Over at http://www.itpro.co.uk/610661/traffic-demands-to-disrupt-the-internet-by-2010?CMP=NLC-Newsletters it says

a) we can expect “slower and more unreliable connections as online traffic increases”

b)  around 10 per cent of users accounted for 80 per cent of network use.

Which is why I am happy to sign up with an ISP who imposes a download limit. I am never going to download huge amounts of data so why should I pay the same as people who do?

While I don’t agree that the market should be the only arbitrator of everything it has its uses. This is the same issues as fixed price entry and free booze clubs  (http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2008/02/05/excuse-me-did-you-take-my-son-to-casualty/ )  If people don’t have to pay for usage they don’t use it sensibly!  My mates kid brother  downloaded the whole series  of Battlestar Gallatica before he realised it was the 70’s version which he had no interest in watching. If he had a download limit or paid by the meg he might have checked before clogging EVERYONE’S bandwidth.

If we abolished fuel tax but upped car tax I think we could see more road congestion! People have a need for cars and computers but not every journey / surf is necessary.

If we had to pay by the meg bloated sites might be a bit less popular too…

For years I used to keep files I wanted secure in encrypted ZIP files figuring they were a) hidden, b) secure but these days even explorer search function searches through zip files. I know I could use truecrypt (and do for on some of my systems) but it’s just bit more work - installing it, setting up, keeping different repositories… Zip was a nice easy solution. Oh yes, and it also reduced the size of the files!

So how secure is an encrypted ZIP file? If I rename it to .DAT will it stop explorer searching it for files? If I zip up the .dat in a second .dat (also encrypted - or “scrambled” as pkzip quaintly termed it) will that do the job?

Well it’s a bit saucy really. I was only explaining Supermarionation to my son the other day - a way of converting sound waves to impulses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarionation).

In the case of Supermarionation it is done to make Thunderbird puppets’ mouths move in time to the speech. In the case of http://www.ohmibod.com/  it’s for a whole other application. Lady Penelope would be shocked.

What I don’t understand is how this sort of thing seems to be cool when for women but less so for men. Inflatable doll jokes anyone?

And here we see the real problems with thin clients - users can’t listen to their CD’s

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/server_virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216402358&subSection=All+Stories

As a user I have some sympathy - in fact I had a CD in my work PC before I had one for music at home so it was a real treat to listen to CD’s!

I doubt it cuts much ice with administrators and managers though

I’ve been watching the Sex Education Show vs Pornography on the tv. The claimed aim of the show is  expose (it does plenty of exposing!) myths that come from pornography and campaign to protect kids from on line porn. You always have to question the media (C4 more than others?) about whether they are genuinely trying to be educational or just sensationalising - especially on this kind of subject. Whatever the education / sensation balance I thought there was some valuable stuff in there.

One of the things they have been doing is challenging ISP’s & PC retailers to put protection on by default. Why aren’t safe search filters and parental controls set by default? Given that I’m not sure what they are talking about with “activating Parental Controls” we can assume most parents will find it a challenge to activate them. Of course the show implies that a couple of simple settings will keep your kids safe. I didn’t think it was that easy - please (please, PLEASE!) correct me if I’m wrong.

Somewhat depressingly, having visited their web site (http://sexperienceuk.channel4.com/sex-education) I can find nothing to actually help people to make the settings they are recommending. http://sexperienceuk.channel4.com/protect-from-porn tells you what you should do but not how - or how much good it will do.

The stats they quote on pornography (especially relating to kids exposure) is shocking - even allowing for some statistical massaging

That can’t be good - what can we do about it?