tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-234803462024-03-14T05:20:59.181+00:00uk, tech, rantcow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-26580380849997825622008-04-09T08:57:00.003+00:002008-04-09T09:28:32.528+00:00World's Smallest Violin<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7336940.stm">BBC has an article about iplayer, costs and the ISP business</a><br /><br /><blockquote>In its first month of launching, the catch-up TV service saw 1m people download more than 3.5m programmes.<br /><br />According to figures from regulator Ofcom it will cost ISPs in the region of £830m to pay for the extra capacity needed to allow for services like the iPlayer. </blockquote><br /><br />Lets do some math, and lets be generous with our assumptions:<br /><br /><pre><br /> Average length of a programme: 1 hour<br /> Bandwidth for a 1 hour programme: 1 Gbyte<br /> 3.5 million programmes bandwidth: 3.5 million Gbytes<br /> Wholesale bandwidth costs for ISP[1]: 5p/Gbyte<br /><br /> Total cost per month: 3.5 million * 0.05<br /> £175,000<br /> Total cost per year: £2.1 million<br /></pre><br /><br />2.1 million not 830million. Care to explain where all the extra is coming from?<br /><br />I'm quite sure BBC iPlayer was expected to get 400 times traffic growth in its first year, we'd be hearing quite a lot more about it.<br /><br />Given that ISPs are already charging consumers to supply them with data. Granted the 5/month "unlimited" tarrifs are just lying - you cannot provision at those costs.<br /><br />But <a href="http://www.ukfsn.org/home/internet/adsl/">ukfsn</a> offer consumers ADSL packages at sane costs (and make a profit, which supports open source stuff). They will give you 45Gb at peak times and 300Gb off peak for about £30/month. That covers their internal infrastructure, billing, ops, marketing AND the bandwidth.<br /><br />The best I can come up with is that the ISPs want to say they will give you ADSL free, and then making the money by charging the BBC (or, us, the consumer) to send the data over the network.<br /><br />[1] Amazon will sell ME (a regular retail consumer) bandwidth at about that price. I'm quite sure ISPs can get better. True UK bandwidth costs more, but this is all traffic between the BBC and the ISPs. At least a couple of years ago, the BBC had direct peering arrangements with all the main ISPs. This means that aside from the installation and on-going cost, the bandwidth is free. Bandwidth within the ISPs networks is also essentially free once setup.<br /><br />If I can buy bandwidth at 5p/Gbyte, I find it hard to understand why an ISP - who's only main job is networking - can't provision it's own internal bandwidth at about those prices (or a lot better)cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-29108452098080820132007-02-08T08:55:00.000+00:002007-02-08T08:55:45.126+00:00Custom RSS/Atom tech news feedsIt seems <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/">The Register</a> have quietly rolled out a feature that lets you get Atom/RSS feeds for any search you run on their website.<br /><br />So if you want to see what Apple have been up to, but are fed up of iphone and drm news?<br /><br /><a href="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=apple+-iphone+-drm">http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=apple+-iphone+-drm</a><br /><br />(Notice the - before iphone and drm? == "Exclude those terms from the search results please")<br /><br />Then follow the email/rss/atom feed links on the bottom right of the search box<br /><br /><a href="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=apple+-iphone+-drm"><img src="http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u293/cowboyjunky2007/Picture2-1.png" /></a><br /><br />It's true that you have been able to do this with <a href="http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&q=site%3Atheregister.co.uk+apple+-drm+-iphone">Google News</a> for quite some time, but Google's results appear to be missing some ("Apple settles with Apple") and also just aren't as clean.<br /><br />What I particularly like is that you can also filter out particular authors - <a href="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=&author=John+Lettice">John Lettice</a> is doing some amazing commentry on the UK biometric (e)passports and ID Cards hoohaa that the government apppear to be making a right old mess of at the moment.<br /><br />I can now have bloglines tell me whenever Mr Lettice makes a post!<br /><br /><a href="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=John%20Lettice">http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=John%20Lettice</a><br />(and follow the <img src="http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/feeds.png" /> icon on the right....)<br /><br />Or The Register can send me an email ... another feature Google News is supposed to have, but I've never found works particularly well.