I recently had a bit of twitter conversation with @BTCare about the cross-browser/platform quirks of BT service and the BT.com website. Twitter’s 140 characters are a bit limiting so I ended up with pat responses and to clarify I’ll post this to describe what I mean.

Some basic information — the technical setup; it’s an Intel iMac running current Mac OS X, all software, browsers etcetera up to date.

I recently had some problems with the broadband speed, well the BT Vision part of it i.e. replay or downloading programmes or movies. Checked everything, rebooted etcetera and found out it was the phone line speed. Straight after that I managed to lock myself out of the HomeHub. My own idiot moment.

During the process of fixing all this, including calling support at the end, I found some quirks, most of which I’ve experienced on multiple occasions over some years. In between I’ve done complete OS re-installs so I don’t believe it’s just my system or setup.

Looking at the BT HomeHub in Safari and trying to get the Advanced menu options on the left will leave you looping round and round to the screenshot below. This is actually an ‘improvement’. Previously, recently, the body where Advanced configuration is displayed, was just white space. Now there is some handy text which doesn’t help or explain in any way but will make you think everything is fine and make you lose your mind that little bit slower after repeatedly looping around. At least with the white space and lack of Advanced menu you realised there was a problem straight away.

With Chrome you’ll be awarded with being able to view (and therefore change if necessary) the Advanced menu on the left.

I also tested the line-speed of the actual phone line. Strangely enough this test would work in Safari but not in Chrome. A mysterious switch?

During the support call the operator needed to connect and control the mouse and keyboard of my computer. Chrome and Safari both seemed to struggle with this so we got Firefox up and running. It didn’t seem to work either but somehow one of the three browsers worked and we got that sorted. I don’t know which browser worked because I don’t think any browser displayed the fact that it had worked on my side.

More recently I logged into the BT.com website. There was a link advertising cheaper international calling rates which I clicked through to. I was using Safari, but the drop down menu of destinations wouldn’t display when clicked. I tried Chrome, after all it’s not very helpful if I can’t choose the country to display the rate and there is no other, easily obvious way to display that information. Chrome didn’t work either. Firefox worked for that but lets say it plainly here:

BT, you’re letting us down regarding accessibility. Should I need three browsers (or more?) and the technical skills required to fault diagnose and solve or work around all these quirks?

Please get in touch, there is something else which I'd like to mention.

R!  :-/

Of-course everyone is going to roundly condemn the violence during the march by students in protest against tuition fees. I'm not going into the rights and wrongs of the violence or whether university tuition should be free or not. This is more a musing on the nature of protest and violence during protest.

The students have already had a number of peaceful demonstrations. So far they have been ineffective.

Do you remember the poll tax riots? Very violent. Effective.

Remember the huge amount of people (600,000 to 1 million) who protested against the UK going to war against Iraq. Peaceful. Ineffective.

Strangeways prison riot was another effective violent protest, leading to major reform of the prison service.

Of-course Gandhi used peaceful protest by means of civil disobedience and  non-cooperation which proved extraordinarily effective. 

The marches against fox-hunting were largely peaceful and again ineffective.

By no means is this definitive but it's beginning to seem that peaceful protest is largely ineffective. Particularly currently in the UK.

My thoughts are that governments around the world should really listen when people protest peacefully. Peaceful protest right now tends to fall on deaf ears. But in every peaceful protest, people have to travel vast distances if significant numbers are to be achieved. They have to miss work. Pay money for travel. Keep themselves fed and watered. It's not done on a whim when large numbers of people get together to do this. When protest becomes more violent and is suppressed violently it starts a spiral. The G20 protests are a good example of this. The protesters are becoming more violent, the police are suppressing the violence with harsher and harsher means. Exclusion zones employed to keep people away only make people feel they aren't being listened to, which makes them angrier which allows firebrands to stir people to violence.

Just my tuppence worth.

R!

p.s. A final word on tuition fees, perhaps if it's too expensive to give free university tuition to everyone then there should just be fewer places and entry should be largely based on ability. Recently I was told about some job opportunities in a call centre, the minimum education for which was a degree. A degree needed to answer phones and follow a script.

If almost everyone has a degree it means a degree doesn't mean much. Remember the old adage, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Perhaps degrees shouldn't be something you just pick up, perhaps they should be a bit more special?