I’ve been reading the forums for Force 9, who provide our business broadband access at both offices. I don’t visit the forums regularly, perhaps once every three months, and only when something is happening in the broadband world. There are however quite a few members who contribute frequently to the forums, including the one forum specifically for ADSL.

Much of the discussion at present is in two areas: the establishment of a Usergroup, who’s purpose appears to be unclear but which according to Force 9 doesn’t remove any current lines of communication; the second being the capping of monthly bandwidth for broadband accounts for non-Premier accounts).

I’m surprised at the amount of discussion, rumour-mongering and general moaning that goes on. The majority of posters seem to believe that either Force 9 is out to get them by changing account terms, or that Force 9 owe them some kind of moral duty to be nice and not charge more.

In my experience, Force 9 do neither. Force 9 are first and foremost a business. We’ve had Force 9 ever since we went broadband. We’ve never had price rises or service use changes. Some things, like customer support, have got better. Some might think this is because we are business customers, but this isn’t the case. Certainly, Force 9 is the consumer arm, but the back-end stuff is going to be the same – it makes logistical sense to do this.

If Force 9 feel the need to change things, it is their right under the terms of service to do so. So long as they do this in accordance with those terms they have no further obligations other than to follow the contract agreed to when each individual customer signed up.

The thing that does amaze me is that people spend time actively discussing what they consider an essential service, like gas, electricity and water. Perhaps these people also spend similar time and effort writing on the forums for those companies too. Guys, get over it. Life’s too short to worry about things like this. If Force 9 don’t provide the service you want move somewhere else. Simple.

Mmm.. nice. Listening to an hour or so of Giorgio Ponticelli’s Frequencies, drinking Chateauneuf du Pape whilst waiting for my Beef Wellington to cook. There’s not much better than this on a Sunday evening.

Except Wednesday morning listening to a ripped stream (thank you Radiolover) of Blank & Jones’ week 6 mix from Digitally Imported whilst drinking Hazelnut flavoured Italian coffee, and finding out that your biggest trade debtor has just paid their bill.

And despite the extreme hassle we sometimes get with our work, this is one of the reasons for having our own business. Freedom.

My Mac mini is now in Edinburgh. Left Eindhoven yesterday and spent a little while in Liege. If you’re interested.

31 Jan 2004: I rang Apple to ask what had happened to my order due to ship 28 January. Bottom line was, they didn’t know and would contact ‘logistics’ to find out.

1 Feb 2004: I rang Apple again. This time the news was that stock was due to be received on 7 February. ‘It might ship before’. I pointed out that others who had ordered the same configuration of Mac mini after me, with expected shipping dates late February had already received theirs.

4 Feb 2004: I received an e-mail from from Apple informing me that my DVI-Video adapter which was part of my Mac mini order was delayed until 7 March. I could ring them within 48 hours to ask them to ship what they had in stock, or delay the entire order until the adapter was ready. Naturally I rang them to say ‘please despatch what you have now’.

7 Feb 2004: No notice of shipping. Rang Apple. ‘Payment is approved. Would you like the items to be shipped?’. Now, what’s all this about? What was the point of telling someone to ship what they had only to find out three days later that nothing had been shipped? This ‘payment is approved’ is also nonsense since payment is always approved when the order is submitted, the credit card company simply holds the funds against that order so it cannot be used elsewhere.

8 Feb 2004: Finally received shipment notice.

The BBC write on their website about the Cell processor for the Playstation 3.

They get off to a good start by stating it will run 10 times faster than current PC chips, and later they explain this is possible by the architecture of multi-core chip.

However, bang in the middle of the article they state that “the chip will run at speeds of greater than 4 GHz… By comparison, rival chip maker Intel’s fastest processor runs at 3.8 GHz.”

Once again, everyone appears to get caught up in the clock speed of the chip. The comparison is irrelevant.

How many times do we have to read this crap before some intelligent knowledgeable editor starts putting an end to this myth. There must be one somewhere in the world’s mainstream press!

I’m freezing in my office today even though I have the central heating on. It’s 2C outside and I have cold arms, even colder fingers and a cold nose. Fortunately, my nose is not wet, so I’m not turning into a dog.

I’m also trying to find something to buy on the iTunes Music Store. I just fancy buying stuff. I was going to buy The Knife’s Deep Cuts [iTunes link], after seeing You Take My Breath Away on The Amp this morning, but it doesn’t quite grab me enough yet. Any recommendations?