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The stated speed of 100MB/s will only work as long you don't actually use it that often. If you use Bittorrent and/or Youtube/iPlayer too much Virgin will trottle down your connection (they do it alreay with their current 40MB/s fibre offer.

Oh, and by the way, your connection will be silently censored.

And let's not forget that Virgin is also a media company: if you, your kids, the neighbour (that managed to hack into your Wireless connection because you used no or easy encryption) or anybody else actually downloads music-tracks/videos/games/apps from some fishy place or other through your connection, expect a call from the appropriate industry's lawyers.

Last but not least, most Virgin companies have incredibly bad costumer service: even when their products are good, you can't trust them not to overcharge you, auto-renew your contracts against your wishes and/or other fishy practices. Usually they include incredible clausules in their contract designed to make it impossible for you to leave (good luck remembering to cancel your contract at a very specific couple of days in the year before they auto-renew).

WRONG! VM does not even offer 40Mbit/sec, it offers 50MBit/sec which is actually what youre going to get. I got a 50Mbit/sec connection myself and it's been great ever since they installed it. They do *not* traffic shape the 50Mbit/sec package: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html On your lats bit about support: That's simply not true, i've had an outage once and was able to contact virgin media support (knowledgable people, not your usual unqualified support guys) on a newsgroup at 10 PM on a weekend (think it was staurday or sunday, they do work on sundays too!) and they rectified it within 1-2 days.

you dont get traffic shaping on the 50mb package, only 10 and 20. so its unlikely they will shape the 100mb either.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

you dont get traffic shaping on the 50mb package, only 10 and 20.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Virgin Media (In the UK) throttles your speed if you download a certain amount of data between certain times. For example, on the M package, if you download 1.5 GB between 1000 and 1500, they bring you down to 200 or 300 kbps. That seems fair to ensure that nobody's encroaching on someone else's speeds (although I'm no network engineer, so someone else can confirm whether this is a legitimate line of reasoning by them).

Also, you're supposed to say "First Post"

in the UK you pay for a certain amount of data transfer, and from what I understand can be charged for overages or cut off.

In the UK it depends entirely on your ISP and contract. For example, my ISP is Virgin Media, which essentially owns the entire UK cable network. They have no limit on data transfers or extra charges or being cut off. What they do have is 75% speed throttling at certain times of day after a given amount of data is transferred.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

BT (British Telecom) has various options, some of which have extra charges per GB over a set limit and some don't. No cut off though.
http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php?p_faqid=10495&cat_lvl1=346&p_cv=1.346&p_cats=346&s_cid=con_FURL_broadbandusagepolicy

I have a 20Mbit "unlimited" connection with Virgin Media, and if I download a large amount of data in one go, say 5GB+, the bandwidth drops to 5Mbit after 4GB's or so, then goes back upto 20MBits after a few hours of not downloading.. Coincidence? I dont think so.

Virgin is actually one of the mainstream ISPs that are doing caps for all users (as compared to BT, who only do caps on congested areas at peak times), maybe you should have investigated a bit before going with them? http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

In the uk, one of the fastest mainstream providers also uses a throttleing policy which can be viewed at http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html . The summary is that there is no bandwidth cap, but during certain periods of the day, if you download more than a set amount within that period (exact amount depends on package taken), you are throttled for 5 hours, usually to about 25%. It is quite annoying to loose so much for so long, but with a little planning, you can set any large download to run over night and avoid any throttleing since from 9PM to 10AM, nothing is counted against any limits for throttleing. I believe they are experimenting with small variations, such as upping the throttleing to a greater length, but removing any throttling after 11PM. Its obviously not quite ideal, but they dont try to hide it, and its more fair than some policies might be.

Second, is BBC the only supplier of TV programming in the British market (aside from satellite)? If there are other minor networks, that want to specify their own DRM or just don't want to participate, I'd think the TV manufacturers would be apoplectic.

The TV content providers on "terrestrial" (the analogue, "free" broadcast) are:
BBC (public service)
ITV (commercial)
Channel Four (public service, but funded by adverts)
Five (commercial)

There are, by my count, up to* 48 additional "free" channels on digital broadcast via the Freeview service, a fair chunk of which are provided by the above 4 providers (I guess around 15-20 content providers, though corporate connections aren't always clear). Pretty much everyone has Freeview now since it's £30 for a box that gives you all these channels for free.

