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* Posts by Wayland Sothcott 1

365 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

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Jackpot: astronomers tag Goldilocks planet

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Boffin

Water is a remarkable liquid. It's a solvent that dissolves all sorts of other chemicals. Effectively these are different varieties of water. Maybe there are other simple molecules with amazing properties of versatility which chemistry could be based on. Hydrocarbons for instance, but these are thought to have been created by life rather than chemistry. They are used as signs of life.

I think the conditions for life are far more narrow. It would not surprise me if this was the only planet were conditions were just right. To recreate our conditions by chance would involve the combination of so many variables as to the universe not being big enough to hold them all.

For instance if there were 100 variables that all had to be within 1% for life to kick off then that would be a chance of 1 in 10^200

However if it was that easy then they would have made life in the lab by now.

How hard is it to make an iPad? Probably need better than 1% tolerances on more than 100 things. You don't make one of those by chance.

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Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

Wayland Sothcott 1
Big Brother

Dig up Marilyn

I am definitely digging up Marilyn next time I go to the states and I don't care who knows it.

Perhaps who thinks thinks the dreaded Homeland Security acted irrationally should vow to dig up Marilyns body. Perhaps I will dig up Elvis if someone digs up Marilyn first.

After that I am going to totally destroy America.

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Vint Cerf: 'The internet is not a human right'

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Not good enough. Please explain why.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Should engineers and their employers be guardians of human rights?

Absolutely!!!

If you try and take my rights I will fight you.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Driving is illegal...

...until you have a license. The reason for this is the harm that can be done if you don't drive well.

It pretty much is a right since it's not held or the priviledged few.

Do you think that Internet access should be licensed? Ie, made illegal until the government givess you permission?

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Human Wrongs

I think some of the people disagreeing with you are saying that we should not have a list of rights as this list is finite and limits our freedom. It's Nepolionic law, everything is illegal unless there is a law saying it's a right.

I prefer a law that says "Do as thou wilt, if it harms none"

Then you just need to list the things that tend to harm people.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
Big Brother

Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself

Knowledge is a human right. To argue that people should be prevented from understanding the Internet (with a capital I) is tyranical. Knowledge is power and he seems to want the power or himself and his buddies. The Internet is where a big part of peoples lives and the activities of the world take place. To deliberately lock people out of this is like locking them in an open prison.

Obviously to purchase the equipment and create the network infrasstructure takes work and money but people should be allowed to buy the gear and build the Internet where they live. Why is this man trying to hold back the Internet and why does he think it's even possible to do so?

I suspect he is buddies with people who think the Internet has given too much power to the people and they want to try and reign it in.

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UK's solar 'leccy cash slash ruled unlawful

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Oil industry?

There are plenty of uses for oil, the 'Oil Industry' would be fine. In fact they are the Energy Industry since some of the best solar panels are made by BP.

I am amazed the the government are scrapping the subsidy since it actually acts as a form of tax.

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Boycott forces Go Daddy U-turn on anti-piracy law backing

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Is why we have a system..

... so that someone not emotionally involved with the case does the justice. Otherwise we have vengeance. The bloke who keyed my car would have his arms and legs sawn off by me with a chain saw had I caught him that day. Fortunately I never caught him.

I am sorry you lost due to software piracy.

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Christmas solar plasma belches to hit Earth, Mars - and Mars rover in space

Wayland Sothcott 1
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If space were a swimming pool...

We paddled in the shallow end for a few minutes then dived in at the deep end like an Olympic champion. Since then we have spent the rest of the time in the shallow end as if the deep end were simply too scary to swim in. By now we should be swimming the Atlantic.

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NASA slammed for losing hundreds of moon rocks

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Google Car

They should send Google to get the pictures, they would be a lot better.

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Durban failed: Relax, everyone

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Sea levels always rise

All over the world there are buildings under the sea, some 100 feet, some 400 feet. Water just keeps on rising. But strangely the Maldives stay above water. Is this because the float? No, but almost. The islands actually grow taller every year.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
Black Helicopters

Lord Monkton Para

I heard Lord Monkton say on the Alex Jones radio show that they would not let him in so he went up in an aircraft and parashooted into the conference.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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I agree...

