Michael's musings

Sat, 05 Jun 2010

Datavalet hotel Internet "service" is broken

If you've stayed at a Hotel that "features" Internet service from Montreal supplier datavalet, you may experience that it... well... isn't Internet.

It's not surprising that hotel Internet services think they are "forced" to use Network Address Translation (NAT), so you aren't really on the Internet, but only half of it. It is also not surprising that they intercept all of your packets until you sign in through their portal (possibly paying).

What is surprising is that after doing that, that they continue to intercept many of your packets, violating both your privacy and BREAKING THE INTERNET.

What does Datavaley do? Well they intercept ALL of your DNS requests. DNS is the Domain Name System, the thing that translates names like www.kame.net to IP addresses like 203.178.141.194, but also to IPv6 addresses like: 2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085.

Except that Datavaley doesn't. If you ask them for the IPv6 address (the AAAA resource record), then instead of answering either "do such name", they just don't answer. And they do this, even if you asked your own corporate server rather than their server. It requires EXTRA programming to do this.

The result? Anyone running with IPv6 turned on experiences the Internet to be broken. Who does that? Today, if you are running modern software: Windows 7, Linux, Mac OSX. Even XP and Vista (if you turned on IPv6).

I first experienced this at Indigo Hotel at the Toronto Airport in April. I reported this to the hotel and to DataValet. My colleagues report that the Holiday Inn (Terasse de Chaudiere) also has this.

My advice: don't stay there. DataValet broke RFC1034/RFC1035. Those documents are 23 years old --- the is no excuse for breaking the fundamental protocols. There is also no excuse for not having fixed this in the past two months.

Mon, 04 Jan 2010

An open Letter to Shaw Direct

Dear Jim,

You write, "Over the last 8 years, we have seen huge advances in the technology of our receivers without an impact on the MRF. Effective Feb. 1, 2010, the monthly rate for MRF (multiple receiver fee) will increase by $1/month to $5.99/month"

Over the past 8 years this is simply not true.

When I signed up in the summer of 2001, there was no multiple receiver fee. So, the MRF fee has in fact gone up by $5 over the last 8-9 years.

Meanwhile, my receiver is still the same VERY SLOW piece of crap motorola receiver you made me buy in 2001. I've seen no improvement in technology at all, and I'm locked into buying crappy, closed source, proprietary receivers if I want to receive your signal. You make me pay for the equipment, and then prevent me from using it the way I want.

When I first signed up, you gave me this "credit" on programming, but you made me spend it on your premium package, rather than on the basics package that I wanted, which meant that the receiver really cost me 2x as much as I was lead to believe.

The packages are such that I get hundreds of channels I do not want, and I can not get the two or three channels that I want without huge expense.

Meanwhile, the number of Pay-per-vue channels continues to decrease (and most of them are porn), I guess because you never bothered to offer your loyal customers an upgrade to the oval dish, and I can only see one of the two satellites.

If hulu.com opens in Canada, you can kiss my business goodbye.

If any local TV stations disappear from my dial, you can kiss my business goodbye. If you pass on any local TV tax to me, then I can assure that I will simply cut my bill by that same amount, or give up, and just watch DVDs.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009

Fido Dollars suck

Dear Fido:

Please cease telling me about my fido dollars. (I've received two emails in the last 24 hours)

Your fido dollars have no value. Not only are they not going to keep me as a customer --- I prefer to have an unlocked phone, and I'll pay for it.

In fact, your recent change to prevent me from spending my credits on whatever I want means that I will look for alternate GSM providers as soon as they appear.

I'd gladly trade my 284 fido dollars for a bluetooth headset, (now required in Ontario), and I tried to do so a year ago. You changed your rules without any real notice last March.

But, it's hard to pick the right headset when you can not see it. And I can not redeem through your stores. and your web site was totally useless.

No, I do not think Fido Cares about me. I think Fido is busy humping Ted Roger's leg.

Tue, 30 Dec 2008

CBC Qtv

I learnt this morning while listening to Jian Ghomeshi interview Gordon Ramsey, that most (all?) of the interviews are on webcam, and posted to Youtube.

This is brilliant! Cool content that I already paid for, and why not video tape it...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Qtv

Mon, 28 Jan 2008

Obama for net-neutrality

http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/01/28/obama/

Writes: Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama\u2019s commitment to open systems \u2014 for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens\u2019 groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it\u2019s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.