<br /><br />Now if someone could just tell me the search terms that would exclude all the rubbish I'm not interested in ....cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1165020852107326142006-12-02T00:44:00.000+00:002006-12-02T00:54:12.120+00:00Child poverty, bbc, flash videoARGH!<br /><br />BBC goes to all the trouble of creating <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/12/strong_visuals.html">really great flash animations</a> (and they are great examples of flash/anim regardless of the issues), about a really important issue (child poverty), and it forces you to watch them in tiny scope because some moron figured they know better than you. Me thinks there is some irony here.<br /><br />You might have to wait a few seconds/minutes while these load, but they will then fill up the space available in your browser window. If they look grainy and ugly, reduce the size of your browser window.<br /><br />Wasn't hard was it?<br /><br /><ul><br /><li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/static/video/wt_player.swf?flv_url=dillon_anim.flv&flv_dur=208&flv_buf=7">dillon</a><br /></li><li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/static/video/wt_player.swf?flv_url=samira_anim.flv&flv_dur=156&flv_buf=5">samira</a><br /></li><li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/static/video/wt_player.swf?flv_url=danielle_anim.flv&flv_dur=151&flv_buf=5">danielle</a><br /></li><li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/static/video/wt_player.swf?flv_url=chris_anim.flv&flv_dur=150&flv_buf=5">chris</a><br /></li><li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/static/video/wt_player.swf?flv_url=keona_anim.flv&flv_dur=218&flv_buf=7">keona</a><br /></li><br /></ul>cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1162125329135469482006-10-29T12:29:00.000+00:002006-10-29T12:37:33.013+00:00Happiness, Choice and Long TailsThese two make for a couple of really interesting talks from the TED conferences:<br /><br /><blockquote>Dan Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard, and author of "Stumbling on Happiness." In this memorable talk, filmed at TED2004, he demonstrates just how poor we humans are at predicting (or understanding) what will make us happy. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:02)</blockquote><br /><a href="http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/09/happiness_exper.html">http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/09/happiness_exper.html</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Barry Schwartz is a sociology professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice. In this talk, he persuasively explains how and why the abundance of choice in modern society is actually making us miserable. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 20:22)</blockquote><br /><a href="http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/09/paradox_of_choi.html">http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/09/paradox_of_choi.html</a><br /><br />How does this map to the "Long Tail" of internet distribution. You know - what Apple, Amazon and YouTube et al do when they make masses of stuff available and build a business selling a little of many many things.<br /><br />In fact, the internet makes loads more information available. More information is good right? Expanded knowledge and all that.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1159532143225371602006-09-29T11:53:00.000+00:002006-09-29T12:15:43.256+00:00Bill Gates $lies++From <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5390000.stm">BBC and Microsoft sign agreement</a><br /><br /><i>"Bill Gates said: "Microsoft's strength is in driving digital innovation, and our vision is to open up rich, new consumer experiences that allow people to enjoy digital content anytime, anywhere and on any device.</i><br /><br /><b>Driving Digital Innovation</b><br /><br />Wrong. They buy (or just rip off others) innovation, they spend a lot on marketing, they are a massively successfull business.<br /><br />They rarely drive innovation in anything technical, digital or otherwise. Apple introduced the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod">iPod</a> in 2001.<br /><br />Microsoft's <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5391226.stm">media player</a> will arrive in November 2006, provided it isn't subject to a typical MS slippage.<br /><br /><i>The first conceptions of the Playstation date back to 1986</i> (from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation#History">wikipedia</a>)<br /><br />Microsoft's XBox was official announced in 2000.<br /><br /><b>allow people to enjoy digital content anytime, anywhere and on any device</b><br /><br />This is so totally untrue it makes you spray the coffee you were just about to drink all over the wall, then take another sip and just do it all again.