Life In The Slow Lane

Recently I had BT Infinity installed. Previously I had been attaining a download speed of 14mb (at the router). now the line has settled down, I’m getting 36mb from the new fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) system. As noted in my previous post, there is a significant slowdown over WiFi due to encryption/decryption. However after writing that article, things went a bit downhill for my PS3.

Soon after Infinity installation, my PS3 enjoyed about 10mb of connection. Faster than it had over BT’s ADSL service or the Sky service I had before that. Gradually though this slowed, to a new low of 256kbs and I was unable to access online gaming. I called Sony and they did all their checks, said they’d give it to 2nd line support who would call back (they never did). I was also tweeting with @BTCare and they directed me to their ‘how to connect to broadband’ help pages. Evidently it was up to me. The signal to the Laptop and the iphone was fine (25mb and 13mb respectively) after much playing around, trying one thing, then another, I’ve discovered the problem is with the ‘Smart Wireless’ system on the BT HomeHub3.

This system analyses the airwaves and selects the best channel number for the WiFi. Trouble is, mine selected 11, which seems to be the one everyone uses. So I’ve reset and fixed it to another channel. The speed on the PS3 has gone up to 11mb. However the speed of the laptop has gone down to 16mb.

Not being satisfied with that, I’ve ordered a 20m ethernet cable from Amazon for the princely sum of £2.84. I’ll hard-wire the PS3, taking it up to the 36mb and put the router back to the Smart setting, so the laptop can increase speed too. Hopefully that will sort everything out.

Social Rudeness

Social media is a weird thing. More specifically Facebook. The inter-connectedness of everyone throws up some odd surprises. As opposed to status updates telling all and sundry what he’s been up to, a friend of mine likes to post links to articles about 9/11 conspiracies, UFO’s, or… well actually any conspiracy theory really. Every now and then we get into a discussion about it, which to be honest is more like each side stating why the other is wrong and often degenerates into a slanging match. Yesterday the subject was the West’s intervention in Libya. Governments doing the oil companies bidding? Humanitarian aid? Or protecting the national interest?

Being the nature of threads, anyone who is a friend of his can join in. On this occasion, someone I knew from college popped up made a comment which I replied to, saying his view wasn’t the case, he then says I shouldn’t address him because I make his flesh crawl. Naturally I pointed out the feeling was mutual but if he doesn’t want me to address him, then maybe he shouldn’t comment on the thread. So he blocked me. On the basis we never got on, I wasn’t about to send this individual a friend request anyway, so it doesn’t concern me at all that he feels that way, but I am fascinated by such behaviour.

The event struck me as odd and it would only happen online. After all, if it were in a pub, who would go up to a group of people join in the conversation and then when someone replies, tell the other person not to speak directly to them before walking off. That’s just weird. However, such conduct is a product of the internet. We can sit safely at home, knowing that if we want, we can be as rude as we like and no one is about to come round and punch us. Consequence is limited by the ‘threat’ of someone blocking you.

The first fully connected generation is growing up now, what will that do to the social skills of the world? Will rudeness become more acceptable in the physical world? Will the people “brought up properly” be left behind? I think it’ll be fascinating to watch society evolve and with the speed of the net, it will evolve quicker than ever before.