I'll point out that Freeview is ran by... The BBC. Well, "Freeview is managed by DTV Services Ltd, a company owned and run by its five shareholders - BBC, BSkyB, Channel 4, ITV and Arqiva", but it was only thanks to the BBC that it got going.

After free-to-air, there are 3 further alternatives for broadcasting, with a lot of channel overlap even above them all also showing Freeview:
Sky (sattelite) - channels
Virgin (cable) - channels
BT (relatively trivial, a mix of freeview and broadband delivery, dont think they have their own channels)

The situation for downloading programming is a bit of a mess right now, providers have their own software and it's a nuisance. BBC did try to get a combined thing going but it got shot down, I have some hopes for Hulu which is on the way. Oh yes and BBC got the whole online delivery going too, the other channels basically followed their lead. For DRM, TV's/boxes sold everywhere are probably going to need a flexible system that can cope with many forms, and oft-updated of DRM anyway, so one more in the mix won't really matter.

* Obligitory "up to" small print: Whether you'll get all those channels is another matter, though most people get most of the best channels and about everyone should get the rest when the analogue signal is switched off (digital will take over the whole spectrum).

The BBC is essentially an arm of the government.

...

It is much like the Obama healthcare "public" option. Publicly funded services will swamp privately funded ones and eventually the private ones will disappear. Yes, Fox News in the UK is threatened in this way by the BBC as insurance companies will be under Obamacare's public option.

There are two fallacies here, one is the public funding leads to government control and the other is the public and private funding can not coexist. The UK experience plainly shows the contrary.

Both the BBC and the NHS are publicly funded but they both have their own constitutions, charters and governing bodies which control them independently of the government of the day. The British might chose to elect a government that decides to override these protections. Similarly the US might chose to elect a government that on the one hand overrides the constitutional protections of the press, or on the other hand one that decides to create some form of public health care.

The idea that the NHS would drive out private practice in health care was the fear of many doctors when the service was set up, but over the sixty years of its existence this simply has not happened. Health care in the UK remains a mixture of private and public provision. There is co-operation between the two sectors.

The position in broadcasting is even stronger. While the BBC started as a state monopoly broadcaster this is no longer the case. Independent commercial radio and television stations have had a long existence in the terrestrial broadcasting and have expanded further with the onset of digital. Ironically Sky a Murdoch company was until the recent onset of Freesat the sole supplier of digital satellite broadcaster for the UK. Companies have set up profitable healthy businesses in this space despite the presence of the BBC.

I'd probably "diss" them as well for considering spying on you with Phorm.

I'm surprised that BT even has a 21st Century Network. Given what South Korea and Japan had, I thought we were still stuck on a 20th Century Network here in the UK.

Not that it makes much difference to me - I'm on Sky's free 2Mbps and 2GB/mo broadband and haven't overused it in any given month enough to be told to stop. 99% of TV is crap as it is, why bother wasting time streaming it or downloading it?

Virgin Media

I think this all needs a bit of qualification:

Upstream just about fast enough for the TCP ACKs generated by saturating the downstream, but only just.

Upstream speed sucks, but at least it's getting doubled when I get my free upgrade from 2 to 10Mb/s. On my current speed I get what I consider acceptable Bittorrent performance (e.g. 3 days to download 15Gb - Complete New Avengers, 26 episodes) and as long as I set the upstream cap suitably the connection is still usable for 2 PCs web/email as well.

Soft caps, so if you download more than a GB or so, or upload a few hundred MBs, you get throttled back to ISDN speeds for a few hours.

Bit of an exagerration - ISDN is 128Kb/s for a single line. You get throttled back to 8xISDN speed i.e. 1Mb/s if you are on the 2Mb/s service. After the free upgrade you get throttled to 2.5Mb/s down which is faster than the current maximum d/l speed.
However, the upstream throttling will still suck as much after the upgrade.
See http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html for the exact details.
Note that the minimum service available now is in column 3.

Painful technical support that's been outsourced, off-shored, and dramatically reduced in size in spite of being understaffed to start with.

