T-9 days

Well, the builder thinks we can start the garage a week on Monday.

Yay!

So this week I get the utility room out of the way - we have a floor, and even another layer of ply, and tiler coming on Sunday/Monday. Then we can get skirting board, sink unit and worktop, and cupboards. Maybe I can get that done during the week.

We fixed your FTTC - that'll be £25,200.00 please

I go on about SFI charges, but the latest scam is BT charging "Time Related Charges" for work (mainly on FTTC line faults).

We had a customer with a fault on an FTTC line, constantly dropping, many times a day. We had, of course, replaced all of the equipment and had it connected to the master socket test port (so no extension wiring), so proving the issue was with BT.

BT's tests said: "Impairment in copper joint detected most likely in local network. Please continue to submit a trouble report" so we reported a fault. BT then asked us to "arrange an appointment" (not, as is more usual, a case of saying there is nothing wrong and "offering" an SFI service).

So, at BT's request, we arranged an appointment, and the engineer went out. The line was off for around an hour while he worked on it. Now it is all working - no more drops. Thank you BT.

To our surprise we now have a bill from BT for "Time Related Charges" for this fault report, as BT had closed it as "Customers Equipment, Error or Misoperation;Fault found on customer sited non BT maintained equipment". Somewhat odd as BT's own tests said to report a fault, and we had not approved any "Time Related Charges", and we had already eliminated all customer equipment (the same equipment still in use and working). In fact it was BT who asked us to report a fault and BT who asked us for an appointment. They took this upon themselves all the way.

This is, in itself, typical of the hassle we have every day from BT.

Except this time BT have charged for 350 hours of time related charges on the fault. The entire fault report end to end was only 7 days (168 hours), most of which was waiting for BT to actually go out and do something. From point of no return at start of day, to closed job, was under 7 hours. They would have had to have had 50 engineers working for that whole 7 hour period to justify this charge!

The charge for this one fault repair?

£25,200.00

And BT are actually meant to be double checking our bills before we get them because of the number of incorrect charges. Odd for that one to have slipped through. Well done BT.

Needless to say that this will be added to the disputes!

P.S. It is probably worth explaining one of the underlying issues here. TRCs are for engineering work. Now, either the engineer did work on BT's side of the NTE (to fix a fault), in which case we do not have to pay, or they did work on the customers side of the NTE, in which case we did not request or agree the work, so again, we do not have to pay. Unless we specifically order work to be done, and pre-agree a TRC budget, and it is not work to fix a BT fault, we should never get a TRC charge whether it is £252 or £25,200.

P.P.S. Three FTTC faults on the bill with TRCs total £39,744.00

On getting a new TV

LG 3D glasses obscure alternate rows

I forgot to say - some things you must do on getting a new TV, whether LCD or OLED or whatever.

Set to "Just Scan"

You need to set the picture to actually fit the screen - HD content is normal now for a lot of sources, especially on Sky TV, and is an image transmitted digitally using 1920x1080 pixels. Your HD TV has a panel that has 1920x1080 pixels. This is no co-incidence! You need the image to fit on to the panel perfectly as designed for the standard and as conceived by the film/programme makers. Sadly all TVs assume you want to upscale the image - taking those 1920x1080 pixels and using algorithms that blur and expand to larger than that, throw away some of the border and then display on your 1920x1080 pixel panel. This is STUPID. Do not do it! Set the TV to "Just Scan" or whatever your model calls it.

Turn off "Vivid"

The TV will be set to show colours really brightly and unnecessarily so - this is for showrooms. Set to display sensibly, or at the very least carefully consider how you want to see the image. Don't just stick to the horrid default that turns people's faces tomato red.

Kill the motion tracking crap

The TV will try and interpolate motion on the 25Hz or 50Hz images and create intermediate images. This rarely works well and often screws up really badly. You brain is far better than the TV at doing this, which is why TV works at these frequencies in the first place. I have no idea why they even try - it is a nightmare. Maybe it works if you watch football, I don't know, but in almost all other cases you get weird juddering effects and heaven help you if you want to read any scrolling text on a news channel!

Choosing a TV

Looks like red/white/blue/green pixels on LG OLED

Choosing a new TV can be tricky - it is one of those things that is always moving forward and there is always new technology and something new to tempt you.

So I am going to try and cover some of the things that may help in the choice, and explain some of the experiences I have had with TVs recently.

I have used many TVs, from different manufacturers, and the latest is testing a 55" LG OLED HD TV.

Price

The price is perhaps the key thing for almost everyone - and typically you'll buy a TV that is just slightly more than you budgeted for as there will always be some feature that is available if you stretch that little bit on budget.

Size

One of the key factors in price is the size of the TV, and this is likely to always be the case. The other key factor is the use of latest features in the technology, but size is a massive factor. To be fair, size is often a matter of what will fit the room - a small room does not need a 65" TV, and even a large room can work perfectly well with a 55" TV. You need to consider what you can afford and how it will look. It is possible for a TV to be too big if in a small room.

