Virgin still slow

With Virgin Media busy showing off their 20Mbps cable Internet service, I am still wondering why I'm paying for 10Mbps and getting a tenth of the speed. An engineer has been out to fix an apparent problem with the cable's power level, making no difference whatsoever. The problem is blatantly one of contention. A lot of other people in my area must be hogging all the bandwidth with their excessive YouTube watching and other needless activities, and I figure Virgin must just lack the capacity.

The official Virgin solution to the problem? Wait until my cable exchange (the bit where all the cables feed into) gets upgraded to accommodate the new 20Mbps service. When will that be happening? Nobody can tell me, except that it is "soon." Great. What will happen then? My bandwidth at peak times will increase from 1Mbps to 2Mbps? By then, you'll need a 10 meg connection just to browse the web. I wouldn't stand for it if I ordered a pizza and it came with nine of the ten slices missing, but there's very little I can do to push Virgin Media into giving me what I'm paying for.

On the plus side, they are offering me a refund for the slow service, although that's not going to help it get any faster.

Virgin Media Customer Service

The Internet was slow. So hideously slow. By dial-up standards, it was still blazingly fast, but this is the age of broadband. I pay a hefty amount for my 10 megabit Internet, so I expect a decent speed in return. YouTube wasn't working properly. I was seeing a few seconds of video, then having to wait about half a minute to see the next few seconds.

I had noticed the Internet going slowly for a while now, but I generally just browse the web at home, so it wasn't a big deal, until I wanted to do something like watch a YouTube video. My service is provided by Virgin Media, which used to be ntl and Telewest, but they're all the same thing now. Calling them up was the usual frustrating affair of going through a series of 'phone menus' and pressing 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for hurry the hell up.

The chap on the other end was a scouser. The problem was that he didn't know the difference between kilobits and kilobytes. Despite my insistence that I was only able to download at 100 kilobytes per second, he kept insisting that this was the same as 1.25 megabytes per second which was how fast my line was. While it's true that 10 megabits is the same thing as roughly 1.25 megabytes, it's certainly not true that 1.25 megabytes is the same thing as 100 kilobytes. After I asked to speak to his supervisor, he agreed to give me the benefit of his doubt and assume that the Internet was indeed slow.

The problem is caused by the different units of measurement and the similarity of their names. When even people with training are getting confused, how can we make sure that 'unit confusion' doesn't happen? The problem is compounded when ISPs use slang in their advertising. For example, a lot of companies offer "10 meg broadband". If I'm talking about the capacity of a CD-ROM, I might say "700 megs". These are not the same units of measurement, even though they are described with the same word.

File sizes have always been measured in bytes. Bandwidth has traditionally been measured in bits. The fact that there are eight bits in every byte, or ten when transferred via TCP/IP, seems to have slipped most people by. Can't we just change the way ISPs describe their service speeds? Why not call it "one megabyte broadband" instead of "eight megabit broadband"? Of course, this makes it seem slower, so they're doing themselves out of business. Can't we just change the way filesizes are referred to? Highly unlikely, since almost every operating system shows file sizes in bytes and not bits, so it would be very difficult to change all this. We just need to educate people I suppose. I hope that the "iPod generation" of youngsters growing up with various gadgets and the obligatory hideously-decorated MySpace page will learn the difference by themselves.

The result of my phone call to Virgin? There is a problem with the line. But I knew that before I called. It just means I have to wait a few days until it is fixed. When it is, I can apparently claim some partial refund on my account. After all, if you bought a six-pack of beer and there was only one can/bottle in there, you'd take it back, right? Why should bandwidth be any different?

Programming niggles

Wow, so it's been quite a while since I last wrote anything. No matter though, I'll soon catch up again.

In the course of my job at oncampus:uk, I do a bit of Java programming. Recently I stumbled upon a problem which had me totally stumped. No matter how I looked at the problem, I couldn't get the result I wanted from my programming efforts. This killed hours of my time, until I finally came to the conclusion that part of the Java code itself was to blame. A quick Google search confirmed that others had suffered the same fate, but the whole process got me thinking.

How many times have I been saved by other people writing about their troubles on the Internet? Whether it's just a general outline of the problem, or a complete solution, I find that the Internet is a key resource for troubleshooting and it's far better than any programming manual. I'll try to document my problems on this blog in the hope that I can pass on some of this 'good will' to other people with the same problems I end up getting.

Albatross18

It's one of those nice oddities on the Internet. On the most basic level, it is an addictive multiplayer golf game with easy-to-use controls but extremely hard to master. From a longer-term point of view, it's kind of like a massively multiplayer online game.

The game is free to sign up to and play, but the 280MB client download might put a few people off. We have more bandwidth than ever before though, and even a 1mbit connection can handle that file in less than an hour. Installation and setup is really simple and you can get going within minutes of your download finishing.

It's a little bit on the anime side of things. Coming from the far East, it's got those sickeningly cute characters and some of the caddies are just ridiculous, but as long as you don't let this put you off, it's a solid golf game. Aspects of golf like wind speed, wind direction, ball spin, shot surface and angle are all modelled, although it does get slightly wacky. In particular, a perfect shot is known (for some unknown reason) as 'PANGYA' and grants you power spin or power curve, making the ball do some fairly improbable things.

In traditional far-Eastern gaming style, your character has a bundle of statistics which can be improved over time, and there are a lot of different items you can carry around in your pocket for use in those tricky situations where you need a super-accurate shot or a bit of extra curve. You can also gain experience points from each game you play, and level up gradually. Each new level becomes harder and harder to attain, so it keeps you playing, always wanting to get to the next stage.

Certain things such as extremely long shots, good shots or good scores can give you 'pang', one of the in-game currencies in Albatross18. You can save up a bit of pang and spend it on upgrading your things, whether it's new clothes, a new caddy, new clubs and balls, or even an entirely new character.

How can all this stuff be totally free? This is where the other in-game currency comes in: cookies. These things can be bought with real money, but allow you to buy some extremely powerful items. Some may question this as it immediately points to the possibility of giving the upper hand to the more wealthy, but if this allows everyone to play for free, despite being slightly underpowered, is that such a bad thing? It's a contentious issue.

If you're not convinced, do give it a try. I had my doubts initially, but the game has some substantial depth, a lot of beautifully decorated 18-hole courses, and some stiff challenges in the form of real players. Head over to http://www.albatross18.com and see what you think.