back to article Everything bad in the world can be traced to crap Wi-Fi

“Ah, it’s sod’s law,” murmurs the person sitting next to me. I nod agreeably. It was inevitable. I am attending a brief awards ceremony for student journalists prior to this year’s Hugh Cudlipp lecture. Young journos, we were reminded, were masters of digital content and were making their names through the use of social media …

  1. frank ly

    "... to blow its secretive mates ..."

    Did you mean to write "... to blow off to its secretive mates ..." ? I'm never sure with you. (Sod's Law in action?)

    1. Steve Gill

      Re: "... to blow its secretive mates ..."

      Given the following reference to heavy petting I'd presume it was correct first time

  2. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Meh

    On the one hand...

    I enjoy watching these car crash IT events unfold, very often down to poor preparation by the participants e.g. assuming that all the kit works without having even a teeny run through.

    On the other hand, I can't stand it when it happens to me.

    1. Anonymous Custard
      Headmaster

      Re: On the one hand...

      Given that he had the fallback option of doing it from print-outs, I'd say he was suspiciously prepared for it...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: On the one hand...

        Nah, that shows experience.

        You'll never catch me presenting or lecturing without a paper backup either, and I write my material in such a way that I can do entirely without IT (and often do). Having said that, my work IS disaster recovery - it's second nature :)

        1. Warm Braw

          Re: On the one hand...

          I was doing some sort of trade show talk on one occasion. The projector refused to speak to my PowerBook 520 (it was that long ago), but I had had the foresight to bring along back up acetates and put them on the desk in front of me, just in case. Only to find someone in the front row had spilt water on them...

          1. BebopWeBop

            Re: On the one hand...

            Wrong printer - some are water based (again from long ago acquired experience)

        2. rh587

          Re: On the one hand...

          Reminds me of our induction/welcome session at university. The library staff had just finished a very flashy powerpoint on all the services they offered (with very limited reference to actual books). They were followed by a chap from IT to give us the low-down on where the help-desk was, accounts, etc, etc. He had the mankiest, most dog-eared acetates you've every laid eyes on, which he duly plopped on the OHP.

          He knew exactly how reliable the digital projector and A/V was.

    2. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: On the one hand...

      assuming that all the kit works without having even a teeny run through

      We often have external groups using our rooms, and despite a standard form that goes out with the booking saying things like "we can check your presentation if you send it a week in advance", "if your presentation relies on streaming video or a live website, send us the URL so we can make sure the WiFi passes it", "if you are bringing a Mac or an iPad please bring your own VGA adapter because we do not carry one of every variant", "presentations which rely on embedded video rarely work properly when transferred to one of our laptops so either send it in advance or bring your own laptop on which you have tested the video", "please remember to bring your mains adapter" etc. etc. despite all that, I'd say that probably a third to a half of all groups that use our rooms have problems of one sort or another which are very rarely anything to do with our systems, but of course we usually get the initial blame.

      Until I or a colleague pops into the room, presses alt-f5 or plugs the lead in or whatever ;-)

      As for the flaky WiFi itself, one of our biggest problems is iOS which often pops up a separate window with the "tick here to agree with the Ts&Cs" box, but this window is hidden by the browser the user wants to use and which is sitting there saying "no connection" because the gateway won't allow traffic until the box is ticked. OSX does a similar thing but it's usually more obvious. OSX also sometimes needs WiFi turning off and then on again before it will actually connect, even though it's sitting ten feet away from the AP, getting a full-strength signal and the thing shows at the top of the list of networks.

      M.

      1. theModge

        Re: On the one hand...

        I do corporate AV upon occasion, the idea of every speakers presentation being with us in advance, as is normally the arrangement, lives firmly in the domain of fantasy.

      2. Nunyabiznes

        Re: On the one hand...

        At Martin an gof:

        Are you me?

    3. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

      Re: On the one hand...

      Or in one case where several of our meeting rooms which had mounted projects but no screens had new meeting guidelines noticed put up.

      These were great until you put the projector on, the bleeding guidelines were placed where the projects projected.

      Much >_<ing and WHY! occurred before I thought Meh, Line Manager however decided to slap some velour edged wall mounted projector screens up to cover the notices.

    4. Alister

      Re: On the one hand...

      Some years ago our company staged a corporate event for the new improved version of one of our web-based products, where new and existing customer's representatives were to be given a presentation and then a live demo of the new features.

      The company chose an hotel with conference facilities as the venue, and the week before the event, we of the sysadmin team went and carried out a full dress rehearsal to make sure that everything was in place and worked.

      The presenter's rostrum had power connections and a VGA connection to the built in ceiling mounted projector, but no ethernet connectivity. However, there was an adequate WiFi connection, from an AP that was located in the roof space of the entrance hall to the conference room, as we later found out.

      Using a laptop, as was planned for the day, the testing all went smoothly, so we were happy to report to the chairman that there were no problems with the venue.

