Gossip

Cranky boss dumps on Hunky Mouse - Nice not nice

We received the following message from The Boss. Since he's the boss, we've let him post it. Well, actually, he can't post it, and he sounds pretty cranky ... so we thought we'd better copy it from our discussion area, which is the only thing he can reach.

Here's his message in full:

I'll have you know that in the circumstances, I'm not cranky; I'm VERY WELL BEHAVED. I'm in Nice, France, for a two day seminar, organised by a friend. I'd better not name him. I'd like him to stay a friend.

The seminar is about networking. Naturally, I asked the organising committee if they had arranged wireless networking. "Oh, of course," they said.

What they actually meant, was: they'd asked two French internet companies, Wannadoo and France Telecom, to arrange an ISP feed to the hotel. That was WEEKS AGO and when we got here, yesterday, neither of them had managed to agree on whose fault it was that neither of them could manage this. "It's their fault" said each of them.

The hotel has a WLAN, but they're paranoid.

So they've allowed us to use it through a special Network Address Translator. That goes through to their LAN. Their LAN itself is behind a firewall, which, in turn is behind another NAT layer.

The only port that seems to be open is port 80. No IRC, no VPN access, no FTP protocol.

I have an Orange SPV, plus a Vodafone Mobile Office. As soon as we arrived in France, the Vodafone logged on, told me it had a GPRS link, and subsequently, simply refused to link. I know it's working; it was working in Gatwick before takeoff. It isn't working here.

The Orange was working, if you can call the Heath-Robinson method you have to use to connect. It needs a USB cable, you have to "activate" the modem, you have to plug it in ... oh, it's all on the NewsWireless.Net article on how to do it.

I managed to get online; and then the PC decided it didn't associate with modems of this sort, and deleted it from its memory. Gone. Plug it in, and it says "No, that's just a PocketPC." Not a modem. No connection possible.

The hotel, is wonderful. Beautiful glamorous Nice on the Cote d'Azure. I won't name the hotel, but if its surname was Martin, it would be a very smart expensive car. It smells of wee in the corridors; and I can't open my balcony window because the smell of poo comes in from the sewage ventilation pipe. The bathroom doesn't have a bath.

The seminar meeting room holds about 40. There are 60 delegates. Most have notebook PCs, but there is only one (loose) power socket at the very back of the room. People who get bored with the seminar disappear out for a chat just outside the door I'm sitting next to.

And that Mouse calls me cranky.

The truth is, mobile IT has a long way to go. This isn't the cutting edge. It's the lunatic fringe.