Posts by lagaba

Good Lord: Former UK spy boss backs crypto

Re: Britain: A Bunch of Sheep-like Mice. What happened to the Bulldog?

(What we need is a modern day Guy Fawkes to complete the job)

What, you want someone to blow up the HoP?

Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women

TV Guide

Which channels did you check the guide for?

I just took a look at the guide for tomorrow tue18th for BBC One and Two and I saw that BBC One tends to have more entertainment type shows in the daytime and soaps, dramas later on, whilst BBC Two has more factual/documentary shows, with the heavier ones being later on in the evening. This is pretty much what I expected.

I didn't check BBC Four but I'd expect even more of a focus on documentaries than Two.

That makes 2 channels biased towards factual programming, and 1 channel for light entertainment and popular shows...

Your charecterisation of the day's programming as 2:45 of cop/detective shows, 5hrs of reality/light entertainment and 90% of the rest being quiz shows might apply to BBC One at a a cursory glance but if you take a closer look at the schedule there are other things in there...and BBC One is only a third of the channels and the one which is focused on light entertainment so obviously its going to have more quiz shows etc.

Personally I don't watch much BBC live but I do use iPlayer and the BBC website (which hasn't been mentioned yet), and TMS on the radio.

I can understand the arguments against the licence fee but private only TV broadcasting models in other countries don't seem to create a better TV ecosystem necessarily...and I feel that the presence of the BBC helps to keep the other broadcasters in the UK from becoming too crappy - i.e you benefit from the BBCs presence even if you only watch other broadcasters - obviously that's not a good enough reason to justify the fee and its purely speculative.

In the end I feel similarly about the fee as I do about the Royal Family - I can see why people think both things are anachronistic in the 21st century, but I'm more suspicous of the alternatives - I don't fancy replacing the Queen with a politician as head of state and I don't fancy a purely private TV ecosystem either.

...oh and the adverts for upcoming BBC shows are nowhere near as annoying as the frequent breaks for commercial adverts on other stations - remember when ITV got the Premier League highlights for a few years? first-half highlights, adverts, second-half highlights, adverts, punditry, adverts, rinse and repeat for the next game, oh, only time to do extended highlights for max 3 games...was back at BBC within 3yrs.

Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?

scroll anchoring

if you are using Chrome turning on

#enable-scroll-anchoring

should help with the screen jump problem

Mighty Blighty broadbanders beg: Let us lay cable in BT's, er, ducts

Re: True, but could be truer

Forget about blaming parents, just blame Muphry's law.

Get a job in Germany – where most activities are precursors to drinking

Re: @Chris Miller

Bit off topic but it sounds very similar to road bowling which is played in County Cork in Ireland.

Shuddit, Obama! Here in Blighty, we ISPs have net neutrality nailed

Re: UK isn't so brilliant

You would need a phone line in to your property which was presumable installed by BT or its predecessor the GPO but you don't have to pay BT - I pay Aquiss for line rental and for Fibre for example.

I'm not saying the UK system is perfect - I've had all sorts of issues with BT Openreach. All I am saying is that compared to the USA we do have choice and we can choose to take our business elsewhere, for the most part. As Tom 38 has shown there are places where this doesn't apply but I stand by my view that the majority of people do have a choice and they are not phony choices.

Re: UK isn't so brilliant

You said:

"There is very little real competition, since the largest proportion of users are all sold BT. Sure, there's an ISP in there somewhere, but most likely the ISP is BT, owned by BT, or buying bandwidth from BT, all whilst we pay BT to build and own all the new infrastructure. Phony choices are not choices"

I don't agree that finding 4 locations in the UK which have limited choice equates to that. I would suggest that the vast majority of people in the UK have a decent choice, especially as compared to the US.

Re: At those moaning about P2P traffic throttling

Big_Ted, if your connection slows down to the extent that at peak times you get constant buffering on iPlayer or low quality streams, then it is probably not some unseen group of "bandwidth hoggers" all downloading illegal files using P2P services. It is in fact more likely that your ISP has not provisioned enough backhaul bandwidth for peak use. If the ISP's network is congested then the other users are also getting slow connections = how can they be hogging your bandwidth, they are not getting a larger proportion of the available capacity than you.

A good example is that Sky bought an extra half million customers - they did not buy Be or O2's network infrastructure. When they started migrating the new users to their network, I found my Sky connection becoming worse so I left. They offered me all sorts of deals to stay with them but I prefer to pay £10 more a month and have a better connection. Many of my friends (against my advice) choose their ISP based on cost and then complain about buffering etc...I have a decent router that cost £100 rather than the cheap crap you get from most ISPs (Aquiss expect you to provide your own router) and I pay a higher than average monthly cost. In return I have stable consistent connection that is not affected greatly by peak/off peak times. This is, I think, what people are referring to when they say "you get what you pay for".

In my experience you get a better experience in the UK if you go with a small/moderate size ISP that has a limited number of users and can therefore manage their network effectively. All the big players are trying to compete against each other using bundled services such as TV and are therefore not as focused on network management - they prob got most customers through cheap deals or because they have football/other sports TV packages and most non-technical users will therefore stay with them for the same reasons even if the network is flakey at times.

I repeat - if you want a stress free experience then look up ISPs somewhere like this http://www.ispreview.co.uk/

..and be prepared to pay £10-£20 more a month - trust me it is worth it.

Re: UK isn't so brilliant

BT own most of the last mile infrastructure and exchanges etc through their history as the previous state telecoms provider, but they are obliged by Ofcom to offer access to this infrastructure at fair rates which they do through their BT Wholesale division.

This is why in the UK you have a choice of ISP wherever you live, even if there is no cable service on your street. Furthermore some ISPs will buy the whole broadband service from BT and sell it on, differentiating by customer support, additional services or cost - whilst other providers will lease the last mile and connect to you to their network at the exchange.

These are not phony choices, I have been with Be Internet, Zen, Sky, a couple of others I can't remember - currently with Aquiss.

As a Be Internet user I was transferred to Sky when Sky bought Be and O2, I upgraded to Fibre for a good deal and was with Sky for a year before I decided to switch. At that point I shopped around and selected Aquiss as although they are expensive, they don't throttle, don't block websites, don't block services and their customer support is fantastic = I had a choice.

It is this kind of situation that the FCC wants to create in the US - particularly the idea about separating wholesale from retail seems to be a nod to this.

So in conclusion I disagree with you that we in the UK have a "phony" choice - our broadband market is actually pretty healthy.