sxa's Technical Musings

[Short link to this article if you need it - http://goo.gl/Id4dW - or retweet me ] Let me start by saying I'm a big supporter of the Raspberry Pi project and have been following it with a lot of anticipation for a while, and I love the goals of this project and what they've done so far. Technically I think it's brilliant. However I'm afraid to say that the release of the first batch of devices to the public hasn't really gone as expected. It's also worth pointing you at the OSNews article which is very positive to the company, and less so to the two distributors. They had said earlier in the week that they were going to make an announcement at 0600 GMT today (29th February 2012) and indeed they did - they changed to a static page (which stayed up - yay!) telling people that two distributors, the well known RS Components (Current Pi link is here ) and Farnell Electronics (link here ) were going to be shipping the first batch of 10,000 model B boards between th...

[Short link to this article if you need it - http:// goo.gl/uJWKM - or retweet me ] Since this is " Safer internet day ", one thing that always surprises me is how many people use their cards online without properly understanding and appreciating the implications of security and encryption online. I've mentioned issues with SecureCode/VerifiedByVisa before and a lot of people don't even do security well enough to get to the issues I mention. Let's take one example of SSL certificates. What would most people do when they see things like this dialog? I suspect most end users would just try and find the most effective way to dismiss the dialog i.e. accept the invalid certificate - and firefox doesn't help by having the "always accept this certificate" checkbox selected by default.. Which is exaclty the sort of thing that leaves you open to talking to a different server from the one you think you are. How many people would actually know enough to even ...

[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...