Virgin Media…

…appear to be tampering with network packets if they detect you are using a router on your network.

…are monitoring and policing the data you send through your internet connection and have begin sending threatening letters to it’s customers on behalf of the record industry; entirely of their own volition.

…believe that net neutrality is, “a load of bollocks“.

…are participating in Phorm (see here for info about Phorm).

We should boycott them. Sadly, it’s our only option as consumers. Fortunately, it’s also the language shoddy, money-grabbing companies like Virgin Media understand.

Update: The ASA have upheld complaints that advertised claims about Virgin Media’s broadband speeds are misleading.

Update: Since BT are now also on the bandwagon, my advice to anyone looking for an internet connection would be to get a BT phone line but go with 3rd party broadband. I’m currently with Be and I can definitely recommend them.

16th June, 2008 — computing,rants — no comments

When I started developing for GNU/Linux I’d only ever come across automake and autoconf when I’d run a few ./configure scripts over the years. My knowledge of them was fairly minimal and rather than learn all about them for the sake of writing a few small programs, I decided I needed a general-purpose Makefile.

The requirements were simple. It had to be easy to configure for whatever kind of project I was currently working on and It had to be fully featured. I immediately started scouring the web for one, expecting to find hundreds, and was fairly surprised when I couldn’t find any! So I decided to put together a simple general-purpose Makefile of my own.

Many revisions and a complete rewrite later, I have something that other people might find useful, so I thought I’d share it.

14th June, 2008 — computing — no comments