I find it incredible that the UK lags behind much of the world in it’s broadband. This article on techdirt shows that it is possible to drive innovation through competition. We’ve had local loop unbundling for a while now in the UK and we have seen faster broadband offerings as well as a boost in the number of companies offering broadband services.

What amazes me most though is the attitude these companies are adopting. We are seeing more services that allow us to view videos or listen to music online, greater access to interractive online services and a general boost to the number of people taking advantage of this new found freedom. The BBC recently started up a beta of their new TV on demand offering where viewers can watch BBC programs for up to 7 days after first airing.

This is of course all good news, except that many broadband providers seem to think that using your broadband connection is not good. Lets look at Virgin Media for example. I have a 4meg broadband account with Virgin Media and you’d imagine that although this is not the fastest available connection speed it is a pretty fast line. And you would be right. I’m also rather lucky as I do generally receive the full 4meg most of the time (albeit when I don’t use it).

I say most of the time because Virgin Media have an interesting policy. They have opted to initiate a capping policy, this means that I am alowed to use the full bandwidth that I pay for only until I reach the cap. This cap is set at 750MB. So I can download 750MB of data @ 4Mb/s then my connection is halved to 2Mb/s downstream and 192Kb/s upstream. The throttling apparently only lasts 2 hours and is supposed to only happen when you reach the cap during certain times but I have seen my connection throttled even at so called ‘off peak’ times.

Now, most broadband providers state that they have to introduce limits to their services as the technology simply isn’t available for them to do anything else. Unfortunately Virgin Media are running on a shiny new Fiber Optic network that hasn’t been in place very long so you’d imagine this argument wouldn’t count. Virgin Media have also introduced a new 20Mb/s service (though I don’t know of anyone who has ever seen a 20Mb/s connection reach more than 12Mb/s) so the network must surely be able to handle it.

The problem in the UK and certainly with Virgin Media is that companies don’t/won’t invest fast enough, preferring instead to rip of the customers. Virgin Media halve my connection on a regular basis as I download patches for Windows or packages for Linux, ISO’s for Linux and other open source software. I also get my emails, watch movie trailers, youtube video’s and play online games. 750MB is maxed out really quickly and considering I work for a living, I can only use my connection during peak times so I’m screwed!

Virgin never offer me a refund though despite my connection remaining inert most of the day, every day… go figure. Other people are worse off than me in the UK as there’s this great marketing technique where providers advertise services as ‘up to’ 4MB or ‘up to’ 8MB which means you can pay for 8 and get 1 and you can’t do a damn thing about it.

Maybe we should move to Japan, it looks like they have the right idea.

Technorati Tags: Virgin Media, Broadband

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I really know nothing about Ruby or Rails but I’m adding this to my things to learn list.

I found these short vids on YouTube this afternoon and thought you might find them entertaining. If Ruby on Rails is anywhere near as good as the vibes being put out on the web, then it should be interesting…

<edit>

hmmm… seems i screwed up and tried to link the vids incorrectly.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuyKUaKFo]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=528BCJiRkks]

Technorati Tags: Ruby, Rails, Java, .Net

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Thanks again to Ajaxian I’ve found a cool resource for Ajax tools and toolkits.  Ajax Rain has some neat stuff available.

Technorati Tags: Ajax, Ajaxian

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As an amature photographer working in the digital realm right up to print; I am painfully aware of how awkward it is to resize some images without introducing artifacts, or cropping and losing a feature you thought might just make the picture work better.

I’m also a web developer and I know that image size is a crucial element for web pages too - Especially when you want your website to scale.

In todays world where almost every device we own has the capability to browse the web, page scalability is crucial.  Usually scaling your site means degrading it slowly until eventually the smallest device gets a text only rendering.  there are various methods to achieve this using some Javascript and a steady supply of different sized images.  Imagine a world where this kind of degradation wasn’t necessary because the picture scaled too without losing detail or becoming mis-shapen.

I found this post on Ajaxian today.  Watch the video, it really is pretty impressive.  Content aware image resizing… and Adobe just hired the co-creator, I’m already saving up for CS4 :0D

with some very smart application this could be one of the next big things to hit the web.

Technorati Tags: Dynamic Image Resizing, Adobe, Ajaxian

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If you are an Ubuntu user and you use Java you would benefit from some cool tips I’ve found while browsing the Ubuntu forums of late.

