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“A row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC. ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope.”
– BBC News (Link)  

Services like YouTube, the iTunes Store and BBC iPlayer should NOT be held responsible for the fact that the Internet is being used by more and more people to transfer more and more data now than ever before. The Internet is getting used more widely every day. This is a GOOD THING for everyone involved, the services get used more, and the ISPs get more customers. The UK’s ISPs are trying to make the services foot the bill for this. This will remove the incentive for these services to be maintained, and many will go away if this happens. It’ll also prevent small companies, individuals, not-for-profit organisations and many others from inventing any services that require high amounts of data transfer. No more Linux ISOs? No more online software distribution at all?

The UK’s ISPs are going about this all wrong. They’re the ones providing connectivity between residential users and the Internet backbones. They’re the ones having trouble with their networks. They’re the ones that need to pay for the costs of upgrading their networks.

But where do they get the money from? Well, their customers. As a residential user myself, I think that sucks somewhat, but in reality we’re getting a worse deal right now. Most providers have massively oversold their service, which is why they punish users who download lots — their networks weren’t designed for everyone to constantly max out their 20 megabit connections 24×7, but they sell connections that are capable of doing so, and punish their customers for using what they’re being sold.

Something needs to change. Spread the word. This is important.

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I’ve put together some more music for you in a nicely mixed fashion! Give it a whirl, it’s quite good this one. This one’s NOT part of the podcast for various reasons, so grab it while its hot!

Download

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The Register reports “A 27-year-old New Zealand man has been charged with assault after using a hedgehog as an improvised ninja star against a 15-year-old [...]“

Link

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I don’t think it’ll be long until Amazon finds it and removes it, but I just got emailed a link to this interesting use of Amazon’s user review service. Let the meme machine commence.

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Rails on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard to most people), is fantastic. It’s already there, and it just works. From the very second Leopard finishes installing, you can run rails yourAppName in a terminal, and boom, it gives you a default Rails app. Move into the directory that just got created with cd yourAppName, and start Mongrel running with script/server. Fire up Safari, head on over to http://0.0.0.0:3000/, and you can see your app running. Awesome!

However, try and move this to a non OS X server, and it won’t work, because /public/dispatch.cgi, /public/dispatch.fcgi, and /public/dispatch.rb all have the following line at the top:

#!/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby

This line should say:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

This change that Apple have made isn’t necessary for Rails to run on OS X, as there’s already a symlink in /usr/bin/ruby to make this extra code unnecessary. I’m a little confused by Apple’s motives here. A mistake? A mischevious way of increasing OS X Server sales, by making it harder for people to port their apps away from OS X? Either way, it’s an unneeded frustration. Fix it, Apple!

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Time for more music! Quite a varied pick this time, but it seems to work well together. Without further ado, here’s what I’m loving at the moment…

1. Digitalism - Echoes
2. The Wombats - Moving To New York (The Touch Remix)
3. The Ting Tings - Great DJ (IDC Rerub)
4. Cassius - Cassius 1999 (Remix) (Long Version)
5. Daft Punk - One More Time (Club Mix)
6. Louis La Roche - Love
7. Ludacris - Move Bitch (DJ Neoteric Remix)
8. Beats International - Dub Be Good To Me (DJ Wood’s Twilight Beats Remix)
9. Hot Chip - Bendable Posable
10. Digitalism - ZDRLT (Rewind)
11. Digitalism - Zdarlight
12. Justice - DVNO
13. Kylie Minogue - In Your Eyes (Sanchez Mix)

Listen now over at http://unadopted.co.uk/podcast/. If you haven’t already set it up, click the “Subscribe” link on the right-hand-side when you get there to get the podcast automatically delivered right into your iTunes or RSS reader whenever I release a new session!

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