Curved

A curved TV is one of the latest things. It is possible with some of the newer technologies, and is an odd thing if you ask me. I could not really see the point of it, to be honest. A curved TV will almost always not be wall mountable (I know one person that has). However, the key thing I have noticed when trying one is the reflection. In my front room my seat (my "spot") gets reflection of the windows at the back of the room, and that is annoying. However, a curved TV reflects a smaller part of the room, and just by sitting slightly to the left or right I can completely eliminate the reflection of the windows. This, for me, is one of the only reasons to consider a curved TV - otherwise you hardly notice the slight curve.

OLED

The latest tech for TVs is OLED (organic LED) which is where each pixel is individual LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) which emit light. This products an amazing picture, and the black is black and the contrast is infinite. It looks stunning, I have to say. The only issue is lifetime which I cannot easily tell on a new TV. I am impressed with OLED (on an LG).

LED/LCD

The slightly older technology is LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). This is damn good, but confusingly we see TVs sold as "LED", which just means "LCD" with an LED backlight. The way LCD works is you have a backlight behind the screen, and the LCD blocks some of that light. Compared to OLED this uses more power, and the black always lets some light through so the contrast is not as good. The best LED backlit LCD TVs use selective lighting behind the LCD, so that you get black when the screen (or large parts of it) are black as they turn off the back light in those areas. LCD is cheaper than OLED but not quite as good. Even so, these days, LCD is damn good. An LED backlit LCD is usually lower power and thinner than an older LCD, but not always as good in terms of quality.

3D

3D is a nice feature, and some 3D films work really well. There are two ways to do this - one uses a fast screen changing left/right image and shuttered glasses. These are, in my opinion, bad. They need batteries that are always flat when you want to use them, and are expensive. They flicker which is annoying if you can see it. They bleed through as very difficult to make them work perfectly (each eye sees a "shadow" of the other eye's image slightly offset as a ghost image). They only work when your head is dead level. By contrast, the other method as used in cinemas is polarised glasses (circularly polarised) with an LG TV (they are the ones with the patent). Only downside is you lose every other line of the image as each line is left or right eye and fixed (see below re 4k TVs). However, the image works at off angles, has no flicker, and really works well. The glasses are cheap, light, and even have "clip ons" for normal glasses that also work in the cinema. This, for me, means an LG TV as they are the only ones with such a system of good passive 3D.

HD/4k

Most TVs these days are HD, so 1920x1080, but the latest standard is 4k (usually 3840x2160). 4k is expensive as a latest tech, and is not typically broadcast though netflix have some 4k content and no doubt it will be the next big thing. One nice thing if you have a 4k 3D LG is you can watch HD 3D without losing lines, as every other 4k line is left/right so at HD nothing is lost (in theory, I have yet to test). I have seen 4k though, and it is impressive - I can see the difference with SD/HD but 4k is just that bit better and impressive.

Smart TV

I don't really expect to use the "Smart" features of a TV as I will use with an AppleTv, Sky box, PC, and so on. But they are pretty good these days. The latest LG has netflix and talks to flex, and so on, so not too bad. They even have half decent web browsers these days. Beware that they log all you do back to the manufacturer (often unencrypted) so you may want to firewall them. I'd be happy if they did a TV with just many HDMI and not "smart" at all.

Sound

I am no expert on sound and would connect to some external thing via optical - sorry I am not a lot of help on that.

Conclusion

Well, for the garage, it will have to be LG (for the passive 3D), OLED (just looks so good), 4k (well, you have to), and probably 55" or 65" (big room). Sadly that will have to be curved I expect. It will not be cheap.

OFCOM numbering tax

I have raised this before, but it is worth re-iterating the stupidity of this latest tax and why I think as a "trial" it should fail and be scrapped.

The basic principle is simple - OFCOM are charging for telephone numbering blocks in some area codes. It is a trial, and hence only 30 areas that are short of numbering. The charges are 10p/number allocated, but a discount of 18p/number for ported out numbers.

There are a number of key problems with this scheme:-

Unfair on existing telcos

The charge has been introduced and applied to existing allocations which have been obtained from OFCOM on the basis that there is no charge for an allocation. Making this charge only to new allocations would have the same effect of reducing unnecessary allocations and encouraging conservation of numbers but without ruining the existing business models of existing telcos.

Unfair on small telcos

A larger telco like BT will have many blocks in each area, and they will be mostly full blocks with a final part filled block. As such they will have paying customers for the majority of number charges. However, as the charge applies per allocation (1,000 block is smallest), a small telco with only a few customers in a block has to pay for the whole allocation. This makes it harder to include the cost of the numbering tax in the pricing for the service. If it is was only "in use" numbers it would be fairer and easy to include in the pricing and business model. Given that OFCOM already have reporting from telcos (for ported out numbers) they could just as easily ask for utilisation levels and charge based on these.

Does not encourage conservation (the objective of the trial)

Conservation is discouraged for two reasons. Firstly as the charge is per allocation, it works better if more numbers are in use in each allocation rather than fewer. This means telcos will want to make incentives to get more paying customers to help cover the costs of the numbering tax that applies to the whole block. If this works that means they need new blocks sooner. Secondly, where a telco uses one of the tricks described below, to port out numbers, they reduce the bill per ported out number, and so will want to encourage more number take up and then porting so as to reduce the bill further.