By default Ubuntu comes with a version of Java (jgc) that isn’t Sun’s.  This isn’t a problem unless you are perhaps developing Java applications, in that case you might want to install the Sun JDK.  This is done easily via the package manager, just search for sun jdk ad pick your version.

Unfortunately despite installing Sun’s jdk the Java system may not be fully utilising it.

java -version in a terminal session will show you the current version in use, and this should be the one you installed from the package manager.

Now try sudo update-alternatives –config java in the terminal.
This should produce a list of installed Java versions and there will be a * by the default one in use.  Pick the number that corresponds to the version you want to use (or accept the current default and that will now become the default Java version for Ubuntu.

This can be handy if you want to check your app in different versions of Java or develop to a specific version, or even switch to a different version to troubleshoot environment issues you suspect are Java related.

Technorati Tags: Java, Ubuntu

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Scott Guthrie has posted details of a fix MS have released to repair an issue found with ASP.net debugging in Visual studio 2005.  the fix attempts to repair an issue with a big delay between hitting F5 and the first breakpoint being hit.

You can get the full details and links from his blog here.  Scott has a couple of other links to hotfixes and a cool tips and tricks page in that entry too.

Technorati Tags: Asp.net 2005, hotfix

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There’s been a few links around to help get compiz fusion running on ubuntu, this one gets you to the simplest set of instructions I’ve seen so far.

These worked a treat for me.

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The isolani weblog has a short but effective article describing the truthy and falsy characteristics of JavaScript.  Well worth a read if you want to get your head around it ;0) 

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Continuing with my trip into the world of Linux, I decided yesterday that I would check out a different distribution to the two i’ve already experienced.  So Far I have tried out Ubuntu Feisty and Fedora 7 and have been impressed with them both.  I’ve managed to get them installed pain free and have had a pretty good experience with them both.

This time I’ve chosen to push myself a bit and have gone with Sabayon Linux.  the version I chose to go with is 3.4e which is an alpha version of the next release.  I fully expected to have a few issues with it being an alpha but bit the bullet none the less.

My initial impression after loading the live CD (a version that runs off the CD for you to try before installing proper), was one of sheer amazement.  As you know I have an HP Pavilion DV5000 series Laptop with an ATI Radeon Xpress 200m Graphics card installed.  Experienced Linux users who are into their gui bling will also know of the pain many people have trying to get CompizFusion running in their distro.  I hope you’ll be as surprised, impressed and in awe of the Sabayon folks as i was when I tell you that Compiz fusion ran off the Live CD!  Full 3D spinning cube bling off the CD!

Well I was impressed and couldn’t wait to get going so I hit the install Icon and off I went.  The usual helpful install app awaits you giving you a simple step by step install process.

You get a choice of either GNOME or KDE for your desktop and this is where I saw my first bug.  I chose GNOME at first as I’d used that before but the very next screen seemed to show that KDE was going to be installed.  There’s also a bug on the partition manager screen that you’ll want to take great care with.  After setting up your partitions and marking which ones you want to format go through the list carefully before you continue.  The theme used is a bit funky and there are black ticks in the format column by each partition that’s going to be formatted.  This is OK except that the background is also black :0)
To be safe, just key through the list using the arrow keys, you can see the columns clearly as each is highlighted.

Once installed you get a decent theme and the desktop runs great.  3D bling didn’t appear for me though and I couldn’t find a way to get it running so I re-installed with KDE.  I figure I might as well try the other desktop type too.
The KDE desktop had full bling from the off for me.  No need to change any settings at all, it just worked.  Also amazingly, my wireless card worked too, just typed in my network password and bingo it was all running.

There’s a huge array of apps installed by default and you get a choice of some cool games too if you are into that sort of thing.  I’m still getting used to KDE and finding my way round Sabayon but so far I am most impressed indeed.

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I’ve obviously been neglecting to read Scott’s blog for a while.  He’s got a fantastic entry detailing just a couple of the nice features in Visual studio 2008’s code editor.  One nice feature I like the look of is the ability to make the intellisense window transparent so you can see what’s under it.  I’ve often been caught blank minded when coding and had to cancel the intellisense window just to see what the hell it was I was about to do.  the coders version of walking into a room and then forgetting why the hell you went there in the first place I suppose.  Yeh i know I’m weired ;0)

Anyhoo.  Check out the blog entry for more details.

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