It Doesn't Make Sense

It's been a while since I posted anything - I guess it's because over the last couple of weeks I've been alternately too busy and too bored to blog . Yeah, I know that doesn't make a ot of sense, but then what does?

In fact, that's kinda the theme for this post - things that don't make sense. Actually, it's a just a couple of random points I wanted to make, but I can spin them so that they appear to have this common theme :-)

So first off, Smallville. I never used to watch it - it seemed like a pretty dumb idea - but then someone said it was good, so I watched a couple, and got hooked. Today was the last episode of Season 2 (yup, we're pretty behind here in SA), and I realised that something's been bugging me about the premise behind it. Okay, lots of things actually, but this one in particular: Clark was a toddler when he landed on Earth during the meteor shower, but he and Lana seem to be about the same age. But she remembers the meteor shower, and how everyone helped out afterwards, and she remembers her parents as well. But shouldn't she have been a toddler too? I didn't watch the first season, so maybe it was explained there, but it seems odd that they'd leave this big inconsistency, since they've done a fairly good job fitting in everything else.

Then, on to two things that will never make sense: broadband in SA, and Microsoft. Microsoft first: I've been trying to learn more about asp.net, but all the resources I find assume that you know asp, and then explain how asp.net differs, which doesn't help me much since I don't know asp. I came across the Microsoft Elearning site, who coincidentally were offering a course on asp.net for free (normal price $349 - unfortunately the free offer is now over). They also have a bunch of free courses on VS2005, and SQL Server 2005. They even have an offline player which allows you to download the course content and view it when you're offline.

So far so good. In practice, though, not so useful. It's a mission to download the player, and a mission to download the content (you need to install flash for IE; it doesn't recognise that you've installed flash, and makes you install it again; you can only use IE; etc. etc.) Still, I wanted to view the course, so I went through the whole process, downloaded some content, then realised that I didn't really have time to do it at work and decided to transfer it all to my laptop. First issue: the content is stored together with the player in the Program Files folder, which seems pretty dumb. Also, you can't launch the player until you've downloaded content - it just redirects you to an html page if you try. But the website said if you want to view the content on another machine you need to install the player on that machine, so I took it to mean that if I installed the player on my laptop, and copied the content folder across, I'd be set. But no - the player on the laptop refuses to see that content has been downloaded and is available, and won't let me launch the player.

So I e-mail tech support - their answer is, sorry, it wasn't designed to do that. No help, no trying to find a workaround, just no. So I e-mailed them back explaining what I was trying to do, and why, and isn't there a registry key I can set, or something, and asking how it recognises that content has been downloaded so that I can mabye get around it *somehow*. No reply. So I e-mail the usability tech support, and get told that it is their version of copy protection - they don't want people to be able to buy the content then distribute it free to other people! It's insane. I understand that they want to protect their income source, but I'm sure that it can't be too difficult to get around it (although I haven't figured out how, yet), so they're just making life difficult for legitimate users! I'm sure lots of people would like to download on one machine and view on another - I can't download it via my laptop, since that's only got access via dial-up, as opposed to the broadband connection at work. Luckily it was a free course - if I'd paid $349 I'd be truly pissed off.

Update: It turns out that if you download even just a single section of content on the second PC, it then sees all the content that you have transferred as well. I assume that if you download new content (for the same or new courses) on the first PC again and transfer it again, that it will then see that too without having to any further downloading on the second PC, but I haven't tried it out yet. Really, they could have just told me that in the first place!

Which leads me neatly to my final point, the sad situation of broadband in SA. Hopefully things will improve if ICASA implements their recommendations (although they're apparently already backing down; also, Telkom has threatened to stop their adsl service if they're regulated), but in the meantime things are pretty bad.

I don't need a lot of bandwidth, and I don't want to pay a large monthly fee, so I was looking at the lower end of the market, where there are basically 3 options:

• MyWireless, at R299 for 500Mb - on a month by month basis, but the modem costs about R2600;
• iBurst, at R199 for 200Mb - also month by month, modem is on special for about R1600;
• Vodacom 3G, with a lot options (but for comparion, R199 for 250Mb) - modem is generally free or pretty cheap, but you have to take out a 24 month contract.

So none of these options are really feasible. And you have to buy the modem from the ISP; can't get it somewhere else, otherwise it won't work on their network. And maybe it's just me, but an initial outlay of R1600-R2600 seems a bit steep for something that only costs R199-R299 per month! ADSL starts at about R450 per month (ISP + line rental), plus an installation fee plus the modem cost, so that's even worse. The world is moving to broadband, and putting more and more stuff on the web, and dial-up just isn't going to cut it. We need to get really affordable broadband in SA fast, or we'll get left behind. And the only way to do that is to get real competition - who can compete on an even basis (no more telkom line monopoly), and where there's enough competition that prices actually drop (as opposed the cellphone networks, who can each charge a fortune because the competition does too).

And now I'm off to study for my learner's, which I have to do to be able to do the test for a motorbike >125cc licence, even though I already have a motorbike <125cc licence and a car licence... yet another thing that doesn't make sense.