      Come the day, the presentation (Powerpoint, what else!) in the morning went well, but at lunchtime I received a panic phone call saying there was no WiFi signal, so they couldn't do the live demo section of the presentation, and the venue had no IT support.

      I drove to the venue, and on arrival, some quick testing showed that whilst the conference room was empty, the WiFi worked as advertised, but once the room was filled with 300 guests, the signal just got soaked up by all the big bags of water wandering around (the guests), and never made it from the back of the hall as far as the rostrum.

      The nearest accessible ethernet connection was the 24way switch located under the desk in main reception, so I grabbed a 100M reel of Cat5 out of the back of my car, and it was threaded from the rostrum at the front of the conference hall, out of the doors at the back, and along through the corridors to reception. Two quick plug terminations later, and all was well.

      The chairman gave me some grief about not testing properly, but short of hiring 300 extras, what could I have done?

      I did have words with the venue manager though, and explained that one weedy access point in the roof was no bloody use.

  3. James Marten
    FAIL

    Icon says it all

    Wifi. The single most unreliable technology that has ever been successfully marketed to consumers.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Icon says it all

      I thought that was DRM. At least you have a chance of doing something relatively simple to fix broken WiFi, in the worst case moving somewhere else or switching to mobile data.

      1. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

        Re: Icon says it all

        Is DRM really that unreliable? Fecking annoying to use, yes, but not necessarily unreliable. The only DRM I can think that is actively broken is a number of games blocked from working in Windows 10, because they did dodgy things in earlier versions of Windows.

        Not that it annoys me at all that I've had to shell out twenty odd quidx2 to enable my non HDCP monitors to an HDCP source, via an HDMI splitter that 'accidentally' doesn't verify the HDCP path. Or, that I've had to spend over 200 quid for a more expensive HDCP box to connect to a CRT projector allowing it to play Blurays..

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Icon says it all

        I thought that was DRM

        And any software made by Microsoft, which is bizarre because most of the hardware (apart from phones and Zune) it actually quite OK. Must be outsourced..

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Icon says it all

        > I thought that was DRM.

        I didn't think DRM was "marketed" so much as "inflicted".

    2. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Icon says it all

      WiFi's pretty good. It's just implemented inadequately everywhere except in one's own home.

      1. Ragarath

        Re: Icon says it all

        It's implemented inadequately usually because the costs of doing it the proper way make the management baulk.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Re: "make the management baulk"

          Well that really isn't hard, now is it ?

          All you have to do is say that what they want is not cost-free. They generally start choking right then.

      2. Andy A

        Re: Icon says it all

        ==== WiFi's pretty good. It's just implemented inadequately everywhere except in one's own home.

        Apparently printing can be a hassle even then.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Icon says it all

        "WiFi's pretty good. It's just implemented inadequately everywhere except in one's own home."

        It's pretty good in Samsung UK headquarters, but then so are all the mobile phone networks.

        Now what I hate with a passion is the monopolistic practice by which B fornicating T is allowed to have "open" wifi which however blocks everything unless you are a BT subscriber. So your phone thinks wifi is available and keeps trying to use it and you can't get an Internet connection till you switch wifi off. And then forget to turn it on again.

        BT should not be allowed to do this stuff.

    3. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Icon says it all

      What, compared to Bluetooth?

      With its totally flaky connection, weirdly different way of connecting to each device and a general tendency to go off and sulk like a teenager.

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re:Wifi. The single most unreliable technology?

      Oh, no there are lots better than that!

      Most Sinclair products,

      All renewable energy products.

      Anything from Rattner.

      Homeopathic medicines.

      C'mon now chaps, the whole POINT of marketing is to sell overpriced dysfunctional cr@p to the great unwashed.

  4. anatak

    free wifi that requires passwords ?

    Here in Japan all the cellphone companies had this great idea to provide free wifi ... for their customers... who are subscribed to and pay for the free wifi service. I guess translating free into Yen didn't work well.

    So I leave my house and my phone tries to connect to a network. On the phone the wifi signal looks ok. But then of course it is impossible to get a connection. I have to turn of wifi on the phone and then it will connect to the 4G network. Of course coming home I forget to turn on wifi again and I blow my 4G (unlimited plan) allowed traffic watching some youtube video or similar. And then I will be on the throttled download rate. This is about as fast as a caveman inputting photons from his campfire into a fiber connection by means of blocking and unblocking the light of said fire.

    1. AndyS

      Re: free wifi that requires passwords ?

      Just stop your phone from trying to connect to any open wifi network? That's what I've done. I want to connect to known networks by default, but I certainly don't want my phone surfing whatever random pay-per-use open-but-passworded flaky, unreliable connection it stumbles across, especially since, as you point out, this can break the connection it is reliably using.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: free wifi that requires passwords ?

