Interesting Links for 06-02-2014

[andrewducker]

• What would life be like on a torus planet?
  (tags: physics earth gravity planets )
• Majority of cuts still to come, says IFS
  (tags: uk finances government austerity )
• Should Netflix bring back channel-surfing?
  (tags: netflix streaming television )
• Why Mom's Time Is Different From Dad's Time
  (tags: gender parenting time )
• Netflix ISP Speed Index
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Comments

[philmophlegm]

What exactly is the point of that Netflix ISP speed thing? It only seems to list six ISPs for the UK. The speed noted by Netflix will self-select to Netflix customers, and by and large those would be people with fast enough broadband to make Netflix worthwhile. And the biggest determinant of speed isn't your ISP anyway, it's the technology available and quality / distance / age / etc of the copper and / or fibre.

Something more useful, that many people aren't aware of (possibly because BT doesn't seem to publicise it much, or even give it a nice web page) is http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/ . This can tell you what speeds you can expect with the different technologies available to you.

[andrewducker]

The big 4 ISPs in the UK have the vast majority of the market share (millions):
BT 6.7
Virgin 4.49
TalkTalk 4.07
Sky 4.39

Below those two you have O2 (0.5million) and EE (0.7million).

The other ones you might have heard of are companies like Zen - but they only have 94,000 lines. Or Eclipse - on 178,000. Basically, those are ignorable most of the time.

Seeing the average across different providers will, hopefully, average out line issues, because those should affect all customers equally, and leave only the effects of traffic shaping/overloading by the ISP.

[artkouros]

"Lead pipes channelled 135,000 gallons of water per day to the city."

[andrewducker]

Lead adds flavour!

[skington]

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't take long for lead pipes to get lined with mud and moss so the water no longer actually gets into contact with lead any more.

[simont]

Mud and moss add flavour too?

[momentsmusicaux]

The problem even with Freeview is that it takes several seconds to switch to a different channel, because there's some sort of delay which I assume is to do with decoding the stream. Which makes channel surfing less responsive than on analogue TV. You can't flip over for just a second to see if the adverts have finished on the other side.

[octopoid_horror]

The valentine cards are amazing and I have said at least some of those things

[apostle_of_eris]

Netflix vs. HBO in two items on the same day . . .
The issue of net neutrality is not going anywhere!

[andrewducker]

It's really not. I'm glad that we have more competition amongst ISPs in the UK than there is in the USA!