sxa's Technical Musings

[Short link to this post if you need it: http://goo.gl/ayGcB or retweet me ] Yesterday @lewispeckover published an article about the fact that O2 were putting an HTTP header (x-up-calling-line-id) with the user's phone number in place on every non-encrypted web request put through their network by their proxies. This also affected MVNOs using O2, such as GiffGaff and Tesco Mobile. The proxies are used, amongst other things, to reduce image quality to improve page load times and other things. The injection of the HTTP header with the phone number is something they do to give the number to "trusted parties" who provide certain age-related services, where they can verify the number with the provider. This only happens when using O2's data network where the proxies are used, and not over any other connection such as your home wifi. Also some browsers, such as Opera and the BlackBerry ones make use of their own proxes and bypass O2's ones, and will therefore not be s...

[Short link to this article if you need it: http://goo.gl/Q1E2H or retweet me ] As I've said before I'm happy to pay for music streaming but this week I've seen an increase in issues for streaming services such as Spotify and We7. This has been bubbling under for a while and the primary issue is that of the per-stream royalties that an artist/label/publisher gets when their music is played through spotify. However the whole concept appears to have blown up recently with some high profile acts like Coldplay shunning streaming services claiming "the album needs to be listed as a whole and not as individual tracks" and distributor STHoldings finding that over 98% of it's represented labels wanting to avoid having their music on spotify. There are valid arguments on both sides. Lets take three typical scenarios: I've mentioned elsewhere that I've bought more music than I did before getting my (paid for) We7 subscription, because of the amount of new musi...

[ Short link to this article if you need it: http://goo.gl/Vk0ZP or retweet me ] I've been looking at alternative energy suppliers recently (as everyone should) and so I was looking for the details of supplier's different tariffs. Bearing in mind the number of comparison sites out there who have access to this information, such as uSwitch , MoneySupermarket , FuelSwitch or any number of others that are on the UK Government's web site you'd think it would be easy to find that information on a supplier's own page. Some of them are better than others. e-On's list was pretty good. A PDF file is available from Southern Electric filtered by your postcode. Scottish Power give a PDF list but you have to filter it to your region yourself. Which is harder for getting the information, but interesting to compare if you're in a cheaper or more expensive area. Staying with Scottish Power, here is a screen shot of their currently available options list . It looks mor...

[ Short link to this article if you need it: http://goo.gl/fVqTx ] A couple of months ago I got an "important" letter in from BT. It had got to the end of the 12 month contract I'd signed up to and the letter said "To continue, do nothing". That's not really something that should have red "IMPORTANT" letters on the outside. I suppose it's not quite as bad as the letter I got inviting me to "bring my calls back to BT" at one point (my calls had been billed direct from BT for a few years...) At this point I logged into my account to see what I was paying for and if it was reasonable. It is absolutely horrendous trying to figure out how BT's charging system works. I have a plan (unlimited evening and weekends) that has a 'sticker' price of £16.90. You get a £3 discount if you sign up for a year as I had. Which means I'm paying £13.90/month right? Wrong. There is also a paper-free discount of £3.75, but that's listed a...

[Short link to this article if you need it: http://goo.gl/lDO91 or retweet me ] Most of this was written a year ago and I've finally posted it. So I'll get straight to the point - I object to browser plugins such as Adblock Plus ... the web is free because it's sponsored by adverts. Taking a single minded selfish approach and blocking adverts on sites where you're not paying to view content that has been put together by other people is not only inconsiderate but since you're tearing away the author's revenue source it should be considered along the same lines as music/film/software piracy. And yes, I really do feel that strongly about it. Most people don't. However, my opinion expressed in the introductory paragraph is purely related to unobtrusive adverts. There are several types of adverts where they really should be stopped: Flash adverts. They waste my computer's resources, don't work on all devices, and don't work if you have Fl...

I often tweet during live Formula 1 motor racing. Usually before each race starts I put up a disclaimer like this to warn followers I might fill up their timeline with F1 information. In order to try and reduce the impact of that for non-F1 fans, I've created a second twitter account, @F1sp . This account is NOT going to be used to post tweets (which stops me needing from switch between accounts), but rather to hide F1 tweets from people who aren't interested. How will this work? Well all of my F1 tweets will be prefixed with @F1sp. That means that unless you follow @F1sp as well as my @sxa555 account, you won't see them, because twitter will automatically hide them from your timeline. Bear in mind that if you follow me via a list for my F1 tweets, you'll need to add the @F1sp account to that list as well. I don't expect to post much in the F1sp account, it's purely there do give me the ability to 'hide' F1 tweets from those who are not interested. ...

[Short link if you need it: http://goo.gl/v6AkX ] This seemed like a good time to post this draft I've had given that Facebook is in the process of announcing some new privacy changes including tagging approvals and the ability to reset visibility of a post after you've posted it (instead of having to withdraw and repost as at present) and they are, of course another step in the right direction. There is a lot of information on the net from people who say that facebook isn't that great at privacy, and giving you control over your own data. And, well they're often right as I've said before . However there are a few things that I've heard people say that Facebook should provide, but they actually already do (and could do before Google+ before anyone starts). Here's a list, and how to access them (at the time of posting - they may move it of course - the last one's moved since I posted this!): Have your stream set to view just people in a list ...