BlueNosedDog

UK2.net has been on a capping spree again, apparently going over 5% usage at any point for any amount of time is really bad and results in your account being suspended. This wouldn’t be a problem if they were running nearly modern servers, but the fact is we only had 90 people active at the time.

We have moved hosts to MediaTemple.net. The switch has been pretty painless, took less than 2 hours. We are having some image cahing issues, which we’re working on now, but would really like to know about anything else not working at the moment.

I’ll give a full post soon, after the weekend maybe, detailing the reasons for the swap and hopefully letting you know how mt is getting on with BND :)

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Today as i was surfing the net, i stumbled across a website listing all the very latest in tech gear. Apparantly the “Epoc Emotiv” is the future of all gaming technology. By this time you may be wondering, what’s so special about this? Two words. “Hands Free”.
The Epoc Emotiv is a headset that taps into the lobes of your brain, and allows you to move everything telekineticly.

The features of this that will be appearing in the first few Emotiv game titles will include the ability to manipulate and control objects by thought, weilg amazing superpowers just by thinking about them, creatures in games will react to your facial expressions and enviroments will change due to your emotional state. Can you imagine what it would be like if this was made for a game like Fable?

But the applications for this are not just for gaming, there is computing applications for this, imagine no more mouse or keyboard. This (BCI) could even be the key of giving speech to people that can’t who suffer from ALS.

University of Ulster video gaming lecturer Darryl Charles told CNN he was also uncertain whether Emotiv’s technology would take off.

“It’s a little bit harder to see. It’s quite a complex thing to force your thought on a television screen.”

However, Emotiv’s Le strongly defended the headset, saying it “works on a vast majority of people and can adapt to a wide variety of thought patterns. Emotiv has carried out tests with hundreds of people and so far we have had success on every single person,” Le said.

The website for this piece of amazing technology is www.emotiv.com, pre order one of these amazing things for the mere price of $299

Featured, Gaming BCI, best, Emotion, Emotiv, Emotiv Systems, Epoc, Epoc Emotiv, Game, Gaming, Gear, Gen, New, Next, pwned, Tech, University of Ulster, Video game, www.emotiv.com

After only 6 months, the latest version of Fedora has been released to the masses, offering a plethora of updates and upgrades there’s very little reason left to be stuck on an older version.

Areas such as virtualization management, networking, boot time and security received the greatest updates. The new virtualization features include the ability to manage virtual hosts and storage remotely, which should appeal to network administrators with fragmented teams. “These features combine to make administration of remote hosts much easier, even in cases where direct physical access is limited or non-existent,” the Fedora Team said in a recent blog post on Red Hat’s Web site.

Users can now also share their Internet connection with others, and Fedora 10 can also start up faster, thanks to a new graphical boot system dubbed Plymouth .

Security improvements include the addition of SecTool, an auditing and detection kit.

Red Hat has also enhanced PackageKit, a software installation and updating system that debuted in Fedora 9 .

“In Fedora 10, PackageKit now detects when the user opens an audio or video media file, and offers to search for codecs used to play that file,” the Fedora Team said in a blog post. “With the user’s authorization, it searches all the software repositories configured on the Fedora 10 system, installs what is needed, and the media begins to play.” Down the road, this capability will be extended to areas like fonts and applications.

In addition, Fedora 10 has a revamped audio system that uses less power; support for “a vast array” of Webcams; improved printing capabilities; and “support for more hardware than any other operating system.”

If you’ve read this far then we also have a little something to let you into. As part of trials to increase traffic and to test the new Amazon Cloudfront CDN we’ll be hosting a mirror of the main ISO ditribution of Fedora 10, and in the future even more software. So, if you’d like to download the Live CD and Installation disk for Fedora 10 you may do so by clicking here. Just please let us know your download speeds in the comments, and how they compare to other sites.

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YouTube has decided that for the vast majority of us black bars are the next big thing. Thats right, not only do we have to put up with poor “high quality” compared to most other online video providers, but they have decided to make those videos widescreen.

For some this will be a bit of a boon. The sale of widescreen video cameras is accelerating for example, so all of those NOT uploading happy slapper videos from their mobile will be well serviced. Yet the cynical in me is screaming that there may be another reason for YouTube going widescreen. Now the home of some movies, and a growing number of promo videos (read ads) maybe YouTube going widescreen has more to do with advertising dollars than user needs.