My only experience was when my cable modem started connecting erratically. I got through almost immediately and talked to a friendly knowledgable UK tech person who decided within a few minutes that I needed a new modem, which arrived within a couple of days. Various anecdotal evidence suggests that Virgin tech support may have improved from abysmal to generally acceptable over the last year or two.

Subscription to the same government-approved (but not government-controlled or publicly-accountable) censor as the other major UK ISPs (the IWF).

Sucks, but it will be compulsory for all UK ISPs soon so not really a big factor in deciding ISP.

Phorm
Virgin have not introduced it yet, they are 'evaluating' it. Not clear which way they will jump yet.

Overall I'd say I'm reasonably happy with Virgin. The connection is certainly very reliable - apart from when my modem was faulty it's been rock solid for about 7 years.
I'd agree the capped services are probably not suitable for heavy BT users or if you stream lots of HD video.
If they roll out Phorm (even with its pathetic 'out-outs') I might change my view.

At the moment their top 50Mbit tier is totally uncapped. I guess if you raped it constantly they might say something, but at least in comparison to their other offerings it is.

If im going to be capped id rather be capped during the times their network is under the most load, than some blanket 50GB/100GB cap for the month. Which is what seems most common. At least i can make full use of my 20Mbit connection during off-peak times.

If i wanted i could leave bittorrent running for ~12hrs at night and not hit any cap. Not bad for the UK. If i do any big downloads i just wait until after 9pm.

I have hit the caps before now without realising it. They may become a real issue if you did lots of HD streaming (iPlayer HD maybe). But 95% of the time i can watch whatever i want on iPlayer, browse the web etc. and not hit their peak-time caps.

Im satisfied with Mr Branson so far ;)

Upstream just about fast enough for the TCP ACKs

Upstream ratios are poor, yes. They're 10/0.5, 20/0.7, 50/1.5.

throttled back to ISDN speeds for a few hours

Personally I think it's a sensible and fair scheme, but I encourage all readers to decide for themselves. The 20Mbit throttle means 6GB in one peak period (there are two separate peak periods per weekday) and you're throttled to 5Mbit for five hours. Big fucking deal. The 50Mbit service is currently 100% cap-free but is considerably more expensive than the 20Mbit service.

Painful technical support

Oh please. Just power cycle your modem :)

IWF

Yes, they're as bad as everyone else.

Phorm

I'm worried about this. My instinct and optimism says it'll get bashed down by the EU or the incredibly bad PR before it goes live.

Moral of the story: say what you want about Virgin Media, but I get, and I mean I actually get 50 megabits on a fully IPV6 network, 24 hours a day, uncapped, at a consumer-level price. I downloaded an Ubuntu image at 4.6MB/s from the IPV6-only tracker at 3PM. Needless to say, I don't miss DSL and its repetitive "too far from the exchange" excuses.

Virgin's lies about throttling are ridiculous, the thing is whoever is doing it is lying both ways, the higher ups (branson et al) have been told, and many customers also fall for it.

Yeah right, if i don't encrypt them im instantly throttled. Fortunatly the threat of several hours also isn't followed through and as soon as i drop my upload rate below whatever is setting off thier sensors today, im fine.

Virgin media throttle your connection if you download over a certain amount during peak times - see here. So it is quite possible when you are having trouble with multiple users watching HD streams your connection has been throttled back to 5Mbps.

For myself I have Virgin's 2Mbps service and I find that quite adequate for my needs, bear in mind that the 2Mbps being proposed here is a minimum which will mostly apply to people living in more remote areas who currently get less or may even be stuck with dial-up, and there is still a lot you can do with a 2Mbps connection, you may not be able to stream HDTV, but that is hardly essential is it?

Aslong as the 'spin' isn't just flat out lies: virgin simply lie here, the reality of being on virgin is if
1) you have unencrypted torrents
2) you upload more than 10,25,45 kb/s (yes there are 3 distinct caps even though they claim 2) for more than a few minutes
3) all your traffic slowed (not 75% but 100% of pings to Google will take >3s)
So they have two pages on their site explaining what they do and how they do it, no mention of phorm and only a hint of truth between both of them.

b) Covertly start throttling back heavy users--sucks for everyone, since no one even knows how much they're being throttled and there is no option of paying a premium to escape it

You missed out the variation on this:
*Overtly* start throttling back heavy users--OK for everyone, since everyone one knows at what point the throttle kicks in/out, and there *is* an option of paying a premium to escape it.

