Nothing to see here. Move along please.

Facebook is at it again …

Facebook has long been known for not taking sufficient care with users’ money and privacy, having hit the news headlines on several occasions. Seems they’re at it again.

Yesterday, I *tried* to get a simple ad running on their system, just a test really — though I did attempt to complete payment for a real ad. I tried three times, each time receiving various, different error messages and automated apologies, with messages like “we’re working to fix this problem …”, etc. At no time did I receive any message saying that my credit card had been charged and at no time did I see anything to suggest that the ads had in fact been accepted and lodged for running.

Today, I see that Facebook managed to fix the problem (I’m assuming), gather up the broken database data from my broken orders and then go ahead and charge me for essentially the same ad, run at the same time, to the same audience (all the same settings), three times. It’s not really the exact same ad, since I tried three times to get the ad to be accepted, each time having to re-enter all the data from scratch and each time receiving errors messages. So, technically, the ad was re-created three separate times.

Now, with any decent and reputable online vendor, you’d be able to contact them to query or complain about what had happened and get something down about it … maybe a refund or some credits or something. But not Facebook.

With Facebook, when you reply to a billing email, you simply get a message back saying that they don’t accept email responses to billing notices. They provide a link to a ad-related help page. Of course, every last character of text on that page is about assuming YOU, the user, have done something wrong or don’t know what you are doing.

There is no way to raise a specific request for help, only the FAQ. There is a message that reads…

Please note that if you choose to contact the Facebook Ads team, we’re only able to provide support for inquiries in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Arabic, and Turkish.

… but there’s no way to contact them, that I can find. They further state …

We’re also unable to offer phone support at this time, but will be happy to respond to questions submitted through contact forms on this site.

… but again, there are not, in fact, any “Contact Us” links anywhere “on this site”.

None of this is in compliance with laws designed protect online consumers and credit card users of course. It’s just Facebook, being their usual half-ass selves, making a mess of things.

What’s the one big lesson Facebook keeps kicking back in users’ faces, concerning both privacy and monetary transactions?

IF IN DOUBT — DON’T!

I suppose its only fair that I also point out that the ads did actually run and did in fact gain some 81 clicks at about $1.23 each. So not all was lost, though the cost was 3x the intended budget.

But sorry, Facebook. Your credibility just went down yet another notch. Very, very poor.

A lot of people tell me, “Hey man, you’re really smart!” But times like these do make me question their judgement …

Some time back, our DSL line was upgraded from ADSL to ADSL2+. The reported downlink ADSL rate went from about 5,500bps to 16,000bps. However, the actual downlink rate as reported by speedtest.net barely increased at all. I figured, “Damn. They’ve put a limit on the back-haul at the ATM level and I’ll just have to live with it.”

But more recently, the guy who rents the cottage at the back of our property decided to get his own DSL connection, instead of sharing ours over the WiFi link. Low and behold, he gets the same ADSL rate (more or less) AND he gets more than double the actual download rate. Clearly, he’s using the same DMAC and on the same back-haul link. So what gives?

I use a D-Link modem, patched with latest firmware and a LinkSys WRT-54G, also patched for more features. He uses just the little ‘free’ box supplied by the ISP. He let me do some swap tests. Here’s what I learned …

1. His modem on my line gives me 11Mbps
2. My modem, connected directly to my iMac also gives me 11Mbps
3. My set-up through the LinkSys WRT-54G limits me to just under 6Mbps
4. If I increase the ‘total available downstream bandwidth’ setting in the WRT-54G QoS area from 6000 to 11500, then low and behold, I get 11Mbps through the LinkSys!

I use QoS (Quality of Service) because I have a couple of SIP telephone circuits in the house. This ensures that if someone on the shared network is doing a big download (or upload), any phone calls in progress don’t get adversely affected. But in order for the bandwidth management to work, the LinkSys needs to know what bandwidth is actually available in order to start limiting connections when it reaches its usable limit I simply forgot all about it! Doh.

Mystery solved. Solution? Turn off QoS, run through the speedtest.net thing, then set the QoS available bandwidths to just under what I actually have available. Now, it’s working a treat.

A close friend just flicked me this guy’s social media/BLOG URL titled, The Art of Nonconformity.

He (Chris) seems to be one of those ‘one in a thousand” type characters, who just go out and LIVE like most people wish they could or regret they didn’t (myself included to a large degree!) He travels a lot, having a goal to, “visit every country in the world” before his 35th birthday in 2012. He’s university ‘educated’ and a conscious life-long learner. Like me!

I can see myself getting buried in Chris’ content for a good long time. His writing have so far been very interesting to me — and are indeed targeted at anyone not wishing to live their lives merely the way others tell them they should.

Haven’t got much time to rave on about Chris’ site right now, so why not just go check it out yourself!

Let me know what you think — leave a comment!

Oh dear. But how not surprising.

Not to be outspoken or anything, but …

I finally gave up on the patent system completely in late 2000 when I learned from a friend that the start-up company he worked for was under attack by a competitor who had somehow patented the idea (only recently at the time) that you could determine if a particular cellular comms module ‘had coverage’ by assessing the voltage on the signal strength (RSSI) pin of its radio chip. DUH. Being as that’s the only reason the chip manufacturer put the signal there in the first place and, besides the same standardised signal having been present on hundreds of radio chips and interfaces for many years, they had also fully (publicly) documented its purpose in this instance. So it all seemed a pretty clear case of an invalid patent.

But the start-up spent over NZ$70,000 of investor funds trying to get the judge to see that simple fact before giving up in disgust. As I recall, they continued with the product by adjusting the code to simply see if a call could be initiated as the method of determining coverage in boolean fashion. (And set about publicising that fact in the public domain as far and wide as they could so as to foil the rogue patent attorneys and their questionable client.)

Flip the roles around of course and you’ll find thousands of highly expensive, completely valid patents begin reduced to worthlessness for the same legal costs reason.

That’s just one of thousands upon thousands of similar stories since patents began. The original idea was good. I invent a bicycle and patent the two-wheeled form of transport. You invent the flip down stand so the thing doesn’t need a lamp post to stay parked upright. You pay me a licence for the original idea, I pay you a license for the nifty advancement, and we both go on to manufacture better bicycles. Now everyone, not least the consumer, wins. But long gone are those well intentioned ideas it seems.

Now you have this nonsense from Amazon as reported reported by PC World — Facebook, stop what you’re doing: Amazon has patent for ‘social network’.

In my perhaps not so humble opinion, the patent attorneys responsible for this embarrassment to all things good in the human race should be lined up and shot … or at least laughed at and ignored. Personally, I’d rather invite the tax man to dinner than partake of a single piece of bread with those low-lifes.

Patents seem to me today as little more than a tool used by the greedy to stay (or hopefully fail to get) wealthy.  Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone pays them any attention any more. Oh yeah. Legal costs of not doing so. I forgot. What a crock. *shrug*

Long live open standards and open source!

This is really just a test post to check that pingbacks are working between this, my personal blog, and ‘that’, one of my company blogs. (See below.)

WordPress is said to support pingbacks automatically. So, when I mention my blog post over at NZ Hosting’s blog, a comment should end up over there automatically — having been automatically verified as to this post actually containing a link to the blog over there. Clear as mud eh?!

I’m going to add a second link to a blog post where I first learnt how both pingbacks and trackbacks work, without which I’d not be writing this anyway, so it seems only fair.

Assuming this works, I’ll be fairly impressed. But I have to say, I can already see a couple of potential ‘gotchas’.