planet davelevy

After last night's triumph I was musing about BT's ability to support their Hub and my suspicions that there is a DHCP bug on the home hub and how large organisations really need to understand the software they use and how open source products make skills acquisition easier; although BT have no excuse, since the hub is a Linux derivative, hence open source but they outsourced the development, and for months have denied any knowledge or responsibility for its functionality.

I'd also add I think their support has got better over the last six months. They guy I spoke to yesterday was excellent, although finding the phone number was harder than I'd like. Once upon-a-time, you couldn't do anything but talk to BT, or at least listen to a voice mail menu.

My biggest frustration has been the instability of Vista's connection with the BT Home Hub's Wifi Channels. (see BT Home Hub here on this site.) I shared this with my colleague Tim Reczek who pointed me at the network card's control panel applet, which has an alternate IP configuration panel. He advised me that

if an XP or Vista system can't get an IP address it uses the alternative but the default automatic alternate IP address it uses is not very common, it might be best to configure the alternate address manually to maximise the chance it is a valid IP address

and you can do this in the knowledge of your home router's configuration parameters. The error message I have trapped on my Vista machine suggests this might be the case, Why has it taken so long to discover what a friend had in his head; he does admit he knows too much about the registry.

I find it disgraceful that BT & Microsoft can't get their act together to support joint customers, but its back to what you need to know to make this stuff work. They're both using last century strategies of dumping cost on their customers.

See more at this thread at file save us

Short URL: http://is.gd/a4m6t

The first comment below notes that Dell's ContolPoint Connection Manager might be a factor and that blaming BT and Microsoft as the sole culprits, can you have sole culprits, might be a bit unfair.

This article describes how to use the Alternate Configuration functionality to establish multiple-network connectivity. Is thie answer to my BT Home Hub pain.

I have just replaced my BT Home Hub in London with a 3rd Party Router. I have documented the parameter changes at http://is.gd/9ZhMH, at filesaveus.co.uk. Lets see if its any better than the PoS its replacing.

In the center of the East-City of Berlin, the world´s largest model railway

on the Medina, between Cowes and Newport, great food and reasonable wine

on the west side of Portsmouth Harbour

an article on the Guardian's blog site, suggesting that the BBC are scaling back their role as digital innovators, possibly because the innovation work is done. Nothing can escape the fact that the BBC's detractors don't want to compete with free, but this article suggests some reasons of their own why they might want to do these things. It's written by Steve Hewlett.

from Waters Edge Photography , a tag line is "Fine Art Photography by Luis Morales". These are his Zermatt pictures from his trip to the Citihub World Conference 2010.

Mark Thomas is a well known campaigner against corporate lawlessness, greed and against capitalism's consumption of humanity. He recently made a TV article for the culture show on the Digital Economy Bill. He interviewed a number of people on both sides of the debate. Frankly, I think he was pretty tame, and balanced; I know I'd have given Timms & Sharkey a much harder time, and Andrew Heaney, of Talk Talk, made a real pig's ear of answering the question, "Why not enforce the law?".

However, the music industry seem deeply unhappy as reported by among others the Guardian and have formally complained to the BBC about their breach of their duty to impartiality. So not only do these companies supported by the Labour Government threaten our freedom of speech, access to culture and right to a fair trial, they are also threatening the publicly owned BBC. It doesn't surprise me, because one of the hidden arguments in the copyright wars is that the private sector have a right to make money by 'alienating' creative workers. Public sector and co-operative organisations have a much better chance to build business models around a no-copyright world. The BBC is probably the largest and most successful publicly owned content company in the world and as such is hated by all those rapacious profiteers who seek to monetise the distribution of content.