This is what Virgin Media in the UK do. The exact details are set out here:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
(this is the proposed new policy, not sure how far it's been rolled out, but I believe the old/current policy was similar but less fine grained).

Note you get told everything you need to know - times of throttling, trigger levels, % throttling. You get a reasonably usable speed even while throttled. Ignoring the 'S' level (not available for a long time to new customers I believe), and looking at the lowest (M) tier *after* the current upgrade which is in progress, you get a 10Mb connection which is throttled to 2.5Mb during certain hours after a given amount of data is downloaded. The throttle speed is faster than the maximum on lots of UK ADSL lines and faster than the maximum pre-upgrade speed for this tier (note the upgrade is free).

I'm pretty happy with this. There's only one significant drawback, and that's the upstream capping; but this only applies 3pm-8pm. So it's probably best to start any torrenting involving more than a few hundred Mb after 8pm. Other than that, you can pretty much do what you like, and this is as I said on what is effectively the lowest tier.

The worry is of course that this traffic management policy may change to something much worse at some point in the future; but this applies to any ISP, and Virgin are spending quite a lot of money on infrastruture upgrades and selling themselves as the fastest mainstream ISP.

almost every broadband ISP has overbuilt their network and was not prepared for the advent of HD video and streaming services

...despite advertising such services as a reason to buy broadband...

"Download a music track in under 10 seconds"

"Want to download films, music and photos faster?"

almost every broadband ISP has overbuilt their network and was not prepared for the advent of HD video and streaming services

...despite advertising such services as a reason to buy broadband...

"Download a music track in under 10 seconds"

"Want to download films, music and photos faster?"

Unfortunately, Super Awesome Broadband would be Super Slow Narrowband where I live - i.e. in a city, but unable to see the telephone exchange from my bedroom window.

After a year of struggling over the ethics of switching to a monopolistic, Phorm-supporting, bandwidth-throttling FTTC cable supplier instead of my morally superior DSL connection, I finally gave in. Goodbye 800Kbit/s, hello 20Mbit/s.

Now I do have trouble sleeping at night, but I can just stream HD video to wile away the time.

Broadband XXL
Up to 50Mb fibre optic broadband TV
Over 100 digital TV channels Phone
Unlimited weekend UK landline calls

Note: I do NOT want to load WINE or any other required-to-work with other operating system process or application on my Linux box. Either it runs in Linux or I simply do NOT want to play it. Why emulate another operating system and slow my system down...no thank you, I would rather not play that game.

I really loved the way Apache (and Apache II - Helicopter game on the MacIntosh II and MacIntosh IISE computers) and Battlezone (DOS) games made you feel like you were flying through the screen. Always wanted to be surrounded by monitors that would give me a 360 degree view as I flew around. One day....

War/Empire, the version I am thinking of is the really old original one from the IBM mainframe / TSO user days. It was far from fancy, just a pixel and a 50/50 shot at winning any battle. However apply that to multiple planets via the internet and a game server and wow...I played one where you had clans and cities that you built online in a world with my sons last Christmas, it was fun...and granted we used my Asus Eee PC to play it, so the operating system, graphics adapter, sound, etc... did not matter.

Anyone else know of some games for Linux where you fly a tank (i.e. like BattleZone), fly a plane or jet or helicopter (i.e. like Apache and Apache II) and it actually feels like you are flying visually...those are the ones I like!

The peer around a corner and shoot games bore me. But let me fly a vehicle and okay, lets go...lol. Any for Linux?

Note: I do NOT want to load WINE or any other required-to-work with other operating system process or application on my Linux box. Either it runs in Linux or I simply do NOT want to play it. Why emulate another operating system and slow my system down...no thank you, I would rather not play that game.

I really loved the way Apache (and Apache II - Helicopter game on the MacIntosh II and MacIntosh IISE computers) and Battlezone (DOS) games made you feel like you were flying through the screen. Always wanted to be surrounded by monitors that would give me a 360 degree view as I flew around. One day....

