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In the UK we can have unmetered internet access at perhaps 60mbps/20mbps speeds: http://zen.co.uk/business/broadband/fibre-optic-broadband/fibre-and-phone-packages.aspx#unlimitedfibre2

Our telephony is heavily regulated. Good job you guys deregulated. :-)

Really? Looking at their website they don't appear to offer that:

http://www.zen.co.uk/business/broadband/fibre-broadband.aspx

The closest is 15Mb upload speed and 1000GB/month cap for £78/month inc. VAT. Add the mandatory BT phone line and that is about £91/month. To give you an idea of what a total rip-off that is I pay just under £40/month for Virgin 100Mb/10Mb with no overall cap but various different limits throughout the day.

It's as if BT don't want people to have it.

Did you even read your link?

A Crystal oscillator takes in VOLTAGE to determine the signal.

http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Circuits/Testgear/crystal.htm

I'm not sure what your point is? Of course it uses VOLTAGE, that is how electronic devices work, they use ELECTRICITY. Hence the name ELECTRonic.

The point of the crystal is that its accuracy depends mostly on the physical properties of the crystal, not the input voltage. Ok, voltage DOES have some effect, but it's minimal, like in the order of 1 part per billion per 1V change.

Did you even read your link?

A Crystal oscillator takes in VOLTAGE to determine the signal.

http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Circuits/Testgear/crystal.htm

I've just had a couple of days off work with a nasty virus, and even with my head full of cotton wool I had a play with setting my Netgear DG834 into "Modem only" mode (via the hidden page http://192.168.0.1/mode.htm) and running RP-PPPoE on my linux server. I managed to get it up running IPv4 pretty quickly. Now all I need to do is wait for my ISP to start supporting IPv6. Unlike Andrews and Arnold who have been running IPv6 for ages, they don't think it will be a concern for some considerable time. Don't they understand that some of us want to start seeing if things work and gaining experience right now?

We did one at a university intro course that was a very simple AM radio receiver. Battery, small coil, variable cap, few transistors and passives and a headphone socket. The variable cap is probably the most expensive bit, alongside headphones. If you're making loads then you could probably get a bunch of PCBs made up. Something like: http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Circuits/rf/amrec.html

http://www.elecfree.com/electronic/fm-receiver-4-transistor-by-bf184/ has a similarly uncomplicated FM receiver. Bit more complex but probably more likely to pick something up you will recognise.

I think that what momen abdullah is asking can be achieved using ham radio. Look for PSK31 for low-bandwith digital communications. Maybe "truckers" in Iran are using CB radio? You can use that as well, maybe hack it a bit. Anyway, building a simple 80-100MHz FM band transmitter is very easy to build, just hook it into a power amplifier for better coverage.
Look at the first search result on google for "fm transmitter", this is what i found. seems easy enough to build with easily attainable components.

http://www.zen.co.uk/ is one.

ATM, I'd guess.

I rang my (otherwise extremely good, if a little more expensive than most) ISP, Zen, and asked for v6. They said they didn't do it, as not enough people had asked for it. I asked if they'd make a note of my request - they said they would.
I offered to run an IPv6 tunnel router for them, if they'd stick it in their network, and hook it up to a v6 feed somewhere. They declined.

Zen. Usage is capped (unlimited for the business accounts) but until you hit the cap the bandwidth is totally unthrottled. But it aint the cheapest...

Cute idea. What they're trying to do, it seems, is mooch a little power from the electrostatic field gradient around the wire. This is quite feasible if you have a wire with a few KV to ground. The classic demo is to light up a fluorescent lamp by placing it vertically below a high tension line. This works partly because air is not a perfect insulator. There's an electrical path to ground; it just has a high resistance.

If the thing lands on an 11KV power line that's 10m above ground, and has a conductive part that dips 10cm below the line, it should see a voltage difference of about 90 volts. You can't draw very much current before the voltage difference disappears, but you can draw a little.

It's also possible to extract some energy magnetically. See U.S. Patent #3,202,963, "Apparatus for Illuminating Power Lines". But that approach requires heavier parts than an electrostatic approach.

Check out the "Moot" project: http://www.zenadsl6186.zen.co.uk/ Hopes to make RIPA act moot...

