Category: Musings

Why it’s crap at Tesco

I was reading this article in the Metro (the free paper you get at railway stations, for the uninitiated) about how the once mighty supermarket Tesco was having a rough year (issuing profits warnings, that sort of thing), generally falling out of favour with the British shopper, who seemed to have been neglected while senior Tesco management were focused on growth at all costs, especially internationally.

I don’t like Tesco, and generally avoid shopping there. Here’s a couple of reasons why:

  • As the article says, it’s a fairly dull and uninspiring experience.
  • The shelf-edges at a Tesco are heavily cluttered with promotional signs (known in the trade as “barkers”) advertising “special offers” – it’s often hard to find what you want in the morass of brightly coloured shelf-edge clutter.
  • Special offers which frequently turn out to be non-offers.
  • When you’re stuck for a quick lunch and the nearest option is a Tesco, the pre-packed sandwiches are dreadful – a bland, rather un-inspiring selection, and what’s more, they tend to use meat from non-UK suppliers – for instance “Bacon from the EU” (could be Brit, I suppose!) or “Chicken imported from Brazil and/or Thailand”, presumably because it’s cheaper than supporting British producers? Given the choice, I’d avoid these.
  • Tesco don’t seem to be focused on doing one thing well. They seem to be trying to be everything to everyone.

There are probably other reasons why I’m not struck on Tesco, but these were the ones which immediately sprang to mind when I read the article.

If you want a no-nonsense, bland shopping experience to pick up your essentials, that’s something Aldi do really well. Tesco don’t appear to have responded enough to the changing market, and seem rather stuck in the 1990s.

Beware the NTP “false-ticker” – or do the time warp again…

For the uninitiated, it’s easy to keep the clocks of computers on the Internet in synch using a protocol called NTP (Network Time Protocol).

Why might you want to do this? It’s very helpful in a large network to know that all your gear is synchronised to the same time, so that things such as transactional and logging information has the correct timestamps. It’s a must have for when you’re debugging and trying to get to the bottom of a problem.

There was an incident earlier this week where the two open NTP servers run by the US Naval Observatory (the “authority” for time within the US) both managed to give out incorrect time – there are reports of computers which synchronised against these (and more importantly, only these, or one or two other systems) had their clocks reset to 2000. The error then corrected, and clocks got put back.

Because the affected systems were chiming either only against the affected master clocks, or a limited number of others, the two incorrect times, but from a high stratum source, were taken as being correct and the affected systems had their local clocks reset.

There’s been discussion about the incident on the NANOG list…

Continue reading “Beware the NTP “false-ticker” – or do the time warp again…”

“A Grandmother dies after feeding her daughters pets”: or the importance of punctuation

Just getting food together this evening, and from the kitchen, this was the headline I heard on the 6.30pm BBC London News:

“A Grandmother dies after feeding her daughters pets”

The Mk1 ear picked this up, for my (admittedly random) brain to parse it as “A Grandmother has died, having fed pets to her daughters”.

Actually, what’s happened is a woman has died having been mauled by her daughter’s dogs in South London.

Maybe it’s just Halloween that’s making me think of this sentence as a one-line plot synopsis for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected – a woman covertly feeds her pets to her daughters, and meets some sticky end with a twist in the tail.

Sorry to go all Eats Shoots and Leaves on you… but the apostrophe that gave this statement the proper meaning vanished once it had become the spoken word.

Meerkats vs. Nectar Points

In a change from normal programming…

There’s a lot of competition between comparison sites in the UK, and the favoured weapon in the arsenal seems to be bonus giveaway: Compare the Market give away toys of the meerkat characters from their advertising, while Confused.com are giving away Nectar points.

So, suspending belief that the primary reason we go to these sites is to get a good deal on some insurance, on monetary terms alone which is the better value? The Meerkat or the Nectar points?

Nectar Points have a rough monetary value of 0.5p each – 500 points = £2.50 is the usual redemption value. Confused.com give away 1000 Nectar points if you buy insurance through their website, so that’s worth a fiver.

Cuddly Meerkats currently have a resale value on Ebay for about £30-40 each, and you claim one when you buy car or home insurance.

Looks like the Meerkats win. Simples.

…we now return you to the usual stuff that Sergei would find interesting.

Is the Internet facing a “perfect storm”?

The Internet has become a massive part of our everyday lives. If you walk down a British high street, you can’t fail to notice people staring into their phones rather than looking where they are going! I did see a comment on TV this week that you have a 1-in-10 chance of tripping and falling over when walking along looking at your phone and messaging…

There are massive pushes for faster access in countries which already have widespread Internet adoption, both over fixed infrastructure (such as FTTC and FTTH) and wireless (LTE, aka 4G), which at times isn’t without controversy. In the UK, the incumbent, BT, is commonly (and sometimes unfairly) criticised for trying to sweat more and more out of it’s copper last mile infrastructure (the wires that go into people’s homes), while not doing enough to “future-proof” and enable remote areas by investing in fibre. There’s also been problems over the UK regulator’s decision to allow one mobile phone network get a head-start on it’s competitors in offering LTE/4G service ahead of them, using existing allocated radio frequencies (a process known as “spectrum refarming”).

