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July 4, 2011

The passing of a true genius and a gentleman

This morning I learnt the sad news that Len Sassaman sadly passed away having taken his own life in an apparent suicide at his home in Leuven, Belgium.

Len was a major advocate for privacy and a great influence on some of my earlier work.  He leaves a great legacy but an even greater void in so many lives.  My thoughts go out to his wife Meredith (L. Patterson), may she have strength and courage through these difficult times.

Depression is the silent killer.

I'm coming to understand that "battle with depression" is sometimes very close in meaning to "battle with cancer."

@maryadydd 04 July 2011

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Len Sassaman (1980-2011)
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Category: General, News, around the web

Posted by Chris Wright at 11:28 AM | TrackBack (0)

December 8, 2010

Yet more Pipex Woes

failure-successTwo moans about Pipex in as many days.  They really are going for it in a big way of late.

When I raised a support request the other day, I used my Pipex account email address, i.e the one that has been associated with my account since day one of me being a customer with them. (usually of the form ***@dsl.pipex.com) 
I noticed that I didn’t receive an auto-reply which was unusual, so out of interest, I sent a test message from another email account.
Funnily enough, it bounced. But not just any old bounce, but because of:

5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'Mailbox is inactive'

Since Pipex have transferred over the home customer control panels to some part of Tiscali, there isn’t actually an easy method of retrieving your customer account settings any more.  No problem I thought, I’ll raise a ticket.

I raised a ticket with Pipex Support and couldn’t believe their response.

I understand from your email that you are uanble send emails on your email account ******@dsl.pipex.com as the senders are getting error 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'Mailbox is inactive'
With reference to your below mail, please be informed that unfortunately we are unable to help you from this helpdesk on this concern.
I would request you to please contact our Customer Support as they would be in a better position to assist you in this regard.
You can contact our Customer Support at 0871 663 3300. Calls are charged at 5p/min from a Pipex line or at 10p/min from a BT line. Calls from mobiles and other providers may vary. Lines are open from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, Mondays-Fridays, 8:00 am-5:00 pm on Saturdays, and 9:00 am-6:00 pm on Sundays.

So support aren’t actually able to provide any support?
That was Pipex Customer Support I had emailed!

It turns out, all that emailing customer support will do is result in a reply back asking me to call their customer support line.  
What they want me to do is call a PAID FOR support line, not a free one, but a PAID FOR support line.
Now trust me, despite 5p/min sounding like a cheap rate from my Pipex line, and 10p/min from a BT line, if only it were that simple.  My last call to Pipex customer support required waiting on hold for over 2 hours, and a further 20mins waiting for the support representative to fix the issue. The same issue reared it’s head the following week which required another 90mins of call time.
That worked out at around £11.50 just to fix that one issue which was yet another screw up at their end.

Well Pipex can go whistle this time. I emailed them back and have given them my home number so they can call me.
And if they cannot resolve it via email, I’ve also given them a deadline of 8pm tomorrow night.
If they have not resolved it by 8pm tomorrow night, WITHOUT the need for me to waste my time and money calling them, I will be requesting my MAC and moving my account to another ISP.

The only reason I haven’t moved away from Pipex is as I stated in previous post in that they Pipex owe me funds which are incredibly difficult to have returned once you leave them. But sod it! I’ve totally had enough of Pipex and the complete bunch of eejots that seem the be running the damn company.  I’ll pursue them via the courts and boy will it cost them a damn site more than it would have done if they had just returned the monies that were owed to me in the first place.

Pipex were once a great ISP, before that was, Tiscali came in and totally screwed the company over and up.

Trust me when I say, avoid Tiscali, TalkTalk and Pipex like the plague. Go with O2 (as my first option), and then Plus Net (as my 2nd option despite them really being BT now). But, be warned with Plus Net.  I’ve seen quite a few mumblings around various online forums that Plus Net support has gone down the pan since BT took them over. (Something else I’m not surprised about).  Never ever go with BT direct either, but that’s a whole new story I’ll save for a rainy day.

Finally, Pipex, you win the idiot of the week award for this week. You must now be ranking as one of the worst ISP’s in the UK

I’m not the only one who has suffered at the hands of Pipex.  Check out http://www.pipexproblems.co.uk/

Category: General, Web Stuff, around the web

Posted by Chris Wright at 4:02 PM | TrackBack (0)

December 7, 2010

Pipex/Tiscali Support Is a Joke

Back around June 2009, Tiscali took over the running of my old Pipex network.  And whereas before I was averaging around 2400Kbps, it all suddenly went pear shaped and dropped to less than 600Kbps for a few days.

Upload/Download Speed Over Time

It did recover later that day, but ever since Tiscali took over the routing of my data, both the upload and download speeds have steadily decreased until yesterday, they nose dived to below 750Kbps.  Pipex insist they do no traffic shaping, no bandwidth throttling on my connection, but I beg to differ!

