtedly proves that the attribute with the biggest sex appeal is intelligence.

Wonderful rant on 10 rules of e-business failure aimed directly at the entertainment industry and more specifically the record industry.

BTW Kazaa Lite V2 is here. Not that I'd suggest you use it or anything.

Maybe my Amazon wish list.

I-Plus : I was just walking down Oxford Street at lunch time and spotted this chalk which i thought was pretty neat. I only read about all this stuff on Wired PDA on my way home last night. I logged on without an ssid, but I'm not quite sure what the speed of the connection provided by the kiosk is. These i-plus kiosks are popping all over London, I'll have to check which of the others I've seen have wireless antenna.

I can't find anything on the web about I-Plus kiosks or who is installing and running them. Does anyone know? If it's true that every one is a WiFi free WAP, that's very cool!

A funny thing happened to my broadband connection last night; roughly half the web disappeared. I could get to some websites completely as normal while others were completely inaccessible. Unfortunately, one that had disappeared was Ecademy. I did all the usual things like waving a dead chicken at the computer, re-booting the machines, power cycling the cable modem, checking all the network settings, refreshing the IP on my gateway but no dice. I used SSH to get a text window to my private server and then used Lynx to retrieve Ecademy and it was running fine. Ping, ftp, pop3 were all working fine, my DNS was working fine. I eventually decided that it must be NTL with some sort of strange outage as I had an inkling that they were intercepting port 80 and putting in a proxy so I fired off an email to their support people and got the expected auto-response back.

This morning, I went through the usual IVR - wait on hold listening to terrible music telephone hell for 10-15 minutes until I finally got an engineer. He told me that one of their Inktomi proxy servers was broken and it was on the segment I use. They'd just found out about it when they saw an email to their help desk. After a bit of complaint and pressure on my part, he gave me an alternate IP address to put into the IE proxy settings and I could get everything again. Now normally I don't have a proxy set so this all starts to look a bit strange. In  response to more direct questioning, he finally let on that yes, they do intercept all port 80 traffic and route it through a proxy.

Now I can understand why they do this, because serving even some web pages locally will save them upstream bandwidth costs, but I'm also extremely bothered about the implications. It means that all port 80 traffic from me, (eg web sites, Kazaa music sharing, IM, RSS news collection), is all being routed through their servers. And proxies typically have an access log which means that a large part of my internet useage is being logged. And given the recent talk about RIP and the Home Office admissions that "we're already getting all the data anyway" it's all the more worrying. Now of course, I'm not a criminal (though I play one the internet!) and I've got nothing to hide, (though what they'll make of my fascination with Japanese kitten asciimation I don't know) but it's the principle of the thing. As I seem to be repeating all too often, all I want from my broadband connection is a fixed IP, fast up and downloads and an affordable price, and that's it. If I want to use a proxy I will, but don't force me without telling me you're doing it.

Good tutorial at RSS Workshop

I have a very beta version of blogToaster up and running, feel free to give it a go [you need MSN Messenger]. Add "toaster@zaks.demon.co.uk" as a new contact, and start a chat session, enter "add http://www.pocketsoap.com/weblog/" and hit enter, repeat with all the URL's of the weblogs you want to get notified about. enter "list" to see the list of URL's you've registered. When BlogToaster picks up a change from weblogs.com of a URL you've registered, it'll send you a message. [thanks, Simon Fell]

How cool! But I'm not sure I need yet another notification system for reading more news. I think this is why I much prefer offline async methods like Email or an RSS reader. I want to deliberately go out and read news and mail when I'm ready not when the other party is ready. In fact even though Messenger is quite useful I've grown to really hate it in the same way as I hate the phone. Because it interrupts me and demands my attention when it wants to, not when I want to.

Having said all that it's a useful tool if you're tracking or administrating a site where other people frequently post (like a Drupal site)

This would be great as a Jabberbot, especially with Jabber's ability to bridge all the different IM systems.

QDB: Top 25 Quotes :
< kritical> christin: you need to learn how to figure out stuff yourself..
< Christin1> how do i do that

Swhack Weblog: HAPPY BURTHDTAY TO TEH ASH!!!! : Coming up next... Giant Man-Eating Zombies: Should they be allowed in W3C Working Groups, or not? Are Aaron and Morbus somehow related? I think we should be told.

Oh, and it's an interview with Morbus about Amphetadesk 0.93.

Blogging talk at Inappropriate Tech

Neil: I like scripting.com because it winds me up every time I visit it.