Okay, I think the iPlayer is a bad thing. It's Windoze only, it's all DRM'd up which given the recent issues with Google videos scares anyone sensible. Basically IMHO it's a bad investment of my license fee.

All that said... the UK papers ( http://www.last100.com/2007/08/13/iplay ... y-uk-isps/ ) are reporting that the ISPs want a nice little payment from the Beeb to pay for the extra bandwidth it is going to use.

What a bunch of sharks!
Net neutrality campaign for the UK required ASAP, if you ask me.

Okay, here goes, bandwidth use is what causes people to buy the bigger packages from ISPs, making them more money. So the reality as I see it is that this is not about the bandwidth.
It's about setting the precedent, that ISPs want to get away with charging content providers to ensure that their content makes it to us fast. The ISPs reportedly are already starting to throttle certain content back. ( ... Channel4’s peer-to-peer catch-up service was already being penalized by ‘packet shaping’ )

Now, I might actually want that Channel4 content and pay for an ISP to serve me that conent as fast as it can. I might want content from a radical website that thinks hey ISPs are all evil. Should the ISPs have the right to throttle that? What about my Judo content? Do I have to pay even more to get that to people who want it?

Who gets to decide what content gets precedence? What criteria are going to decide what gets the precedence?

Here is a scenario to consider...
What is an ISP is owned by a someone who supports say the BNP political party?
That owner starts throttling all the websites of say Labour and the Conservatives, etc. Whilst of course giving precedence to the BNP site.

Is that right?

I like my web equal, lets keep it that way.
It is imbalanced enough as it is, without allowing ISPs start forcing content providers to pay for precedence. I hate the iPlayer, get cross platform BBC!!! And how about OPEN!! But BBC fight this one hard! Political types fight this one hard!


Maybe http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ will pick up and run with this one. Or the EFF ( http://www.eff.org/ ) http://www.savetheinternet.com/ will hopefully?


UPDATE 14 AUgust 2007:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/14 ... ed_in_uk/1 - Bit-tech discuss it also
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14 ... _analysis/ as does the register

Well, hi all. The weekend is drawing to a close and I achieved very little! Okay I achieved a little, I have got to get my proverbial "a" into "g'.

I have a huge (and I mean HUGE!!) list of things to do. And I know I need to add more and more to it. The problem is I am just going day to day and not getting time and energy to commit to anything.

Lots of projects to get into, and not getting into them. So GTD time?
Or perhaps Get Anything Done.

I think I will have to get a nice big wall year planner and start doing some scheduling. That said, leave it to 2008 and a shiny new planner?
What procrastination? ;)

Lance

Last Man Standing Last Man Standing is officially my favourite reality TV show to date.

Unlike most reality TV shows, these guys are out there really doing the do!
They go on a world tour and participate in some of the maddest sporting events you can imagine.

I recommend it to anyone.

Check it out on iPlayer... assuming of course you can.
I can't being a Mac User! Hey BBC how about that, people who are not using Windoze! Grr....

Those of you who read my www.judocaoch.com/blog blog will know that for the past three years I have been attending the University of Bath and doing a foundation degree in sport.

Well, I have completed the programme as of today!!
A few short hours ago i sent in my final assignment officially completing my three year course! I now can say that I have a University education.

Graduation is not till December, but I now have that degree my parents said I should get immediately after leaving school. Which was great advice I wish I had listened to way back then.

That said... the reason that I didn't go to Uni (other than being thick) was that I wanted to be a Judoka. And the reason I have completed this course is because I am a Judoka.

Anyway... WOOT to me!!! I am an educated person finally, sorry it took so long Mum & Dad. ;)

As I have just blogged over on www.judocoach.com/blog I had a really interesting lecture today on a video analysis project for Judo. Which if implemented would generate some amazing data.

Discussing the research done to date, it became clear that my e-Judo project needs reviving as I believe it could be really powerful.

I'd like to see it mature into a tool to provide players and coaches of Judo the ability to get an accurate simulation of what an opponent might do in a fight. We know a fair amount about the structure of a fight and about the content of the actios, which is pretty linear and predictable. So simulating it is a matter of analyzing the data and working out the best way to apply that data to to the stages in the segments of a Judo fight.

So when I get back home, I suspect I shall be taking a long look at the e-judo software and trying to progress it along a bit.

If a notation system like Kat's was in use, it would be amazing and it would make my life much easier. As I said to her after the lecture, my research last year at the commonwealths and so forth is all leading towards my e-judo software. Basically the problem as I see it is that there is not enough data available to make an accurate model of Judo...yet! So her system along with some smart coding would get us a long way down that path.

Stay tuned!