well im curious has anyone tried the new fiberoptic broadband from Virgin yet? I must admit im pretty intreaged by it and wanted to know if its any good.
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well im curious has anyone tried the new fiberoptic broadband from Virgin yet? I must admit im pretty intreaged by it and wanted to know if its any good.
I have Verizon fiberoptic stuff at my mom's house. I really see no difference in quality compared to the DSL at my dad's house. However, I don't know anything about Virgin, so no help there.
I get my broadband from Virgin Media, but we have done for a long time, so will I have that fiberglass broadband? I don't even know :jess:
I'll get it if Samuel L. Jackson comes round to install it.
id be a little worried about invisible shards of glass entering my skin and killing me
I'm not sure why anyone would buy from a company whose moniker is a synonym for "inexperienced"
Fibre Optic can offer speeds of over 20 megabits per second, however Virgin Media traffic shapes so you will only ever recieve half normal broadband speed at any given time and torrenting (even if it's a legal Linux Distribution) will result in Virgin Media sending a letter through your door accusing you of being a theif and threatening to throw you off :)
Since their site only mentions offering speeds at similar (actually slightly lower) levels to normal ADSL(2) here at the moment, it smells scammy :p I'll have to see fast unthrottled (up and download) uncapped connections before I believe it's good :p They're only in it for the money, not to provide good service :p
Oh, and we use lots of 1Gbps fibre links between most of our offices at work, with some of the hardware on the ends already capable of 10Gbps per link, so 20mbps over fibre looks really miserly to me :p
All isp's in the uk are going to be doing this. The weird thing is, the article I read said it was only if downloading music.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloki
Not all ISP's will be doing it, only most of the big ones, and they don't distinguish between torrenting and downloading music as it's easier to consider them the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by BalzacAll isp's in the uk are going to be doing this. The weird thing is, the article I read said it was only if downloading music.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloki
Well it was all about Feargal Sharkey's one man fight agaist music piracy.
No, but a Virgin man tried to talk me into trying it for 20 minutes in my parking lot. He also offered me pizza. :aimsun:
Well you see part of the issue is that to admit they're looking at what is downloaded (since they actually see just packets with hexadecimal string values to look at what it compiles would most likely involve "spyware" on your comp or guess work based off the sites you visit) would be tantamount to admitting that they're breaching your right of privacy by spying on you and infecting your computer with an illegal piece of software without your consent both of which would not only invalidate any evidence involved in legal proceedings it'd also incurr them a lawsuit.
Ofcourse they could possibly go through your history but doing so and tracking the many many sites accessed by a computer is very tedious and could take a long time even for a super computer to process if you consider how many people there are in the UK with an internet connection. Still it'd require guesswork to prove you're downloading illegally because you might have been infected with a downloader virus or could be downloading anything. File fragments especially those shared over torrenting is hard to track hence most ISPs will black list Torrenting in general which is a stupid idea because more and more legal sites are starting to accept the use of Torrent downloads to make things faster. Even Limewire and Open Office these days include torrent download streams when setting up.
As for fibre optical broadband, well to be honest it's a bit of flashy show. Sure glass won't degrade like copper does so fibre optics is a step in the right direction. However if you're not intending to just be faster than most servers or other users online in terms of gaming or downloading a shed load of films, music, games, software what is the point of such a gross speed? In all honesty without lots of downloading going on (and face it, untill the end of time, 95% of music downloads will be pirate distrobutions. It's rather like terrorism, if someone sets rules people will disagree, if they disagree then most will generally complain, some however rebel physically. I work for a record store so music piracy affects me in a big way but I accept facts over it.) it's pretty pointless I've had some pretty decent connection speeds on just my normal broadband.
If the music industry and the ISPs truly want to kill internet music and film piracy then it's a simple case of making the world even. Games, Anime and lots of decent TV shows or films never make it to the UK or Europe. If they actually got off their asses and released them over here legally with decent dubbing or subbing when needed it'd sell and if it's selling in the shops then it's less likely to be downloaded online illegally. Secondly, release movies, games and films at the same time worldwide. Not with weeks, months, years inbetween the US/Japan release and the UK release (Especially with games) The only way to shut down piracy is to drop their prices and to remove the necessity or attraction of piracy. If something was released at the same time (even if it was technically available from 4am in the morning or 9pm at night) worldwide would you bother downloading or buying a pirate copy of it? No you wouldn't because you'd be comfortable in the knowledge that somehow if you wanted to see it at 4am or 9pm or at any other release time you could do so because the market would always pander to demand shops opening at midnight for big releases, special screenings...the list goes on.