        And you know that your SIM isn't overriding those settings how, exactly? Google "attwifi" and be afraid at how by default every phone (Android, iPhone, WP, doesn't matter) with an AT&T SIM will automatically connect to that SSID. You can disable it, but how many people know that not doing that leaves them vulnerable to a trivial MITM attack?

        I'm sure most cellular providers do something similar.

      3. illiad

        Re: free wifi that requires passwords ?

        "Just stop your phone from trying to connect to any open wifi network"

        DO tell us HOW... :)

        1. David Nash Silver badge

          Re: free wifi that requires passwords ?

          "DO tell us HOW... :)"

          I've had a series of Android phones over the years and this has never been a problem.

          On the odd occasion that my phone does connect to something that then doesn't work, Just tell the phone to "forget" that network.

          Sounds like the problem here is people leaving things switched on all the time.

          My phone has BT, Wifi, Mobile Data, NFC, Location turned off all the time unless I need them.

          Generally I leave Wifi on at home and usually at work, but I am certainly in the habit of turning mobile data on when I need it and off when I've finished (Why do later versions of Android make the latter such a palaver by the way?)

        2. AndyS

          Re: free wifi that requires passwords ?

          > DO tell us HOW... :)

          On my phone (Wileyfox Swift running Cyanogen OS), go to settings, Wifi, advanced, and turn off "Network Notification (Notify whenever a public network is available)". This stops it trying to connect. This, or something similar, has worked on my previous phones too (Moto G & others).

          As above, you can also manually disconnect each time it happens.

  5. Tony S
    Alert

    Shit Wi-Fi?

    Is it really shit Wi-Fi or is it badly designed, shitty apps that broadcast their presence to world + dog every 10 milliseconds.

    Or is caused by the obsession of marketing droids to capture every activity that we make so that they can apply bad "Data Science" in order to try and sell us shit that we don't need?

    Or is caused by the obsession of TPTB to capture every fleeting message in order to ensure that there is no "wrongthink" or unauthorised shit taking place?

    1. AndyS

      Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

      >Or is caused by the obsession of marketing droids to capture every activity that we make so that they can apply bad "Data Science" in order to try and sell us shit that we don't need?

      My current one is wire clips. I needed some, so I went to Amazon and bought some.

      Now, obviously, the data analyst wombles have discovered my nefarious plan to fill a warehouse with the things.

      For all their claimed intelligence, I would have thought it would be relatively easy to work out which things are typically one-off purchases (wire clips, home router, things like that) and to say "you bought an A, so you probably don't want another," versus things like, I don't know, cabbages, which one might buy on a reasonably frequent basis.

      1. Franco

        Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

        I get exactly the same thing. I buy coffee beans on Amazon fairly regularly, as they are cheaper in bulk. I NEVER get offered them again, but having recently bought a paint roller and tray Amazon assume I am a decorator and need one every 2 days.

        Back to the topic in hand, shit WiFi is always a problem, but the shit apps that "require" a data connection/location/stool sample/blood of first born to run are a large part of the problem as well. The latest being the Outlook calendar app on my Windows Phone. It's job is to tell me where I need to be, not where I am but is obsessed with being allowed access to my location.

      2. Andy A

        Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

        A couple of years back, my parents redid their bathroom. My email was used for contact when delivery was due for the major items.

        BAD move.

        In spite of me not adding to the original order in the period between the visit to the showroom and the truck arriving with the goods, I now get a dozen emails a week, as the company are convinced that I change bathroom fixtures more often than I do my underwear.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

          "My email was used for contact when delivery was due for the major items."

          1. Own domain.

          2. Set up mail address specifically for the vendor.

          3. Tear down mail address when no longer needed.

          4. Occasionally give a thought to all those spams being bounced.

          1. Tenacal

            Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

            It's great that solutions like this exist to those in the know but you've also got to consider a few things:

            1) Not everyone knows enough (nor cares to learn) to set up this sort of thing, and those that don't know far outnumber those that do.

            2) Should we really need to put in the work to create these sorts of workarounds when my dead grandmother can understand the idea of "one off purchase"?

            1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

              'my dead grandmother can understand the idea of "one off purchase"?'

              Unfortunately your dead grandmother has more perspicacity than anyone in sales and marketing.

            2. DropBear

              Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

              "Should we really need to put in the work to create these sorts of workarounds when my dead grandmother can understand the idea of "one off purchase"?"

              One would think even the stupidest web-bot would be capable of looking at your purchase and deciding between "most people who bought this kept buying it fairly regularly after" and "nobody ever bought this thing twice"...

              1. Werner McGoole

                Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

                Even with not-one-off purchases things can still get a bit weird. After buying a digital thermometer recently I was surprised to learn that my ideal next purchase would be a giant bag of freeze-dried locusts.

                I suspect the connection might be keeping reptiles, but what gave the ad-bots an idea that was an interest of mine (it's not) is beyond me.