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC</a> works on almost ANY platform and plays almost ANY content.<br /><br />Microsoft's players work on Windows and maybe Apple's Mac platform. Not Linux, not BSD, not many many mobile phone platforms. (Yes they can be made to work - but you actually have to break the law to do so). <br /><br />Microsoft <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3680">sues anyone</a> who tries to let legally bought content in their format be played on something Microsoft didn't allow, and the <a href="http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt">bad evil DRM</a> technology that Microsoft built and pushed on users is specifically and pretty much only about <i>stopping</i> people playing what they legally own "anywhere, anytime"<br /><br />In short, Bill Gates is just plain wrong.<br /><br />The fact that the BBC are reporting such twoddle, never mind that they are falling for one of the oldest IT tricks in the book and about to get sucker punched by Microsoft, is sadly the much more important element to this story.<br /><br />So long, and thanks for all the fish.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1159525959249420882006-09-29T10:18:00.000+00:002006-09-29T10:35:54.630+00:00Advanced Web Mail (or just not dumb)It has been impressive watching Yahoo Mail 2.0 evolve. They've taken their time, and haven't rushed. It's a pure guess, but as Yahoo have been around longer in this domain than Google I suspect the percentage of non-tech savy people using Yahoo is going to be higher.<br /><br />Google Mail is savy and swish, but if you aren't using the web every day (a LOT of people don't) it isn't the simplest of UI's to learn.<br /><br />I'm not saying it is any better or worse than Yahoo's, just that it is different to virtually everything else. While Google may be offering improvements they may also be harder to grasp for those that haven't grown up with a web-browser integrated into their daily life.<br /><br />Thus, Yahoo taking their time and polishing their offering are quite crucial to it being a success with the masses, as well as those of us who are drinking the web-juice each day, all day. And so props to Yahoo for being grown up and professional about their upgrade.<br /><br />However ... a minor niggle.<br /><br />I have a few Yahoo and Google Mail accounts. Possibly I shouldn't, possibly I could live with one. But let me put it this way: I am able to register multiple accounts for multiple uses if I so desire, and I do desire.<br /><br />To switch from one Yahoo Mail account to another I have to:<br /><br />* Logout<br />* Logout again (honestly, I really did want to logout)<br />* Follow a link to "Return to Yahoo Mail"<br />* Login<br /><br />It ought to be possible to:<br /><br />* Logout<br />* Login<br /><br />Don't put it up by default - have it as an option. It's a small percentage of users - but advanced users, who are using your service a lot. They are worth a little effort.<br /><br />Google Mail at least get's this right.<br /><br />However, that is still a bit sucky. Why can I not be logged into multiple Yahoo Mail or Google Mail accounts? <br /><br />Technically there is no reason.<br /><br />I don't want to have one uber account that aggregates all the others (which is what Google allow you to do), and I don't want to have to constantly be logging in and out.<br /><br />Make it an advanced feature. Turn it off by default. Hide it from the majority of users. But please stop making life sucky for no apparent reason.<br /><br />And on a related note: Aggregators (mail, bank accounts, whatever) are great for the companies - they lock you in to their service and I'm sure for some people offer convenience.<br /><br />But I don't want everything in one place. I just want you to realise that I do have many accounts in many places, and make that easier without at the same time killing one of the reasons I have multi-whatevers in the first place - resilience, redundancy and seperation. These (for some people, in some cases, some of the time) are very very important.<br /><br />Rant off.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1154886907683899932006-08-06T17:36:00.000+00:002006-08-06T17:55:07.696+00:00mobile phones, insurance, financeTell me how this makes sense.<br /><br />I had a fairly up-scale Nokia 6680 phone. I lost it. All my fault.<br /><br />I have phone insurance. £4.99 a month.<br /><br />Doesn't cover loss. <br /><br />I have household contents insurance at £28 a month.<br /><br />It <i>does</i> cover loss (and everything else I might need covered on the phone).<br /><br /><b>Lesson 1</b> : If you have decent household insurance, you don't need the extra/seperate mobile phone insurance.