...that we should take care of the planet. However I don't agree that lying for worthy reasons is the way to do it. Man Made Global Warming is a lie being used by environmentalists to save the planet. Most people involved may not realize it's a lie or may not care to look too hard because they are invested in the plan to save the planet from actual pollution.

However there are a core of scientists who are actively spinning this to save the planet and suit the political requirements to keep this thing moving.

As the genuine environmentalists discover the lie they will distance themselves from it so it will run out of steam naturally.

If you watch any nature program on TV, they all have a bit about global warming. Often this seems to have been added as an after thought but in many cases the whole program is a vehicle to get the climate change message across.

The people against the idea that man made CO2 can change the climate seem to think that any sort of weather modification is impossible. Looking at a clear blue sky many people can see that it's no longer as blue as it used to be but seems to be a bit more milky than years ago. None of the Global Warmists seem to have commented that this is due to CO2, why the missed opportunity?

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RED MOON to GO DARK tonight in Pacific eclipse

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Moron!

The Zodiac was invented thousands of years ago to study the movement of the heavenly bodies and how they relate to mans affairs. Astronomy is a recent development and has yet to relate the stars to man to the extent that astrology does.

The very basics are that the Earth revolves causing day and night, that the moon orbits Earth causing the tides and the Earth orbits the sun causing the seasons. These things affect man. The whole solar system runs like clockwork with orbiting planets, Astrology will tell you that these also affect man, astronomy has yet to grasp this.

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AMD helping Android fans port to x86

Wayland Sothcott 1
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x86 cheap and plentyful

x86 is just about the worst processor for mobile devices. The reason it is popular in Laptops is because a Laptop is a portable desktop computer. It has to be x86 to be compatible.

There are far better processors for mobile devices but only if you ditch Windows and start with a mobile OS. This is now possible because the Internet is now the OS and the computer OS is just a means to operate the Internet.

Having said that, I look forward to a good Android distro for x86 because it may be able to give new life to old laptops.

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Second US Navy robot stealth bomber takes flight

Wayland Sothcott 1
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IT Angle

hmmmm, remote kill switch...

well hack into that and you can just ask them to blow themselves up.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Surely it's better that the good guys don't risk getting hurt?

Surely you realize that we are the good guys and we are in the right to bomb people?

Surely it makes you proud to be from the western civilization?

If killing everyone at a wedding saves the life of one innocent child then it's a price worth paying?

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Climategate 2.0: Fresh trove of embarrassing emails

Wayland Sothcott 1
Boffin

5148

"... .

Hi Phil,

Gavin and I have been discussing, we think it will be important for us to do something

on the Thompson et al paper as soon as it appears, since its likely that naysayers are

going to do their best to put a contrarian slant on this in the blogosphere.

Would you mind giving us an advance copy. We promise to fully respect Nature's embargo

(i.e., we wouldn't post any article until the paper goes public) and we don't expect to

in any way be critical of the paper. We simply want to do our best to help make sure

that the right message is emphasized.

thanks in advance for any help!

mike

..."

Pretty cozy bunch of climate friends all working together for the greater good. Except they don't want us to know that they are so cooperative with each other. Some might call that a conspiracy.

Icon - Lab goggles

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Facepalm

Get this, the new Green Tax is to pay for Nuclear plants!

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Mushroom

Read todays newspapers, green tax is to lower the carbon footprint by funding new nuclear power stations and wind farms. Why would the nuclear industry be cliamte skeptics the way you suggest?

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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I am sure nature will do well in Fucashima when all the people move away.

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Dud Mars probe's explosion will spare Earth's cities

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Yeah, it looks like they still have a bit of work to do before they can use fly it.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Turn it off, wait 10 seconds and turn it on again.

Obviously!

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Diaspora co-founder dies at 22

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Big Brother

Voice of a man with a bit of a political agenda. A man possibly about to be more powerful than the Facebook founders if he would only put the NWO coding into their social network software.

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'Ghost hunter' set to become Tory Euro-MP

Wayland Sothcott 1
Pint

Plenty to be explained

There are plenty of things about the world which are not yet backed by hard evidence. In fact most science starts as a hunch or an imaginative idea about an unexplained phenomenon. Static electricity is pretty weird. Rubbing pieces of amber with cats fur sounds like occult magic. The effect is subtle, it can pick up bits of tissue paper but it can't lift a man.

You could go through your entire life ignoring static electricity and be none the worse. Your ignorance of the phenomena would not negate the truth that it exists.

If you limit yourself to what others thoroughly understand then you will never discover anything new. If you are sensitive to subtle new ideas which don't yet have a solid foundation then you might learn something new.

Icon; to be discussed over a pint.

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Feds nab granny in moon rock sting

Wayland Sothcott 1
Alien

Perhaps it's fake

Perhaps NASA know it's not real moon rock because no one walked on the moon.

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Scotland Yard trackers operate fake mobile base stations

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Because they are the police. There are different laws for different people.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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How would that be unhelpful to the public if the police went round recovering lost and stolen phones? The police are not there to assist people, they are there to make life hard for you.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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It's just going to go which ever way suits the prosecution. Both posts are correct.

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BT gets 14 days to block Newzbin2

Wayland Sothcott 1
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I think he is making a case for Tor.

A virtual network overlaid onto an existing network. People will make their sites more virtual. We already have P2P, why not use P2P to host websites?

The traffic could be masked to look like BT Vision and YouTube. You could rebuild the whole IP system on top of this virtual network. Virtual servers would be distributed.

Ah but then this is probably why the PC and Laptop are being replaced by iTabs and Androids.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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I suspect you can see where this is going...

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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They don't do all these things at once. This is coming. They are supplying little wireless meters which tell the users how much they are using. They are supplying smartmeters than can tell what devices are using the electricity. They are publishing your bill online. Once it's as easy as using google earth to spot swimming pools then expect them to use electricity usage to find cannabis growers.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Big Brother

Proxy only gets you somewhere else. When the banning system becomes 'harmonized' then all ISPs will comply or else the UN will provide humanitarian aid.

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Scottish rats scoff optic fibre, take down broadband

Wayland Sothcott 1

The attraction of 'new'

Rats love new cables. They probably only chewed the existing cables so they would get some new cables. It's probably that 'new' smell that new plastic gives off.

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Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is dead at 56

Wayland Sothcott 1
Unhappy

An amazing visonary

He could see the possibilities of the technology as could many people but he went further and put them into practice with amazing flair. So many of us simply imagine the possibilities or do a half hearted job.

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Power cut knocks Miliband off-air mid-speech

Wayland Sothcott 1

Ed Milliband

Why did they pick Ed Milliband rather than the more credible David Milliband? To give the very weak Con-Dems a much needed head start. It should not be necessary to power cut him, surely he is useless enough already.

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Social networks likely to snub Home Office in riot confab

Wayland Sothcott 1

There is a way to deny them access

When criminals have been identified as such by the court they should be put in prison and have things such as Internet kept away from them. If people are not in prison then short of turning the outside world into a prison there is nothing that can be done.

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People don't want tablets, they want iPads

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Not true

I have seen people use the iPad in a very useful way. Customer loads it up with all his documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Because the unit its held in the hand like a book it's at the perfect viewing distance. Because the screen and graphics are so powerful it is a breeze to zoom and scroll and turn pages. He can hand his client the iPad to show him the document.

Obviously it's better to prepared the documents on a machine with a keyboard but the usability of iOS compared to Windows put's Windows to shame.

However I refuse to be a Fanboi and want them to fix Android or Windows Mobile or something so I don't get sucked into Steve Jobs Brave New World.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Cheap Android are crap

I have a cheapo Android tablet and it is so bad I never want to try one again. Except I have seen the Apple product and it shows what they can be like. We definitely need an open alternative to Apple, just like the PC is an open alternative to Apple lock-in. What happened to the Windows Mobile in the tablet world? Why is Apple the only one that's any good?

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London rioters should 'loose all benefits'

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Big Brother

What's the difference between protesting and rioting?

Well there is a fine line that got blurred this week. A protest can turn into a riot and then looting simply by taking a sensitive situation and throwing in some violent thugs.

When the protesters were kettled at the G20 last year it made me want them to fight the police. But instead they just let the police do what ever they liked. AT the same time actual rioters were smashing banks windows and the police were letting them.

People can't comprehend that police can chose to allow this stuff or chose to tackle it. Just because the looters get away with it does not mean the police could not cope and need more powers. People also can't comprehend that powers to tackle looters and rioters will be applied to protesters since effectively it's all degrees of the same thing.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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Meh

Urban Officials

But they might just stand around saying there's nothing they can do until the law gives them more power.

