Damien Mulley

Remember that? Probably not. Way back in January 2006 the Government decided to have a consultation about how to stimulate demand for broadband in Ireland. They got a lot of reponses, nearly all of which (except eircom and Forfas) said the biggest issue was supply not demand. A report was written as a result of all the feedback on methods to increase usage of broadband in Ireland. It appeared to have just been buried. Well until now. Broadband Demand conclusions come on down!

Photo owned by johnthescone (cc)

I sent in the following Freedom of Information request in January of this year:

A digital copy of all consultation responses, drafts and the final version of the Broadband Demand Report. I believe this report/consultation happened around January 2006

Last week the Department of Communications uploaded the digital versions of the documents I received to their website. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

It’s all rather boring really until you get to the report that was generated from all the suggestions. The FOI request showed me the three versions of the final report which itself was not made public. Amazing to see how the civil service works and watching as the initial draft get severely butchered as it probably went up the chain of command and became rather tame. Part 6. A 19 page document got turned into a 16 page document and then got turned into a 12 page document (Page 81)and on the way suggestions from the Department were removed. But even with that final report, it never actually got published after all the people sending in their views and it all being sifted through. What a horrible waste.

The overall conclusion of this report was: Stimulating demand is not a concern at present and it’s still not.

Where did the Murphy’s go?
The draft versions of the report on the conclusions saw the report split into two parts, stimulating demand and tackling availability/infrastructure issues. In the cleaned report (page 81) they turn from “suggestions” into “summaries”. It is obvious in the drafts that the Department have come up with their own constructive suggestions on demand and availability but further along the line they seemed to have been disappeared. Shame. But it at least shows that like every org they are some great minds and constructive suggestions being worked on but politics comes into play.

BT Ireland and eircom had massively different data on line failure rates which was mentioned in one draft:

BT in their submission, claim that up to 62% of FRIACO lines they surveyed (a sample of 4,300) failed the line test for broadband. Eircom state the figure is 10%. The truth is probably somewhere in between and it would prove a worthy exercise for the Department to ascertain the real truth, if only to counter the spin Eircom put on the figures in the national media.

The clean report turns this into:

BT reported that a high share of FRIACO lines failed the line test for broadband. However, in relation to coverage issue, Eircom stated that by “March 2006, 85%+ of telephone customers will be connected to DSL enabled exchanges”

Nowhere does it mention that this is just fiddling with numbers but it is warned about in the two drafts:

The wording of this is very careful. They are not saying that 85% of customers can get DSL, they are saying 85% of customer lines are attached to a DSL enabled exchange. This brings the numbers of the population down from the 67% of the country who have a land line, down to 56.95% who have a landline attached to an exchange.

Eircom claim there is only a 10% failure rate on lines, which brings to sum down to 51.26% of the population who have a land line, attached to an enabled exchange, with no failure problems. … and is assuming you accept Eircom’s word

And the Murphys:
A suggestion was made to pick out the first 100 Murphys in each area code and put their number into the eircom line checker and see what the %s would be. It never made it into the “clean” report. Neither did lots of other very good suggestions probably because it would have added more reality to the situation the Department had been preaching up until then.

There are dozens of other great suggestions in those draft reports. They’re worth checking out. I still think the Murphy’s idea is great and maybe someone should try it out and see what the line failure rates are.

Justin Mason did the sleuthing. Will we have to download weekly patches soon?

Firefox barred. MacOS barred.

Still, you can win vouchers ranging from 1 euro to 10 euros as well as an N95. Go here.

Apple must have been jealous of the attention Pat Phelan gave O2 and the iPhone launch so they’ve done one better and Pat’s watching. See Apple have told Irish employees they can have a free iPhone but can’t unlock it and if the phone is unlocked, they’ll get done by HR. Apple have said they’ll be spying on their phone usage. Looks like they’re keeping some ownership rights too as you can use it but not sell it on but you can give it to a friend or family member. Can they sell it on? What if they unlock it?

