I'm in London today, first thing I did was check what channel our wireless network was using... it was set to 11. Ever since we moved offices the reception here has been awful, and I couldn't figure out why.

Yesterday I suddenly thought, what if all the other wireless networks we're picking up are using channel 11 too? So I looked on the web to see if changing the channel can actually have any downsides... as long as you stick to 1, 6 or 11 you should be fine, as they don't overlap.

So I changed the channel on the Access Point to 1 and clicked Save. Almost immediately the network was discovered by my dad's tablet PC and it said FULL STRENGTH!

Finally, that problem is solved!

I spent half of Friday, all of Monday and the first part of Tuesday attacking the office firewall with a hammer... ok, not really. But it was coming close to that. I kept fiddling with all the configurations to try to get incoming SMTP working but to no avail. What was confusing was that attempts to connect to port 25 were appearing in the firewall logs but the connection would ultimately fail.

Eventually a light bulb went on over my head and I realised that it must be my ISP blocking it. So I rang them up and asked them if they were... they were! I asked them to open the port up on the IP our Exchange server uses and they did it within the hour.

Everything now works perfectly!

Next step... create all the email accounts for everyone, then move the DNS for all our domains Exchange will service over to Gradwell.com so I can modify the MX record easily. This is probably the scariest part, as all email and web access will probably drop for a while as the propagation takes place all around the world. :)

I updated my post on MSN Messenger 7 today, replaced one of the patches with a much better one. More info in the article. :)

A whole bunch of ISPs in the UK are regrading their customers' ADSL speeds for free. 512Kbps users are moving up to 1Mbps and 1Mbps users moving up to 2Mbps, all for no extra charge.

So when are Eclipse going to regrade mine? I want 2Mbps!!

Update: I have 2Mbps!

KAZAA: Employees at peer-to-peer provider Sharman Networks "hate" installing the company's own Kazaa software because it has ill effects on their computers, according to an internal document written by Sharman's chief technology officer.

More here.

GOOGLE: After Google disclosed last week that it had been granted the right to sell domain names, the question in many minds was, "Why?"

Would it use its new registrar status to snap up expired domains and show ads to wayward surfers? Is this a move toward Google world domination?

"In a few years you'll be driving your Google to the Google to buy some Google for your Google," read one posting on Slashdot, an online technology forum.

CYBER LOVE: AN INTENSE CYBER affair between a Jordanian man and woman turned ugly when the couple met and turned out to be already married - to each other.

According to the Petra news agency, Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa had been separated for several months and by chance met on an internet chat room.

Rest of the story here.

I hate spyware, but then so do most people. What I hate more than spyware itself are the ultra-paranoid people that think that every ad-enabled software program is "spyware". There are a lot of software packages out there that are both bundled with adware and spyware.

My opinion is: Adware just displays adverts while using the software package, Spyware sits in the background and does weird stuff you don't even know about. Stuff like downloading extra programs and installing them automatically, taking over vital Windows functions, and popping up adverts at random intervals when you're not even using the program it was bundled with. Also spyware is more likely not to be uninstalled when you remove the program that installed it.

A couple of examples:
FlashGet - a very useful file downloader.
It is shareware, and is ad-enabled. It is not spyware, it displays banner adverts IN the FlashGet window and nowhere else. If you register it, the banner disappears. This is frequently attacked as being "spyware", which frankly is complete bollocks, it is Adware... and isn't dangerous to your system at all.

Opera - a well known web browser.
It is also shareware, and contains banner adverts. Everyone knows Opera has adverts unless you don't register it, but no one ever says Opera is "spyware". Funny that.

MsgPlus! - an add-on for MSN Messenger.
Freeware. The installer itself contains a "Sponsor" component... which is TOTALLY OPTIONAL to install. The component is known as "LOP.com" and I would personally count it as spyware, as it can be very hard to remove once it's installed. It sits in the background downloading extra components and displays adverts whenever it feels like it. In fact previous versions of LOP.com have even displayed virus like tendencies, renaming its executables and trying to hide throughout your system.

It's definitely a nasty little bugger BUT, and it's a big but, installing it is OPTIONAL. So it's your own fault if you don't bother to read the instructions properly (read my previous post to install MsgPlus! safely). A lot of people call MsgPlus! "spyware", which again is bollocks. The installer itself contains spyware, which will NOT be installed if you don't want it to be.

Screensavers from freeze.com, screensaver.com etc.
You might get the choice to install some of the bundled extras, but sometimes they install them whether you want them or not. They are all spyware. Never install one a "free" screensaver, it may just fuck up your system. One such component I've seen frequently installed by a screensaver is NewDotNet.

NewDotNet is a company that sells domain names with extra TLDs such as .shop .mp3 .travel and a few others. As they are not real TLDs recognised by ICANN, to be able to access them directly you need to install the NewDotNet software which intercepts your computer's DNS lookup requests and points your browser in the right direction, otherwise you'd just get an error as the domain doesn't really exist. In fact all you're buying is yourdomain.extension.new.net so a domain like pie.shop is really pie.shop.new.net. I'm sure it sounded like a good idea, but in practice, it's a waste of time and money. Plus the software can break Windows quite badly, especially if you don't remove it PROPERLY.

So, think before you click and watch out for those nasty extras. Oh yes, and stay away from Internet Explorer ;)

I have updated this post since Microsoft has released the final version of 7.5.

It can now be found here.