Not in spirit of Comms Act

The Comms Act actually has a clause that specifically covers cases where the price for numbering allocation has been agreed with a telco when allocated, and prohibits OFCOM increasing that price. This seems to be a good principle and designed specifically to stop this sort of abuse and impact existing allocations. OFCOMs view appears to be that no pricing was agreed (it was not necessary as it was ZERO) but if OFCOM had agreed a price they could not have increased it. Increasing from zero seems to me to be abuse and very much against the spirit of the Comms Act and possibly even in breach of it. Making new charges for new allocations is a separate matter.

Can break numbers for existing users

Until the numbering charge, a block of numbers is an "asset" to a telco, and a portable one. If a telco is wound up, or simply stops doing numbering (e.g. a company stops doing VoIP), then they can sell or give away their numbering blocks to another telco that will be happy to take them on and continue to provide service to existing users. One of the key things with any block is that it may have some "ported out numbers" in the block, which a telco can ensure continue to work. These are not really a money making part of the block but not a lot of hassle either, and allow the rest of the block to be used for profitable customers. Because of this number blocks would almost never be "returned" to OFCOM. However, now number blocks have a cost then they are less of an "asset", and may end up being returned to OFCOM. In that case, even if the telco returning them has no remaining customers, all ported out numbers would stop working. This is especially bad if a small telco goes bust. The ported out number users would find their numbers stop and nothing they can do and nobody they can blame. A situation which simply would not happen before numbering charges came in.

Avoiding the charges?

We had one simple way to reduce charges - we made it part of our terms that anyone getting a number in any of the conservation areas would immediately port the number to another telco (not a related company) who would then sell back a VoIP wholesale service to us for use of that number. We set this up legitimately with a totally separate company and suitable formal cross billing for services. OFCOM have accepted the numbering charge discount with each such number being 18p/year off the 10p/year*1000 charge for the number block. This encourages us to sell more numbers in conservation areas now as each live number reduces our bill.

However, by total fluke we found that the charges were not even valid! Most of our numbers were allocated to a separate subsidiary company Andrews & Arnold (numbers) Ltd. This is a company we purchased that had already obtained blocks in every area code. We had intended to move the blocks over, but OFCOM made that difficult saying that the needed to audit all blocks in the process. So instead we bought and renamed the company and A&A(numbers) leased the use of the blocks to A&A. A&A(numbers) stopped doing any services directly. This means A&A(numbers) is not in fact a Communications Provide now (it has no network or services itself, it just provides use of numbering). OFCOM have had to agree that they are unable to charge a non Communications Provider, and so are refunding last year's charges and not charging this year. A&A do have a few blocks, including one for which we pay, but most of the cost was via A&A(numbers), so that is a win!

Trial failed?

Clearly the trial does not actually meet its objectives, and may be creating actual incentives to use more numbers in conservation areas. It is also incredibly easy to completely avoid these charges with little more than the cost of creating a separate company to hold the number blocks. OFCOM need to re-think things carefully and abandon the trial ASAP.

Floating floor

Ever wondered what a floating floor is? Well we have one.

Ours is wood (tongue and groove) with ply on top, all resting on top of polystyrene blocks which rest on/in concrete beams and thin air below that. Sadly that is building rubble, and not a secret tunnel to be used in case of zombie apocalypse.

Seriously, nothing is fixed down. The polystyrene flexes! The whole floor flexes. If you want tiles you are buggered - the tiles move and the grout cracks. In our kitchen the installer put a second layer of board on top to make it more solid, but still the tiles are moving enough to crack the grout.

However, for the utility room, we have looked under the wood - it was water damaged so we had to.

The solution - thick wooden frames resting in the beams on the lip, and insulation blocks in between.

This results in flooring that is actually screwed down to the wood frame and has little chance to flex or move. It is also around 25mm lower allowing some matting and tiling on top which will match the height of original floor it has to join in the hallway.

So far so good with these guys, B.W. REED & SON BUILDERS.

P.S. Why utility room - what happened to Man Cave? Well I had the boiler moved from the garage to the utility room, and as usual, that means doing the utility room first - floor, tiles, wall, unit, sink, cabinets, the lot. This is how things work isn't it :-) Man cave starts very soon!

#CryptoWars - why back doors in iMessages are stupid

Obviously that is a tad convoluted, and you might expect the phone to be able to work out keys to use automatically, but it raises serious questions.

With end to end encryption any "back door" has to be added by the sender. This means that if, say, someone in China texts someone in America, the sending phone has to add the necessary "back door" keys at the start. Now, US may be able to bully Apple in to adding their keys, perhaps by making US laws, but what if Chinese made laws saying Apple was not allowed to do that when on Chinese soil?

Even if you changed it to be a server based solution, what country wants to entrust all message intercepts on such a popular platform to the control and whims of a foreign country - we need end to end encryption to protect us, and countries need to insist on it to protect their citizens.

As I also ask at the end of the video - is this only down to the country you are in, or is the sender's (and recipient's) nationality a factor too? How would Apple know that?

But then whose keys are included at the sending end, in what circumstances, and by what legal jurisdiction?