I for one have used the BBC's web site, https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/, to praise them for this article, and make the point that their duty of balance is across the whole of their output, and not applicable to just one show. I feel there were some inaccuracies in the show, but whenever you know a story well, you find this. What UK Music need to understand, in the words from "The Wire",

"A lie ain't a side of a story. It's just a lie."

and the fact is that this is not about the wages of, or entry into the creative industries. Billy Bragg, among others, made it clear, and has elsewhere that this is about industrialised music's profits. Its not even the case that despiteBono's whinging and suggestion we adopt China's approach to freedom of expression that high earning artists get more from royalties than from earnings at concerts. They earn more by charging for their time, just as the most of the rest of us do. Its the lawyers and suits, like Simon Cowell who'll loose out if we abolished copyright, or even restricted it to five years. This is what makes Sharkey's comments that poor musicians are

"earning less than last year"

moronic, the DE bill will boost the profitability of the music industry and the wages of their lawyers, it'll do very little for the average musician, who of course doesn't have a recording contract. Sharkey stated that the average earnings of, I assume, british musicians was under £15K. What's the average wage of the copyright lawyers at the UK Music companies?. You only have to look at who' supporting this to see the truth, its about protecting privilidge, not enhancing creativity.

Thomas asked Andrew Heaney,

"why not enforce the law?"

and as an executive of a PLC, he has to answer that he does and will. However, since the charities commission definition of a political organisation is one that seeks to change the law, the DE Bill is a matter of politics and we as citizens and voters need to consider the moral right and wrong. Copyright is a human artifact, not moral statement. Those who advocate the free copying of knowledge and culture don't deny the right of musicians, lawyers and business people to sell their time or charge for tickets. Breaking copyright law is not theft, nor is it piracy. Why is it morally wrong? I personally haven't a clue and no one that supports the DE bill has presented me with a reason for changing my mind. Its only illegal because its against the law, once we talk about changing the law, maybe we should abolish copyright, not strengthen it. The DE Bill's clauses on so called illegal file sharing clauses threaten internet users freedom of speech, freedom of expression, access to culture and innocent until proven guilty, all basic human rights established by the European Convention on Human Rights or the United Nations Human Rights Charter. Copyright and industrial music's profits aren't worth the price.

At the beginning of February, AFACT, representing several Hollywood movie studios, lost its case against iiNet after the court decided that the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers. Despite being ordered to pay all costs, AFACT says it will now go back to court in an attempt to avoid paying them.

The TV Licensing dunning letters are a bit scary and very unclear. I rang them today and have been told that the test applied to computers, (and it seems mobile phones) is if they have a TV tuner card. Since the computers I use in my new flat don't have this technology, I don't need a licence for this address, which is good; I didn't want to pay a second licence fee. I was told I have been registered as that odd minority, a notv household, and they'll make an appointment to come round and check up on me.

The availabilty of wireless connectectivity in the UK can be a bit sporadic as I have learnt over the week I didn't have it in the house, and I relied on my phones for internet connectivity. A lesson this need has taught me is that

Handset designers need to remember that the goal of wifi is wirelessness. Its pointless to replace the need for an RJ45 with the need for powerlead.

i.e. energy efficiency and battery size and life become noticable if you use a modern mobile the way it was intended. HTC...I am talking to you.

Finding old blog posts is not easy on Snipsnap; it creates a snip named on the basis of a date/serial concatenation, and does not/cannot index the date against any title specified, or at least not as far as I can see. (I have created a Tag aka Category label of Blog but this will only listed manually tagged articles, and it seems, attribute the serial to it. Not too useful.)

Back at work after our first weekend in our newly rented flat in London. We took a turn about Docklands, visiting the London Ice Sculpture festival, and on Sunday, we went out to the London Boat Show, which is at the ExCel Centre on Victoria Dock. While I had to look at some of the boats, and couldn't avoid looking over a somewhat excessive Sunseeker, I also visited a couple of training exhibitions and several of the holiday companies, which has given me some ideas as to what I might do this summer. Sail Ionian is offering passage from Gibralter to Greece via Sardinia, which might be fun, depending on the personality of the skipper and rest of the crew, although it takes a while and I may not have the leave. Sailing Holidays might be another way to do the Ionian or even the Saronic Gulf on the east coast of the Peloponese and both Nisos Yachts, another greek charter company & Moonfleet Sailing, a training company had stands. We also looked over a couple of J boats, although I can't imagine buying any of them.