[Nottingham] Slashdot and ridiculous NTL Cache

[Dave Silvester]

Hi everyone!

This is my first post to the list, having only joined today.

A brief introduction: I'm a freelance web programmer, moved to Nottingham in 
August with my girlfriend who is at Trent Uni.  I'm running Gentoo mostly for 
my work stuff, but as I also write music, I'm getting closer and closer to a 
100% satisfactory Linux-based audio setup too.  I actually don't have a 
Windows partition any more, which feels wonderful!  ;-)

Anyway, the reason I'm contacting this list is because I'm seriously at the 
end of my tether with NTL and their crappy transparent web cache.  I'm a bit 
of a Slashdot junkie, and in the last few days I've noticed that now even my 
Firefox RSS feed has been banned.

It seems Slashdot has banned all NTL's Nottingham caches from being able to 
log in to the site, and has now banned them from accessing the RSS feed as 
well.  I've contacted both Slashdot and NTL about this, and (as expected) 
haven't heard anything back.

I've had some limited success by manually specifying one of the NTL Manchester 
caches on port 8080 for my web connection, as it let me log in to Slashdot 
and post, but the RSS feed was still banned.  I've tried all manner of public 
caches from www.publicproxyservers.com, and been able to log in but not post 
to Slashdot, because Slashdot prevents you posting from public proxies.

You have to understand that Slashdot withdrawl, given that Slashdot is quite a 
major part of my web browsing (and participation) experience really makes me 
feel like I'm on some kind of semi-crippled web connection.  Actually, it 
doesn't make me FEEL like it, it makes me KNOW it!!

There was none of this nonsense on Telewest in Birmingham!

I don't fundamentally object to the idea of surfing through a web cache, but 
when it's forced upon me, with no mention of it before the 12-month 
minmum-term signup, and when it's banned by my favourite site, and when the 
company responsible for it can't even be bothered to reply to an email about 
it... that's when I start losing my rag!

I noticed there was a thread about this in your archives last month...

http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/nottingham/2004-November/004639.html

... so obviously I'm not the only person having this problem.

NTL apparently don't give a damn, which makes me pretty annoyed that I'm 
paying for a broadband connection that I can't use properly!!  They obviously 
want the "benefits" (for them, in lowered bandwidth costs) of running a 
transparent proxy, but without any of the customer-required administrative 
duties that come with it.

To my mind, that very much includes notifying bandwidth-protective websites 
that they are not actually being repeatedly beaten senseless by any one 
particular connection, since that connection is a proxy.  A single email... 
sheesh, is it really that much effort?

Largely, NTL will get away with it, because most users probably don't even 
understand the words "transparent proxy", let alone know why it's a bad deal 
for them that they might wish to complain about.

Therefore, once again, I believe NTL are doing a very poor job of running 
their services (not to mention their non-existant customer service) and 
wonder if anyone else is suitably annoyed about this to want to do something 
about it?  Perhaps involving collectively writing and signing a letter (a 
real one on paper) to NTL demanding a satisfactory resolution.

NTL are completely happy to tie us down to 12 month contracts, but they 
blatantly don't give a damn about keeping their side of the deal.  I've even 
respected their 1Gb per day download limit that I was also unaware of before 
signup, and it just drives me crazy that all I want to do is participate in 
my favourite website, and that I can't, because of their stupid proxy setup.

Hehe... sorry for the rant, but I'm not the kind of passive "don't want to 
cause a fuss" customer that will take bad service on the nose, especially 
when I'm tied down to a 12-month contract that forces me to continue to pay 
for it!

Cheers,

~Dave

-- 

Dave Silvester
Music Technology Junkie | Rentable Website Monkey
http://www.mu-sly.co.uk | http://www.rentamonkey.com