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Apple nudges out Exxon Mobil for top spot on Wall Street

Wayland Sothcott 1
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fanboi

I marked you down, you just said Fanboi, oops, I said fanboi twice.... doh!

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BlackBerry Messenger archives open for inspection

Wayland Sothcott 1
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Wheres the archiving part?

It's 'buffered' on a server ready for collection. Is that an archive? An email maybe in a POP account which means it's removed once collected. If it's in an IMAP or Webmail account it stays there unless the recipient deletes it.

Archiving would be a separate process and not a function of sending and receiving.

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'Up to' broadband claims out of control, says Ofcom

Wayland Sothcott 1
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They do throttle some P2P

I had someone on BT Infinity try my VoIP connection which goes through my ADSL MAX line. He dialed in to my Draytek router and was able to get better P2P performance through the piggy backing my ADSL than he got through BT. It was crap P2P performance but much better than BT Infinity.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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20meg on an ADSL MAX line

It's very deceptive since the people they are talking to need it explained properly.

If an ISP has a service some where on it's network that goes to 20meg then that should be sold separately from the service which goes to 8meg in that persons area.

By lumping it all together as one service that goes up to 20meg for £15 per month they lie to the person on an 8meg exchange. What's more, if that person is on a line that supports 1meg they are getting 20 times less speed.

Because 20meg seems so slow they will probably switch providers to the one that offers up to 40meg and pay £30 per month for the same 1meg service. The more they lie the better it gets.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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WRONG

If you encourage people to shop with the company who has the fastest average speed then you will find that rural Internet services will cease. The best way to increase your average speed is not to connected anyone who's speed will be below average. The ISP I work for has one of the lowest average speeds because we specialize in connecting the people farthest from the exchange.

When you look at a web page it does not travel down the wire at more than 2meg. When you do a download at 8meg compared to 2meg it does not become instant if you had to wait for it on 2meg. Downloads do take a few moments. VoIP and gaming should still be near instant on 2meg or 8meg, the bandwidth is not the speed, the ping is the speed. Throttled upload speed is a sneeky way of limiting your Internet usage since you cannot use your full download bandwidth in real world situations if your upload is throttled. But it still comes out nice on a speedtest.

The speedtest sites are not that good at showing you the real reason your Internet seems slow. Everyone assumes they need more megabits. A really good speedtest site would shine a light on the ISPs bandwitch shaping and reveal it's silhouette.

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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OFCOM is a decoy

We direct our anger at Ofcom which keeps our anger away from the real culprits. Instead of getting angry why not roll out some fibre optic cable yourself?

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Wayland Sothcott 1
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IT Angle

WISP

Wireless Internet Service Providers don't have to use BT copper. It is true we used ADSL in the beginning, well actually we used Bonded ISDN because it was faster than dialup. The point is that faster Internet can be beamed in from another location to the village with the slow Internet. People suffering speeds below 1meg should look for the WISP operator in their area. These are always tiny companies who hardly advertise. Look for odd white boxes on peoples TV antennas, ask them where they get their broadband. It might take a bit of investigation but you will find a WISP near you. If you don't then maybe you should start one.

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Wayland Sothcott 1

2meg/512k is acceptable

If you can get a low contention reliable 2meg service then you can pretty much use any Internet service acceptably well. I am not saying you can use more than one heavy service at a time though. The craving for faster speeds is driven from two areas;

1. People think they are on a super fast 8meg service or other such over sold over hyped speed when in fact they are barely getting 1meg and probably have a slow virused up computer to boot. They imagine the answer to their problems is 40meg where as getting a decent ISP that got them a reliable uncontended 2meg service and cleaned up their computers would make everything acceptable. BT slow the up speed which make things feel slower than the download speed would indicate.

2. Long line issues with BT in rural areas can often be solved by using a HGV2700 router instead of the crappy home hub. Remembering also to sort out the telephone filtering and wiring. I got one customer from 200k to 2500k. It solved all their Internet problems.

If these two things fail then remember that most of the country is reachable by Wireless Internet and I don't mean mobile phone dongle since they are crap. A typical £200 install will get you a 2meg service for the subscription price of a normal business Internet service. You might have to work with them to bring the service to your village.

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