Poor service
Hurrah...Blair's digital Britain is here, and everyone's favorite communications company, BT, is spearheading this advance into a cheaper realm of the web.
Errr, well if you don't include the constant busy lines to the free (0800 number) evening and weekend service, then when you do get through, the most sketchy line in internet history (constant disconnection and timeouts).
When I use the standard (0845 number) paying service, my authentication fails constantly although I have been a BT internet customer for three years.
So what can you do? Get charged 50p a minute for some school leaver telling you to download the latest software (not applicable for the Mac), and then to be told that you don't know anything about computers! Big company, big mess.
Mark Parsons
Wrong lines
If BT is determined to convince us all that it is internet friendly with the advent of Surf-time, will it stop fobbing off users who complain about DACS (which split a single line into two, effectively limiting the data transfer rate to 28.8Kbps) with the excuse that they only guarantee fax-quality lines (ie a maximum transfer rate of 14.4Kbps)?
It generally takes a lot of prodding from a customer before BT will remove them and install a full line.
Ian Warren
Text trap
It is indeed a seductive notion to think that the educational experience can be created by hyperlinking ideas. In fact, the reverse is the case. As an educator, my interest is slightly less in teaching my students facts, rather more in teaching them the structures and relations between areas of knowledge and most of all in helping them develop the ability to form their own structures - which may be very different from mine.
Hypertext in whatever form crystallises the structure of knowledge and presents it (subtly) in as rigid and didactic a way as the periodic table shows atomic masses. It may make the acquisition of factual knowledge easier or more pleasant, but it makes the development of an inquiring and synthesising mind very much more difficult.
Ian Johnston
Staff tutor in technology, The Open University (in a personal capacity)
Cookie hell
Why do I have to suffer the continuing nuisance of cookies every time I use the net? More and more sites seem to be using them and most will not take no for an answer, but continue to flash up. Even if, in desperation, you return "yes" more often than not they return when you go to a new page, and will almost certainly re-appear when you revisit the site. I find that I often have to leave the net to avoid the irritation, both to myself, and anybody else in the room. Is there any solution?
William D Perry
info@rostra.co.uk
Whose mail?
Can anyone tell me what browsers are used by Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You've Got Mail? Neither Netscape Communicator nor Internet Explorer have the software and so far I haven't found a site that provides it.
GL Samson
gerald.samson@dtn.ntl.com
