Poor Shak, hope he is feeling better soon. I missed his Apple fanboy enthusiasm

You need to sort out Henry's audio. It sounded like he was working in a server room and there was a lot of background noises too.

What no chapters this week

re. Packet Shaping.

I see this as a very bad thing. I pay for a service and expect to receive that level of service at all times. Today it is peer-to-peer and torrents but what will it be in the future? If we are really going to move to cloud computing, if iPlayer and the like are to become the norm, if online on demand gaming is to take off, then we must have an infrastructure and services that are capable of supporting them.

re. VMWare Fusion

As a recent Apple convert, and as someone who is still in the process of switching, I have found it invaluable. Unity mode is awesome and provides seamless integration. I am looking forward to v3, is that wrong?

Henry actually has the best gear amongst us….but he forgot to switch his mic on and spent half an hour trying to get it all working. DOH! Made me chuckle.

Bugger. I did all the chapters as normal in Garageband – no idea why they didn't come across properly. I'll check tonight and upload a new version.

So annoying as I really like the chapters for skipping through Chris when he's banging on about Windows or competition

Agreed. I still think we'll move to a model of paying £x for basic broadband. Want online gaming, add £w. Music streaming, add £x. Video over IP – £y etc etc. Want all that and also no packet shaping – add all that together and double it. Our infrastructure doesn't cope now if we're being honest, hence the packet shaping.

I'd love to see how fast the interweb's would be if, just for one day, there was zero peer to peer torrenting or newsgroup downloads.

You're right tamiaras – I was on overtime in the server room. It's the only way to get paid to appear on digitaloutbox.
Didn't switch on my mic? Half an hour trying to get it working? I wouldn't be so inept. Don't listen to Ian…

Tam – thanks again for the heads up on this. Turns out there is a bug in Snow Leopard with Garageband – an ampersand in a chapter title can stop chapters being written to the file – http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3020

I've re-uploaded the file so anyone still to download will get the chapters. Something for me to keep an eye on while I await a patch from Apple.

Although I'm with you Tam on the packet shaping front, I do see it as inevitable to some extent whilst we have a network with such high levels of contention across the board. A free for all has already proved to be impossible to sustain, with the connections of many being unfairly affected by the actions of a few.

ISPs are having to react to a rapidly changing market and they aren't all coping very well. They were all set up for pretty basic levels of email/web browsing, with the occasional user who downloaded the odd video/game. However, we now see even basic users utilising great services such as iPlayer, 4OD and Spotify as well as uploading tonnes of content to social sites. The casual user today is probably consuming as much data as the hardcore user of yesterday.

So, should we just have a free for all and everyone fight it out for their share of the bandwidth – or should certain time-critical net traffic be prioritised (e.g. online gaming, live video/radio streams)?

In many ways, a well managed packet shaping system on your ISP should actually benefit you – but I think packet shaping should be used as a temporary fix to the larger problem of bringing the contention ration of users down to a far far more realistic level. I have a fear that it won't be used like this however and will instead be used as a solution.

As I said on the podcast, I would like to understand where all the money everyone pays for transfer goes and why sending a packet of information down a pipe that already exists costs quite as much as is does.

Henry has the best gear?? Are you kidding? Surely my “Rock Band Microphone” can't be outdone?

You mean to tell me that our Apple Tablet story would have been different if Shak had been around?

Although I'm with you Tam on the packet shaping front, I do see it as inevitable to some extent whilst we have a network with such high levels of contention across the board. A free for all has already proved to be impossible to sustain, with the connections of many being unfairly affected by the actions of a few.

ISPs are having to react to a rapidly changing market and they aren't all coping very well. They were all set up for pretty basic levels of email/web browsing, with the occasional user who downloaded the odd video/game. However, we now see even basic users utilising great services such as iPlayer, 4OD and Spotify as well as uploading tonnes of content to social sites. The casual user today is probably consuming as much data as the hardcore user of yesterday.

So, should we just have a free for all and everyone fight it out for their share of the bandwidth – or should certain time-critical net traffic be prioritised (e.g. online gaming, live video/radio streams)?

In many ways, a well managed packet shaping system on your ISP should actually benefit you – but I think packet shaping should be used as a temporary fix to the larger problem of bringing the contention ration of users down to a far far more realistic level. I have a fear that it won't be used like this however and will instead be used as a solution.

As I said on the podcast, I would like to understand where all the money everyone pays for transfer goes and why sending a packet of information down a pipe that already exists costs quite as much as is does.

Henry has the best gear?? Are you kidding? Surely my “Rock Band Microphone” can't be outdone?

You mean to tell me that our Apple Tablet story would have been different if Shak had been around?