<br /><br />So I cancel the largely pointless mobile phone insurance from Citymain. For the record, I found their service to be <a href="http://www.citymain.com/">exceedingly sucky</a>. Sure, technically I should have read the (how many pages of) small print. In reality, I was paying a lot of money to cover my phone (compare the monthly premium to the amount of cover provided for the home contents insurance). They didn't cover it when I needed it, and more to the point, made the entire experience of finding that out a royal pain in the ass. <br /><br />But get this. The household insurance has a £50 excess. For that, they will give me a new phone. Great. They will even sort out the SIM card (Three like to charge for the pleasure of replacing it), and cover the extra memory card I had.<br /><br />But I can get the same phone, on a 12 month contract. Free phone, and the 12 months line rental is fully refunded at the end of the 12 months. Free. It won't cost me a penny. Ever.<br /><br /><b>Making a claim for a legitimate loss (and the first time I've ever done so) will cost me more than just taking out another contract</b><br /><br />What is with the mobile phone market?cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1154044386956488122006-07-27T23:48:00.000+00:002006-07-27T23:53:06.966+00:00Anniemal<a href="http://www.anniemusic.co.uk/">Annie - Anniemal</a> : top grade <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniemal">sugar coated bubble gum pop</a>. love it.<br /><br /><ul><br /><li> Track 2 (Chewing Gum)</li><br /><li> Track 5 (Heartbeat)</li><br /><li> Track 7 (Anniemal)</li><br /></ul><br /><br />Follow with some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldie_Lookin'_Chain">Goldie Lookin 'Chain</a>cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1152696483735398312006-07-12T09:12:00.000+00:002006-07-12T09:39:19.233+00:00Yell.com are evil (imho)So Yell decide to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5169674.stm">throw the lawyers at a little hobby site</a>. Reminds me of <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/06/19/bt_claims_ownership_of_hyperlinks/">BT trying to claim they had a patent on hyperlinks</a><br /><br />Yell have a terrible website and have had years to try and sort it out. Instead of threatening legal action and spending a load of money on lawyers and bad press, what about:<br /><br /><ul><br /><li> Hiring the "offending" website authors as consultants for a few days, and picking their brains</li><br /><li> Offering a deal, where Yell pays Yellowikis to promote their content where Yellowikis don't have much coverage</li><br /><li> Getting with the program and delivering a better service that customers will use in preference <i>because it is better, not because you've beaten all the competition around the head with baseball bat</i></li><br /><li> Just making a donation to a charity of their choice (instead of the legal profession), and admitting they have missed a trick</li><br /></ul><br /><br />Cause here is the thing : <a href="http://www.yellowikis.org/">yellowiki</a> is going to struggle to ever really compete with Yell, certainly within the next couple of years. They have a novel, new and <i>still developing</i> business model. Yell have more business connections than you could throw a stick at, exposure and money to compete.<br /><br />See also <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/13/transport_for_london.html">Transport for London using public money to threaten a genuinely useful fan site</a>cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1148241458283472842006-05-21T19:57:00.000+00:002006-05-21T20:00:05.710+00:00The new John Peel<a href="http://www.last.fm/">Last.fm</a> truely is the new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peel">John Peel</a><br /><br />And instead of "Did you hear [some band] last night", try instead "Have you tried [some band] as a seed on Last.fm?"<br /><br />It Rocks!cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1147862946766919242006-05-17T10:37:00.000+00:002006-05-17T10:49:06.780+00:00Parcel Force living the dreamParcel delivery companies are universally rubbish, however until today Parcel Force used to be my least favourite of them all.<br /><br />However, today I was sent a package via Parcel Force. The house number and postcode where correct on the address label. But ...<br /><br /><ul><br /><li>The street name was mangled, and basically wrong</li><br /><li>The area was mangled, and basically wrong</li><br /><li>The town was listed as London, when it should have been Edinburgh</li><br /></ul><br /><br />So, first up they deserve mad props for delivering it to the right address. First time, within 24 hours of posting.<br /><br />But what really rocked was that when I wasn't home to sign for it, they dropped it at my local post <b>office</b>. Not the local sorting office (which is anything but local). Not at some trading estate on the outskirts of town. But at the local Post Office branch that is about 2 mins walk from my front door.