More about Mobinil and image compression
UPDATE BELOW!
Since my last post about Mobinil compressing images over 3G connection, I've been too conscious about the fact that all the images are messed up by a proxy. I've been testing and trying many things to figure out what exactly is happening. Until I tried CNN one time and I noticed in the status bar the IP addresses 1.1.1.2 to 1.1.1.5 being contacted. I looked at the image sources on the page, which originally come from a CDN server different from the HTML of the page, I found out that the full URL of the image is prefixed with http://1.1.1.X/bmi !! So this image source:
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/26/annie.lennox/tzban.lennox.jpg
gets changed into:
http://1.1.1.3/bmi/i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/26/annie.lennox/tzban.lennox.jpg
and that's inside the HTML code itself. Which means that the HTML also goes through processing to make some images point to their proxy source.
Since my last post about Mobinil compressing images over 3G connection, I've been too conscious about the fact that all the images are messed up by a proxy. I've been testing and trying many things to figure out what exactly is happening. Until I tried CNN one time and I noticed in the status bar the IP addresses 1.1.1.2 to 1.1.1.5 being contacted. I looked at the image sources on the page, which originally come from a CDN server different from the HTML of the page, I found out that the full URL of the image is prefixed with http://1.1.1.X/bmi !! So this image source:
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/26/annie.lennox/tzban.lennox.jpg
gets changed into:
http://1.1.1.3/bmi/i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/26/annie.lennox/tzban.lennox.jpg
and that's inside the HTML code itself. Which means that the HTML also goes through processing to make some images point to their proxy source.
I called up Mobinil customer service expecting one of two responses: Complete ignorance of the fact or complete denial. I got neither! The guy (from the First Class customer service not normal customer service) told me "yes, this has been active for the last two weeks" and he asked me to place my mouse over any image and press SHIFT+R to download a better quality (i.e the original) image. Just placing the mouse not clicking. A behavior that indicates only one thing: They also appended a script to the pages to handle this. And my further inspection showed this to be true.
When I hover the mouse on any image I get a tool-tip saying: "Shift+R improves the quality of this image. Shift+A improves the quality of all images on this page." I checked the page scripts (God bless firebug) and found this script added to the source: "http://1.2.3.4/bmi-int-js/bmi.js" which is responsible for the added functionality of requesting the higher quality images.
Still on the phone with customer support he started convincing me that this is for my own benefit, "this way pages load faster and you don't pay much on connection". I told him it's me who decides whether or not this is a benefit or a disadvantage. I asked to file two complaints:
1. This was applied without informing the customers, at least with the fact that there is an option of downloading the original images!
2. This is mandatory and cannot be turned off at my choice.
I'm waiting for their IT to call me back (they already did, check update below) about my complaint. When they do I will also ask him why I can't make VPN connections over their 3G network!
PS: This was posted over Mobinil 3G connection ;)
UPDATE:
So they called me back. It was a mixed signals response. First they tried to insist that it's a great service for me, then they said I do have the option to download the original images anyway.
My answer to this created a side debate: If an image is 450K and the compressed version is 50K, I will end up downloading 500K to look at the high quality image instead of only 450K! Because I will get the compressed image first then request the original. He insisted that this is not what happens and that only the "remaining" (????!!) 400K will be downloaded. I left that behind as there was no way to convince him he was saying nonsense.
The final feedback from him was that this is an application they're testing now and this will not last forever. They will call me once it goes back to the way it was with no image compression or code manipulation. I don't believe him, but we'll see.
When I hover the mouse on any image I get a tool-tip saying: "Shift+R improves the quality of this image. Shift+A improves the quality of all images on this page." I checked the page scripts (God bless firebug) and found this script added to the source: "http://1.2.3.4/bmi-int-js/bmi.js" which is responsible for the added functionality of requesting the higher quality images.
Still on the phone with customer support he started convincing me that this is for my own benefit, "this way pages load faster and you don't pay much on connection". I told him it's me who decides whether or not this is a benefit or a disadvantage. I asked to file two complaints:
1. This was applied without informing the customers, at least with the fact that there is an option of downloading the original images!
2. This is mandatory and cannot be turned off at my choice.
I'm waiting for their IT to call me back (they already did, check update below) about my complaint. When they do I will also ask him why I can't make VPN connections over their 3G network!
PS: This was posted over Mobinil 3G connection ;)
UPDATE:
So they called me back. It was a mixed signals response. First they tried to insist that it's a great service for me, then they said I do have the option to download the original images anyway.
My answer to this created a side debate: If an image is 450K and the compressed version is 50K, I will end up downloading 500K to look at the high quality image instead of only 450K! Because I will get the compressed image first then request the original. He insisted that this is not what happens and that only the "remaining" (????!!) 400K will be downloaded. I left that behind as there was no way to convince him he was saying nonsense.
The final feedback from him was that this is an application they're testing now and this will not last forever. They will call me once it goes back to the way it was with no image compression or code manipulation. I don't believe him, but we'll see.
1 هو عدد اللي عبروني:
I am having the same experience on Vodafone. Just bought their prepaid USB device. Images loaded over Protected VPN are better than images loaded over their network directly.
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