Posts by Friar

Up yours, Europe! Our 100% prime British broadband is cheaper than yours... but also slower and a bit of a rip-off

I don't see why broadband connections aren't 'metered' like other connections. You should pay for what you receive, not for some notional package which is unattainable. If I'm on a 300Mbps contract, but only get 100Mbps then I should pay the rate for 100Mbps.

The ISP's get let off on the basis their service is "up to 300Mbps", but a gas supplier wouldn't get away with a service offering gas "up to 100 kWhs a month" at a fixed price and then only giving you half that. If we got charged on a consumption basis suppliers might then make more effort to see their connections were actually capable of delivering what they promised.

Well, well, well. Internet-of-Things speaker biz Sonos to continue some software support for legacy kit after all

Exactly. I can see no change of policy at all.

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

Re: Have i missed something?

"They don't say what happens if you try to attach a Sonos device bought after May 2020 to the same network"

The way Sonos works is that all units have to be on the same release level. If I'm on v8.4 and buy a new v9 unit the system will upgrade all Sonos units to v9 as soon as I attempt to add the new unit to my system. If any of the existing units are unsupported on that release they may be bricked. That's what happened to the CR100s after v8.4.

You cannot have units with different firmware levels on the same network, so if you wish to keep your old units working you are unable to buy anything new. (Or secondhand either, unless you are lucky enough to find something with exactly the same level of firmware as you've got).

Re: So many "negative waves"

+1

I stopped updating like you when my CR100's were going to be retired and am glad I did. The latest announcement would make everything else I have bought redundant too. Sonos must be mad to think I am just going to bin a whole house system just because they have decided it is obsolete.

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

Re: Unacceptable

Ah, but Sonos does force upgrades on you that do degrade your equipment. I have two CR100 controllers that work perfectly, but one day Sonos decided that the batteries might be a fire hazard (a reason it later retracted) but it issued an update that bricked these controllers.

It said you could keep using the controllers if you didn't upgrade, but in reality it is almost impossible not to upgrade. For starters adding any new Sonos component triggers an upgrade.

Sonos for my money is totally unethical in the way it sells you a system, then changes that system whether you like it or not.

BOFH: The company survived the disaster recovery test. Just. The Director's car, however...

Or the time in a Hosting Centre where a certain government organisation thought they knew better than to use the centre's own power backup system, so used their own battery backup system in their super secure server area (Security cleared personnel only!).

Unfortunately it overheated, releasing acid fumes into the server room. Also unfortunately the server room aircon operated in common with the rest of the building aircon, so the whole building was pumped full of fumes.

This resulted in the secure server area rapidly becoming insecure as all exits, emergency and otherwise were unlocked to try to disperse the fumes. Still we had an afternoon off as we were told to evacuate for several hours.

Turn me up some: Smart speaker outfit Sonos blasted in complaint to UK privacy watchdog

Sonos is particularly aggressive with its update policy and the reasons behind this are particularly worrying. As others have stated they don't appear to be for the benefit of customers, but to increase the control and data gathering of the Sonos organisation. Customers are powerless to resist these updates, as the alternative is to lose service; if not immediately then at some point in the future.

The issue first surfaced some time ago when Sonos issued an update that bricked their own controllers. Customers soon found that although the update was supposedly 'optional', in practice it was not. The system constantly prompts if it is not updated, and is vulnerable to anyone using the system triggering an update.

Sonos, like other companies, relies on the fact that its users have a large investment in the system and cannot afford to refuse to go along bu opting out and junking their kit.

Much as I like their hardware I would no longer recommend it.

End all the 'up to' broadband speed bull. Release proper data – LGA

I've never understood why companies are allowed to charge for a service that isn't as advertised. If you get 5Mb/s you should pay for 5Mb/s, not for a service "upto 25Mb/s". Gas, Electricity and water are metered and charged for as provided, why isn't broadband?

If companies could only charge a maximum of the actual achievable linespeed then there might be more incentive for them to improve linespeeds. As long as they can charge for a 8Mb/s service but only deliver 0.5Mb/s then why bother?

TalkTalk incident management: A timeline

the Dotcom experience.....

This is all entirely predictable. Talk Talk's IT is a direct descendant of the original dotcom boom and bust. I worked in a start-up then and the attitude was to deliver fast and first. Procedures and methodologies were for wusses and losers.

The founder of Carphone Warehouse, Dunstone, was an entrepreneur who operated this way too. He saw a gap in the market and exploited it. Again speed and being first were critical, He moved his company into being an ISP when he saw the money to be made. His IT boss was told to 'make it so', despite the IT department having no previous skills or background in the field. Growth then became the supreme directive. The IT Department were instructed to ramp up customer provision as fast as they could to keep up with a huge marketing push. I attended an IT conference where a Carphone Warehouse IT Manager told the story of their move into being an ISP.

It is no surprise at all that security played catch-up in all this. If the firm was unwilling to put money into customer service, as evidenced by customers' experience, was it ever particularly likely that they were investing in security either?

Storage device reported stolen from insurer RSA's data centre

Here we go again

History repeats - http://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/aug/26/consumeraffairs.banks