<br /><br />Local, easy, and open at sane hours. The service, going by the label, is called "Local Collect" and it's the most sane idea I've seen from a delivery company ever.<br /><br />Wonders will never cease.<br /><br />btw : some other random thoughts about parcel delivery<br /><br /><ul><br /><li> Most people are going to be visiting a supermarket within the next few days. Why not let me collect parcels from there?</li><br /><li> When it's an online order, why not email the recipient and ask if they would (a) like it delivered to their door asap, (b) like it delivered on a specific date (optionally for an extra fee), or (c) collect it from the local depot (or ideally post office / supermarket) at their convenience. Default to (a) if you don't hear from the recipient. It's better service for the customer, and reduces the wasted delivery attempts for the courier, at virtually no cost to implement.<br /></ul>cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1145110358736199372006-04-15T14:11:00.000+00:002006-04-15T14:12:45.953+00:00Free Cinema TicketsIf <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/04/01/8372814/">Ryanair can give away free flights</a>, why can't cinemas do the same thing?cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1143231647142611222006-03-24T20:17:00.000+00:002006-03-24T20:20:47.153+00:00No public demand for itIt's been said that with regard to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4817612.stm">public funding of political parties</a>, that the public is not keen on it.<br /><br />Hasn't stopped them bringing in ID cards tho.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1142968176005669502006-03-21T19:04:00.000+00:002006-03-21T19:11:41.293+00:00Internet Time<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=115952512&size=l" target="_blank"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/43/115952512_2b5d97e891.jpg" width="500" height="281" alt="internet time"></a><br />(click the image to load a larger, readable version)<br /><br />Does anyone else find a wry giggle in this?<br /><br />Read the three headlines in order, and the times they are posted.<br /><br />Rumour, launch and burned all in under an hour.<br /><br />;)cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1142333134991393072006-03-14T10:30:00.000+00:002006-03-31T18:27:49.246+00:00A better PVR for the homeThe Register, via their Hardware channel have reviewed the <a href="http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/13/telewest_tvdrive_reviewed/">Telewest TVDrive HDTV-enabled PVR</a>. Seems like nice kit.<br /><br />Don't get it. Why on earth would you want a PVR in the house?<br /><br />From here on in, assume PVR == the <i>functionality</i> of a PVR, not the actual set top box you traditionally see. Namely, something that lets you record huge amounts of video, can store it for years, lets you watch it again, again and again, fast forward through ads. You get the idea.<br /><br />What happens if the "PVR" doesn't live above your TV, but down the other end of a long long wire that reaches into a server hosting facility somewhere?<br /><br />First off, with half decent broadband you can stream good enough tv quality down the line.<br /><br />You most likely don't have an email server, or web server in your home. But I'll bet you email and use the web. Centrally locating all the PVRs in a warehouse would mean that scale really kicks in.<br /><br />Larger harddrives (or banks of them) could be employed. Why store 2000 identical copies of Desperate Housewives for 2000 different people with their PVR co-located? Just store the one copy and create a "shortcut".<br /><br />What's the point? For the same $$ you would be able to have Terabytes of storage available instead of Gigabytes. At this point, you could technically store everything broadcast on Freeview for a rolling 12 month window.<br /><br />Imagine, anything, from any channel in the last 12 months available to watch as often and as many times as you like.<br /><br />'cause it is just a very very large PVR : and a PVR is already perfectly legal.<br /><br />Heck, with this model (and having signed up using your tv licence number to ensure it is used properly), you can now login to your account from anywhere in the world and watch, well, anything.<br /><br />Update: Seems <a href="http://usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2006-03-27-cablevision-dvr_x.htm">we're not the only ones with this idea</a>cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1142210138015427552006-03-13T00:12:00.000+00:002006-03-27T22:33:47.696+00:00How to make P2P legal.Easy.