Why do people care? Because the Internet helps foster growth and can reduce the costs of doing business, and it’s why the developing countries are working desperately hard to drive internet adoption, along the way having to manage the threats of “interfering” actors who either don’t fully understand or fear change.

However, a bigger threat could be facing the Internet, and it’s coming from multiple angles, technical and non-technical. A perfect storm?

  • IPv4 Resource Exhaustion
    • The existing addressing (numbering) scheme used by the Internet is running out
    • A secondary market for “spare” IPv4 resources is developing, IPv4 addresses will have a monetary value, driven by lack of IPv6 deployment
  • Slow IPv6 Adoption
  • Increasing Regulatory attention
    • On a national level, such as the French Regulator, ARCEP, wishing to collect details on all interconnects in France or involving French entities
    • On a regional level, such as ETNO pushing for regulation of interconnect through use of QoS – nicely de-constructed by my learned colleague Geoff Huston – possibly an attempt to retroactively fix a broken business model?
    • On a Global level through the ITU, who, having disregarded the Internet as “something for academics” and not relevant to public communications back in 1988, now want to update the International Telecommunication Regulations to extend these to who “controls the Internet” and how.

All of these things threaten some of the basic foundations of the Internet we have today:

  • The Internet is “open” – anyone can connect, it’s agnostic to the data which is run over it, and this allows people to innovate
  • The Internet is “transparent” – managed using a bottom-up process of policy making and protocol development which is open to all
  • The Internet is “cheap” – relatively speaking, Internet service is inexpensive

These challenges facing the Internet combine to break all of the above.

Close the system off, drive costs up, and make development and co-ordination an invite-only closed shop in which it’s expensive to participate.

Time and effort, and investing a little money (in deploying IPv6, in some regulatory efforts, and in checking your business model is still valid), are the main things which will head off this approaching storm.

Adopting IPv6 should just be a (stay in) business decision. It’s something operational and technical that a business is in control of.

But, the regulatory aspect is tougher, unless you are big enough to be able to afford your own lobbyists. Fortunately, if you live in the UK, it’s not reached “write to your MP time”, not just yet. The UK’s position remains one of “light touch” regulation, largely letting the industry self-regulate itself through market forces, and this is being advocated to the ITU. There’s also some very bright, talented and respected people trying to get the message through that it’s economically advantageous not to make the Internet a closed top-down operated system.

Nevertheless, the challenges remain very much real. We live in interesting times.

The best thing EE could introduce at LTE launch is…

…a LTE mobile access point, or “mi-fi”.

There’s been lots of excitement about the iPhone 5 supporting 1800Mhz LTE, perfect for EE’s deployment in the UK. But, forget about new handsets, tablets and USB dongles for a minute.

Almost every gadget you already own is wifi enabled. Why spend vast amounts of dosh on making this LTE friendly while the market isn’t fully developed?

Stick a LTE capable mi-fi in your bag and you’re ready to take advantage of the faster data service on your existing kit – your laptop, your phone, your tablet, your camera, etc.

Simples.

When your staff are your best asset…

All stop on the West Coast yesterday, as a mahoosive signal failure at the important Motherwell signalling centre brought everything to a stand between the Scottish Border and Glasgow and Edinburgh. A number of people were stuck on trains in the affected area, which were unable to move for as long as three hours. Other trains were held at the station stop prior to entering the affected area, such as Carlisle.

One of the stuck people was comedienne Janey Godley, who appeared to be slowly losing her mind despite travelling in First Class, and tried to open up a 140 character at a time dialogue with the @virgintrains twitter person.

Eventually things got on the move again, and while Janey had to settle for sausages as opposed to “sex and mince”, today she did point out the kindness of the on-train crew toward the passengers during the extended delay…

Nicely done by the Virgin Trains’ On-Train staff, who seemed to put a human face on the extended delay. Good to see that staff morale is still relatively high despite the ongoing wrangling over the franchise. Talking of which…

As Virgin Rail Group has applied for a judicial review of the DfT decision to award the “ICWC” franchise to First Group, this has brought the franchise handover date itself of 9th December into question.

We’ve got the Branson offer to continue to run the franchise on a non-profit basis (donating profits to good causes) while the review proceeds.

However, the other option is that the DfT take control of the franchise until such time as it can be awarded and smooth transfer of responsibility can happen, not dissimilar as they had to do with East Coast.

