The First Conservative Budget for more than a decade

I'm still "running the numbers", but at the moment it seems like it's the first time I've ever known a Conservative budget that wasn't completely ideology-driven, and actually did more than a dismissive hand-wave at those on lower incomes.

Harriet Harman's points (Merseyside worst hit, wealthy Cheshire least; substantial job losses to come) were well made, though.

Where I felt it was weak was in support of small businesses -- well, I would, wouldn't I?

In the current economic position, Big Business is more part of the problem than the solution. It acts as a brake on economic development. Equally, since the Tories are looking towards big Civil Service job cuts, there's going to be a fallback in tax receipts and an increase in unemployment. What will boost us out of the doldrums will be small business growth -- the only economic sector that can show genuine growth despite overall recession or stagnation ... provided that that growth isn't stifled by onerous taxation or bureaucracy. I didn't see much in the Budget speech that made a difference there, one way or the other. I'd hoped for more but, given the pre-Election manifesti of the Tories and LDs, I wasn't holding my breath.

Still, not as bad as I'd feared, nor as skewed to topping-up already full pockets. The full public services cutback plans will be the pivot around which the economic recovery will move. It remains to be seen in which direction it turns.

Phone tariffs, and bizarre ways to get them

I just had an interesting chat with Carphone Warehouse's Loyalty Team. The upshot of it is...a SIM-only tariff that costs me (well, LookBox) £5 per month, for which I get unlimited internet use¹, 600 call minutes and a never-going to-need number of texts each month. Oh, and 80% off call costs when I'm roaming abroad, which is often.

There's got to be a catch, right?

Yep. It's a cashback deal. £35/month up front, and you've got to send back your 6^th, 12^th and 18^th bill in order to get each of the £180 cashbacks. "Guaranteed" cashback, though, so if you miss your "slot", you can still claim it later.

I said, "Hang on - you already know my billing details, right? You already have my bills - you ought to, you send them to me! So what's that all about?"

"It's just what you have to do to claim the cashback."

I asked, "What happens if I can't find the bill?"

Now it gets really daft.

"That's OK. Give us a call, we'll print out another copy of the bill, and post it to you. Then you can send it to us to claim the cashback."

"Couldn't I just ask you to print out the bill and send it direct to the cashback department for me?"

"Sorry, it's just what you have to do to claim the cashback."

<*Wibble*!>


¹ The usual "Fair Use Policy" (i.e. to be fair, please don't use it!) applies, of course.

Diane Birch is channelling Sandi Thom!

I just heard Diane Birch on Later with Jools Holland.

She just sounds SO like Sandi Thom! Now let me say that that's no bad thing. I love Sandi's music and lyrics. But now I've got to buy another artist, dammit!

Shouty marketing

I really can't stand shouty marketing material. I unsubscribed from one online magazine when I got an email that took that to the ludicrous limit.

Here's what I wrote to them:

Dear Mike and Webmaster,

SORRY, but I REALLY can't STAND emails that insist on SHOUTING RANDOM words. It's a VERY ANNOYING way of writing, and DOESN'T SPEAK WELL of the journalism STANDARDS of the magazine it REPRESENTS.

Most PEOPLE wouldn't let YOU KNOW why they UNSUBSCRIBED, but I THOUGHT I'd give you that COURTESY.

All the best,

Jon

US Airways Free WiFi? No, not really.

I'm a pretty heads-up kind of guy.

Let me rephrase that. I'm pretty much a heads-up kind of guy. (I never claimed to be pretty!) Every computer I own or control has virus protection, firewalling (usually customised), intruder detection, and a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not going to discuss. So it takes a lot to put one past me.

Someone did.

This January, after the Consumer Electronics Show 2010 in Vegas, I was coming back via LAX. (That's Los Angeles International Airport, to anyone who still flies by boat.) I'm in the bloody-awful Air New Zealand lounge, which Virgin Atlantic has the misfortune to share. So I'm looking around for WiFi, and I spot "US Airways Free WiFi" on the list. Sounds good to me. LAX is a US Airways hub, and I've just flown from Vegas on a US Airways flight, so I'm entitled, right? I connect. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work, so I disconnect, and try one or two others. Eventually, I find one that does seem to work, check my email, and shut down the laptop.

Wind forward a month or so.

