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Great Northern Trains First Class grott-hole

GreatNortherFirstClassTip
Great Northern Trains “First Class”. What you can’t see is the dirt, sticky carpets and tables.

I’m currently on the 11:52 Great (sic) Northern Trains service from Kings Cross to Cambridge. I’m in First Class. The compartment is a tip – strewn with litter and the tables are filthy. It has the kind of carpet that you stick to in places. The ticket collector has just been and gone, and I pointed out the state of the place. She shrugged. I enquired if anyone ever cleaned it. “Only if there’s time.”, she said.

I pointed out that this really wasn’t good enough, especially for a first class compartment. It wasn’t Northern Train’s fault, came the reply. Apparently “It’s because of the customers, we put up notices but they still drop litter.”

In a normal compartment I’d have some sympathy with this; in First Class it’s not really the right attitude. I’ve seen at least three Northern Trains staff crewing the train; one of them could clear it. Why else am I paying three times the price for the ticket? For a table I don’t want to use without using anti-bacterial cleaner first (which I forgot to pack silly me).

Update:

I brought the state of the compartment to the attention couple of Northern Trains customer service representative ticket barrier. Apparently the turn-around at Kings Cross is too short to do anything about cleaning the whole train. I pointed out that I was talking about a dozen seats and two tables in a tiny First Class compartment and they fully understood my point, agreed it was indeed unacceptable, and apologised for the ticket inspector. So Norther Trains – are you listening?

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ParentPay won’t support “insecure” browsers

This week that ParentPay, the Microsoftie payment system used by many schools, rolled out a web site update to support an even more limited range of browsers. This included dropping support Internet Explorer before 9 for “security reasons”.

By coincidence, in the same week Microsoft trumped their loyal fanobois at ParentPay by announcing that everything prior to version 10 was hereby deemed unsafe. ParentPay has yet to comment.

However, the notion that any version of Internet Explorer is “safe” is stretching the truth badly. All the mainstream browsers are dodgy; they all support unsafe scripting and embedded code. Microsoft may have the worst reputation, but they’re all undermined by their code and add-ons – and host operating system, to be fair. Only a few niche browsers, that don’t support things like JavaScript and ActiveX, can be considered safe; and those are the ones that ParentPay refuses to support because they don’t allow “rich content”. (And their developers are Microsoft fans). It’s definitely a case of form over security, yet again.

As an illustration of just how feeble their new browser support policy is, here’s a list  of those they’ll accept, taken from their web site:

  • Chrome 35 or higher
  • Firefox 30 or higher
  • Internet Explorer 9 or higher
  • Safari 6 or higher.

The the the the That’s All Folks!

Schools should be seriously considering their relationship with ParentPay, given the cost and inconvenience they’re forcing parents to go through in order to use it. Analysis of the traffic across my servers suggest that IE has around a third of the browser market. Of these, more than half are using IE 9 or earlier.

ParentPay’s assertion that this will only affect a “..small proportion of parents” may be literally true, but it’s disingenuous. Let’s do some simple arithmetic. Say there are 1500 parents in a secondary school. A third of these use IE – that’s 500. Half of these use an old IE (on an old PC) – that’s 250/1500 parents at each school who’ll be grossly inconvenienced. Cancel the fraction out and it’s 1/6, which could be described as a small proportion, but it’s still 250 per school.

The number of people who would be using”unsupported” browsers on tablets or mobile devices is probably very high. Anecdotally, parents have access to a PC somewhere that they currently have to go to in order to use ParentPay. Many would rather use a tablet.

It’s about time someone set up an alternative to ParentPay and schools were educated in to the benefits of open standards.

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The Force is Strong in George Osborne

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has an exit strategy from politics. Rather than being employed as a consultant in the city, his career will revolve around making appearances and selling autographs at sci-fi conferences.

How do I know this? Read the credits for “The Force Awakens”. He’s mentioned there, unambiguously, as “George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer”. It probably only appears on the UK release though.

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New Nominet Registrant terms

If you have a domain name ending in .uk it’s probably administered by Nominet (exceptions being .gov.uk etc). Nominet is a not-for-profit outfit set up in 1996 to manage UK domain names as the Internet expanded. Unlike certain other countries, our domain registration service as traditionally operated for the benefit of Internet users, which is as it should be.