That is exactly what the shit ISP[1] Zen in the UK has done. I am currently on an ADSL line from Zen, 512K down and 256K up, but otherwise unlimited, and its costing about £30/month (also 8 IPs, rDNS). This account is not available to new customers anymore, they get the choice of:

8meg down, 448K up, 50gig/month, £34.99
8meg down, 448K up, 20gig/month, £24.99
8meg down, 448K up, 2gig/month, £17.99

The up and down speeds are theoretical maximums, I understand in the real world you'll get half those numbers. If my dirty maths are right, I can download 1283gig in a month (and upload ~600) for £30. I'd hate to think what that'd cost on the "better" packages!

But this business model only exists because BT still own most of the infrastructure in the UK, and they charge other ISPs by the byte transferred. ISPs can put their own equipment in some telephone exchanges to bypass BTs bullshit, but they then play by their own bullshit rules because everyone else in the industry does (see Sky's broadband offering: shite considering they are using LLU'd exchanges!).

The only thing Microsoft should be worried about is Google IMHO. Anybody smaller will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I think it's a mistake to look at this as "MS vs. Apple" or "MS vs. Google". I don't think its about brand names, I think it's to do with the technologies that the new kids on the block are choosing.

If Apple fit into the picture at all, it's because most people look at a windows system and see Work. They see hours spent down the office writing reports and shuffling email. They see homework assignments. They see stress. Apple's ads are cleverly leveraging that by reminding people that computers used to be fun - and still can be.

But I don't think that's what Paul Graham is talking about.

I as at Spa2007 a couple of weeks back. It's a developer conference, tends to attract people who want to stay on the cutting edge. One of the things I kept hear there was people choosing open technology, not because it was better or worse than MS particularly, but because the barrier to entry was lower. I find this too. Suppose I want to do something new with Technology X, and I google an open solution; I'll get half a dozen howtos. If I do the same for the MS package, I'll get half a dozen MS MVs selling seventy dollar books that promise to remove the pain of Technology X. I almost always end up choosing the open tech.

And that's what I think is at work here.

Loyalty to any specific company in the computing industry is like being loyal to vaccuum tubes over transistors ... People who choose Microsoft do so because it is simply the best solution in today's workplace for productivity.

Well, I can see why you might think that. I mean, I think that Linux is far and away the best solution. And it is: for the type of work I do, and for the way that I like to work. The trouble is that it's too easy to forget the qualifier and assume that "the OS I use is the best, full stop". And that's when the flame wars start.

The way I see it, imagine Windows, OS/X and Linux as a Venn diagram. In fact, better yet.... I've put a bit of overlap in there to reflect the existence of cross platform apps and toolkits.

Now as I see it, the best solution for a given task depends on a lot of variables, but I think there's a sort of fuzzy sweet spot (if that's not too oxymoronic) - a loosely defined zone marking out the set of more-or-less optimum solutions. Ten to fifteen years ago, I think that graph would have looked like this, with most of the optimum solution space lying inside the windows domain.

The thing is, I don't think that locus is static, and for the last five years or so I think it's been moving away from Microsoft, and I think it still is. And I think that is what Paul Graham is seeing, even if that's not how explains it.

The only thing Microsoft should be worried about is Google IMHO. Anybody smaller will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I think it's a mistake to look at this as "MS vs. Apple" or "MS vs. Google". I don't think its about brand names, I think it's to do with the technologies that the new kids on the block are choosing.

If Apple fit into the picture at all, it's because most people look at a windows system and see Work. They see hours spent down the office writing reports and shuffling email. They see homework assignments. They see stress. Apple's ads are cleverly leveraging that by reminding people that computers used to be fun - and still can be.

But I don't think that's what Paul Graham is talking about.

I as at Spa2007 a couple of weeks back. It's a developer conference, tends to attract people who want to stay on the cutting edge. One of the things I kept hear there was people choosing open technology, not because it was better or worse than MS particularly, but because the barrier to entry was lower. I find this too. Suppose I want to do something new with Technology X, and I google an open solution; I'll get half a dozen howtos. If I do the same for the MS package, I'll get half a dozen MS MVs selling seventy dollar books that promise to remove the pain of Technology X. I almost always end up choosing the open tech.

And that's what I think is at work here.

Loyalty to any specific company in the computing industry is like being loyal to vaccuum tubes over transistors ... People who choose Microsoft do so because it is simply the best solution in today's workplace for productivity.

Well, I can see why you might think that. I mean, I think that Linux is far and away the best solution. And it is: for the type of work I do, and for the way that I like to work. The trouble is that it's too easy to forget the qualifier and assume that "the OS I use is the best, full stop". And that's when the flame wars start.