I'm at home, on the same laptop, when the router goes down. I power-cycle the router, and sit on the "Wireless Network Connections"¹ dialog, waiting for the network to come up again. And I see: "US Airways Free WiFi". Not in leafy Cambridgeshire, surely?

So, I've been "had". The apparent network I connected to at LAX was in fact an ad-hoc (computer-to-computer) network, not an access point. In my defence, if I'd not been exhausted from four days of exhibiting at the biggest trade show on Earth (and the inevitable evening entertainments), the subsequent teardown, and travel, I'd have spotted the "ad-hoc" symbol in the networks list, and avoided it like a leper. But that's exactly how hackers do these things. Travellers are weary mortals, and easy prey.

Ever since that airport incident, my own laptop had been broadcasting "US Airways Free WiFi" to everyone else, encouraging them to connect with me, and start broadcasting it for themselves. It's like sneezing in a crowded room.

What was lost? Nothing, as it happens. If I'd had any shared folders advertised, the peer to which I'd connected could have raided them, but for good and sound reasons I didn't have network shares enabled.

The fix is very simple, and I recommend it to anyone else who travels with their laptop. It assumes you're using Windows' own WiFi configuration tools: if you're using a vendor-supplied tool instead, you'll have to work it out for yourself.

The vast majority of computer users have never needed to use an ad-hoc network, so the sensible thing to do, since it's a vector for attack, is to disable ad-hoc networking completely until uncured ham flaps past the window, and you decide you do need to use it. Ad-hoc networking, that is; not the ham. Ahem.

Here's how you do it on Windows XP¹. I don't use Vista (in fact, I upgrade² all Vista machines under my control to XP), and haven't yet needed to buy a Windows 7 machine, so if you're using any other Windows, you'll have to adapt these instructions to your own operating system.

1. From the Start menu, select Control Panel, and choose "Network Connections" from the list.
   
2. Right-click on "Wireless Network Connection", and select "View Available Wireless Networks".
   
3. In the left panel in the pop-up window that follows, click on "Change advanced settings". You'll get a list of all sorts of stuff you don't care about.
   
4. Select the "Wireless Networks" tab at the top of the window.
   
5. Near the bottom of the page that's now show, there's an "Advanced" button. Click it.
   
6. There's a list of three options shown. Select "Access point (intrastructure) networks only". If the "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks" box is checked, uncheck that one too. Then OK your way out of the dialog, and close everything else.
   

You're now protected, at last. With that one, simple change, you've prevented hackers using your machine to propagate this meme, and you've prevented anyone from viewing your shared folders. Now, why couldn't Microsoft have done that by default?

¹ Yes, Windows. I know, I'm a Linux guy by preference, but I do use Windows. (And then spend most of my time in Linux sessions in VirtualBox, or over SSH-hardened connections to Linux boxes, of course.)

² When I install another OS version, and it goes faster, uses less resources, is more compatible with past programs, works with more hardware, has less bugs and dies less often, that's an upgrade, right?

Copy of a complaint to the BBC about proposed closure of 6Music

I gather from a variety of news sources that plans are under consideration at the BBC to close 6music. I believe that this would be a profoundly retrograde step.

6music is the only national radio station to address its specific audience: those who wish to listen to an eclectic range of music from the 1960s to the present day. Even Planet Rock, the nearest comparison, has a more limited range of music styles and dates.

6music's quality of production is second to none, and its presenter line-up is stellar.

The _only_ reason why 6music has low figures is that it is only available on DAB.

Let's draw a comparison.

If BBC Radio 3 was a digital-only station, its listening figures would be dire. Even though R3 is on all formats, and 6Music only on digital, R3's listening hours are only three times those of 6Music.

The unavoidable conclusion is that if 6Music were on analogue as well, its figures would leave R3 in its dust.

And yet 6Music is apparently under threat, and R3 carries on regardless.

6Music has an excellent, high-value audience demographic, comprising individuals with broad musical tastes that are unsatisfied by any other radio station. From a personal perspective, R1 is too oriented to playlisted low-grade pop, frequently repeated, R2 is too staid and uninteresting, and the BBC offers me no other music programming (except for 6Music) that I'm interested to hear. I do listen to Radio 4. If 6Music were on FM analogue, I'd be listening to that in the car rather than R4, much of the time.