Right now Nominet is holding a public consultation on changes to the terms and conditions for anyone registering a domain name. It’s mostly sensible stuff, like dropping the need for a fax number. But there are a couple of changes that do worry me.

First off, there is a provision in the old terms that if Nominet changed the T+C of the contract once it had started, the owner of the domain could cancel and get a refund. This is only fair; people registering direct with Nominet could be paying hundreds of pounds in advance and you can’t change the rules of the game once it’s started without consequences.

The plan is to drop this provision, with the apparent stated justification that they can’t remember anyone ever invoking it. Lack of use doesn’t mean the provision is wrong; it simply means that they haven’t upset anyone with a change in T+C enough to make invoking it necessary. One likely reason for this is the requirement for a public consultation before changing the T+C’s.

The second problem is that they want to drop the need for a public consultation before changing T+C. This is all in line with “industry practices”, apparently.

Hang on Nominet, what have industry practices got to do with you? You’re not an industry; you’re a service run for the benefit of, and paid for, by Internet users in the UK. Other countries have domain registration services run on commercial lines, for the benefit of shareholders, and the last thing you should do is follow suit on their sharp practices. So why ask for permission to do so?

Nominet has been a beacon of how the Internet should be run, setting the highest standards in fairness and transparency. It should continue this way by setting an example of the highest standard.

Eroding the power of the stakeholders may be convenient from an operational point of view, and doing things properly may cost money (not something Nominet is short of). Dropping these awkward provisions may seem like a good idea at first glance. But for the sake of the wider picture, eroding the rights of domain owners would hardly be their finest hour. Unless, of course, the public consultation tells them to back off!

Here’s a link to the consultation. If you’re in the UK, your views count.

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Does the iZettle card reader work on Android 5.0 (Lollipop)?

The iZettle card payment system is well worth a look. The company is very SME friendly, unlike the traditional card handlers. There’s no standing charge or transaction charge and the their percentage cut is fair.

Unfortunately they’re all Apple Fanbois, in spite of Android having 90% of the mobile market, and functionality on the most important platform lags. Everyone complains about it. But they’re such nice people when I speak to them on the phone, I still like them.

One case in point is that iZettle have finally launched a contactless reader. Yeah! Unfortunately the contactless feature only works on Apple, although my sources say that an Android upgrade is in development.

The contactless reader replaces the bluetooth-connected Pro version. In fact it’s the Pro version with a NFC reader built in, and it costs an extra £10, at £80+VAT (bargain).

If you’re a real tightwad there’s the £30+VAT (or free) blue keypad, which is actually quite a solid piece of kit, but it connects to the device using the headphone connector and modulating it’s data with burst of audio carrier (from listening to it). What could possibly go wrong?

Well, having tried it with Android 5.0 (Lollipop) I can tell you that it’s not going to work beyond Android 4.x until they fix the App. Version 2.5.1 of the iZettle App was supposed to support Lollipop, but take it from me, the support is far from complete.

Bluetooth Reader does work

I gave up and ordered the Reader Pro Contactless, the current bluetooth-connected unit, and I’m happy to report that seems to work perfectly. I was up and running within a minute; just pair it and off you go. For what it’s worth, this was with a Doogee DG700 with Android 5.0. iZettle is planning to release an update so it will make contactless payments, and (in theory), this will work.

Note that iZettle replaced the Reader Pro with the Reader Pro Contactless recently. They look the same. I have a hunch the older one will also work.

 

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Web developerz

Another in my occasional series of desperate sales pitches:

A friend said his company web site looked a bit sad. It is a bit dull. There’s not much in the way of product photos, only soothing words. I’m not one for the pictures with everything craze, but in this case an illustration would be worth a bit thousand words.

“Get some proper photography done, and I don’t mean iPhone snaps. That’s all you need.”, I said.

