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APFerguson

Listed below are comments made by APFerguson between Tuesday, 2nd June 2009 and Monday, 30th November 2009 (2 Hours Ago) .

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Facts about file-sharing 10:03pm on 30 Nov 2009 Looked at Sky songs at the weekend, streaming at 48Kbps, mmm even with decent codecs can that be any good. Radio1 is at 128Kbps and is okay.

The MP3 files on offer, 192 to 256Kbps bit rates, i.e. lower than Amazon in many cases. My hearing is not brilliant, but on a reasonable system you can start to notice the differences, or is the mastering of some recordings bad?

Why not offer people the choice of bit rates? Storage is cheap and music files are small compared to the HD video offered on the PS3 now.

Times change, jobs for life do not exist any more, and many artists know this, but do the record execs know this?
The Digital Economy Bill - does it add up? 10:19am on 21 Nov 2009 One of the original aims of Digital Britain had seemed to be a revamp of fair use to make it fit for a Digital Age (as StargateHitchHicker - post 15) mentions, it is dissappointing that as far as I can tell the bill has nothing to define fair use.

How many millions own an MP3 player? And a CD collection that is now on that player...I do wonder if sometimes these figures are included in the piracy stats.

There is no carrot and stick approach, all it seems to be is stick. Hence why people are moaning, including those who do buy all their music.
The Digital Economy Bill - does it add up? 12:29pm on 20 Nov 2009 In the actual bill, page 13, appears to allow the Secretary of State to impose a technical obligation on ISPs for reasons other than copyright infringement.

While the measures are talked of being applied to a single person, what is to stop the measures being used to block a complete website?

Is this a way of adding to law a Digital D notice
Computing for older users: Patronising or practical? 1:11pm on 11 Nov 2009 Invariably the problems people new to modern computers have is the vast number of options. Do I single click, double click, right click on something?

Add to this the various issues that exist around the human machine interface, i.e. some cannot get along with mice, but prefer trackballs, others want to do everything from the keyboard.

Its less an OS battle, and more about making applications usable without having to have had years of experience in the previous versions.

Hands up all those who've encountered the question, 'you asked me to press the enter key, but there is no enter key on my keyboard' - something so simple but difficult for novices.
Orange's 'unlimited' iPhone 1:26pm on 04 Nov 2009 Having unlimited as 750MB is somewhat limiting with devices that in theory can do online video, and at £30 odd a month it does not look cheap. Yes cheap in comparison to other mobiles, but it makes one seriously question the 'mobile will overtake landline based broadband' crowd.

It may overtake in terms of numbers, but in terms of what people do with it, I suspect it will always lag. Remember a home with 2 adults and one teenager may have 3 mobile phones, 2 mobile dongles, but just the one fixed line broadband connection for the home.
The Big Broadband match: A poor result? 1:08pm on 12 Oct 2009 Live Streaming will always be difficult to do for millions, there is a reason that satellite TV still exists in countries where broadband speeds could support a decent bit rate.

The stream at its high bit rate, was probably around half that of a Freeview stream to settop box. BBC HD tends to run at around 10 to 15Mbps on satellite services, so good quality is possible over the speeds some are getting to the home. HD is still well below the quality the footage was recorded in though (1.6Gbps would probably give you a raw HD feed)

Many people I've known who are into their football are happy enough with radio coverage, aka Radio 5 Live.
A big match for Broadband Britain 09:39am on 07 Oct 2009 The lowest bit rate video they are offering is 250Kilo bits per second, which should run on a good 0.5Meg based service.

Alas providers budget for each user using around 30 to 100Kbps at peak times. The higher the figure the more expensive to provide.

The services worst affected are likely to be the very cheap, or ones with 'unlimited' in the sales blurb, as they often try and squeeze more people onto their capacity.

If going to sign up, check that the test stream works well at around 8 to 10pm in the evening before parting with cash.

The national infrastructure should be able to cope assuming that deals have been done with the major content cache providers, but the architecture of the connection between providers and the consumer will be the area of greatest possibly congestion.
Can Digital Britain top the league? 10:54pm on 16 Jun 2009 I don't see today's proprosals can make us a world leader, Japan in looking at 90% fibre coverage in a year or so, and universal mobile broadband coverage. Finland will hit its 1Mbps USO in 2010, and 100Meg by 2015.

The report mentioned that we are starting to see under investment in the middle mile, but from the early readings I've not found a solution proposed, but then these reports are hard going to digest.
BT and the iPlayer 10:48am on 11 Jun 2009 If we the end-users want more video then we may have to buy a more expensive connection, alas many providers with traffic management try to sell unlimited, which means the peak spike becomes difficult to manage.

For years it has been clear that unlimited will cost more than the providers charge us the end users.

Education of their customers would be better and setting realistic expectations, rather than chasing someone else to foot the bill.
iPlayer: BBC v BT 12:10pm on 02 Jun 2009 Car manufacturers are allowed to have different specifications for different models in the range, if the BT Total Option 1 was the only product from BT Retail then a clear complaint is possible, but it seems BT Retail are trying to say 'If you want streaming media usage, then buy our Option 2 or Option 3 package'.

Would anyone buy broadband if the reality of you are guaranteed 30Kilo bits per second of usage, but can burst up to 8Mbps (if using ADSL) dependent on factors like line length, was used?

In data centres it is normal to buy 10Mbps with a burst speed to 100Mbps, or other variations depending on budget.

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