6Music is a superb asset that the BBC should nurture and exploit, not discard as it if were an inconvenience.If its closure is still under discussion, please do the sensible thing, and find a better, easier target. Even after the firestorm over GCap's attempted closure of Planet Rock, I do not believe you have the slightest idea of just how big a hole you would be digging for yourselves. Stop before you see kangaroos; that's my advice.

Jon Green

The iCan'tPhone

So the speculation ends.

Steve Jobs has delivered us of an iPhone that can't phone, or a keyboardless laptop that can't multitask. Remarkable, since even Apple's Lisa, in 1983, could.

The Apple fanboi press predictably drooled over the prospect of a device that can't do email and web browsing at the same time, can't do USB unless it's in its Dock, and can't dock unless it's in the (less useful) portrait mode. Oh, and its screen resolution - 1024x768 - makes it even less impressive than the cheapest netbooks.

It's light, though, and it's got a fruit on the front. What more could you want?

[Ecademy] Community : Ecademy - making sales, or advancing business?

[This is one of the blog posts I posted at Ecademy. I am reposting them here as I probably won't be in Ecademy much longer.]

[Date posted to Ecademy: 09-Oct-2008. Original URL: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=113882.]

Reading Nikki's recent blog, "I'm on Ecademy to make money, and so are you..." gave me pause for thought. [Later note: Nikki seems to have left Ecademy, so the links no longer work.]

Many Ecademists are here to promote their B2B enterprises - services, usually. It's a perfect playground for marketing and promotions people: in using Ecademy to sell their skills, they're demonstrating them. Job done!

I get worried, though, about Nikki's view of an Ecademy where everyone's here to make sales.

I have a vision of a circle of people in suits, each selling to the one in front, who's selling to the one in front of them, ... A bit like a sales version of MC Escher's "Ascending and Descending".

Clearly, that can't work, or involvement in Ecademy's a zero sum, and there are as many losers as winners. We all want to be winners, right?

As far as I can tell, and the Powers will doubtless be along shortly to set me right if I'm wrong, Ecademy was always about networking, more than direct selling.

The way it has to work is if we're primarily working towards promoting our businesses - and, more importantly, each other's businesses by referral - to non-Ecademists, with sales to Ecademists a secondary objective. That's how the zero sum gets broken. Coincidentally, it's also how networking works best!


As I've said elsewhere, I'm here mainly to get access to the right people, in the right places, to advance LookBox's success. Right now, I'm looking for a part-time (portfolio) CFO, and people to help with business development into Developing World educational projects, particularly Indian Subcontinent and China . In all cases, people who themselves have the right contacts to make things happen.

It's possible that, in the process of finding these people, I manage to jump a step and make direct contact with potential purchasers of our products and services. If that happens, I'll be delighted of course - but it's an aspiration, not an expectation.

Either way, with the right contacts made, we stand fair to make excellent sales ... just not in the direct model.

The quid pro quo for all of this - apart from the membership subscription, of course - is to be a connector, someone who enables connections, rather than simply exploiting them.

How many of the intensely sales-oriented individuals who blogspam are primarily connectors? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that in networking meetings, the most pushy self-promoters have been the least likely to say, "I can't help you with that, but [name] over there can, and I know a couple of others who aren't here who might be useful too. Give me a card, and I'll get you set up." And they've had a lot fewer around them than the connectors, the hubs of the room, as Mike Segall pointed out in a recent seminar at a business conference in Birmingham.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's wrong to promote one's business to Ecademists. For some, particularly the marketing and bizdev people, that makes perfect sense.

But I'm mindful that there's a lot more sales opportunity out there than in here.

If we're all to advance our businesses, doesn't it make sense to most of us to change the emphasis from "How much money have I made out of Ecademy"? to "How much money have I helped Ecademists make?"

[Update: please also check out Fraser Hay's blog - same sentiment, different angle.]

[Ecademy] Community: Autoconnect meets guanxi - a different perspective

[This is one of the blog posts I posted at Ecademy. I am reposting them here as I probably won't be in Ecademy much longer.]

[Date posted to Ecademy: 14-Jan-2010. Original URL: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=142626.]