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.netflix.com/">Netflix</a>s, <a href="http://www.blockbuster.com">Blockbuster</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=scrumwikiorg-21&creative=7274&camp=1962&link_code=sub&path=http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/subs/rentals/help/learn-more.html">Amazon</a> (in the uk) are all making a nice profit shipping rental DVDs in the post. Heck, they are even covering the return postage!<br /><br />This is legal, the industry approves, actors are paid, Hollywood smiles, big money no whammies. Everyone is happy. <br /><br />Apart from me, because the shipping takes at least 24 hours and then there is the scam that involves them <a href="http://www.fool.com/Server/printarticle.aspx?file=/news/mft/2006/mft06021501.htm">not actually shipping you the dvds you want when you want them</a>.<br /><br />I can download a movie in a couple of hours. <br /><br />So ... I download it. <b>But, I also log into Netflixs/Blockbuster/Amazon and add the movie to my list.</b><br /><br />When the DVD arrives in the post, I keep it for a day or two, then ship it back, unwatched.<br /><br />I don't keep the movie I downloaded - I delete it once I've watched it. I am, after all, only renting.<br /><br />The model must work : for $10 a month they can afford to ship me DVDs in the post, pay hollywood AND make a profit. <br /><br />So how much would they save if they used a BitTorrent network and had virtually no inventory to manage, no warehouse to light, no monkies to pay to package the disks and no shipping costs, no lost or scratched disks and didn't even have to pay for the bandwidth?<br /><br />And forget DRM. If you offered me the ability to pay $10 a month to LEGALLY watch whatever I could find on bittorrent, I'd pay up right now.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1142208548282023872006-03-12T23:29:00.000+00:002006-03-27T22:34:44.216+00:00Cost of BandwidthA great example of <a href="http://telephonyonline.com/iptv/news/BellSouth_VOD_costs_030706/">using maths to add credibility to an otherwise rubbish argument</a>. In this case the point is that:<br /><br /><pre>> The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes <br />> per month ... at a monthly cost to carriers of $112</pre><br /><br />Namely, how are the poor ISPs and backbone providers going to cope? "I canny give her any more captain or she'll blow!"<br /><br />The first clue is right there:<br /><br /><pre>> Today’s average residential broadband user consumes about 2 gigbytes <br />>of data per month, Kafka estimated, which costs the service provider about $1.</pre><br /><br />Rubbish. If I get a typical small to medium website hosting package I will probably be paying $1 per Gbyte. No question. But BellSouth is no small operation. Wholesale bandwidth charges are nowhere near that. If I was a big boy, I could get a Gbyte of bandwidth for closer to $0.10. The 2Gbytes quoted in the piece would come to $0.20. So our sums need to be divided by a factor of 5. That $112 per month cost in bandwidth to the poor ISP? Try $22 and change. The $560 per month quoted for HDTV done over IP is really more like $112.<br /><br />Then there are economies of scale. And the fact that bandwidth prices keep on falling : and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=scrumwiki-20%26link_code=xm2%26camp=2025%26creative=165953%26path=http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%253fASIN=0670033847%2526tag=scrumwiki-20%2526lcode=xm2%2526cID=2025%2526ccmID=165953%2526location=/o/ASIN/0670033847%25253FSubscriptionId=04BXBKS5ET3EW09CPPG2">they will keep falling for a while yet</a>. (It's a great book by the way, and well worth a read).<br /><br />Finally, and this is key : the cost to ship a GByte between two points within BellSouth's own network is a fraction of the cost of delivering the same Gb across the public internet. You can cache p2p traffic (when it's done the way it will be for main stream, mass adoption) and if you are downloading in the old style way you can definitely cache. So your prices drop even more.<br /><br />1Terabyte of data in a few years time? Forget the $560 they quote, and try nearer $56 in a galaxy not that far away<br /><br />Update 27 March 2006 re: bandwidth costs. If <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3">Amazon can run an online storage business</a> selling bandwidth at $0.15 per GB to anyone, with no startup costs and no minimum spend, I don't think my bandwidth cost estimates are widely off the mark.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1141991027348865532006-03-10T11:39:00.001+00:002006-03-11T19:54:27.506+00:00Word, Writely and Walled gardens> From: A friend<br />> http://www.upstartle.com/<br />> undoing of MS Word ?<br /><br />Unlikely in the short term, but the next two years are going to see a flood of applications built in the browser. Exciting times to be sure, and MS market share is most likely to drop, but that is one reason they have been filing patents at an alarming rate. You know they now have <a href="http://www.technewsworld.com/story/49229.html">at least 5000 patents?