Photo owned by rveenen (cc)

I mentioned in a blog post that Blogspot is like cat pee. I was asked to expand on that.

The issue I have with it is that it’s hard to get your data out of the site once you start and redirecting spiders and Google to your new blog if you do escape is difficult to impossible. So for me it does not give you as many options as other blogging software and no plugin support but also if you move to your own domain, a hell of a lot of traffic will still go to the old site. Google “Twenty Major” and his old blogspot blog comes up 3rd or 4th in searches.

When it comes to business blogs it irks me a bit that Blogger/Blogspot gets all the linklove instead of the company even when they do decide to move the blogs to the main domain.

Cat pee. Is there an easy way to redirect with blogger/blogspot?

Rob mentions though that WordPress.com sticks ads on your blog and doesn’t give you a choice whereas blogger does.

Via the Yahoo! Corp Blog. Very encouraging. Also on the Google blog.

In this same spirit, we announced today that we’ve joined forces with Google and MySpace to create the OpenSocial Foundation, and will also begin supporting the OpenSocial standard. Industry consortiums such as this often start slowly and evolve over time. So far, OpenSocial is rapidly growing and adapting, but still in the early stages. We feel that this is the right step at this stage in its evolution. It’s no longer a trial balloon — it’s for real. We are taking this opportunity to help ensure websites and developers feel confident using OpenSocial as the building blocks for their new social apps.

We already offer Web services and APIs through the Yahoo! Developer Network that make it easy for developers to build applications and mashups that integrate data sources in new ways. We think OpenSocial will continue to fuel this innovation and make the Web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions.

The big question though is whether they’ll do what Bebo did and then supports Facebook Applications too.

Update: Further thoughts. The foundation looks good with it owning the IP and NOT Google. This is better for sure. Is this also forcing Microsoft to join via the backdoor if they eventually do nab Yahoo!?

It seems that if you use a certain url on the Aer Lingus site you can access the account details of whoever logged into some sections last. I logged into the Gold Circle section and when someone logged in after me the got the below details. I’m not the only one. Anyone that clicks on the url (which seems to be just a general url with session details) will see details of anyone who logged in last. I rang customer care who are not equipped to deal with this in fairness and they asked me to email in the url. Twenty mins later and I still can’t find an email address on their site that I can email. They seem to think fax is enough for Irish people. Oh and their Aer Lingus queries site is down so I can’t send in my “query” via there.

Not that I have much of a clue about security but it appears to be a simple session hikack, although not intentional. The url sent to me and others by someone linking to the Gold Circle page contained session details and for some reason when registering after that for Gold Circle and logging out, the next person in could see the details of the previous person. If they hadn’t logged out yet you got the screen cap from above but if they logged out you saw “just” their email address. A very obvious data breach.

The worrying thing is that this technique might be used to get even more details from accounts including credit card details. So on Easter Sunday I am told I should email this into customer care, if I can find their email details. I’m still looking.

Update: Email to customer care:

My personal data was accessed by other people.

My mobile number is +353

I already called about this at 3pm today. I was told to fill this form in. There has been a data security breach on your site which has ended up with my personal data being exposed via the Gold Circle section of Aer Lingus website. It has happened to others too and I believe they have made contact.

The clock started ticking for me at 3pm and I would like to be contacted and assured that this data breach is being taken seriously and that a report will be issued as to what happened. I would also like to be updated on the progression of the investigation of this issue.

I have also put this issue on my website: http://url.ie/aln and will be updating it as time goes by.

Thank you.
Damien Mulley

Update 2 @19:11 – Well Aer Lingus took down the site for a while but the issue is still there. James Galvin shared a url and when I clicked on it, I got his fake account details:

Including his credit card details, though he didn’t put them in:

The very worrying thing is that it was sheer accident that some of us happened upon this. Is this a temporary bug or has it been around all the time? Can session IDs be predicted?