By now, anyone on Ecademy who hasn't been living under a rock has become aware of autoconnect. It's a feature that's being introduced experimentally, allowing its subscribers to make random connexions amongst the Ecademy community. If you've received a request recently that said:

(name) Was sending invitations to join their network on Ecademy, discovered you were already here and requests that you add them as a contact.

...that was an autoconnect request. If you've received one, you've probably received lots. Brace yourself; it's going to get worse yet.

This is scattergun networking. If you fire enough cartridges at enough trees, chances are you'll hit a bird eventually.

Let's draw a contrast.

I'd like to introduce you, if you haven't already heard of it, to the Chinese concept of guanxi (關係 or 关系 ). Pronounced "GWEN-shee" (approximately), it describes your value, as expressed by the quality of the network of people upon whom you can draw.

Guanxi networking is often misunderstood in the West to be similar to the kind of business networking with which Westerners are familiar. In fact, a guanxi relationship is more personal. It must be maintained actively, or it will wither, and it's not as casual as Western network relationships. Properly managed, a guanxi network connection is for life.

The heart of guanxi is exchanges of favours. If I want to connect with a certain person, I will find out who I know has guanxi with them, and then I'll use my guanxi with that connector in order to make the connexion. Sometimes, there's a whole chain of connexions, and often you end up making further guanxi relationships as you work down the chain to complete the connexion.

Equally, it's expected that if a guanxi friend needs help, you assist without complaint.

When I joined Ecademy, the ethos seemed to me to be similar to guanxi. A business community that was oriented towards mutual help, and long-term personal relationships. In fact, the Blackstar concept seemed about as near to guanxi as I've ever seen in Occidental networking.

Contrast this to autoconnect. Networking by robots - about as far from personal networking as it's possible to get. I've commented here and expanded here about how autoconnect requests are functionally identical to spam. And like spam, there's presently no way of opting out. You get the requests whether or not you want them.

It's also about as far from guanxi, and personal networking, as it gets. Maybe a valuable - guanxi - relationship can arise from autoconnect, but the vast majority of autoconnects won't yield any benefit.

Let's consider that for a moment. You gain thousands of contacts - or, at least, try to - but only a small handful work out. You've put several thousand people to inconvenience for a marginal benefit for a tiny proportion.

The business model is depressingly familiar. "Spamford" Wallace would be proud.

Today's music tips

Greetings, gentle readers.

I've just found two groups I really like.

First, thanks to BBC News Online's coverage of the UK music pundits' poll, I finally got the message about Animal Collective. Really cool psychedelic-indie-trance-rock-sampling-oh-whatever. Just take a listen and work it out for yourselves, geez, make me do all the work, why don't you?

Secondly, having gone to Animal Collective's MySpace page and added them as fiends - sorry, friends - MySpace suggests some guy called HJ, out of a group called Nemesea, from Holland. This guy is nuts. In successive tracks, house/trance that morphs into something like an Evanescence number, then superbly executed lounge jazz (a skit on "Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)"), followed by classic Ibiza house, and finally sublime fast rock that suggests what would happen if Steve Hackett fronted Metallica and riffed on Latin monastic choral music. HJ's guitar work is superb, absolutely top-drawer, and he's got such a broad reach in styles that I'm in awe.

[Later note] I did get the Nemesea back catalogue. I won't say I was disappointed, but it was very much an Evanescence clone, nothing really to get as excited about as HJ's own work.

Off to the vet's...

Well, that's it. I've been "fixed", like some dog or cat. Two kids, and that's the lot. That's OK, two kids are quite enough!

Such a quick procedure too; about 20 minutes later, it's a plastic cup of water (didn't fancy the aspartamine-laced blackcurrant squash), a plate of biscuits and a feeling of, "Was that it?"

In today's news...

1. From Ananova (http://www.ananova.com/News/story/sm_3591742.html:

A council has spent thousands of pounds on a scheme to teach the over-50s how to wear their slippers safely.

The Warwickshire County Council service allows 'older people' to bring in their old slippers and replace them with a new pair, to cut the risk of falling over.

For a fee of £5, participants receive a fitting session, a new pair of the Velcro fastening slippers, and advice on how to wear them, reports the Daily Telegraph.

In other news, South Cambridgeshire District Council are due to introduce "Breathing safely" seminars.

2: (Many sources) Contestants on I'm A Celebrity... catch, kill, cook and eat a rat.