War/Empire, the version I am thinking of is the really old original one from the IBM mainframe / TSO user days. It was far from fancy, just a pixel and a 50/50 shot at winning any battle. However apply that to multiple planets via the internet and a game server and wow...I played one where you had clans and cities that you built online in a world with my sons last Christmas, it was fun...and granted we used my Asus Eee PC to play it, so the operating system, graphics adapter, sound, etc... did not matter.

Anyone else know of some games for Linux where you fly a tank (i.e. like BattleZone), fly a plane or jet or helicopter (i.e. like Apache and Apache II) and it actually feels like you are flying visually...those are the ones I like!

The peer around a corner and shoot games bore me. But let me fly a vehicle and okay, lets go...lol. Any for Linux?

i believe that 20Mbit down still only comes with 768kbit up, 10x down but only 3x up, and their shaping, and that your unlikely to get 20Mbit, and that most cheap routers wont support that speed etc etc http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

I live in a rural area, about a mile outside the nearest village/town.

I use Virgin as an ISP over a BT phone line, and my download speeds are noticeably faster than my mother's connection. She uses BT Internet as an ISP, but lives in central Reading, so one would assume should have a faster connection.

Punchline being, if you're using BT, and you're unhappy with the speed, give Virgin a try.

I don't know about your experience but going from ( download ) 1000kb/s -> 30Kb/s and ( upload ) 45kb/s -> 11kb/s looks like throttling to me.

Try Virgin Media's mirror server:

http://mirrors.virginmedia.com/

Judging by the fact you have an 8mb/s connection, I assume you have ADSL rather than cable. I can happily download at 20mb/s and still have a reasonable ping time (I have some QOS on my router to help aswell).

Regards
elFarto

No.

Its more like they're saying "traffic outside our network will cost you; internal stuff is free".

In other words it is no different to the way many ISPs behave in the UK. They have mirrors of things people might want to use - so that their customers don't use more external bandwidth than they need to.

For example Virgin Media's Debian mirror.

During peak use hours (4pm till midnight apparently)
My mother-in-laws 2mb broadband is throttled to 1 mb to "ensure equality of access"...

Actually, it's 4-9 pm any the throttling only kicks in once you've downloaded 500 MB (in the case of their cheapest package) within that time. The information is on the Virgin website.

Are you with a decent ISP? (If there is such a thing)

If you are with Virgin Media then you will easily exceed their bandwidth limits which you can find at the bottom of this page.

... Most of the time you would simply be streaming video of 2 empty kitchens to each other wouldn't you?

Well, yes. Empty kitchens are the most common state. It depends a lot on the compression algorithm, I suppose. In principle, an empty kitchen takes very little bandwidth to transmit.

So, if one had compression software that was optimized for the 24/7 kitchen case, it would be
doing perhaps 256kbit/sec when someone was walking around, but only 5kbit/second when nothing was moving.

24/7 x 96kbit/sec = 28 Gbyte/month. That actually fits within a small business ADSL plan for GBP 24/month. If it spent 80% of the day transmitting nearly nothing, you'd be down to about 6 gigabytes/month, which you can get from lots of ISPs for less than 20 pounds per month.

Are you with a decent ISP? (If there is such a thing)

If you are with Virgin Media then you will easily exceed their bandwidth limits which you can find at the bottom of this page.

I'm not sure what other ISPs set their limits at (or if they publish them at all like VM do) but I'm pretty sure you would exceed them also.

I'd think about the possibility of other options, such as simply using a video-call when required. Most of the time you would simply be streaming video of 2 empty kitchens to each other wouldn't you?

"Our old friend Nostradamus' words ring from the grave with this grim prediction:

Nostradamus quatrain 9 44:

Leave, leave Geneva every last one of you,
Saturn will be converted from gold to iron,
"Raypoz" will exterminate all who oppose him,
Before the coming the sky will show signs.

Did Nostradamus predict the Large Hadron Collider?

Will the Earth disappear into a black hole of its own making?"
http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/science/endoftheworld.php?vmsrc=vmhpld

Stay tuned for next weeks exciting adventures of Earth Sucking Black Holes!!!

