A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the problems I had with a TP-Link IP camera. Today I received a comment on that post from a guy called Luke in the TP-Link support team. In that response he apologises for the difficulties I had and promises to investigate further.
His response deserves as wide an audience as my original post, so I am drawing attention to it here.
Thank you Luke for taking the time to comment.
I guess, like me, many parents will have facebook accounts simply as a means of communicating with their kids. In the past I have used my account as a way of finding out what my kids actually do, or like in the way of music for example. This can be more fruitful than attempting a conversation with a grumpy teenager. My kids are no longer teenagers so I don’t use it much these days. However I tried today to check my son’s page in the hope that it might give me some inspiration for a christmas present. Facebook won’t let me log on unless I give it a mobile phone number.
No Zuckerberg, you cannot have my mobile number. And I am seriously pissed off that I cannot now even get to my account to delete it.
This would be funny if it weren’t quite so tragic. A friend of mine has just pointed me to the Computer Weekly “second annual UKtech50” poll of “the definitive list of the real movers and shakers in UK IT – the CIOs, industry executives, public servants and business leaders driving the creation of a high-tech economy.”
The flummery goes on, “Voting has begun to find out who is the most influential person in the UK IT community. Our panel of judges has chosen the shortlist of 50 names, and we want your opinion on who should win.”
So who are these 50 top “movers and shakers” in UK IT? A depressing list of the (maybe) worthy but dull. The sort of list that the President of a local chapter of the BCS might dream up. It even includes the Cabinet Office Minister Frances Maude. I don’t think his CV contains much in the way of technical capability, With one or two exceptions (pick your own) few if any of those listed could be deemed UK IT leaders – influential maybe, IT leaders? I doubt it.
So let’s take a look at the list of judges. This is where the tragedy is most manifest. Take a look at the bottom of that page – the section headed “Read More”. It says:
People who read this also read…
What is 3G (third generation of mobile telephony)? – Definition from Whatis.com
What is TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)? – Definition from Whatis.com
What is cloud computing? – Definition from Whatis.com
What is supply chain management (SCM)? – Definition from Whatis.com
Oh deary, deary, deary me.
Standalone IP cameras have come down in price quite remarkably over the past few years. It is now perfectly possible to get a camera for between £50.00 and £75.00, and this makes them attractive for anyone wanting to set up simple “home surveillance” systems. I bought one recently just to see what I could realistically do with such a beast. I chose the TP-Link TL-SC3130G,
which goes for around £60.00. I bought mine from amazon. I chose this particular camera because, on paper, it looked to have a good specification at a keen price point. According to the TP Link website, the camera’s highlights include:
plus an impressive list of protocol capabilities all in a reasonably compact and attractive hardware package.
When the camera arrived I was pleased to find that the hardware was indeed quite solid and attractive. Such a shame I can’t say anything good about the software though.
As you would expect, I had to first configure the camera over a wired link. By default the camera comes up on 192.168.1.10. The login credentials are the usual “admin/admin” – which is the first thing you should change, but sadly I’ll bet that few people bother. The web interface presents the user with a set of configuration menus on the left of the screen and an image taken from the camera towards the centre of the screen. The software assumes that the user has IE and ActiveX running so for those of us with more sensible setups, some of the configuration and control options on the camera (such as snapshot, zoom and audio volume control) are unavailable. No matter, the important thing from my point of view, and the reason I bought this camera rather than its slightly cheaper brother, the SC3130, is the supposed wireless capability. At first sight, the camera and network configuration options look surprisingly comprehensive. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the list of options available might confuse a user who had little networking experience. For example, besides the obvious options to set new static IP addressing or change to DHCP, you can change HTTP, RTP and RTSP ports, set up multicast streaming, change the multicast address, change the ports used for video and audio streaming, set viewer authentication, set the camera to use PPPoE and dynamic DNS and even send users an alert via email containing the new network settings (such as IP address) should these change. Of course, in order to do so the user must first configure email on the camera. Altogether an impressive looking range of capabilities. Again, such a shame they don’t all work.
