* Posts by Spadge Fromley

7 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jul 2007

ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds

Spadge Fromley

@Peter Gathercole

"If you read exactly what Virgin Media say, it is not a fixed threshold that you have to cross."

I'd love to know where you read that.

"Broadband Size: L

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: L package download at least 750MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 2Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied."

From http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

With, later: "The way that our customers use their broadband is changing all the time, so it's possible that in the future we may increase or decrease the thresholds – don't worry though, we'll always let you know on our website if we're going to make any changes, and we don't expect the thresholds to change very often."

So expect to see further limitations announced on their website in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard' soon.

Spadge Fromley

Unlimited Virgin Media

For those of you who can't be arsed to actually look it up yourselves, the Virgin unlimited policy goes something like this:

If you exceed an arbitrary (allegedly what the top 5% heaviest users do) amount of data downloaded within peak hours (4pm to midnight), your bandwidth is shaped (nb not throttled, not limited, but shaped) to about half the up- and down- load speeds for the next four hours.

And so you see that whilst it is limited in technical terms (packet-shaping is, after all, throttling, or imposing a limit to the speeds when used like this) it *is not* limited in marketing (q.v. lying) terms.

Jack Thompson sets about Halo 3

Spadge Fromley

I am NOT the law

Now, I don't know much about the legal process, but if Jack sent his son out to buy something he knows he shouldn't have been allowed to buy by law, is he himself not accessory to the crime?

Pretty irresponsible parenting, if you ask me.

Internet gambling apparently no problem after all

Spadge Fromley

Gamblor!

Does the % include traders (read: investors) in stocks, currencies, futures, options, etc?

Or do we draw a distinction between investment and gambling based on, erm, them being different, hell yes!?

I mean, it's not like the value of your property / stock price can fall as well as rise, is it?

Yangtze river dolphin is an ex-cetacean

Spadge Fromley

Hilarious

Personally, I think it's sad that a species like this should go the way of the great awk (I always sed it would happen?).

And I love the shock "don't give a damn" posts. One can only hope that anyone who really feels that way has the expected breeding habits and removes themselves from the genepool ... unless some kind of human/kleenex hybrid is looming on the evolutionary horizon.

I don't think it really matters where it happens though, China or not. It just happened, and it's sad. It probably needs mentioning that fresh-water mamals aren't exactly sea-side fluffy creatures, unless we're talking about fresh-water seas - and last I heard, those were called lakes.

As to human-influenced selection not being natural selection, I'm not so sure; we are animals, and a part of nature, surely? Discuss. If leopards (beware them!) eat all the, erm, whatever leopards eat, stoats or something, do we say that's not natural because it's leopard-influenced? Or do we consider ourselves to be above nature, and isn't that rather the problem, really?

kthxbye

Behind the Apple vs Universal breakup

Spadge Fromley

Title

"Steve Jobs says it is Apple's goal to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, the first full year of sales. This means that the goal is to get one per cent of the £1bn strong mobile phone market. If Universal could negotiate £1 from every unit Apple plans to sell, it'd make $10m."

Chuck in a pear of bananas and you've got yourself a meal!

This isn't 1985, you know.

Sweden may block Pirate Bay over child porn

Spadge Fromley

Lies, damn lies, and other lies.

I've reported kiddie pr0n torrents to piratebay admins before, and got frankly nowhere.

The admins know it gets posted, and don't much care if you report it.

Now, someone explain to me wtf this has to do with piracy? Last I heard, owners of child pornography IP don't tend to advertise the fact.