The way I see it, imagine Windows, OS/X and Linux as a Venn diagram. In fact, better yet.... I've put a bit of overlap in there to reflect the existence of cross platform apps and toolkits.

Now as I see it, the best solution for a given task depends on a lot of variables, but I think there's a sort of fuzzy sweet spot (if that's not too oxymoronic) - a loosely defined zone marking out the set of more-or-less optimum solutions. Ten to fifteen years ago, I think that graph would have looked like this, with most of the optimum solution space lying inside the windows domain.

The thing is, I don't think that locus is static, and for the last five years or so I think it's been moving away from Microsoft, and I think it still is. And I think that is what Paul Graham is seeing, even if that's not how explains it.

Charge people for the amount they download.

Here in the UK "unlimited" connections are very rare - you pay for the speed of your connection, and that comes with a basic usage allowance (2GB for light users, 50GB for heavy ones, for example) and then when you go over that limit you pay for each GB you download (about $2). (Example prices are from Zen ADSL - http://www.zen.co.uk/Broadband/athome.aspx), who I'm not affiliated with, and don't use, but have a good reputation.)

So if you're just surfing the web and checking email you can get a light user account, if you're watching videos/downloading music you get a heavy one, and if you're constantly getting ISOs or torrenting then you pay for the privilege. Nobody subsidises anyone, and people pay a fair price for what they actually use.

Why, exactly, this hasn't caught on in the US is beyond me.

Does he mean $4Gb? Four GigaBucks?

Yes, if you dump $4,096 on a top-of-the-line machine, you too can boot up WordPad.

What is Vista written in, Visual COBOL?

Why is it I can get All These Applications,
and the Whole Operating System, in under 90MB,
but Vista can't boot up until you empty your bank account?

Puppy Linux - your system on a stick.
OS, Apps, Data, Songs, Videos - just plop them all on a flash drive.

1. Download the Live Puppy Linux CD here.
2. Burn .iso file to a CD and Reboot - booting up from the CD.
3. Run the Install to USB Flash Drive,
4. Reboot setting your BIOS to boot from the flash drive.
5. Enjoy running your whole system without needing a hard drive!

PROFIT! (Invest the money you saved by NOT buying into the Vista Cabal.)

(Puppy Linux runs Fast on any Windows XP computer, lightening fast on any computer that is 'Vista Ready' - 4 GB of RAM -or $4000 - Not Needed.)

> Incorrect. It's a contract case. The only copyright infringement claim
> The SCO Group is making has to do with IBM continuing to distribute AIX
> after TSG supposedly terminated IBM's irrevocable, perpetual, fully paid
> up SysV license.

Sorry, but it's you that's wrong Mr Hasler.
Here's a breakdown of those Items that remain:

1 (JFS in Linux): Contract claim
2 (RCU in Linux): Contract claim
23 (Dynix EES in Linux): Contract claim, negative know-how
43 (Dynix TCP in Linux): Contract claim, negative know-how
90 (Dynix EES in Linux): Contract claim, negative know-how
94 (NUMA/SMP in Linux): Contract claim
113-142 (SPIE test suite in Linux): Contract claim
150-164 (STREAMS in Linux): Copyright claim
183-184 (Single Unix Specification ABI header files in Linux): Copyright claim
185 (atemalloc in Linux): Copyright claim
186-192 (misc Dynix stuff in Linux): Contract claim
194-203 (Monterey in AIX for Power): Copyright claim
204 (SysV in Dynix): Copyright claim
205-231 (Single Unix Specification material in Linux): Copyright claim
272-278 (ELF in Linux): Copyright claim

Total remaining items 106
Contract items 43, copyright items 63
Linux items 95, Dynix items 1, AIX items 10

Source: http://www.zen77087.zen.co.uk/nug/alleg/viols.shtm l

For informed discussion, forget Groklaw's red dress worshipping zombie horde.
Go to the SCOX forum at Investor Village
http://www1.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&p t=m&clear=1

The Imaginary Toolstore carries a number of hard to find items. I recently picked up a left-handed screwdriver as well as a stretchable tape measure from them. You may want to shoot them an email inquiry for the left-handed version of XP. I'm sure they'll be quite helpful.

£24.99 for 512/256.
But I stick with them because they have decent fast newsgroups with all the binaries. I'm talking about you, Zen.

I rang up though, and asked for IPv6 connectivity. They said they didn't do it because there was no demand for it. I said, "Well, now there's demand for it", and they said that that didn't count.

