James Titcumb

Cloud Computing is a buzz word that’s been chucked around a lot on the Web 2.0 world recently, and with the announcement yesterday of Windows Azure, a cloud-based operating system developed by Microsoft, I thought I’d give myself more of an insight as to what this means.

It isn’t really a new concept, just like AJAX was never a new concept, it’s just when people realise things can be used in a certain way, it gets popular real fast. Basically, the concept of clouds is providing an abstraction layer, and normally a physical seperation between several nodes, for example cloud storage (Amazon SimpleDB, Google BigTable), cloud infrastructure (Amazon EC2) and cloud services (Google Checkout). In fact, you’ve probably already used cloud computing without even realising it… Google Maps and Google Docs are a couple of examples. Google, as you might have guessed, are pushing forward with the cloud computing bits quite a lot, and the only other real competitor in my eyes is Amazon, especially their hugely popular EC2 and S3 services.

It’s a pretty cool concept though - instead of having a laptop with 10GHz processors and 1TB of RAM and all that, we’ll all be using Eee PC with just Firefox running, most likely connected to Google. The concept of that forces buying hardware into the providers hands - the companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc. and all we do is use the services. I’ve not really gone into too much detail about what it is, but one of the advantages of this whole thing is that you don’t have to worry about data storage, and you can access your stuff anywhere you want.

The big thing holding UK back from diving headfirst into this cloud computing stuff is the fact that most residential UK internet connections suck. We’re still using ADSL and cable broadband for christs sake. And unreliable at that. Despite Virgin Media having a 35% market share, and BT Broadband having 40%, I still hear endless complaints about them. At the end of the day, even 24meg just doesn’t cut it (although in reality, I’ve rarely seen someone actually get anywhere near the potential throughput of a 24meg connection, due to contention ratios and all that). We need Fibre to the Home, and we need it with low contention ratio - we need Gigabit internet (or maybe 40 gigabit anyone?). The problem with that is that no-one wants to foot the £28.8 billion bill. I digress, that’s a different story…

With regards to this story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7560887.stm

I disagree with the final paragraph of the story:
“Shilpa, meanwhile, became a household name in the UK after the series.”

I have never even heard of Shilpa Shetty before this story.

Surely a household name, by definition, is something or someone that EVERYONE knows? For example, Hoover, BT etc.. I mean - even iPod is only JUST becoming a household name, and even James May knows what an iPod is, despite pronouncing it incorrectly in an episode of Top Gear.

I protest the fact that Shilpa Shetty is a household name, and you should replace the sentance with:

“iPod, meanwhile, became a household name in the UK due to completely unconnect events.”

P.S. I’m really REALLY serious about this, it has REALLY offended me so much - I’m crying right now… no really, I am…..

P.P.S. If you think I’m being serious, you’re wrong, it’s just a little jibe and hopefully I might give someone at the BBC a smile.

I just had a little rant post on a forum and I thought I’d post it here. The mentioned argument happened last Thursday.

I had an e-mail argument with Matthew Evans, the Assistant to the Chairman & Chief Executive, but they literally don’t care. He shoved all responsibility to BT Wholesale, and said they can’t do anything about it… I said why not, BT Wholesale is part of BT, and you’re the assistant to the CEO, surely you have some say over what BT Wholesale says - and to that he replied with the standard crap I’ve heard before - they’re non customer facing,and he doesn’t have access to the results and reasons why BT Openreach would not give me copper overlay… what does that say about BT??

Basically, you can’t complain to BT about this kind of thing, you have to complain to the ISP, because BT simply do not care.

BT Wholesale’s customers are the ISP’s i.e. BT Retail, Be Unlimited etc. Wholesale liaise with their customer’s only. Unfortunately you cannot liaise with Wholesale directly as you are a customer of the ISP. If you have a complaint re Wholesale you would make that to your ISP. Your ISP would then liaise with Wholesale to resolve the complaint and would then come back to you with the answer.

As far as I can see this process has now been followed and you need to accept that unfortunately, at this current period in time, it looks like a broadband service is not available to you. However in the future, as technology advances, this may change.

You really can’t take this matter any further.

Which translates to me as:

I couldn’t care less you can’t get internet, you didn’t go with BT as your ISP so we won’t bother sorting you out with internet. If you had gone with BT, we would’ve actually given you a copper overlay, but then screwed you over with a 2KB download limit. Haha, consumers are so stupid, look at my BIG PILE OF CASH SITTING ON MY DESK.

Grr.. BT annoy me. Supposedly they were supposed to fix my line yesterday, that never happened. Supposedly they are doing it today. I might get internet one day.. I might not.

Now, even though I still don’t have Internet due to BT crossing my lines, I am already singing Newnet’s praises. Their customer service is simply supreme. The difference is quite simple… call centre in England, with English speakers, but the important part is this, so I will emphasise this a lot:

The technical support know what they are talking about.

I have never had such a pleasurable experience being told I can’t get internet just yet. It was simply bliss. The good thing is, they explained the problem clearly, in simple-to-understand language, and without just repeating what BT Wholesale just told them, or just reading from a script!

So, here’s to Newnet, possibly the best ISP in the UK.

Well this time it’s not Pipex’s fault, it’s BT now, and the stupid invention of TPON - Telephony over Passive Optical Network. I’ve been without internet (and thus currently forking out £25 a month to host the most important websites I run on Newnet) for two weeks, and it’s really annoying.

To outline, I’m trying to get Be Unlimited which allows the use of Annex M, allowing higher upload speeds (ideal for running my servers). From the outset, there were problems. When I first ordered, Be said that there was a problem with my line. I rang to/fro between Be and BT trying to understand the problem, eventually getting the blood out of the stone that my line had a TPON tag.

Nevertheless, a few days later I was given an activation date and my activation pack was sent through. Hooray, I thought! Along came 10th July… I got home, no internet. I rang Be, they told me it could be up to 9pm until it gets activated. 9pm came, and went with no sign of internet. Today, I have been told this by Be:

Dear James, I just spoke with BT Openreach and they told me that unfortunately they can not replace the fibre optic line to a copper in that area and they advised me to cancel the order because the fibre optic line is not compatible with broadband orders.

Well that’s just great. I went on the Think Broadband forum (see thread here) to enquire (as well as replying to Be essentially saying, I don’t care, get BT to sort it out pronto). If the case really is that I’m still on TPON and there’s no copper overlays left, then it looks like I’m screwed. That’s just great. I’ve spent hundreds of pounds on server equipment recently, which will now be wasted.

However, I’m not letting this lie - I am determined to get Be Unlimited service, and I will do everything I can to make that happen.

And if it doesn’t work, then I will be a failure - a web developer… without internet?

Interesting concept… thanks a bloody lot BT.