</a><br /><br />Office is less about any one tool these days, and much more about the integration of services. Aka one of the main additions to the next version is tighter integration with Search. That sort of thing will continue, and as such make it harder for startups to compete : UNLESS, you have a series of open API's (<a href="http://flickr.com/">flickr</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> and where Yahoo are really pushing), which will allow anyone to plug lots of the pieces together in interesting ways.<br /><br />This is what MS are missing. They still want to control the whole shop. So even when they are "open", they are only doing it in a token way. Or subtly include some gotcha that will lock you in down the line. Standard, old school, business practise.<br /><br />Walled gardens never do better than open ones.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1141976287035835662006-03-10T07:32:00.000+00:002006-03-11T19:54:30.243+00:00Making Public Data Public in the UKI'm sure the <a href="http://theyworkforyou.com/">usual</a> <a href="http://www.writetothem.com/">set of</a> <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">suspects</a> are behind this ...<br /><br />Campaign to get data created and collected through funding from the British Tax Payer put into the public arena for us all to use without having to incur more charges:<br /><br /><a href="http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1726229,00.html">Give us back our crown jewels</a><br /><br />Indeed. Let's hope Tony doesn't go the other way and decided that the data collection should be entirely privatised. Sell off ownership for a headline grabbing (but massively undervalued and short sighted) few billion and then have the public taxpayers purse buy it back for the rest of time.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1141606977338585592006-03-06T00:46:00.001+00:002006-03-11T19:54:32.476+00:00RFC : Linux Kernel Compilation for Newbiesre: <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=0d310eadb229405b090ab3fab7090ab7&t=56835">linux kernel compilation for newbies</a><br /><br />tis cool. mad props to anyone who has got their head around it and bothered to take the time to share what they have learned with others.<br /><br />but.<br /><br />this is not a simple science, for various reasons. You can re-compile the (k)ubuntu kernel easily enough thanks to the wonderful forums, but that is only half the battle if you are a laptop (or modern hardware) user, and you need special (proprietery) drivers.<br /><br />Now you have to go find the non-kernel stuff (nvidia, ndiswrapper, aka non open source stuff), and figure out how to make it talk nicely with your shiny new kernel.<br /><br />what we need is less forum howto posts, and more <a href="http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/">auto configuration scripts</a> that someone can download, chmod and run.<br /><br />let us be blunt here:<br /><br />* if you are seriously running linux, you will, sooner or later, need to re-compile your kernel to get some device/driver working<br />* it isn't simple, even for (many of) the vaugely tech savy<br /><br />if (k)ubuntu can do it for the basic installation and configuration, then it ought to be possible to do the same for adding or updating a <a href="http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=70657&page=3">usb webcam driver</a>cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23480346.post-1141605625717893052006-03-06T00:38:00.000+00:002006-03-11T19:53:29.243+00:00How to make AOL Payre: <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/03/aol_screw_you_were_t.html">AOL charging to accept email.</a><br /><br /><br />The solution here is to figure out a way to make AOLs mail servers work harder.<br /><br />Like not accepting any email from them on the first couple of attempts, forcing them to store the email longer and retry.<br /><br />Third time they tried to send it, you accept the email. No email is lost. People sending via AOL just find their email takes a few hours longer to arrive. Which surely can't be too unusual for an AOL user anyway.<br /><br />There are lots of us, and if we can increase the load on AOLs mailservers by 5% that equates to a lot of money they have just wasted.<br /><br />Best of all, they have no way to know if you are being nasty, or just have a problematic email server at the moment.<br /><br />Another way would be to setup your "out of office" assistant to send a standard response to everyone with an @aol.com email address that sends you an email.<br /><br />With enough people on board, the increase in email to AOL's servers would start to add up.cow boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17834705016116415984noreply@blogger.com0