                But let's return to the subject of programs that unnecessarily go and preen themselves on the internet before giving you their full attention. I recently made a list of offenders while the media virgins at Virgin Media were engaging in one of their frequent attempts to disable all DNS functionality. Surprisingly many linux programs gave themselves away by being very slow to get started.

                Once the DNS diddling was over, I found that a simple apparmor profile could be used to block any program from having network access - so many are now blocked. In fact, I quickly realised that only a few programs apart from system daemons (firefox, thunderbird, curl,...) actually need a network to do their job.

                Apparmor seems to do the job very well (just "deny network" and allow all other files), but there are probably other tools that would be as good and more suited to other platforms.

          2. Andy A

            Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

            ==== 2. Set up mail address specifically for the vendor.

            I often do this sort of thing. This time I didn't have a chance. My parents did the handing out of the addy.

            My domain now bounces it straight into the bit bucket, but it still clogs up the world as it heads from their domain to mine.

            There are other vendors who have me on their weekly round-robin. One deals in the stuff anyone with an old car is bound to need. I actually read theirs. Sometimes I click on a link in it to see more about some neat new product. Occasionally I actually buy things. When I do, I don't automatically get a second copy of the round-robin, as happens with too many organisations. They are a pleasure to deal with, and their marketing actually works.

      3. Fibbles

        Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

        For all their claimed intelligence, I would have thought it would be relatively easy to work out which things are typically one-off purchases (wire clips, home router, things like that) and to say "you bought an A, so you probably don't want another," versus things like, I don't know, cabbages, which one might buy on a reasonably frequent basis.

        Sometimes I perform random searches on Amazon just to confuse their analytics software. It's currently advertising king sized mattresses and photographic lighting equipment to me. Apparently it thinks I'm in the pornography business.

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

          No, Amazon's just using data from your visits to IMDB as part of their product recommendations.

          1. Fibbles
            Gimp

            Re: Shit Wi-Fi?

            Cant be, otherwise they'd be advertising rubber sheeting and enema kits.

  6. Mystic Megabyte
    Happy

    Aleister Crowley photo

    and no mention of wi-fi daemons?

    1. magickmark
      Devil

      Re: Aleister Crowley photo

      Damn it!!

      Well Wi-Fi can be something of a dark art and I find Aleister Crowley's "Book of the Law"* useful at time like this.

      You have to incant the right formula to make it all work, I find that this one tends to help "The key of the rituals is in the secret word which I have given unto him." - Chapter One, Rule 20

      *http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm

  7. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
    Coffee/keyboard

    Aleister Dabbs

    See icon. Nice weekend, everbody!

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

      Re: Aleister Dabbs

      @allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      The corrptn was causd b teh crp Wi-F

  8. Efros

    WiFi

    One of the Black Arts. Routers and dongles and for that matter those mini pci WiFI nics are all PITA to get going in a reliable configuration if you happen to use more than a single WiFi network. In the course of a single day my laptop probably changes network about 5 or 6 times, from home to work and back again. None of these changes happens smoothly always something pops up, usually a yellow exclamation mark triangle informing me there is no internet connection, which magically disappears about 30 seconds later. Must be the card/configuration I hear you say, maybe but I get similar little annoyances on my tablet and my phone. The tablet will occasionally go into an obtaining IP address loop which it never does until I reboot it, sometimes tempted to do this with my size 12s I might add. My students all have Apple MBA and if they don't reboot their laptops when they come into the building then they get no internet connection, so the little foibles don't seem to be isolated to Android/MS kit. Whatever the reason I can safely agree with others on this forum that WiFi is just a barrel of spiders to an arachnophobe in terms of friendliness to its users, and 15 years or so experience of using and configuring routers just shows how messed up and consumer unfriendly a consumer device can be.

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: WiFi

      My students all have Apple MBA and if they don't reboot their laptops when they come into the building then they get no internet connection

      I have found that rather than rebooting, it's often enough with Apple kit to disable WiFi, wait 10 or 20 seconds and then re-enable it.

      The one thing I have not been able to do reliably on Apple kit without rebooting is add an external monitor / projector. Very occasionally it "just works" but more often than not the computer needs a reboot before it'll even consider that there just might be something attached to its external monitor port, whatever flavour that is, and Apple does seem to have more flavours than anyone else.

      M.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Shit coding

    What causes this is CRAP code where clueless numpties INSIST on making SYNCHRONOUS network calls in the UI thread! If you're not using async sockets, you need a separate thread for comms. However, in the offices of said numpties, the LAN/Wifi is fast enough that the comms delay isn't significant.

    Plus using threads is "hard". Pillocks.

    1. Andy A

      Re: Shit coding

      I've been convinced for years that testing has to be performed over a slow link, say 2400 bps.

      That would force out the horrible bloat we see.

      As a bonus, we could have a scheme where the developer took a 10% cut in remuneration if the speed had to be doubled to make stuff usable. So, if it needed 4Mbps, they would be down to about 1/3 of their base salary.

      1. Fatman
        Joke

        Re: Shit coding

        <quote>I've been convinced for years that testing has to be performed over a slow link, say 2400 110 bps.

        That would force out the horrible bloat we see.</quote>

        There. FTFY!!!

        (PS - showing my age, aren't I?)

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Shit coding

          "(PS - showing my age, aren't I?)"

          No, you missed out "on a teletype".

          1. Mookster

            Re: Shit coding

            Avian Carrier?

            1. Alan W. Rateliff, II
              Paris Hilton

              Re: Shit coding

              Obligatory, I thinks. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt

          2. Jeffrey Nonken

            Re: Shit coding

            Here, I'll be happy to lend you an acoustic coupler modem. ... If you have a matching phone that can use it.

    2. DropBear
      Facepalm

      Re: Shit coding

      Exactly. Now guess what happens when Firefox loads a tab and the DNS server pretends it never heard the query...? That's exactly right, NOTHING HAPPENS, in any of the tabs, because everything is frozen up worse than the tundra permafrost! How the f@#$% $%$%&* in a $#@& %$&^'s ass does this pass for acceptable coding standards in 2016?!?

  11. Novex
    Coat

    Relying on wifi and cloud to do presentation things in a live environment? Really??

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      >> Relying on wifi and cloud to do presentation things in a live environment?

      Well no, this is my point. Even if all the documents are right there on your hard drive, the software required to open them - say Adobe PDF Reader or MS Office - tries to go online anyway.

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        You don't need the Adobe PDF Reader to open a PDF or MS Office to open a PPP, there are alternatives.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          You don't need the Adobe PDF Reader to open a PDF or MS Office to open a PPP, there are alternatives.

          Who uses MS Office to open up PPP? Years ago I might've used Trumpet Winsock for that, or Microsoft's PPP dialler but these days, good ol'e /sbin/pppd does the job.

          1. Charles 9

            PPP as in PowerPoint Presentation. And yes,the only program that can do a PowerPoint presentation correctly is PowerPoint. And since it's the standard-bearer, substitutes aren't permitted.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              "PPP as in PowerPoint Presentation."

              Well, I read the original post and did wonder why Microsoft Office was needed to open an old-style connection. PPP as a TLA for PowerPoint Presentation never occurred to me.

              But then I interpret TLAs in this order: International agencies,Government agencies, then RFCs, finally VSAs (Vendor Specific Abbreviations.) Use the first match until proven incorrect.

              "And since it's the standard-bearer, substitutes aren't permitted."

              There's another thread somewhere else about Microsoft's world domination ambitions. But the term "standard-bearer" means "the unfortunate guy who holds the pole with the eagles on it till somebody spears him". It does not mean what you think it means. You mean "the proprietary and frequently changing version designed to lock out competition and mandated by our management".

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              PPP as in PowerPoint Presentation. And yes,the only program that can do a PowerPoint presentation correctly is PowerPoint. And since it's the standard-bearer, substitutes aren't permitted.

              For me, PPP has always stood for Point to Point Protocol, which displaced Serial Line Internet Protocol as the dominant form of providing an IP connection over a serial link, and lives on in the form of PPP over Ethernet with today's ADSL.

              As for Powerpoint? Haven't used it this century. I've done presentations since using Macromedia Flash (not Adobe, should hint at how long ago) and more recently using LaTeX Beamer.

              The latter would be my go-to tool for generating a presentation today, failing that, perhaps LibreOffice Impress, making judicious use of its PDF export capability.

        2. Charles 9

          None of which work quite right because the specs change from implementation to implementation, promises of WYSIWYG be damned.

  12. Velv
    FAIL

    WiFi Assist

    Apple partial attempt to fix the "poor wifi" problem was WiFi Assist where packets were augmented with 3G or 4G when the wifi was poor. Shame it didn't clearly indicate the wifi was being augmented and it used up all your allowance on this background stuff.

    So you're right, stop the background chatter, but also fix the optimisation of services to make automatic switching clearer on the packet route. WiFi Assist had the potential to provide great service, but at a significant cost.

  13. Alan Sharkey

    And the biggest culprit recently is...

    Microsoft - I was at an Azure conference earlier this week and guess what didn't work a lot of the time - yes, the "supplied by Microsoft" wifi. It made for some "interesting" demonstrations

    Alan

  14. Mr Dogshit
    Headmaster

    You describe a strange, alien world which I do not frequent.

    Oh, and it's "railway station", not "train station".

    1. Rob Daglish

      I would normally say "station" on it's own, not "railway station" or "train station", but I guess I'd be thinking "railway station". That said, why is a "bus station" not a "road station" then?

      1. Charles 9

        Because taxis use roads, too, whereas the only vehicles that use railways are trains.

      2. Barry Rueger

        "That said, why is a "bus station" not a "road station" then?"

        Because, at least in these parts, busses arrive at the Bus Depot, not at a "station."

        (Traditionally in Canada the "bus depot" is in the downtown core, while the "train station" is on the furthest outskirts if the city.

        Needless to say we further protect ourselves from transportation cross-pollenation by ensuring that neither rapid transit nor the airport are anywhere nearby.)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Or "bus stop", as the term "bus station" is only relatively new here in Brisbane.

          Traditionally buses just pulled up to dedicated spots at the side of a conventional road. It's only recently that they had a completely separate road system (the "busway network") that they could use, and it's there you find the bus stations.

          The depot is where they get parked -- you generally don't catch the bus from there in these parts.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh how we laughed

    I was supplied as a lighting tech to a software house (a large one, many of you will have heard of). They had a new shiny product. They booked the crypt of a large stone building in central London for said demo. It was posh .Their marvellous new product was - unlike it's predecessors - cloud based and reliant on an internet connection to function. Sadly they had not booked an internet connection because they planned to use 4G - the event appear to have been given to a new project manager, otherwise surely they would have know that was unwise in extremis. There was no 4G in the stone crypt. The WiFi didn't penetrate down there and it was too late now to russel up a wired connection that they could have ordered. There was a fine demo of a loading screen. O how we chortled at the back behind our respective control desks....

  16. Kubla Cant

    My BT Homehub provides a free WiFi service called BT Fon. As a BT broadband subscriber I get free access to all BT hotspots, including other people's BT Fon. This is a useful facility, especially when connecting from a phone.

    Unfortunately, for the past few weeks my phone has decided that it likes the BT Fon connection better than my private home WiFi, so it always connects to it. Worse, it's so thrilled to be snuggling up to its new best friend that it forgets my BT login credentials, so I'm presented with a page that tells me how much I need to pay for using my own WiFi.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "Unfortunately, for the past few weeks my phone has decided that it likes the BT Fon connection better than my private home WiFi, so it always connects to it."

      Back in the day when unsecured home access points weren't that unusual my laptop would manage to ignore my network and latch onto some unsecured one-bar job down the street at what felt like 10 bits per minute.

  17. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Wi-fi kills Google Maps on Android

    I have gotten screwed by Google Maps going completely TITSUP and leaving me stranded with either messages that it can't connect to the server, a completely blank map, or an inability to search and find things on it. (Fortunately I have a paper map, as well as Nokia HERE offline maps)

    I finally figured out that if wi-fi is enabled, it kills Google Maps if I don't actually have a wi-fi connection. If I disable wi-fi, Maps starts working over the cell connection.

    It doesn't "fail-over" to the mobile data connection at all.

    (Firefox, email, etc have no problem... it's only Google Maps that takes a shit. Very strange.)

    1. Andy A

      Re: Wi-fi kills Google Maps on Android

      There are wierd effects built in to all the systems it appears. My Winphone refuses to search the "Store" if I have a WiFi connection. Once I have selected something for download, nothing appears to happen.

      When I look at the status, it tells me that download will commence when I am next on WiFi.

    2. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Wi-fi kills Google Maps on Android

      Remind me to tell you about my experience with the satnav in Audi's car of the year...

      1. Jeffrey Nonken

        Re: Wi-fi kills Google Maps on Android

        Alistair, please tell us about your experience with the satnav in Audi's car of the year.

    3. illiad

      Re: Wi-fi kills Google Maps on Android

      Its a common to have 'issues' with android gmaps... I use 'locus free' for general maps, but It seems google feeds its 'simpler' maps to other apps that need a map... just search 'GPS' on Gplay store.. :)

      Also 'buschecker' and cell signal checkers - 'open signal' and 'network cell'

    4. Jeffrey Nonken

      Re: Wi-fi kills Google Maps on Android

      Garmin GPS FTW. Though I was happy with my old Magellan, too, back in the day.

      The point being that I do not rely on having a live internet connection to get turn-by-turn navigation. And yet, I still have it as an option if needed.

      And yeah, maps are updated less frequently. Funny how that was always an issue with paper maps, too.

  18. Tom Betz

    What person who has a good 4G service available on their device travels with WiFi enabled? That way lies madness.

    Especially now that I'm using it on a Nexus 6P (which performs soooo much better than my former Verizon-branded Moto-X), I will cling to my unlimited Verizon data service until my dying day; and the only places it uses WiFi are known secure connections, like the one I have at home.

    1. Andy A

      ===>What person who has a good 4G service available on their device travels with WiFi enabled?

      Decent phone reception isn't available everywhere in the world. The canteen where I work appears to have Faraday Cage properties for mobile signals, but has a wifi hotspot. Many other buildings scrape a 2G connection. In some my phone even reports Roaming. Don't even ask about the major production building, which has metal cladding.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Decent phone reception isn't available everywhere in the world.

        Quite true, but every Android phone I have used has made it pretty easy to turn airplane mode on and off, plus WiFi, mobile data, and Bluetooth.

        Learn to use those widgets.

        Yeah, I know, it's a pain in the ass to intentionally select what you want to use, but it is a lot less of a pain in the ass when nothing happens because you have a brilliant mobile connection but the phone is confused and is trying to pull data from a distant WiFi connection it can barely receive.

        That's why I also force my phone to work on 3G only. It is a lot simpler to have the signal drop out in blackspots than the totally random and erratic downgrading to EDGE when 3G is good enough, and the fact that it doesn't like switching back to 3G (not to mention EDGE is voice or data, not both, and Orange France is set up that data has priority).

    2. Jeffrey Nonken

      Well... I'm on Sprint.

  19. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    Just noticed that your pic in your bio seems to have morphed into a completely different Aleister

    ...Probably something to do with thelemic energy. You should keep an eye on that.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Just noticed that your pic.....

      And here, I was thinking: "Is that Devo?"

  20. OzBob

    Could we create firmware for Wifi that does QOS differently?

    Have a screen that pops up saying "congratulations, you have a reasonable service for 5 minutes, at which time your access will expire and you will go back into the lottery pool with X other people".

  21. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Shuffle

    Why the fsck would a music player have a shuffle ?

    You paid money for an album but think the artists not only didn't care about the order of the tracks but you think random would improve it?

    I assume that if you press shuffle on a Pink Floyd album the computer does a hard reset out of pure shame.

    1. heyrick Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Shuffle

      "Why the fsck would a music player have a shuffle ?" - it is useful when you are in "all tracks" mode and just want it to play some stuff at random.

      Sometimes I like to random play my albums. Keeps things more interesting than the predictable this-song-follows-this-song. I grew up with cassette tapes and even mix tapes were a strictly linear order.

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: Shuffle

        Ah, making a mixtape for that girl you wanted to impress... days of agonizing about which songs to choose and in what order to put them and making everything fit smugly on a C90 cassette... plus cobbling together a individual cover/inlay...

        BTW, I still make sort-of mixtapes for long journeys by making playlists, usually edited to create a certain atmosphere or follow a specific theme.

    2. David Nash Silver badge

      Re: Shuffle

      Anyway CD players had shuffle way back when. I never used it but I do sometimes use shuffle on my phone when playing a playlist rather than an album.

      Never understood using shuffle for albums. I think kids today just don't think of albums the way they have always been, but treat them as just another playlist.

  22. Maty

    IT and presentations

    A whiles back, I was giving a talk at a fairly prestigious London institution. The IT guy asked to look at my talk so he could throw the slides onscreen at the appropriate moment. Then he took my only copy and vanished.

    Since I knew the topic intimately (which is why I was asked to give the talk) it was not hard to adlib my way through the hour, every now and then looking up at the projectionist's box and asking for 'next slide please'.

    Afterwards, the IT guy came and asked rather heatedly why I had not stuck to my script. Apparently this should have been showing on the flat screen built into the lectern. However, no-one had told me this, or turned the thing on.

  23. Mookster
    WTF?

    Ericsson says slow video streaming as stressful as watching a horror film

    And to top it all, Ericsson says slow video streaming as stressful as watching a horror film

    http://phys.org/news/2016-02-mobile-buffering-horror-ericsson.html

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Ericsson says slow video streaming as stressful as watching a horror film

      That was on El Reg about a fortnight ago:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/19/mobile_phone_stress_shocker/

      http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/02/19/mobile_phone_stress_shocker/#c_2786036

      But the study is obviously flawed. It stated that solving a math problem is causing the same stress level as watching a horror movie, too - and that just can't be right.

  24. Ugotta B. Kiddingme
    Coffee/keyboard

    HipsterWankCafe_FREE

    that did indeed make me laugh. Thank you for ending the work week with a fine spray of afternoon tea on the keyboard/monitor/shirt/nearby coworker. Cheers!

  25. DCLXV

    We, the lemming horde

    The crux of the issue seems to be that tech companies have forgotten that the customer is in fact a stakeholder. They are too busy serving other masters (advertisers, media conglomerates) to care and clearly most of their customer base doesn't really care either, as long as they receive some hollow assurances of privacy and their appetite for mindless consumption better enabled.

    Lately it feels like the consumer-end of the market has gotten downright hostile towards technically-minded users. Clearly the manufacturers don't like doing business with anyone who might peel back the glossy veneer to expose the cluster of shite lurking beneath.

    That aside, WiFi is even poor of quality when it's working perfectly. 3x3 802.11ac has an advertised theoretical maximum of 1300 Mbps, which it never even gets close to. It doesn't seem right to bandy about impressive-seeming numbers knowing there is not a snowball's chance in hell of the actual maximum ever intersecting with the theoretical.

  26. Terry 6 Silver badge

    reliant on an internet connection to function.

    I think a good rule of thumb is that if your task/ reputation/employment relies on someone else's systems working properly it's probably time to move on.

    For my own presentations there has always been plan A to C at least. With the addition of locating an easel and felt tip pens as plan D. And when outside people have come to show us stuff I've always made sure that I can offer as many alternative resources as possible for when their own stuff doesn't work. When we've asked them to do training or something that we actually need this started with asking them to email me their presentation and burning it to a DVD and/or saving it on a laptop HDD that they can plug into our IWB when their own laptop/memory stick/cloud account/ saved file etc. fails to work. I'd also tell them what version of which software we had because sometimes they'd use the latest geewhiz version of whatever software suite had just come out, and try to open it on the rather older machines that we had to make use of.

    I also made a point of trying to get printed/photocopied handouts in advance. Because if I didn't I'd find, sure as eggs, that something wouldn't print from their laptop, or wouldn't come out in the copy or something like that, five minutes before we were due to start.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: reliant on an internet connection to function.

      "I think a good rule of thumb is that if your task/ reputation/employment relies on someone else's systems working properly it's probably time to move on."

      Cloud-based systems, anyone?

      1. Charles 9

        Re: reliant on an internet connection to function.

        What happens when (not if) it becomes cloud or bust? Do we just shoot ourselves then?

  27. Unicornpiss
    Meh

    I have been the person...

    ...tasked with making very poorly-planned meetings go as well as possible. I have seen machines blue-screen in the middle of presentations, people showing up with shiny iStuff that won't connect to anything and expecting us to have adapters for it, have had a person with half the presentations show up while the first speaker was 15 minutes into theirs. (Ended up locating the presenter's laptop's IP and dropping the next slide deck on the desktop over the LAN)

    The universe has a cruel and whimsical sense of humor when it comes to these things, and always finds some new way that you never imagined for things to go wrong. If it's a Monday and you're hung over, forget anything going smoothly, regardless of how many times you've tested or how well prepared you are.

    1. Barry Rueger

      Re: I have been the person...

      "... people showing up with shiny iStuff that won't connect to anything and expecting us to have adapters for it..."

      Lord save me from Apple people who are unwilling or unable to comprehend that no matter how wonderful they may think their stuff is, if they walk into another business or venue they may may need to interact with Windows, or even a VGA connector.

      Part of "professional" is being prepared for different scenarios instead of whining.

  28. Stevie

    Bah!

    Dabbs, you speak to something deep in me - an abiding hatred of "design for persistent internet connection" thinking.

    Every time I go through Ye Lyst Of Unnecessaree Updayte Checkyng Services I coin new, highly corrosive and therefore health-damaging swear words to describe the self-agrandizing "software architects" who think it is vital to keep the iTunes or OpenOffice dll libraries accurate to the microsecond.

  29. Floydian Slip
    Black Helicopters

    Never work with....

    Children, animals and live internet (whether wi-fi or wired) when making presentations.

    It's always from MY laptop with all content stored locally

  30. Adrian 4
    Facepalm

    inevitable

    I'd have liked to watch the video. But it just says 'Error #2035'.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why The Fi?

    WiFi - never used it, not gonna use it, can't make me use it!

    I'll shamble back to me cave now....

  32. plrndl
    FAIL

    Pot/Kettle

    What is "error #2035", on your video playback?

  33. Lakerjuck66

    Perhaps Apple Music is different in the UK but mine does not have a white screen post the normal few seconds for the app loading, ever, and Dark Side definitely shows as the correct artist. Odd.

  34. thomas k

    hipsterwankcafe

    Address, please.

    1. Unicornpiss

      Re: hipsterwankcafe

      Pretty much any of them...

      Right next to the Bukkake Bar & Grill..

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everything bad in the world cna be traced to how annoying Alistair Dabs writes. Kudos to the one author that I usually avoid but that can actually get my feathers ruffled when I read his works.

  36. md56

    Nothing new here.

    *I* fondly remember the time when my second slide jammed in the projector, and the idiot running it tried to retrieve it, incidentally dropping all 30 slides on the floor, which he then reinserted in random order and orientation. My talk then became interestingly disjointed. And the time when I was chipping my talk on a soft rock, and the bloody thing shattered into pieces. The more things change the more they stay the same.

  37. Dr Gerard Bulger

    Add blocking. Nah; we need stop that background chatter background blocker.

    Why does every damn app, or programme on any device now believe you have access to infinite and free bandwidth? It is a form of theft. I really notice this when having to use BAGAN satellite links. To avoid being bankrupted I had to set up a false default route, proxy server than only Firefox (in text mode) knew about and set one route to that, in order to avoid megabytes of crap with any device attached to the Sat Modem being pulled down and up FOR NO BENFIT OF MINE. The screen is doing nothing, but within a few minutes 700kb costing me $$ came down. I quickly stopped that. If left megabytes and my $$ stolen for nothing.

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