But, ask yourself, is it a good use of public funds to incorporate a new entity to run ICWC on an interim basis (this includes hiring management, etc.), rather than accept Virgin’s offer to keep things on an even keel until a decision can be made.

As long as the VRG offer can be taken on a non-prejudicial basis, could this be delivering best value for the taxpayer?

In any case, spare a thought for the staff caught up in this…

Can you hear Steve screaming too?

Interesting article on BBC News about the impending iPhone 5 launch by the chap behind the “fake Steve” blog.

Definitely some valid points made, especially with reference to the leaks in the run up to the launch about how potentially unremarkable the iPhone 5 could be, that Apple’s share of the smartphone market that they helped to define is being thumped by the nimbler Asian companies’ Android handsets, and that Apple’s spend on R&D as a percentage of revenue is a paltry 2% under Cook’s leadership. There’s a good argument which says that for a company like Apple, it needs the yin and yang balance at the top – both the eccentric visionary to keep driving new ideas and push to take risks, and the number-crunching expert to keep the corporate feet on the ground once in a while, and stop the money running out. Very rare you find these qualities in the same person, if you ask me.

But there’s one comment which doesn’t sit right with me, and that’s the comment that the UI hasn’t changed in years, and that is somehow a bad thing.

I don’t know about you, but people who lead busy lives don’t appreciate having to start on a whole new learning curve just because they’ve updated their device. People like familiarity, which seems to be something Apple haven’t lost sight of.

The “familiarity” aspect is a huge selling point for those who don’t have time to to re-learn, or if you’re someone like my parents, don’t really want to have to re-learn, because they a) don’t much like change, and b) are a bit technophobic, usually because just as they get the hang of something, the UI changes on them.

But, I’ll go one step further. The entire smartphone market is, at first glance, pretty unremarkable now. They are all hand-sized rectangles with a capacitative touch screen on which you can read your email, a half decent point-and-click camera, and you can even make and recieve phonecalls.

So, does this give grist to the “upgrade the UI” mill? Maybe there’s some way of keeping both camps happy – like a “simple” and an “expert” mode?

As for Steve? I’d say he’s screaming and spinning in his grave.

“Snackboxes”: Cutesy, yes. Wasteful, probably.

I’m just heading up North on a Virgin Train (thought I’d better try one while I still can).

I ended up going 1st Class because it was cheaper than Standard, when booking in advance. Not that uncommon actually, and sometimes it’s even worth doing if it’s a couple of quid more expensive, because of the inclusives: light refreshments such as tea and coffee, and wifi access at no extra charge. Basically, you can sometimes get good value for money, and Virgin (and other train companies) get to put bums on 1st class seats which would otherwise go empty off-peak, and it reduces the pressure on the cheap seats.

In common with most train operators, the weekend 1st Class at-seat service is a shadow of it’s midweek counterpart: limited to tea, coffee, water and snacks. This used to be things such as (normal-sized packets of) crisps, nibbles, and biscuits.

Today, this has been replaced with “A little box of snacks” – about 2×3″. Now, it looks cute. There’s no doubt about that. There’s a childlike feeling about opening one for the first time.

But the contents are distinctly underwhelming:

  • The smallest bag of pretzels I’ve probably ever seen (and if you don’t like “sour cream and chive”, you’ll be left feeling a bit sour)
  • A micro-flapjack that would leave a hobbit’s tum rumbling
  • A pack of cream crackers and soft cheese
  • A continental “speculoos” biscuit for with coffee
  • A bit of Valrhona chocolate (yum)

I had the pretzels and the chocolate, as I didn’t really fancy the rest of the contents. The rest will no doubt go in the bin.

While I’m in no doubt that it makes inventory control much simpler (and may well be cheaper), it is effectively a reduction in choice for the passenger, and surely increases waste in an era when a huge part of companies’ social responsibility is dedicated to reducing their environmental impact?

Phone cameras: Apple continue to dominate

I was carelessly browsing through flickr’s camera stats, and I thought I’d go back and revisit the post I did 6 months ago, where I thought that flickr’s stats on cameraphone usage said something about the loyalty of the iPhone userbase.

So, the latest breakdown of the most popular cameraphones used to upload to flickr is still dominated by Apple:

The 4S has now overtaken the 4 as the most popular camera, just in the past month, but 4 usage isn’t really falling off, it seems to have plateaued.

The long tail of 3G and 3GS continues, with the nearest Apple competitor, the Galaxy SII only garnering the same number of daily uploads as the 3G.

Now, if anyone from flickr is reading this, what would be interesting is a comparison of iOS vs. Android vs. Windows Phone devices, as it will be interesting to see how this changes over time, particularly as there seems to be just more and more feature parity and less USP across the smartphone market.

I also thought that it was interesting that uploads from cameraphones to flickr are altogether higher than dSLRs, with the iPhone 4S dominating, and have been for some time: