Weekend Update...

So, on Saturday (after swimming) we came home, I installed our new Virgin Superhub (looks like they just leave you to it now - everything worked okay apart from my Xbox - and that just seemed to be sulking as when I tried it 4 hours later it popped right up without me actually changing anything), then, to give Mummy a rest (as she is poorly with Bronchitis) I took the kids to Godstone Farm -

- where I let them just do what they wanted - this consisted of ignoring the animal petting completely, 15 minutes in the slide barn (yelling "Dad, look what I can do!" every three seconds), two loops around the Dinosaur Walk (including the creepy crawly cave) insisting on posing for pictures each and every time -


- and then about 30 minutes in the main play barn (where I barely saw them)...followed by 15 minutes driving little tractors outside then *another* walk around the Dinosaur Walk (somewhere along the line Poppy losing her beaker)...this would have been alright (she wasn't that bothered), but Thomas was *devastated* ("It's my favourite lid Dad!") and insisted we walk around everywhere looking for it, so we did the main play barn (again), the tractors (again) and the Dinosaur Walk (again) - unfortunately to no avail (and plenty of wail)...anyway, when we got home Mummy said she would email the farm and ask if they had found it (so that sort of diffused things)...

Sunday morning we woke up early, as the Sky engineers were coming (much excitement) - this is also the reason why we had to install the superhub on Saturday as we ditching Virgin TV for being far too expensive (and I get a great deal on Sky+ HD Ultimate package through work).  They came along, installed a nice small dish on the side of the house and managed to route the cables without making any mess at all and we then spent the rest of the day playing with pausing live TV, queueing up TV shows to record, downloading movies and configuring our telephones and tablets for Sky Go and all the other cool things it does...cannot believe how many channels we have now...Thomas particularly was loving Phineas and Ferb, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Adventure Time, Spongebob Squarepants (and all the other shows that you don't get on Freeview we seem to have been missing out on)...!  The only thing that is a bit annoying is that it simply can't stream anything - everything must be downloaded first (at least a large chunk of it anyway), but thanks to our nice 50Mb broadband that isn't too much of a headache...just need to learn to be a little more patient! ;)

Anyway, a rather busy, but rather cool weekend... ;)

Hurrah...

...Flyingpops just sent an update, they have a general fault in our area, engineer call cancelled, they expect it all to be up and running before I get home from London... ;)

Usenet as an alternative to Bittorrent - Virgin spying on customers - Privacy

I hate the idea that ISPs (those providers of internet) are being bullied into spying on what we are doing, first by the likes of the MPAA (etc.) and now by the bigger kids in the playground like the French Government (who are bowing to the posh kids with all the money) and it won't be long until other governments decide to go the same way...It's wrong to tar everyone with the 'evil' brush...

If that wasn't bad enough, some ISP's are spotting a way of saving money off the back of this and quietly sorting/throttling popular packet types (like bittorrent for example) and dumping it to narrower bandwidth...I object to both of these practices - frankly it's no-one's business what I'm doing with my pipe on my own time...and if I want to transfer stuff around the place using torrents, why should I get a slower transfer speed than someone moving data with FTP or HTTP? It's definitely unreasonable and it's obvious why - it's so they don't have to bite the bullet and upgrade their networks to cope with increasing demand for fast broadband (remember all the wailing and crying from the ISPs when BBC iPlayer rolled out)?

So...especially if you are using Virgin for your internet access (as they have already publicly admitted they are now going to voluntarilly spy on what their clients are doing with their pipes, which is frankly shocking), rather than search for an ISP (with backbone/morals) quite yet, IMHO it's time to go underground...

For web access, unless it's other SSL stuff (like internet banking) or just reading the likes of the BBC website, I recommend Torpark (which is a Tor-network enabled Firefox browser), use gmail over that for email accces (a bit slower, but free, anonymous and encrypted)...if you have some cash to spend, use Xerobank for the same thing (it's fast)...

If you need to move big chunks of data around - ditch the torrents (where all the attention is at the moment) and go old skool ...Welcome (back) to Usenet (some parts of which actually pre-date the internet, believe it or not) -

Two articles you will need to read to get you up and running (looks like "Wired" has similar feelings to me) -

How to share files on Usenet

What are NZB files?

- one you might need -

How to bypass blocked usenet

- that will get you 95% free from attention (for now) and cost you nothing...however, personally, I'm going to go "the full tamale" and employ SSL (i.e. - Packet gets encrypted at your end, goes through your ISP, can't be packet sniffed and therefore can't be deliberately slowed down or stopped by your ISP or pawed through and licked by the French Government...it gets safely decrypted at the other end and visa-versa...and then *everything* you do is just a big stream of anonymous, classless gibberish to the prying eyes that lurk in the underpipes (to which all they can do is shrug and shuffle on to the next victim)...thus leaving your ISP (in your case at least) to do exactly what they should be doing - providing fast, reliable internet access and not to be lackies for the money-grabbing lawyers of the music industry in the far-off US of A...