I contacted support to see if any work was going on. “Absolutely none sir, nothing has changed this end”.
So I sent them a copy of the above data and rang them back. There response was “Have you changed your phone sir?” to which I replied “What everyday since June 2009 !”
He assured me nothing had changed and that there were no problems his end. I then asked them to sort out my Mac code as I had enough and I would be transferring away ASAP.
Funnily enough, within 30mins, my upload speed has shot up above 2000Kpbs for the first time since June 2009.

Pipex/Tiscali/Talk Talk absolutely suck and are to be avoided like the plague regardless of how cheap they are.

You are much better taking a look at Plus Net (although now they come under BT, I’d be weary of that).  My top suggestion at the moment is believe it or not, O2 Broadband.  Yes, they are a big corporate group, but their customer service is first rate. If you tell them there is a problem, they actually listen to you. They don’t treat you like some half witted idiot, but they actually listen to what you have to say.

So why am I still with Pipex? Because the buggers owe me over £400 in over payments and the instant I leave them, I face a long haul through the courts to try and claim it back. As for Ofcom? Forget it. They know who pays their wages and are about as effective as a chocolate fireguard.

My Broadband Ping - My Shite Pipex Connection

And if you wanted further proof of just how bad Pipex/Tiscali can be, just take a look above.
They insisted absolutely nothing was wrong at their end. It took 30mins of ranting at their support guy for them to go actually get off their arse and take a look. And finally, after 8am, things magically get a whole lot better.

Be warned… stay clear of Pipex and Tiscali…

Category: General, Technowotsits, Web Stuff

Posted by Chris Wright at 12:52 PM | TrackBack (0)

December 6, 2010

Warm As Toast

Warm as toast thanks to Mr Sweep... on TwitpicFinally had the chimney swept after the hammering it took last year. Couldn't book the chimney sweep until Friday last week, by which time all the snow had gone. But saying that, the warmest it reached over the weekend was 2.5deg.

It was minus –8deg on the outside thermometer when I woke this morning, so I quickly got the fire going.  Crumpet, marshmellows and a few chestnuts tonight for supper methinks.

Category: Around the Home, General

Posted by Chris Wright at 3:59 PM | TrackBack (0)

November 10, 2010

Letter to Home Office - November 10th 2010

Dear Sirs,
I would very much like to show my concern over the current extradition laws, especially with respect to the current state of affairs with the US.
Current legislation appears to give a very lopsided difference between the requirements of the UK versus the US in the conditions that are required in order for extradition to take place.
Whilst I realise that this is due to differences between UK and US laws, I would still expect UK citizens to be protected by UK laws at all times.

In abolishing the need for evidence when extraditing to most countries in the world, this has removed the safety net once afforded to UK citizens in that they will always obtain a 'fair trial'.
How is it that the US because of it's Constitution has a provision that any country requesting the extradition of a persons or people must have evidence of the crime committed by the person being extradited?  All other European and Commonwealth countries signed up to a similar treaty did so on the understanding that we all played by the same rule book.
For the UK to extradite someone from the US they only need establish ‘probable cause’ of which the US constitution’s fourth amendment has defined as “information sufficient to warrant a prudent person’s belief that the wanted individual had committed a crime”

  • Whilst it may be impossible for us to create a law that is compliant with both UK law and the US Constitution, all I ask is that they UK Government should introduce the forum bar with respect to extradition.
  • The Home secretary should be given the powers to halt extradition to the US if they feel that their is a lack of evidence. Reasonable cause is not justification enough for people or persons to be extradited to the US.
  • The same should be applied to the European Arrest Warrant.  The UK Government should protect it's citizens by ensuring that the trial they receive in any Foreign country is at least of equivalent standard to that of which they would expect within the UK. UK citizens have a right to be protected by their UK Government at all times.
  • When a crime is mainly committed in the UK, that person should be tried here.  It is my personal belief that this provides a simple solution to the problem where the victims of the crime or the scenes of crime are spread around one or more countries.  If the crime was committed upon UK soil, it should be tried upon UK soil under UK laws.
  • The US-UK treaty is most definitely unbalanced for the reasons I have previously mentioned above.
  • Requesting countries must provide sufficient evidence in order to prove an allegation. If such allegations are terrorism related for example, the UK already has systems in place to help protect UK citizens and those should be afforded to foreign countries by applying UK law.

Many thanks for allowing me the opportunity to express my views on this matter and I look forward to following the outcome of this review.

Lastly, I would like to add that Home Secretary needs to clearly state that Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to the USA until this "Review" has been completed any changes passed in to Law by the UK Government.
The family of Gary McKinnon are being subjected to pressures and events tantamount to torture in not knowing the fate that is to be bestowed upon Gary. This must be addressed immediately!

Category: General, Politics, UK

Posted by Chris Wright at 5:04 AM | TrackBack (0)