Next UK ISP with native IPv6, and newsgroups with binaries, and I'm off. You hear that, Zen? :)

Got to add this link:
http://www.zen13655.zen.co.uk/mythphone.html

Anyone tried this?

The future of video phones is cerainly destined for the TV.

I took some pictures of identical scenes using a Sony Ericsson W800 camera phone and an old Olympus C2000-Z 'proper' digital camera.

I've dumped the pics here: http://www.zen86135.zen.co.uk/W800vsC2000Z/

Those with filenames beginning with dsc* are from the phone and are the first in each pair.

I think the quality of the phone camera is fine, but it's obviously still a toy compared to a 'proper' camera, even when the latter is in the hands of someone who doesn't know the first thing about photography.

Rik

Sounds like you need Zen. I've been with them for a year now. Excellent customer service, low contention, and high speeds at reasonable prices. see also http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

You can get a neat QuickTime VR panorama here.

Now we know that Darwin was wrong, at least about Windows.

It looks like like windows XP, with a few 'features':

1) transparency: you can't actually see the stuff behind there because it's all blured out, kind of ruin any productivity benefits.

2) the 'x' button: they should have learned from Netscape 8. It is a well known usability issue that the best place to have important buttons is in the corner. http://www.zen9361.zen.co.uk/mgs/usability.html

3) consistant gui: I won't say linux or OSX is perfect here, but Longhorn looks downright terrible.

Computer Management (image 2): combines the longhorn window buttons with the 9x style buttons (btw, what are the 9x buttons doing there anyway, is that supposed to have multiple tabs or something?)

Windows Media Player (bottom): doesn't have transparency, plus the buttons are in the old position. Seriouly what are you guys trying to do to poor grandma? I thought the WMP in XP was screwed up badly enough.

IE7: don't get me started on this one. I think the others at slashdot have already outlined why only AOL could make an uglier program.

If this is was the native microsoft apps look like what are my 3rd party XP apps going to look like!

Man XBox controllers suck the big one. They are SO bulky and lame. Playstation controllers are so much more 1337. Oh, and they're easier to use on a computer: http://www.zen35383.zen.co.uk/stnield/usbpads.htm

Puppies love David Hasselhoff. Wait... I got that wrong, didn't I? (SFW)

Slashdot rejected this Ask Slashdot submission, everyone I've talked to says it's an excellent talking point so screw them. Please discuss:

Recently I've been trying to find a good ADSL ISP for my mother to migrate to. Her broadband provider has gone downhill rather nastily, requiring all http requests to be forced through their proxy, and tech support is £1/minute. During recent chats with people, I've mostly been given the conclusion that having ISPs offering uncapped broadband connections is ultimately unsustainable and all will be capped or PAYG in the near future. This is rather depressing, and I'd like Slashdot's thoughts on the matter. What's wrong with averaging out bandwidth costs over all users of an ISP? It seems to work OK for uncapped ISPs at the moment, and people who use the Internet just for e-mail and www don't have a massive problem paying a bit extra - on the contrary, people who use their connections a lot would have big problems if they were expected to cough up 10x more each month. I mean, what's the point in having a 10Mbit/sec connection if you're capped to 1GB/month? You'd have some trouble even streaming decent quality video, let alone doing a plethora of things that would require a lot of transfer. What's the benefit - web pages loading a few seconds faster?

I'm told that this model is unviable, not because ISPs are unable to get uncontended bandwidth from themselves to the Internet, but because of BT's side of the connection (I'm in the UK). BT's network is apparently not sufficient to cope with lots of heavy users, or they are just plain greedy, so they are beginning to charge very high prices for bandwidth. Take a look at this image, and bear in mind BT will be scrapping the 'Standard charging' option for ISPs soon.

Does this mean the best way to go is cable? They don't have the black-box infrastructure costs of BT to deal with as they run their own networks. What's the situation with uncapped ISPs in the US/Canada? Is there really a depressing future in sight where bandwidth (an abundant constantly reusable resource) is charged PAYG just like electricity (coming from scarce non-renewable resources, mainly) and other utilities?

Macs have run on proprietary OS's until very very recently, but now they run proprietary extensions to a reasonably open OS. I am sure you couldn't just give away OS/X the same way you can give away Knoppix on a CD to someone.

Gee, did you even read the link? Or did your willful blindness prevent you from checking my references? It was to an Apple IIe! Apple has made more than just Macs in its history, you know. That was the entire point of my subject line.

Average - When Apple don't produce their own components, they buy middle to high end components and rebadge them. Average is a very adequate description.