Annoyingly, the web interface sometimes simply refused to accept changes or the system reset the changes after reboot, I first noticed this when changing the camera’s clock setting to sync with the time on my PC. It simply refused. NTP worked eventually, but it tended to stop working for no apparent reason. But by far the worst fault was in the WiFi stack. WiFi configuration options were all accepted and it was soon possible to connect wirelessly both to configure the camera and to view either a video stream or a still image. However, as soon as the wired connection was removed, both interfaces went down. Nor was it possible to connect wirelessly if the camera was booted without a cable inserted. Now it is pretty pointless to have a WiFi camera that insists on having a wired connection present as well and I couldn’t believe that no-one had tested this so I assumed that there was some way to get the thing working. Besides I hate being beaten. So I spent what was, on reflection, a disproportionately silly amount of time playing with various configuration options (DHCP vs static addressing, various combinations of UPnP and no UPnP (which involved me changing my router configs as well), changing various network port numbers, all to no avail. I searched the manufacturer’s website in case there was a new firmware image I could try, but that was a waste of time because the image on the website (1.6.17 dated 29 October 2010) was older than the firmware on the camera (1.6.18 dated 17 March 2011).
After trying umpteen variations of settings, at one point the camera froze completely and refused to boot. I had to resort to a hardware reset to get the thing back up again. Here it got weirder still. The camera came back up on 192.168.1.97 and not the default 192.168.1.10 (I found it with a sniffer). God help the average punter trying to get this thing to work.
I sent it back, and amazon refunded my money. Do yourself a favour. Don’t even think about buying one.
For the first time since early 2005, Ubuntu has fallen off the top spot on distrowatch. The new number one, by page hit ranking, is Linux Mint.
I’m not at all surprised.
Following a visit to EFF to read an article on e-book privacy, I met this:
So. EFF uses a wildcard SSL cert issued by a company which was breached earlier this year.
The reaction to Ubuntu’s move to Unity seems to be getting wider coverage. Over at LWN, Bruce Byfield blogged recently about the rift between the Ubuntu developers and its users. In particular he highlights Tal Liron’s entry to the Ubuntu launchpad bug wiki under bug number 882274. In that entry, entitled “Community engagement is broken” Liron gently rebukes the developers for their apparent lack of enegagement with the community, saying:
“The bug is easy to reproduce: open a Launchpad bug about how Unity breaks a common usage pattern, and you get a “won’t fix” status and then radio silence. The results of this bug are what seems to be a sizable community of disgruntled, dismayed and disappointed users, who go on to spread their discontent and ill will.”
Both Liron’s bug entry (and the subsequent commentary) and Byfield’s analysis of that discussion bear reading. I found myself frustrated by the obvious lack of understanding of (and impatience with) Liron’s position apparent in Mark Shuttleworth’s responses. Byfield concludes that:
“[Suttleworth] sounds impatient, resorting to personal attacks and invoking his personal authority or the necessities of design or standard practice instead of offering explanations. At times, he seems to address issues that at best approximate what others in the discussion are saying. Exactly why this change has happened is uncertain, but it adds a sting to Shuttleworth’s once-humorous title of Benevolent Dictator for Life.”
Meanwhile, over at El Reg, Liam Proven offers his analysis of the Ubuntu upheaval. In that article, Proven describes the differences between GNOME 3, GNOME 2 and Unity and explains how these changes (or more properly, the management of these changes) have led to the difficulties now facing a wide range of users. Proven concludes:
“Ubuntu is gambling that Unity will attract floods of new Linux users in such numbers as to outweigh those abandoning it for its spin-offs and rivals. If it’s correct, then Ubuntu will continue its rise to near-total dominance of the Linux desktop. But if it’s wrong, it will leave the Linux world more fragmented than ever.”
In my view Ubuntu (or more precisely Canonical and Shuttleworth himself) is wrong and will regret this decision not to properly engage with its user base. I don’t blame them for changing the desktop, after all, the GNOME developers have forced that change upon them. But I do agree strongly with Liron’s position. Ubuntu could do well to listen more.
And in a nice summary of Xfce, Scott Gilbertson today explains why previous GNOME users are moving to that desktop in the wake of the GNOME 3 and Unity changes. It seems I’m in the company of a growing number of other users.
