New Adventures in Software

Over at DZone, I saw an article titled “Who Needs a Computer Science Degree When There’s Wikipedia?“. It suggests that you can learn as much from Wikipedia as you can by pursuing a formal university education in Computer Science. Sure, Wikipedia can be extremely informative (at least as an initial resource), but a random walk through the Wikipedia jungle could take you anywhere. It’s not a very structured syllabus.

I’ve been through a university CS education. I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of it here. Instead I’m more interested in how to acquire similar knowledge freely via the web. I’m certain that there are better approaches than trawling through Wikipedia (though Wikipedia would remain invaluable for background reading and finding references to more authoritative sources).

For me, the most obvious place to start is the universities themselves. Have a look at the Computer Science department websites and you will find that many of them provide access to course materials for anyone to download. One of the perils of teaching yourself is that you often don’t know what you don’t know. Unlike Wikipedia, the university content will be from a structured course, designed to teach the important stuff and avoid leaving huge blindspots in your knowledge.

Unlike going to university for real, you don’t have to worry about fees, academic records or geography. You get to pick from the best universities worldwide to provide your education. Leading the way is MIT and their Open Courseware program. This provides high quality content tailored for remote learning. But there are many other universities that provide access to lecture notes (or videos) and exercises.

I was thinking how useful it would be if there was a website that collated links to the best online CS course materials. Then, quite by accident, I stumbled across Google’s CS Curriculum Search. This is a Google web search restricted to the CS departments of universities. It categorises the results into “Lectures”, “Assignments” and “Reference”. It seems to be a very useful tool.

The Curriculum Search is part of the Google Code University, which includes their own content related to CS topics that are important to them (e.g. distributed computing and web security).

Another resource that may prove useful is Scholarpedia, which I have mentioned before.

A couple of days ago I sat in a state of open-mouthed incredulity as I read the Daily WTF’s account of how the Oklahoma Department of Correction provides access to sensitive personal information. Not only were they allowing any semi-knowledgeable visitor unrestricted access to names, addresses and social security numbers but, if I’m understanding the situation correctly, it would have been possible to modify the data and add an innocent person to the sex offenders’ register

Elsewhere, a man had his life wrecked by false accusations of purchasing child pornography because an online store failed to protect his credit card details. Meanwhile, there remains no trace of the CDs containing the personal information (including, in some cases, bank account details) of 25 million British people (that’s over 40% of the entire population).

These stories and others like them demonstrate wide-spread ignorance and negligence when it comes to managing sensitive personal information. In the Oklahoma case the defect was primarily a technical one, whereas in the case of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs it was procedural (I’m sure at the time it seemed entirely sensible to burn 25 million people’s lives to CD without encryption and then send them via unregistered post).

As more and more of our personal information finds its way into databases around the world, these incidents become ever more likely. There is of course legislation such as the UK’s Data Protection Act and its equivalents in other EU countries. One of the eight principles of the UK act is that data should be held securely to prevent unauthorised access or misuse. The punishment for an offence under the act is a fine for the company or individual found guilty. As far as I am aware, nobody has been punished for the HMRC fiasco (except of course for Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson).

I’m starting to think that I would like to see some kind of accreditation for IT professionals (programmers, managers and network admins) who work with people’s sensitive information. Perhaps not for private sector projects - at least we get to choose which companies we give our details to - but certainly for public sector projects. If a government wants to invest carefully in huge databases of private information, then they should be forced to work only with suppliers who have demonstrated their competence in dealing with the issues involved.

If I wanted to perform appendectomies I would first have to prove my competence and obtain the necessary medical licence. If I botch an operation I will face a malpractice suit and the prospect of being struck-off (the system prevents me from stuffing up twice). And if I’m really reckless I could end up in prison.

Maybe something analagous in IT would be beneficial?  There needs to be real accountability.  If you negligently put millions of people at risk, you should be held responsible.  Maybe the Oklahoma Department of Correction has room for a few errant coders?  The rehabilitation could involve building a secure website for their hosts.  Now that’s synergy.

Or perhaps we’re happy to leave the unaccountable, self-declared “IT professionals” to ride the government gravy train and hope nothing bad happens to our data?

…and I would like the BBC to buy me a new car.

The ISPs weren’t too bothered when people were downloading huge amounts of illegal data. The file-sharers didn’t really have any grounds for complaint when the ISPs curtailed their activities. Now that it’s all above board and they actually have to deliver on their “unlimited” service plans it’s a bit different.

I don’t recall the ISPs asking YouTube/Google or Facebook to subsidise their operations. I’m sure they realised that these commercial entities would tell them exactly where they could stick their fibre optic cables. The BBC should (continue to) take a similarly dismissive approach.

Interestingly, the BBC estimates that their new iPlayer service is already responsible for 3-5% of all UK net traffic.

Well, after 2 and a half weeks, I’ve finally got a proper Internet connection again. The Pipex nightmare that I described previously carried on for nearly another week. Pipex’s assurances that my phone line had been released, allowing me to use another ADSL provider were, it seems, entirely fictional. This became clear 2 days after signing up with the new ISP. One final call to Pipex, this time to the more helpful people at the “Customer Retention” office, severed my association with them.

I had to wait 3 and half days after this to receive the vital MAC number that would allow the new ISP to take control of the phone line. This delay and the subsequent 7 days to connect with the new ISP were both due to the major bottle neck in the entire UK ADSL network, BT Wholesale. All the while that BT maintains its laggard monopoly on the infrastructure, the barriers to changing providers are too high for most people to bother. This provides little incentive for ADSL providers to compete on customer service since customer retention is all but guaranteed unless they really mess up.

