WHEN BT announced its consumer Internet service, there were no advance copies
of the software for the press to try. But BT鈥檚 managers insisted that it had
been tested on real consumers.
Now the system has been launched, and Feedback has just spent a busy week
grappling with the software, genuinely and sincerely hoping that it would give
CompuServe and other Internet service providers some much-needed
competition.
It has not been a happy experience. After numerous calls to BT鈥檚 helpline,
often talking to different people who had no record of previous calls, and who
then gave advice that was well over the head of novice consumers, we got the
nasty feeling that we and the helpline were learning the system together.
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BT Internet works on the 鈥渁ll you can eat鈥� principle, giving subscribers
unlimited access for the flat fee of 拢15 a month (plus local call
charges). It is gloriously fast, pulling Web pages off the Internet at very high
speed. So BT has to stop several users fraudulently sharing one password to get
unlimited access from a single subscription.
This is done by making the master start-up code work only for the first PC on
which it is used. BT justifies this because it is aiming the service at
consumers who are new to computing and have only one PC, and so will not need to
install the same software on more than one machine.
This may come as a shock to anyone who wants to use both a desktop and
portable PC to send e-mail. It will also come as a big surprise to anyone who,
like Feedback, runs into error messages while trying to use the system and then
follows the usual procedure of deleting the software and reinstalling it to
start all over again. With BT Internet you cannot do this until BT has issued
you with a re-registration code. This then only works for one more try.
The first warning sign came when the software was loaded. It immediately
reported that 鈥渢o avoid conflict鈥� it was getting rid of a file that was already
on the PC.
Then Feedback answered Yes to the question 鈥淣ew User?鈥�. Believe it or not,
the answer should have been No. This triggered an avalanche of gibberish
questions about Pop 3, Popserver, SMTP and Mailhost, culminating in 鈥淓rror
513鈥擳ry again later鈥�.
Things were just as bad later so Feedback reinstalled the software.
From then on it was downhill all the way, with 鈥淐hecksum does not validate鈥�
even when BT provided yet another new code for re-registration. More help from
the helpline got the software working again. Feedback had failed to notice a
鈥淩e-load?鈥� option.
Now something called a BT Mail Spooler kept popping up and causing error
messages. This seems to be one by-product of BT鈥檚 file renaming.
The final, killer insult was that BT Internet suddenly hijacked the
CompuServe software which was already a working tool on Feedback鈥檚 PC. Any
attempt at logging onto CompuServe made BT Internet spring to life and dial its
own number instead. BT boffins say that this is inevitable because of file
renaming.
BT鈥檚 software experts continue to be very helpful and their system obviously
has great potential. But after countless hours wasted, Feedback now wants only
to shut all BT鈥檚 directors in their boardroom, give each one a PC, and not let
them out until they have all succeeded in making their own consumer service
work.
BRITISH physicists, worried that their discipline is losing out under current
government funding schemes for science, had their worst fears confirmed by a
recent report from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
鈥淭he EPSRC Physics Programme Prioritisation Panel met on 12 March 1996 at the
University of Warwick to consider 42 research proposals with a total value of
approximately 拢7.5 million,鈥� the report stated. 鈥�. . . The panel
recommended funding 16 proposals totalling 拢2.鈥�
NEVER accept a gift of gratitude from Cornell University. Cornell has just
put out a sugary press release about a Californian family that lent its German
shepherd dog to the university to be monitored as part of its research on sudden
infant death syndrome, or cot death. The dog, called Shasta, suffered from
cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that is thought to underlie some cases of cot
death.
The release closes by noting that Shasta was rewarded for her contribution to
medical science by being treated to a 鈥渓ong-awaited spaying procedure鈥�. Some
reward.
THE IGUANA will get you if you don鈥檛 watch out. Well, not the iguana itself,
but the nasty salmonella bacteria that the iguana brings with it.
Since the film Jurassic Parkhit the srceens, iguanas have been
popular with Americans as appealing 鈥渕ini-dinosaurs鈥�. 杏吧原创s at the Cornell
University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory are warning that, like the
dinosaurian denizens of Jurassic Park, iguanas are not harmless. The problem is
that most reptiles carry salmonella in their intestinal tract, shed them in
their faeces, and get some on their bodies.
Iguanas carry at least 20 different types of salmonella, some of them quite
exotic because the animals typically come from Central and South America, warns
Patrick L. McDonough of Cornell. Healthy adults will survive salmonella better
than an attack by a hungry raptor or Tyrannosaurus rex, but Feedback
would prefer to suffer neither.
WHEN IT COMES to telling us what we all thought we knew already, we can rely
on the British Psychological Society. Those attending its annual conference in
Brighton last month were rewarded with another tale of the not-in-the-least
unexpected when a psychologist from the University of Central Lancashire
announced that men become less macho as they grow older.
To test his theory that the male tendency to view women as sex objects and to
approve of toughness dwindles with age, John Archer asked 200 men aged between
18 and 45 how much they agreed with macho statements such as 鈥渨ife swapping is
fine as long as both men agree鈥� and 鈥渞eal men don鈥檛 back away from bar room
confrontations鈥�, or disagreed with statements such as 鈥渋t鈥檚 a good thing for men
to cry鈥�.
In support of his unsurprising claims, Archer offered an evolutionary
explanation that is guaranteed not to rock the scientific community to its core:
he suggests that 鈥渁 strongly physical masculinity鈥� is more important in young
men as a competitive strategy for attracting women.