Some record labels fees are exhorbiant I've seen CDs for like £22 for one disc of 15 songs...£22 now, some is store markup to cover the profit and tax paid. Profit for the store is essential if they want to beat piracy since profit means staff wages and staff means shops and shops means more market bringing in more people and thus taking away from the pirates. If the same CD was £12 more people would buy it and since the band/artist makes like 50p a CD sold most of that difference covers just the production fees (note the slice taken for this is probably less than 5 pence per CD sold) thats a huge return per CD for the record label. Sell 1 million copies of that £22 CD and the cost of making the album is easily recovered. Sure the artist makes about 50k from it but still think how much the record label could be earning? Labels and publishing houses need to drop their fees some and suck it up because otherwise they just cannot ever beat piracy when a DVD quality rip file burnt to a cheap DVD-R spindle disc will play just as well and can be brought from the dodgy immigrant with nothing else to rely on for income for £2 - £5, why pay £10 - £15 for a DVD single disc edition with no extras (take batman begins, the extras on the 1 disc edition are: theatrical trailer. Who the hell wants the trailer when they've got the movie?) you're getting the same quality video, the ones you have to watch out for are the cam's they're the knockoff quality they harp on about.
EDIT: Note guys I am not condoning or encouraging illegal piracy, I am merely from the point of view my field of work and my own perspectives on life, the universe and everything giving my opinions on the idea that the threats to disconnect people from broadband are hollow since if the isp is earning money another isp will give you a contract even if virgin/bt/tiscali/orange whatever kick you off.
Actually Iceglow if ya get ya third strike once the new system is in place your blacklisted with all majoy ISP's so no more internets for you.
The thing is, anyone who masks their machine with a decent firewall and ghosting software is going to get away with this for a long time. The ones who will be caught are the people who wouldn't normally download stuff illegally and therefore don't use the correct protection to hide from the authorities. I'm all up for stopping piracy but the way to do this is to remove the need for piracy not to clamp down on the few people they can catch who might have downloaded 1 illegal song/album when some people get away with downloading hundreds of songs a day illegally. They're treating the symptoms not the cause.
It's up to the record labels and publishing houses to stop piracy not the ISPs and the law. If they'd actually listen to what the piracy figures tell them then they'd be able to stop the piracy by responding directly to the figures are saying: Music piracy is there because cd's are expensive compared to a £30 internet connection a month and a £3.99 25 pack of blank CDs for £33.99 you've got the ability to download and burn 25 CDs a maximum of 6 CDs in a record store (going on the figures of them all being in a 2 for £10 offer similar to those commonly found in HMV/Zavii which never includes the new albums on release) will cost £30 thats 19 less CDs than if you download illegally. Film Piracy on the main is there due to the delay on the releasing of films globally. Japan got The Dark Knight yesterday, We had it the weekend in the UK, America has had it for 2 weeks. If there had been a global release date set and it went out in all countries at the same time, would there be cams floating around the net probably but far fewer and there would be less downloading of the copies on the net.
Also, how will they control this blacklist? Address in which case people can move house and be reconnected and some poor folks can move in to a place and find out "hold on you can't have the internet the address is blacklisted" there's big enough issues with banks blacklisting addresses only to find that the persons they intended to stop with the blacklist moved house and they're sanctioning someone who has done nothing wrong. Or by Name in which case how will they control the blacklisting of the many many many many Smith(s), Cooper(s), May(s), Cox(s) and other common surnames out there. I can easily produce bills, pay slips and such where my name is incorrectly recorded as Smith. They're going to ban all Steven Smiths from the internet? If they do then well that's the stupidest move on the behalf of any ISP out there. An ISP is a company same as any other they exist to make profit and they incurr costs if they truly did blacklist and remove every person in the UK who downloads illegal music, film or software then they'd go bust because they'd have no customers left. I believe most ISPs won't cut you off they'd just really throttle your speed so that downloading huge numbers of songs and or films is totally draining on your bandwidth and you consider it "not worth it" whilst the record labels come after you.
I've been using Virgin cable broadband for years now without problem, and the best thing about it is probably the stability. The speed is fine, I've never had any issues with it at all - all my downloads are completed pretty quickly. But the stability is something I've known many people to struggle with when using other ISPs, so I figure Virgin is doing something right on that area at the least.