My newspaper of choice is the Guardian. Recently they were forced to increase the cover price and ever since have been running a series of advertisements for various forms of subscription which will lower the cost from some £35.00 pcm (if you include its sister paper the Observer on sundays) to as little as £9.99 if you go for the kindle option.
The economic case for change is unarguable. A saving of over £20 a month, plus you get the “paper” delivered to your breakfast table in seconds over the airwaves. No need to go out in the rain down to the shop to pick up a copy (I live in the sticks and the local shop won’t deliver to us). No disappointment when they have sold out (it happens). No waste paper as I immediately bin the sports section. No waste paper when I eventually discard the bits I do read. And it would mean that I actually use the kindle as something other than a rather expensive paper weight. The Grauniad even kindly offered a two week free trial if you signed up.
So I tried it. I really did. But it just didn’t work for me.
To be fair practically all the editorial is there. And the layout is pretty good. Down the left hand of the screen you see the headings for the main sections – Top Stories, UK News, International, Financial etc. whilst on the right hand side you are given the headlines for each of the main stories in each section. The layout also makes good use of the kindle’s navigation features so it is easy to skip from one article to another or even from one section to another. But it lacks that essential aesthetic which makes a good newspaper. I’m sorry, but the medium is the message – at least it is over the breakfast table.
I don’t read a newspaper in serial, article after article, front to back form. I skip about. First I throw away that useless sport section. Then I start at the back of G2 with Steve Bell, and flick back two pages to Doonesbury. What? No Steve Bell? No Doonesbury? Oh dear. I then flick to the front of G2 while my tea is brewing and I munch my cornflakes whilst reading whatever takes my fancy. (Note to non Guardian readers. The G2 is a tabloid sized insert to the main paper. It contains little in the way of editorial and much in the way of entertainment. Ideal breakfast fodder.) G2 section finished (normally about the time I have finished my breakfast) I can retire to my armchair with my second cup of tea and the main paper.
And I don’t read that in serial fashion either. I skip about. I scan the pages for something I want to read first, then read that before scanning for something else. Doing so gives me a good feel for the main issues of the day. I’ll see the obvious front page article – get a paragraph or two under my belt, then flick through for further details in other articles before going back to read the main news in detail. On the way I will inevitably be exposed to advertising (none in the kindle version) and will see a wide range of pictorial editorial content (very little in the kindle). And I can fold the paper to match what I am looking at. And it doesn’t weigh much. And it has two crosswords, plus the soduko and more Steve Bell!
I’m sorry, but a newspaper is more than just the sum of its content. I think I’ll carry on wasting 20 quid a month. And throwing away the sport section unread. And my local newsagent will continue to benefit from both the sale of the paper itself and any incidental purchase I may make whilst I am there. They wouldn’t get that if I carried on with the kindle.
After exploring the alternatives to Ubuntu, I finally settled on Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) running Xfce as the desktop. I am now Ubuntu free and have a desktop that looks the way /I/ want it to look rather than the way some design nut wants it to look. I am also hopeful that the desktop will stay that way in future.
My main desktop now looks like this:
and my netbook looks like this:
(click on either image to get full sized views)
I chose LMDE rather than Xubuntu partly out of pique with the way Canonical is taking Ubuntu, and partly out of a genuine desire to move to a distro which is closer to the ideals of the FOSS community which Ubuntu used to espouse and which Debian always has done. For me, LMDE now offers the best compromise between a truly useable modern desktop (with all that implies for proprietary codecs) and the purity and stability of Debian. I know where things are in Debian and I much prefer the Debian package manager to RPM (which immediately rules out Fedora or SUSE). Having now spent some time playing with Xfce I find myself surprised that I didn’t move to it much earlier. It is clean, relatively lightweight, fast and eminently configurable.
On my main desktop machine (which is running the 64 bit version to take full advantage of the 8 Gig of RAM I have installed) everything works as it should – even the dreaded flash (yes, I occasionally watch youtube). On the netbook (32 bit version) everything except the RHS card reader works. Hot plugging works on the left, and the right /will/ work if there is an SD card in place on boot. (But no, I /still/ can’t read Sony memory sticks. I have sort of given up on that now anyway since I no longer use the PSP to watch videos.)
Now to convert my wife.
the latest from El Reg