And this is a story...how? If I was being starved by the producers, I'd have done the same thing. It's supposed to be - if you can believe it - a survival situation. That's the premise. So you treat it as a survival situation. Best of all, it was a world-renowned chef (Gino D'Acampo) doing the killing and cooking! Blimey, even I would eat rat he'd cooked - and, seafood aside, I don't eat meat!

The really daft thing is that contestants are eating invertebrates every day, for entertainment, and apparently it would even be acceptable to kill and eat crocodiles, "but it depends very much on the way they are killed and processed for human consumption," according to the Australian RSPCA. So you're only allowed to kill animals that aren't cute and fluffy. Future contestants please note.

And finally...

3: Go Go Hamster toy Mr Squiggles is safe, Cepia insists (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8398586.stm)

NO IT'S NOT!

Two minutes after its wrappings are rent from its trembling, terrified body, it will be mauled and abused by hordes of unrestrained and brutal youngsters bent on trauma and suffering! If it could speak, it would be crying for Gino D'Acampo to give it a merciful end.

Somehow, I suspect it's a Slow News Day.

What's with the weird blog title? Are you mad, or something?

No, not remotely. At least, that's what the crows tell me.

I've no idea what came over me, when I was hunting around for a title. All the ones I really wanted had gone long since, so it was time to find something more quirky. Anyway, I had a chat with the crows, and they suggested...well, you get the picture.

So, "Just this side of sane."

But which side is this side?

HP printers, XP, a laptop, and 100% CPU!

Let's talk about the symptoms first. You're using your PC (in my case, always a laptop), running Windows XP, and the CPU fan speeds up...and up...and up...and stays like that, screaming at top speed.

Usually, you expect that the fan will run down again when the processor's finished an unusually tough job, like some poxy website's unnecessary Flash animation. But no. Not this time.

When you come to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to run the Task Mangler, sorry--Manager, you find that SVCHOST.EXE is maxing out one CPU.

Sound familiar?

I'm betting you're set up to use an HP printer, and that printer has a network port (whether or not you use it). Right? Thought so. Read on.

The cause is actually HP's network printer drivers, in particular a service called "HP Network Device Support".

If you want to know the in-depth technical reasons for the problem, "zairon", in an excellent blog post drills down to the individual lines of assembler code containing the bug. It's a salutory lesson in how to look foolish in front of your customers.

The solution is delightfully simple.

First, hold down the Windows key on your keyboard, using it like a SHIFT key, and press the R key, then let go of both. You should get a "Run" dialog popping up. (If you don't have a Windows key, click on Start, then the "Run..." entry at the bottom-right of the pop-up.)

Type "services.msc" into the box, and hit ENTER. You should now get the Services application popping up.

Now scroll down the list until you find an entry named "HP Network Devices Support". Double-click on the name, and it should bring up a dialog describing that service.

Before you do anything else, hit the Stop button in that dialog. Aaaaand...relax.

Now find the "Startup type" drop-down list.

What you do now depends on how you connect to the printer. Either way, hit the "Stop" button now

If you only use it through USB, or if the printer uses a static (unchanging) IP address, rather than being given one dynamically using DHCP, you can select "Disabled". Then hit the "Stop" button in the dialog, and listen to the fan spin down.

If the printer uses a dynamic IP address (DCHP), select "Manual" instead. Then hit the "Stop" button. If the printer changes its IP address, you may have to start the service briefly, so that it can be rediscovered. Or beat up your sysadmin until s/he gives the printer the static IP address it's always longed for and deserved.

I find it astonishing and (vicariously) embarrassing that HP can leave this bug festering in its drivers for several years, despite many, many users reporting it. I know they have--enough of them have blogged enough about it, and their problems getting HP to understand it, that HP has no excuse!

Anyway, if this helps to add a little more momentum behind the movement to get HP to fix the bloody drivers, or saves one other person the same troubles, so much the better.

Technology World 09

What a refreshing change!

A trade show in which just about every person we talked to had relevance to us, where there were no "liggers", refreshments and biscuits were free to both exhibitors and delegates, and there was enough traffic to keep us very busy for the two days of the expo. Even the car parking was free!

Full marks to the UK Trade and Investment people for a superbly-well-organised event. Well done, people!