I'm on Virgin Media, one of the Big Six. Their definition of throttling as per the website is to drop my download speed back to what they were giving me for the same money last year anyway. So I can't say I'm that put out by it.

As for these letters, I think they're a good idea. They're not a threat of a lawsuit, they're not a threat of disconnection. That Microsoft study demonstrates that most of the letters will be going to the PARENTS of the infringers, not the kids performing illegal acts themselves, so it should have a fair-sized impact anyway.

Pah. They traffic shape the crap out of your connection http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html if you try to download more than 300Mb (good news for the likes of damn small linux)

Curiously, Virgin's traffic policy page uses 'music files' as a measure of capacity eg 'Even if a Broadband: Size L user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 5,500 music files per day.'

You do realise they're not capping you to dialup speeds, more like 1mbit down and reduced up stream. It's probably someone you're sharing the connection with whoring all the upstream and making it feel like dialup. They start the cap at 4pm and it runs for 4 hours. Make sure everyone sets up a schedule on their P2P software to limit it back heavily. More details here : http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Sorry wrong..

The cap on the amount of data downloaded was removed ages ago and replaced with traffic throttling, see here Virgin Media

And yes this could be argued as the same as data limit caps however with Virgin you're not going to be either billed or disconnected for going over it which your post seems to suggest.

You don't need to cancel your entire service to make a protest, you just need to switch to a lower tier service. In the case of broadband, that would mean dropping down from XL (20Mb) to L(10Mb), or down to M (2Mb), although the savings are not that much.

Virgin Media Deals

Except it's 20Mbps, not 20MBps, and it's only 5 times faster than yours, and it only costs me £35 per month.

Seeing as you're using pounds, not dollars, you must be oblivious to the speeds available in your own country.

>Virgin Media (Cable)
>4MB connection is going up to 10MB

and 50Mbps is on thw way this year

http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/upto-50mb-broadband.php

Enjoy your rather draconian traffic management :D

Broadband Size: L During peak times, the top 3% of downloaders on the Size: L package download at least 800MB of traffic each, with the top 3% of uploaders uploading at least 325MB of traffic each. Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till 9pm) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 5 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

It's supposed to be 3GB, then you get throttled for 5 hours.

ntl:Telewest Business costs £3 more than Virgin's 20Mbit package for 10Mbit, but doesn't have throttling, has call centers in the UK (no crossing your fingers hoping you get Ireland and not India), optional static IP, and supposedly has some sort of SLA for support (6 hours iirc). 20Mbit's supposed to be available soonish too.

We have tiered pricing in the UK too. I think British Telecom and Virgin Media (formally NTL) are the biggest players. I don't see anything wrong with tiered pricing.

On a side note, dial up internet access. It used to be possible to have unmetered dial up internet access for a monthly fee, but as the price of broadband has come down, and availability improved (I think most broadband is over phone wires in the UK, ISDN?), dial up internet access seems to have shifted to a metered, local phone rate package.

Taking non-satellite, non-cable first, the basic list's here:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/terrestrial/epg/

The first five of those are available analogue (which is currently being phased out); everything is available on a series of digital multiplexes which may or may not be available depending on where you live. If you follow the website links from the Digitalspy page you should be able to get to "who owns what", but in brief the BBC is publicly owned and licence-fee supported, ITV is a standalone company, ad-supported, Channel 4 is publicly owned, ad-supported and Five is owned by RTL.

The largest satellite operator is Sky TV:
http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/tvguide
(mostly owned by News Corp)

The largest cable operator is Virgin Media
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=1
(standalone company)

Well here's a fan comparison. ;-)

Furries: http://www.virginmedia.com/microsites/games/slideshow/game-geeks/img_3.jpg
Trekkies: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Trekkies_at_baycon_2003.jpg/800px-Trekkies_at_baycon_2003.jpg
Star Wars: http://www.virginmedia.com/microsites/games/slideshow/game-geeks/img_2.jpg

Well here's a fan comparison. ;-)

Furries: http://www.virginmedia.com/microsites/games/slideshow/game-geeks/img_3.jpg
Trekkies: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Trekkies_at_baycon_2003.jpg/800px-Trekkies_at_baycon_2003.jpg
Star Wars: http://www.virginmedia.com/microsites/games/slideshow/game-geeks/img_2.jpg