A few days later, after talking to his prospective web developer, he came back with the following:

“…I have told that using iphone pictures is good internationally since the pixel number is lower [which means web pages] loading quicker”

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Nominet’s AGM venue fail – almost

I decided to miss out on the first day of Infosec to attend the Nominet AGM, which this year took place in their home town of Oxford. In the Said Business School, to be precise. I’d never heard of this, but it’s a very nice place and right next to the railway station. But I was driving.

Had I known this was in the centre I might have made other transport arrangements, but getting to Oxford by public transport is difficult for me. Had I known that one of the main Thames bridges had been closed and the city centre was grid-locked, I would definitely left the car behind.

Given that most of those in attendance were from Nominet (only a dozen members were listed as expected), it does make sense to hold a meeting close to home. But the city centre?

As you approach, it’s obvious that Oxford has plenty of Parks. There’s he normal park, of course. There’s are also Business Parks, Retail Parks, Leisure Parks, Science Parks. In fact, every kind of park you can think of other than a Car Park.

I managed to stop in the short-term station car park, without a ticket as the machine was out-of-order, while I negotiated the use of the Said Business School’s underground one. I said it was a nice place.

Nominet – please don’t do this again! Or at least, put out in the AGM details that parking is a nightmare at the venue, if you do.

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Kids can review Kindle books in their parents’ names

Occasionally I write the odd review on Amazon products directly on Amazon. This is normally information I wish I had when I was looking for an item or book. Then, today, I was clicking about and came upon a list of things I’d written about:

AmazonReviews

Now I don’t remember reviewing E. Nesbit’s classic, and I prefer her Barnstable series anyway (although I doubt it’d be PC enough to make in to a film, so its merits are less widely appreciated).

So what’s going on here? And I certainly don’t remember reading “The Ugly Duckling”, illustrated or otherwise.

And then I realised – this was my daughter using a Kindle attached to my account. It appears that it’s possible to rate books from it directly, and this she has obviously done. In my name.

Her pronouncements as to their literary merit  may be valid, especially for someone her age, but this needs to be made clear.

I’ve sent some pointed feedback to Amazon on this point, and will wait to see what happens.

 

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Blackbushe Cybersquatting Club

Today the nice people at Blackbushe Flying Club decided to register the ICAO airfield designator for Popham Airfield in Hampshire (eghp.co.uk) and redirect it to their flying school at Blackbushe. Nominet claims to have validated Blackbushe Flying Club Ltd as the rightful owners, which is interesting.

I used to be a member of the flying club at Popham for many years, but I’m not now. Still friendly though. I’m also a member of Nominet. If anyone from Popham would like to get in touch for backup in getting these juvenile scallywags at Blackbushe dealt with appropriately, I should be flying in some time tomorrow morning.

FWIW, here’s chapter and verse:

Domain name:
 eghp.co.uk
Registrant:
 Blackbushe Flying Club
Registrant type:
 UK Limited Company, (Company number: 00000)
Registrant's address:
 11 The Close
 College Town
 Sandhurst
 Berkshire
 GU47 0RE
 United Kingdom
Data validation:
 Registrant contact details validated by Nominet on 08-Apr-2015
Registrar:
 Mesh Digital Limited t/a Domainmonster.com [Tag = MONSTER]
 URL: http://www.domainmonster.com
Relevant dates:
 Registered on: 08-Apr-2015
 Expiry date: 08-Apr-2017
 Last updated: 08-Apr-2015

Update 13-Apr-2015

I did some investigating and I know exactly who is behind this, and it was nothing to do with Popham or a joke. It looks like something that seemed like a good idea at the time to someone. It’s not actually Blackbushe airfield that’s behind it, it’s an outfit calling itself Blackbushe Flying Group (and I won’t get personal by naming the individual).

Judging from the hit-count on this page, and a the result of a few phone calls, “someone” has realised the error of his ways and changed it to a redirect sending all traffic to Popham’s real web site. If that someone wishes to get in touch I can help make it right permanently, at least as far as Popham is concerned. His landlord, Blackbushe Airport Ltd, may be less forgiving as, in addition to associating the Blackbushe name in some skulduggery, he’s only gone and registered eglk.co.uk too. Ouch.

If the idea behind the wheeze was there’s no such thing as bad publicity, I’d say that was only partly true.