Given that we live in a Nanny state, where we are all protected from all forms of risk and threat, how is it Frost Towers is without power this morning?
EDF inform me that they don't know why, and don't know when it will be back.
How the fark am I meant to keep my beer, tonic and other mixers chilled or indeed maintain a stock of firm ice cubes for my tinctures?
Who do I sue?
FYI, this was published using a laptop and piggy backing off soemone else's wifi.
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Oh no! Not the piggybacking off someone else’s WiFi!
ReplyDeletePiggybacking off other WiFi ‘hotspots’ seems an eminently-sensible and cost-effective ‘way to go’ for this country. Many people found it an invaluable means of sending emails to their families on 7/7 when mobile phones in central London weren’t working, and it’s almost certainly preferable to higher-power WiMax masts/transmitters popping up around our towns.
However, there was a case (a couple of months ago) of the police arresting some guy in a street for doing this very thing.
The police made a statement at the time (from a nanny mindset fixed somewhere back in the 1960s) that ... wasn’t entirely constructive.
How much did it cost someone to let you use their WiFi?
Nothing.
How much of a security threat were you?
Probably none except it’s in everyone’s best interests not to open the hornets’ nest of Nanny’s snooping issues.
How much were others inconvenienced by the reduction in bandwidth?
They probably didn’t notice (Although, given the number of advertisements that have to be downloaded with the NKB web page, maybe they did think their Broadband had died for a couple of minutes).
n wrote:
ReplyDelete" ...firm ice cubes for my tinctures?"
I bet that had alarms going off in more than one department at Central Blog User Monitoring (C-BUM).
My next door neighbour used to leave his internet open for others to use until they obtained their own installations, and of course the BT Openzone/Fon options rely on people sharing their connections with others in the same scheme.
It will be interesting to hear about the cause of this outage, UK power generation being in a somewhat parlous state now and likely to be catastrophic a few years from now.
If the Olympics 2012 attempt to put on an opening (or closing) display anything like Beijing's I imagine they will have to turn off all the other users within 50 miles of London.
That should be fun.
Ken:
ReplyDeleteHave you paid your bill?
:-)
Ken probably doesn’t need to be told this but coincidences frequently occur that give the impression this web site is read by opinion formers in government, media, local council etc.
ReplyDeleteAnother occurrence today reinforced that theory.
Several months ago I made a reference on this site to threatening letters I receive each month from TV Licensing (trademark for the BBC). I included some quotes from one of their letters as well as the list of contraband their enforcement officers particularly watch for as evidence for criminal activity:
TV
DVD recorder
Video recorder
Digital box
Computer
At the time I said “Seemingly they’re soon to add mobile phone”. It was just a thought I pulled out of the air.
Today out of curiosity I opened their letter (probably the first time since writing those comments). It contained the usual stuff: “you are hereby notified”, “your statement will be taken”, etc. However, their list of contraband contained one new item: ‘mobile phone’.
Now that’s spooky.
Seemingly they’re soon to add ‘PDA’.
Anonymous 12:03 PM said: “BT … Fon options rely on people sharing their connections with others in the same scheme”.
ReplyDeleteThanks Anon. That’s exactly what I had in mind in my 11:14 AM post but didn’t realise BT already operates such a scheme. In the best of public-spirited traditions I’ll sign up and wait to see my hot spot appear on the Google map for others who want to use it.
It creates an interesting dilemma for the police who have said they intend to stamp out such behaviour. Technology is running ahead of them.
And finally (for information) ...
ReplyDeleteI didn’t sign up for BT / FON in the end. It turned out to be nothing other than a crafty scheme by BT to protect its Openzone network.
BT / FON members, in effect, hand over a portion of their bandwidth to BT for free. BT then passes it off as its own network and charges anyone who wants to use it.
What’s needed is a public version, where BT is cut out of the loop and members of the public offer a genuinely-free and useful service to each other. Of course HMRC would probably kill that solution due to VAT avoidance.
Anon 10:35PM
ReplyDeleteThe concept might be useful if one was moving around a lot and, for the Fon aspect, travelling to certain places in participating countries.
Where I am I doubt anyone would ever use my bandwidth. In a city it could be a different story.
However since, as I understand it, one cannot use the optimum security settings on the router there are other issues to consider, beyond access and usability.
And as we know, in such matters BT has some Phorm.
Grant