Boardmad

Have been tracking the IE8 release cycle for a bit now and am thoroughly underwhelmed by it’s lack of innovation.

Then along comes Google’s Chrome with almost no fanfare and re-writes the browser paradigm. JS virtualisation in the app, threading in web apps presented as tabs…this is nothing more than an OS in a browser !

Then a little further research brought me to Aurora from Mozilla Labs…just delicious use of interface, component manipulation, semantic and relevance clustering in the FS and data sharing and manipulation between users in real time. Hope the UK BB environment evolves to be able to support this sort of interaction !

Sigh…here’s the reason I hate flash ! Got into a huge scrap at work with a colleague arguing our customer-facing offering needed to be Web2.0 and RIA and that flash was the way to go as AJAX wasn’t ubiquitous yet etc etc and I politely pointed out that I personally, on all the browsers I use at home, block flash content.

And here’s why and here’s the original PoC code. Nice bundled-up, serialised SOAP call over an embedded flash object using an XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) vulnerability and UPnP (Universal Plug n Play - it makes those tricky little apps like MSN Messenger and Skype slip through your hardware and software firewalls like a hot knife through butter).

So the ongoing rule is learn to use your hardware properly and configure ONLY those ports on your firewalls that you really, really, really, REALLY need open and go home this evening and make sure UPnP is disabled on your router.

You have been warned…again !

This post from well known and respected UK ISP Zen has to set alarm bells ringing ! Hot on the heels of the news that the UK’s BT Home Hub is borked comes the news that the chipset used globally by a third of all ADSL router integrators ’causes intermittancy’

Yikes…this could run and run !
As I suspected the comments that have arisen after this info appeared on the net point to confusion, misunderstanding and and an utter lack of faith in the BB market in the UK.

Surprise surprise…people in the UK still aren’t getting what they thought they would when ordering Broadband. I do sympathise with the ISP’s to some degree here…they’re selling a 2nd rate product over a third-world POTS copper network which in much of the UK predates WWII.
Technology being used in the BT backhaul is ‘just’ keeping Broadband speeds ahead of what people expect nowadays but with news that the internet2 backbone has gone live in the US (University & student faculties only !) at speeds of up to 100Gbps (yes that’s right a 1000 times faster than your normal 100Mbps office network !) and fibre networking delivered to the home the far east for less than we pay per month for ‘Max’ ADSL (there’s a misnomer if ever I heard one !) It’s hardly really surprising that the ‘big six’ are getting their bum’s felt from Ofcom.
Just you don’t expect anything concrete or earth-shattering to arise from this meeting of minds !

The main problem is the marketing guff that the ISP’s get away with selling their products with…”up to 8Mbps” to your average Joe in the street..’Oh well if I get the right kit and turn up the volume then I should get the full speed’ When you then get into the conversation with them trying to explain line length, signal attentuation, copper twisted pair being repaired with Aluminium, lack of capacity in the exchange,  rate-adaptive products, 10 day training periods etc etc they just give up and burble ! Hardly surprising really is it…but then if you were > 4km from the exchange would you be rushing off to Talk Talk to get their great 2Mb service when your mate living 2 street from the exchange gets full speed !?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Net firms quizzed on speed limits Bosses at six of the UK’s top net providers are being asked to explain why consumers do not get the broadband speeds firms advertise. The six executives are being questioned by Ofcom’s Consumer Panel which acts as the regulator’s customer champion. The panel wants consumers to get more information so they are not misled about the speed they sign up for. The panel also has proposals on what net firms should do to improve how they sell and advertise broadband.

Blogged from ThinkBroadband.

Will downloading DVD quality films replace rental?

With the rise of postal DVD services like lovefilm.com and others, one wonders how high street rental shops are doing. Japan is going one step further and one broadband provider (KDDI) is offering its customers the option to download a DVD image for ¥500 (£2.15), which can then be burnt to a DVD-R for viewing on DVD compatible devices. Read more on the service at www.tech.co.uk, and for an English version of the KDDI website use this link.

A full standard DVD is around 8GB in size since lots of films now using double layer DVD discs. This can take a long time to download and a guide for times for a full 8GB dual layer DVD can be seen here:

• 56K dialup, more than 14 days
• 0.5Mbps broadband, 36 hours
• 2Mbps broadband, 9 hours
• 5Mbps broadband, 3 hour 36 minutes
• 10Mbps broadband, 1 hour 50 minutes
• 20Mbps broadband, 56 minutes
• 50Mbps broadband, 24 minutes
• 100Mbps broadband, 12 minutes

Of course in the real world while it is fairly easy to run a 0.5Mbps connection flat out for some hours, contention between other users on a network becomes more noticeable as the bottleneck that was the last mile of connectivity is removed. This means people with faster connections are likely to see the speeds move up and down a lot over the course of a large download. An aspect not visibly present in Japanese services are download limits, which if a service like this was to run in the UK would very often prove to be insufficient.

One big problem for any commercial service looking to offer large downloads is the ability for providers to grow their networks to cope with the loads without large increases in price. Since KDDI is only offering this service to its own broadband customers, it is likely these costs are factored into the download price, which while looking cheap to us in the UK is actually double the cost for renting a movie for a week in Japan.

KDDI already provides a fibre based service carrying a symmetric 100Mbps broadband service as well as telephone and digital TV. The promotional price is ¥5040 (£22) with the 30 channel TV service costing an additional £10 a month.

The price of the KDDI service which is cheaper than ADSL shows that the fibre based services are having to compete on price, the suggestion being that speed is not the largest deciding factor when choosing a service. This raises the big question of who would dare to speculate on a large commercial roll-out of fibre to the home services like this in the UK, if the market is too price sensitive.

[ Topic: Broadband | 8 comment(s) | link to this item ]

It’s been suggested by Mr. Timms (Head geek if ever I saw one!) that there may be some mileage in the Gov’t intervening in the British broadband market and make 21CN a reality sooner rather than later.Currently BT the encumbent (recumbent shurely ! - Ed) primary wholesale Telco in the UK is the only group looking at the next generation of BB delivery however this is largely still over the now laughably slow Copper POTS network. They are mainly looking at ADSL2+ running at higher frequencies with upgraded kit in the exchanges and at end-of-the-street cabinets. Still doesn’t get us into the market in competitive terms with the rest of the BB enabled world, and take up will again be driven by population density and market forces, so the majority of your non-urban dwellers (myself included) can go whistle.

I ain’t holding my breath but it’s a small nod in the right direction.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Stephen Timms, Minister for Competitiveness, ordered a summit to look at the role of government in providing next-generation broadband.

Well this site’s the one for you…a little bit of ajax and some scripting and lo and behold your search terms from both Search giants can be seen in parallel on screen. And it’s very interesting what disparities become evident when this kind of parallel comparison takes place.

I like the simplicity of mash-ups like this…such a simple idea and even nowadays in the age of tabbed browsing I think this sort of feature on a website works far better for the user than opening two tabs and switching back and forth between them or even worse (and my pet hate) opening multiple windows and having to sift through the righ ones to get back to the content I was looking over in the first place !