Ofcom, the toothless regulator, recommends not to bother complaining if the switch-over takes less than 20 days. In the 21st century, when broadband Internet is a basic utility and is used by people to work from home, to buy their weekly groceries, and to communicate with friends and family, is such a delay really the best that we can do? I’m not sure that it would be considered acceptable in a less apathetic country.

This posting is brought to you via the magic of 44kbps dial-up Internet.

It’s now four days since my broadband connection suddenly stopped working. An hour of investigating routers, modems and phone lines revealed nothing. A telephone call to Pipex the next morning cleared-up my confusion. Pipex had cancelled my account. Not suspended, it was cancelled, which is apparently irreversible.

Why would they do this to me after over 3 years of a previously harmonious customer-ISP relationship? Because my debit card, which they had been charging every month, had expired four months previously. This was strange because back on 13th August they had sent me an e-mail threatening to disconnect me within 6 days because my card expired at the end of September (a little premature perhaps, but no worries because a phone call sorted it out and we arranged new payment details - or so I thought).

I’d completely forgotten about the summer’s confusion when I called up customer service again on Thursday morning to enquire why I couldn’t connect. Apparently, Pipex had continued to try to charge my card. It failed in September (no idea why since it was still valid) and it failed in October (by which time it had expired). Now rather than doing anything about it at this point (after all, the card was not going to become unexpired), Pipex attempted to charge the card again in November. Guess what? It didn’t work. Still, why not try again in December, just in case? Now it was at this point, on 18th December, that Pipex insists that they sent me an e-mail explaining the situation and outlining what would happen if I didn’t pay up. Somehow this e-mail never found its way to me. I’m not in the habit of randomly deleting e-mail (I still have the message they sent me on 19th December informing me of a change to the customer service phone number), but maybe this mail got lost in transit or got swallowed by an over-zealous spam-filter somewhere en route?

Anyway, I made the point to the helpful woman on the phone that it would have been much more constructive if Pipex had telephoned me or sent a letter to warn me of the impending disconnection. Even another e-mail on the eve of disconnection would have averted the situation. I was annoyed at the inconvenience but the woman told me I could pay the money owed and my connection would be back within 24 hours. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take my payment details but she’d put me through to someone who could. I didn’t appreciate having to wait 24 hours to get back online, but changing ADSL providers is a real headache, so you’ll put up with a lot of shit just as long as they get you connected.

So the helpful woman passed me on to the not-so-helpful man. I made my point again that the situation could easily have been averted with just a little bit more effort to contact me. He was entirely unsympathetic as he took my card details to pay for the previous 4 months and to set-up future payments. Great, so I’d be back online by the next day? No. It was going to take 48 hours, he said. I told him that I was not happy with this but I would make a complaint separately, and I thanked him for his cheerful assistance.

Now the best bit about having your account cancelled rather than suspended is that your mailbox is deleted. The 25 e-mails that I had read via web-mail but not yet downloaded were zapped and all subsequent mails to my address during this 48-hour period would be bounced. Brilliant.

48 hours passed. Still no Internet. Another phone call to Pipex and another unsympathetic call-taker. The woman seemed incredulous that I expected to get back online within 48 hours. This was going to take 7-10 days. My account hadn’t been suspended she reminded me, it had been cancelled! I’m not sure what the justification for such a delay is since, if I was a new customer, I would be online much more promptly.

It was at this point that I raised my voice for the first time. Again I made the point that the situation could have been avoided with better communication. I was informed that it was not their fault if I chose to ignore their single (apparently undelivered) e-mail. I told the woman that the situation was completely unacceptable and that I no longer wanted my account re-enabled. I asked for, and received, assurances that I would not be charged again and that my phone line was not locked by Pipex, so that I could use an alternative provider.

So that’s where we are. Waiting for the new ISP to set-up my ADSL connection, which, because of the weekend, is probably still going to be a few days. Pipex’s inflexible customer service turned a minor misunderstanding into a major inconvenience. They’ve gained yet another thoroughly dissatisfied customer and, without my business, they’ll have ever-so-slightly less money to piss away on David Hasselhoff and the under-performing players of Fulham FC. As for me, I’m getting a connection that is 4 times faster and costs less. And while I can’t vouch for the new ISP’s customer service, I feel confident that it can’t be any worse than Pipex.

The BBC brings news of Google’s plans for an online encyclopedia to rival Wikipedia.

The new project, called Knol, atttempts to address some of Wikipedia’s short-comings by putting more emphasis on respected authors and peer-reviewed content. In exchange for contributing, authors will receive a share of the ad revenue for their pages. Meanwhile, Wikipedia steadfastly refuses to display adverts, and instead relies on charitable donations to cover its costs.

This sounds a lot like the Scholarpedia project that I wrote about previously. But Scholarpedia lacks the considerable backing of the Google machine or the financial incentives of Adsense.

So will Google crush Wikipedia? Will Wikipedia have to adapt to survive? Or is it too entrenched already for Google’s efforts to have any real impact?

Wikipedia’s ad hoc editing certainly results in some interesting articles. During this year’s World Cup I found 3 separate pages detailing rugby player Jonny Wilkinson’s international points-scoring record, each with a wildly different number (including one that put him hundreds of points ahead of all-time record holder Neil Jenkins). Other things Wikipedia has taught me in the last year are that Clash frontman Joe Strummer was in favour of AIDS and global warming (or perhaps it was just a poorly constructed sentence), and that billionaire Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich is in fact a dustman.

I’ve moved from Blogger to my own site so that I can have more control (via WordPress). I’ve managed to import all of the old articles but seem to have lost the comments in the process. I’ve also updated my JavaBlogs entry, which has had the unfortunate side-effect of spamming the front page with old articles. Sorry about that…