Please explain just what was so average about the linked computer, the original Mac. The 68000 processor was far from average at the time, as was the bitmapped display, the 3.5" floppy drive, the built-in networking.... Also, it's more than just the hardware. The original Mac was beyond average in the software department as well.

Underpowered - Reviewing the link provided zealously by the parent, one can see that, as per typical Apple philosophy, no hard facts or trustworthy benchmarks are provided, aside from a slightly amusing "10% faster than.. an older mac". Realisticly, in terms of IPC the G3 in the article was a better performer, it's just a shame that the intel gear of the time was orders of magnitude faster. Great link for proving my point, though.

Woo, you finally looked at a link! Too bad you're so condescending that you didn't realize the link was just to provide a reference, and wasn't meant to prove anything.

The beige G3s shipped in November of 1997 with clock speeds of 233MHz and 266MHz. The top of the line from the x86 camp at the time was, according to this page the 300MHz Pentium II. Was a 300MHz Pentium II really "orders of magnitude" faster than a 266MHz G3? (This will mean at least a factor of two, you realize.) My experience was that the G3 was significantly faster than same-clocked x86 processors, and would more than make up for the 12% difference in clock speed.

Three times the price - This is an exaggeration on my part. Usually it's more like 150%-200% the price of an equivalently performing Dell/HP. A quick look around will show you can get a better laptop than the iBook in terms of performance for a few hundred dollars cheaper than the prices on that website - again confirming my general gist, thankyou.

If all you care about is performance, why get a laptop at all?

Show me a better, cheaper laptop than the iBook in terms of everything and then you have a point. To give you a helping hand, I'll even forget about all of the software and just look at the hardware. Don't forget to consider size, battery life, ports, wireless networking, optical drive, etc.

The latest Development Newsletter just arrived too, summarizing recent developments in the community. It's a great way to keep up-to-date with the project -- no need to trawl through the mailing lists.

See September's issue, and more, here:
http://msa.section.me.uk/sdn/

Additionally, a Flash demo can be found on this page.

Here's the link (from the MythTV site) for MythPhone. It's for making SIP calls, not intended for integration with a POTS service as far as I can see, but conceptually it could be a good front end for calls made over asterics (or any landline, if tied into one). That would lose the fancy picture stuff, but would turn a MythTV computer into a big, fancy phone. Beldar Conhead plastic face mold not included.

"Unfortunately big complex systems require some idea of what you are doing. Services are available to those who don't understand telephony. But usually they want to get paid for their time. You sound like you expected something like this to be just configure, make, make install and it's up and running."

Actually, I'd like it to be even simpler than "configure,make, make install," but I don't *expect* it -- at least, not magically. The reason I suggest a turnkey appliance is because such a thing can encapsulate many hours of the time you mention in a form that's easily reproducable at low marginal cost, and the cost of that time can be amortized over many units' worth of hardware -- the same way interface-design and programming time that go into things like wireless appliance of various kinds can.

Re: complexity / money for time, the same could be said (and has been) about all kinds of complex systems which have in the end been simplified with sufficient skill to make them useful *without* a big learning curve. I want my cake and to eat it too, Yes, but so does everyone who drives a car that doesn't need to be manually cranked, rides a ski-lift, or uses central heating instead of stoking a coal furnace (etc). There will always be a market (in money and attention span) for the hardcore, bare-metal approach to just about anything, but that doesn't mean simplifications and commoditization in general are bad.

Somewhat related example: video compression. Using dvd::rip, I have squashed a few DVDs into hard-drive friendly smaller sizes, so I can carry some favorite films on my laptop. dvd::rip is itself a front-end meant to be simpler and friendlier than using the underlying programs it connects, but it's still not all that user friendly, at least to klutzes like me :) Got it working, eventually, Yes, but QuickRip (sadly discontinued) does a good-enough job with a shallower learning curve. Tradeoffs are everywhere, and there's one.

Cheers,

timothy

There's also MythPhone

MythFM Radio, MythRecipe

and MythTivo

Britain is already considering doing the same thing.

That's why, although the article may be shorter, I prefer to use BBC News if I'm referring to a story.

Me too.

What do you think about a Campaign for Real Hyperlinks?

So they are supposed to provide world-class journalism and post it on a world-class website and you can't be bothered to host a cookie and look at some ads (which can be easily blocked anyway) in return?

They are not "supposed" to do anything, they can do whatever they like. And so can I; I can choose to look at whatever web content I like. If a website isn't to my liking, because it requires registration or pay-to-view, I'll go elsewhere.

