You pay too much for beer...

By my maths you could get at least four pints for 9 quid. More if a special offer is on :P

Open standards

Surely the argument should be more about open standards, than an iPlayer for Linux? I feel sticking Linux in the title is rather missleading.

Two tribes

Saying they defected is a bit harsh, they could have good humored it and say a fringe militant group took them.

Hell, I think both teams should collaborate, it'd be good for international relations and bolster both of their sales... they could release episodically doing the same story but told from each sides perspectives.

hell yeah!

Having to pay to return something...

...Is that even legal?

Unlikely they'd have questioned him if he was caucasian

but then again, there haven't been that many caucasian suicide bombers either...

Surely not?

... Joost, which is baked by Skype's founders, ...

Mmmm, baked software...

No sorry, I think you'll find it's pretty easy to hit the cap

"(Also - don't forget that Sky is only going to give you ADSL - which could be much slower if you are too far from the BT phone exchange. At least Virgin\NTL give you the speed you pay for (yeah, yeah - quotas - but everyone is having to do that due to the small minority who insist on downloading all them ripped films.. (don't give me the Linux Distro excuse)))"

Uhmmm.... ever downloaded a game patch? Last time I turned on World Of Warcraft I had to download 500mb because I hadn't played it in a while, that was me capped for four hours...

A week later, a large patch from Battlefield 2142, my flatmate needed the same patch and due to us being in at slightly different times didn't know I'd already grabbed it...

Combine that with the bandwidth needed by sites like youtube, yahoo music... also, I'm quite fond of downloading game demos via my xbox, and my Wii can occasionally generate a fair bit of traffic too.

Oh and what about the traffic from Skype?

Or how about our new wave Web2.0-esq apps, Google Earth and Second Life spring to mind as being bandwidth heavy too.

Sure, I could turn all these off, but I originally paid for a service that let me run all this, we've become accustomed to it - the itnernet has evolved and yet our ISPs are back to imposing draconian measures much like the time limits we saw on ISPs towards the end of dialup era.

I'm sorry, anyone who says you can't reach the caps without downloading illegal content is quite mistaken. Admittedly, these issues only affect me on average twice a week or less, but still, that's more than zero.

This is not new news...

It's SHITE being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched miserable servile pathetic trash that was ever shat on civilization. Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to get colonized by. We're ruled by effete assholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference!

- Mark 'Rent-Boy' Renton; Trainspotting (1996)

Poor use of English (Re: Mike's comment)

Sorry, I was reffering to the timing of their release rather than the finished product.

Also, I'd like to point out that I do know our TV license doesn't cover TV shows in the way I said, I was just being facetious.

I also appreciate the many financial difficulties in removing adverts from programs and selling them on at a price a customer will still pay, but as a customer - that's the service I'd like to see.

Oh no, what a great loss of advertising!

Oh wow, what a great loss of advertising.

Seriously, that's why when I moved I didn't bother getting Sky One again, it was more adverts than content, any of their exclusive content was broadcast months before in the USA, and subsequently available for download advert free - did you know BSG, Prison Break etc aren't actually an hour long?

So I've got two choices, pay extra for content delivered to me littered with adverts that is months old compared to what our American cousins get... or download it advert free 20 minutes after it's aired in America.

What I would pay for, is the same content, stripped from adverts - broadcast as released in America and delivered nicely onto my telebox, until then I'll continue to receive the same content at a higher quality for free. It's not piracy, it's economics. (And hell, once it finally get's onto any form of terrestrial, it's covered by my TV licence so it's not even theft.)

Under suspicion

Great, not only can you be arrested for suspicion of terrorism, in the not too distant future you can be arrested for sweating suspiciously. In suspicion of suspicion of terrorism they should call it.