Now I know that YouTube is massively popular, but the lack of “optional” widescreen and the proliferation of tacky advertising, alongside the lack of real “high quality” and no live streaming - and that’s before considering the attitude of most of the regular commentators - surely some, if not most, semi-serious video bloggers (f.ex) will be moving away from them and onto other platforms, such as blip.tv, justin.tv and my personal favourite mogulus.com?

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::Updated below:: Over the weekend some customers were reporting that their Sky + boxes were freezing and/or not letting them into the programme planner and therefore being unable to user the PVR to do and VR[ing?] leaving them simply p’d.

It seems as though sky knows about the problem though, as one subscriber was given the following advice after informing customer services of their issue:

• Put Sky+ box into standby
• Take out viewing card
• Power off at mains
• Power on (after 10-20 seconds)
• Press on button after 30 seconds or so.
• Planner then available
• Reinsert viewing card
• Wait for update to channels
• Planner still okay

Although this fix seems to be working for most users, some are saying that the problem comes back after only a few hours. We have called Sky for an official response and were told that more details on the issue would be presented later this afternoon.

We’ll keep you updated.

::Edit:: I know the picture used is of a SKY HD box, but it’s all I could find that was high enough res.

We regularly upgrade the software in Sky+ boxes as part of routine maintenance and product enhancements. All software is tested rigorously against each hardware type of the box before being downloaded to customers’ boxes.

We’re investigating reports from a small number of Sky+ customers whose boxes are experiencing problems following a recent software update. Although our investigation is continuing, the problem appears to be isolated to a small minority of owners of a particular type of box, which in turn represents about 5 per cent of all Sky+ boxes. After reviewing call centre data and customer feedback, it appears that in the vast majority of cases the boxes concerned have had their hard disk drive changed for a non-standard component.

While our investigation continues, we are reviewing whether to reverse the software update to provide a short-term fix for the affected boxes. We’ll consider longer-term steps once we’ve confirmed the scope of the problem.

Featured, Hardware

Amazon Logo

Finally, after a couple month of beta, Amazon have launched their version of a Content Deliver Network, or CDN.

For those that don’t know, a CDN is a series of “edge” servers which host a copy of a central file and delivers the version of the file which is closest to the user which theoretically makes everything a little faster.

I works alongside S3, amazons storage network, with your S3 bucket holding the original file. This S3 bucket can be assigned an Amazon URL (123xyz.cloudfront.net) or you can CNAME from your own domain, and replicates through several edge locations basically caching your file for speedier delivery to your users.

The network has a couple of problems, unlike Limelight and the like, Cloudfront caches a copy of your file for an unspecified period of time, so isn’t useful for delivering content which changes often. It also has a limited number of edge locations, for now, meaning that - especially for those in the far east and Australia - the nearest location to you may not be much closer than the source.

For those in Europe and North America however, coverage is much better, meaning that for static files (such as the images in this post) someone in Germany will be receiving a different version of the file to sommeone in New York and different again to someone in San Francisco. This means that page load for all three of these users will be less than through the hosting this site is primarily on - good times.

The pricing is based on the now famous Amazon PAYG formula.

Pricing

Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee.

United States Edge Locations

Data Transfer
$0.170 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.090 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Requests
$0.010 per 10,000 GET requests

European Edge Locations

Data Transfer
$0.170 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.090 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Requests
$0.012 per 10,000 GET requests

Hong Kong Edge Locations

Data Transfer
$0.210 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.160 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.140 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.130 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Requests
$0.012 per 10,000 GET requests

Japan Edge Locations

Data Transfer
$0.221 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.168 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.147 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.137 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Requests
$0.013 per 10,000 GET requests

We charge less where our costs are less, thus some prices vary across geographic regions and are based on the edge location where your content is served. Usage tiers for data transfer are measured separately for each geographic region. The prices above are exclusive of applicable taxes, fees, or similar governmental changes, if any exists, except as otherwise noted.

Origin Server
Amazon CloudFront uses Amazon S3 as the origin server to store the original, definitive versions of your files. You will be charged separately at regular rates for Amazon S3 usage, including “origin fetches” - data transferred from Amazon S3 to edge locations.

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Instead of fighting a losing battle, the Monty Python team have decided to not only compete with the thousands of fans that upload their videos, but to do so on their terms. Monty Python have launched their own youtube channel, which features high quality versions of all their shows and sketches with the hope that these unlimited assets (which everyone seems to be sharing anyway) may lead to sales of their DVDs and other items from PythonLine, their online shop.

Now the Python guys can explain a lot better than I can, so give the following a quick watch.

Featured, Online