To turn around your complaint:

So I am supposed to waste my time and money jumping throught whatever hoops a web publisher wants me to, when they aren't respecting the principles Tim Berners Lee invented the web upon, just so they can make profits out of me.

If someone wants to control me while I use the net, they can pay me an hourly rate to do so. Otherwise, I'll do what I want.

Two principles for web publishers:

1. put up content on permanent URLs, not encumbered with registration or pay-to-view
2. only link to content that follows the above principle

What we need is a campaign to encourage web publishers to:

1. put up content on permanent URLs, not encumbered with registration or pay-to-view
2. only link to content that follows the above principle

(See also here.)

What we need is a campaign to encourage web publishers to:

1. put up content on permanent URLs, not encumbered with registration or pay-to-view
2. only link to content that follows the above principle

(See also here.)

/jarek

/jarek

Now, did this design come out before iTunes? I don't have time to go check on the release dates, but like you said, this is a pretty fundamental UI solution.

What? No GPS coordinates?

The car park is at ST 756 778 (in OSGB notation), or 51deg 29min 52sec north, 2deg 21min 7sec west.

From there, walk as per the directions on the website.

Also, check out some of his other art. "A rotating, pulsating, elevating, sound and movement activated, life-size neon brain." Now that's just strange.

Yeah, yeah chips in your hair. 2000.

A3 x 30. Taken in the studio this series of photographs depicts the artist fending off a swarm of silicon chips as if they were flying insects. The work deals with the effect, intended or not, of technology on the individual.

In my exuberance, I forgot that not everyone here was up walking on two feet when the 386 was introduced in 19-freakin-86! Of course, logic dictates that the processor, or at least its exact specification, must be available before an operating system can take advantage of it. That explains why the first version of Windows to exploit any 32-bit features of the 386 was introduced in 1987. And that's why Intel's position that they were wait for the OS was ready before releasing the chips is nonsense.

So what Intel was really doing all this time was delaying the inevitable. They were afraid of introducing any commodity 64-bit processors (x86-64) that would make their future cash-cow IA64 product even more undesirable than it already was (and still is). And now that AMD is going gangbusters with Athlon-64 and Opteron, Intel could no longer afford to wait. The Itanium will now have to make it on its own merits, if any, instead of being forced on the unwilling IT departments of the world.

The thing that grates on me is the two-facedness (is that a word?) of Microsoft, first in promising 64-bit support for AMD, and then withholding its release until Intel has at least some form of competitive product. There is no reason that they couldn't have had full support for AMD64 by the end of 2003 at the latest. Operton was released in April '03 and of MS would have had early samples months or years before that.

And of course Michael Dell is Intel's lapdog and wouldn't dare offer any product without Intel's approval. Time will tell, but I think Dell will regret that eventually. Just because Intel will have a chip that can execute AMD64 code doesn't mean that it will do it particularly well. There's more to an architecture than just the instruction set.

CHeers!

There's also Telewest, for people in the Telewest cable franchise areas, and a whole host of other ADSL providers that use infrastucture that was formally BT's, and the last mile of phone cable that BT has to offer tham a good deal on reselling.

Although someone said we get shafted on transfer speeds compared to America (which is somewhat true), none of our decent ADSL resellers implement monthly data transfer caps. I'd far rather have a 512k/256k ADSL service with unlimited transfer and no worrying about going over the limit than a 2mbit service with a measly 10 gigs per month.

I personally go with Zen Internet, who are a damn reliable ISP and give me 512k/256k ADSL for around 25GBP per month.

I'd specifically recomment *against* going with BTopenworld... they incorrectly closed my account, and then had the audacity to charge me an early account closure fee, because of the fact that they have a ludicrous 12 month minimum term contract for their ADSL service, where nearly every other ADSL provider has 1 month minimum term. It was settled with them paying 300GBP to me in compensation. I've also heard other nasties about BTopenworld, ie. they might be implementing monthly data caps (yuk!) and blocking ports. Americans might be used to this kind of BS from their monopolistic cable companies, but that doesn't mean it's something people should have to put up with.

Listings and reviews of other BT ADSL providers can be found at ADSLguide.

About 3 months back I saw an advert, someone had made minicds that would fit to creditcard size, you could store 50M on one and then hand them out to clients/friends/etc. I cant remember the price but it was cheap

CDROM Cellar (UK-based) sell these - check the CDR section. Megadata brand - 1.50ukp each. They also sell the cute small CDRs that devices like the camera would use for the same price.