The speed below will probably fluctuate (a lot) over the next few days, but 36Mbit/s is pretty impressive:

Certainly an improvement from my previous Virgin broadband

If you want to take part, have a look at the Facebook page for where you can buy a digital download of the track “Killing In The Name Of”

Now, part . . . → Read More: Not X-Factor for Xmas No 1…]]> So, some of you may have heard of the campaign for getting Rage Against the Machine to no1 in the UK charts for Christmas.

If you want to take part, have a look at the Facebook page for where you can buy a digital download of the track “Killing In The Name Of”

Now, part of me thinks this is great, lets get a real band to christmas number one (I don’t think I can remember what the last *real* band to do so was once you ignore all the Xfactor winners, tellytubbies and bob-the-builders). Another part of me thinks that perhaps this is just a publicity stunt for Rage Against the Machine. It is a real shame the band did not decide to give all money they got this week to charity!

Another part of me wonders if this is a bit of a social experiment, to see if the internet is more popular and influential than Simon Cowell and XFactor…

*Edit 17th Dec*

Interview on Radio 5:

Apparently Rage Against of the Machine are giving “the windfall” of proceeds from Killing in the name of to shelter

If you are on Wave, you can find me as “anton.piatek” on Wave

If you are not on Wave and want to have a . . . → Read More: Waving with Google]]> I have been playing with Google Wave for about a week, and while it is interesting I have not really had enough time with it to write up much here yet.

If you are on Wave, you can find me as “anton.piatek” on Wave

If you are not on Wave and want to have a play, I will give an invite to the first person that comments on this post asking for one (only one, so if there is already a comment asking then you are too late). Please fill in the email field in the comment box (which stays private) as I will send the invite there

For reference the previous test got 9Mb/s download and 0.49Mb/s upload. The old speed wasn’t too bad, but still wasn’t as good as Be . . . → Read More: Virgin broadband – not so fast!]]> I wrote a while ago about the speed of virgin broadband vs. Be but my internet has been feeling rather slow recently… So I decided to take another speed test.

For reference the previous test got 9Mb/s download and 0.49Mb/s upload. The old speed wasn’t too bad, but still wasn’t as good as Be provided.

Obviously this new one is slower – the question is why? this test was about the same time of day, and as luck would have it the same day of the week. Is July a quieter internet usage month that September? Or has my service just become over-subscribed?

I will certainly be thinking carefully when it comes to the end of my contract… as paying for 10mbit and getting 2.4 is hardly value for money…

A quick google shows I am not alone:

We are on the way comrade

“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more of expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will . . . → Read More: Did Marx predct the bank bailouts?]]> I got the following email recently and it got me wondering…

We are on the way comrade

“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more of expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

Is the above really a Karl Marx quote?
http://www.democracyforutah.com/node/2510 and http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/faux_marx.php don”t seem to think it is, and to be honest I agree – the idea that credit would be given out by banks at these levels probably didn’t make sense in 1867.

Snopes doesn’t have anything to say on the matter yet (which IS surprising).

Has anyone read much Marx (I mean to, but haven’t got round to it yet)? Does it sound like a true quote?

I wonder how many “quotes” on the internet are simply made-up on the spot (much like statistics – they say that 98.2% of statistics are made-up on the spot).

It is an absolute must read if you use Gmail

If you don’t know much about OpenId’s, . . . → Read More: OpenID]]> I noticed that Yahoo recently started offering OpenID authentication as part of a Yahoo account, this means you can now use your Yahoo Id or Flickr account to authenticate for comments on this blog. Of course I had to install the wordpress openid plugin to make that work.

If you don’t know much about OpenId’s, you may want to read more about them on OpenID.net. A quick summary is that an OpenID allows you to log in to sites that support OpenID but having one username and password on a OpenID server. You just put the address of your OpenID (which can be your own website) and the other website asks your OpenID server whether you have logged in.

If you don’t want to use Yahoo’s OpenID, you can use any OpenID provider (which is the point of OpenID) such as Blogger,Wordpress or even build your own OpenID provider just for you.

I decided to build my own, mostly for curiousity. I used phpMyId, which is about the simplest php script to install. Drop the 2 files in the right place, edit the files to create the username/password (you may need access to a command line linux box for this) and then you can log in. If you want to make your website be the address for an OpenID, you need to add some html to the header of the index page (called delegating your OpenID) but this is included in the instructions for phpMyId.

Once you have an OpenId, you will probably want to test it.