There was a recent article on the BBC News website claiming that BT has been found to be throttling iPlayer (video) traffic during peak hours and therefore forcing their customers to have a poor experience during those times.

I have just read another article that says BT have sent an email to the BBC's lead Technology Correspondant (Rory Cellan-Jones) outlining their position, it says, that content providers should share some of the cost of providing content to end-users and that they should no longer expect a 'free ride'. I have to say, I think this is a flawed position - each service provider should be responsible for the infrastructure they need and in the case of the BBC that is their datacentres and the connections out on to the public internet. Each provider is responsible for dimensioning their service to provide for their customer's demands - again, for the BBC that is making sure it has enough servers and bandwidth onto the internet. For ISPs that is making sure that during peak demand it can provide for a certain minimum service level, while this may have been x kbp/s a year ago it is now clearly different in a world with iPlayer, the iTunes Music Store and any number of other real-time music and video services.

Requiring that content providers start to pay for or contribute to the end-to-end path between their servers and their end-users will change the model of the internet in a ridiculous way - where does it stop, and how does it map onto similiar scenarios outside the Internet? Voice providers, for instance, do not charge tele-marketing firms for upgrades to their networks where they're making large numbers of calls. In my opinion this is simple - if it is inside the service boundary of a particular company then it is up to that company to make sure its infrastructure is up to scratch.

Now ISPs do have a simple retort to this and that is to tell consumers that their product does not support the sustained transfer rate needed by iPlayer and offer them another product of a higher price that doees, however, I do not think they should be allowed to do this and I do not think they will.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/06/bt_and_the_iplayer.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8077839.stm

A have had a bit of time off work over the past few days, hence the large number of updates to my webpage/Twitter and having so much time to read the news. Today seems to have been a bit of a dubious news day - with two bits of odd news.

1) The millionth word: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8092549.stm

2) The 112th element: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8093374.stm

Now... the 1 millionth word to be officially recognised was 'Web 2.0' - forgive me, but words should be atomic - I think 'Web 2.0' is a phrase, the conjuction of the word 'Web' and the number 2.0. It seems that based on the rules that once a new word has been used 25,000 times on the web that quite a few names must also now be words - 'Gordon Brown' for instance; I wonder what that word would mean?

As for the 112th element - I was always unhappy about adding additional elements to the table that have only existed for a fraction of a second within a massive particle accelerator - also adding more elements to the table is just going to screw up its asthetic integrity.

Forgive me, as I have no better way of putting this: ha ha ha ha ha ha

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8091605.stm

Always good to see fascists being scrambled.

I have just finished watching a real-time text feed from the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developer's Conference) Keynote address in San Francisco. During this they have annouced some new MacBooks, an update to the current version of MacOSX (10.5.7 Leopard) called Snow Leopard (10.6), iPhone OS 3.0 and the new iPhone - the iPhone 3GS. OS3.0 will be available on June 17th and the new iPhone will be available (in the UK) on June 19th.

iPhone: http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/iphone-3g-s/index.html

MacBook: http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookpro

O2 are the carrier that has the iPhone family in the UK, their page for the new iPhone 3GS is here http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/iphone.html

For a long time I used to have a diary on my website where I posted what I was up to and my thoughts on various subjects. Over the past few years I have not had the time to do this, however, after seeing the results of June 4th's European elections I have decided start my 'blog' up again so that I can air my thoughts about the things going on in my life and in the world at large.

I am sat here this morning watching and reading the coverage of the outcome of the European Elections that were held on June 4th. I find myself desperately unhappy that the BNP have won two seats in the European Parliament (Andrew Brons: Yorkshire & Humber, Nick Griffin: North West) - especially so as I grew up in Yorkshire and I am sure that there are those in South that will further refine their sterotypes based on these results.

The BNP disgust me, there are no two ways about it - they have no policies and no favoured method of government except one: to turn back the tide of globalisation, to close Britain's doors to non-whites (even those of British descent) and this is both morally wrong and economically stupid. I read their literature that says white Britons will be given preferenential treatment for jobs (perhaps people like this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1354363.stm ), I am not really sure how this will help - are they going to create more high-paying jobs? No. In my opinion the people the BNP are talking about are unemployable - are they going to force businesses to take them on and raise their wages? Well if they do then those businesses will leave or go bust - we have seen all this before, in Zimbabwe and that once great agricultural nation has been reduced to its knees by protectionist and racist policies.

I take comfort in the fact that the BNP's share of the vote increased it seems, solely because of poor turnout - Labour supporters not going out to vote or voting for other (less radical) fringe parties. In fact in both places that the BNP were elected they got fewer votes than during the last election (2004). This is an important lesson for both the main parties and those people that did not get out and vote - apathy will put others in the driving seat, do you really want to stand by and watch these people take over our country?