I'm a little scared it'll be too packed to reach the bar. Other than that, should be fun!

Indeed. Everyone knows s(s(0)) + s(s(0)) = s(s(s(s(0)))).

Thanks for pointing out the Blam Blam Blam stream Russell. I'm a little disappointed some of the songs were cut (Call for Help, Doctor Who off the top of my head). Do you know if there's any chance this stuff will see greater release? Should I feel bad about "archiving" the stream? Will there be some way I can pay for the tracks? Who do I ask?

Does John's customer have DomainKeys installed/enabled on the mail server? Yahoo invented DK, and they rely on it extensively. In my experience, it's the number one reason why mail ends up in Yahoo's bulk mail folder. It's also a bit of a pain to set up, certainly more complicated than something like SPF (which you should also have), but also far more useful, from what I've seen anyway.

The fact of the matter is, these days, you can't just set up your A and MX records, slap an MTA on your box and expect big mail providers to accept your mail; that's just a consequence of the fact that 80% of unfiltered mail received is spam. This isn't the 90s - running a mail server involves being on top of industry best practices, constantly monitoring for false spam database reports, installing the anti-spam flavour-of-the-month technology (DK, SPF, LMAP, SID, SSP, whatever), etc., etc.

All I know is that if Oswald did it, then he was an exceptionally fine marksman.

He was. Sharpshooter class rifle weapon qualification badge from his military service.

I can envision a lot of confused viewers, especially around Cyberwoman and the finale...

Indeed:

"Who is this 'Jack' fellow, and why does he have an amputated hand in a jar? Why can't he be killed? What does he mean he's died before? This show is crap!"

And with the next season of Doctor Who things are likely to become even more confusing (although I'm betting Jack'll only crossover in the final quarter of the season/finale).

Reece: The limit is, as Sam F pointed out, 700MB, not 400. This is Telecom's "fair use" policy, and it seems seperate from their "traffic management" policy.

Evidence: http://jetstream.xtra.co.nz/xtratools/1,8752,205451-204362,00.html

'traffic shaping' is a slippery slope - and a steep one at that - basically a top where all packets are created equal and a bottom where you ISP decides which ones they like.

I'm not sure how to state my position on this. Should I say that I don't believe the slope is slippery, nor steep? Or should I say I think that the slope is very, very long? Or should I say that I don't really think there's much of a slope? Or should I say that going from what Telecom is shaping now to actual VOIP blocking would be more like falling down a cliff? Probably all of the above.

Essentially, I don't think that Telecom's current shaping policy implies more rigorous shaping policies in the future. Nor do I believe that more rigorous shaping policies in the future imply that Telecom will adopt unfair practices. I think each devolution on the 'slope' is less likely than the last.

And most of all, I think that all of this is a bad way to argue against what Telecom is doing. If you don't like their traffic shaping (and, really, who does?) then it should be enough to simply state the reasons why: we'd prefer to tell Telecom what we want to do with our bandwidth and if they don't like it they can sod off. I don't think it's honest to say you don't like X because X might lead to Y which might lead to Z, and Z is really really bad!

I'm a regular P2P user, and I signed up for the Go Large plan knowing that Telecom was going to be quite strict with the shaping on this plan.

Major ISPs throughout the world have been shaping peer to peer downloads for quite some time. Most of the protocols favoured by the technically competent have had obfuscation/encryption implemented for long enough that it's a viable option. I'm using it, and not seeing any shaping at all. And it's pretty well known amongst heavy downloaders that that's what you do to avoid shaping, so, Telecom's policy in this area is punishing anyone but the heaviest users.

As far as I'm aware, Skype has similar obfuscation implemented and enabled as part of its protocol. It has a reputation for being notoriously hard to block and shape. And really, that's certainly in Skype's interest - they know that the biggest ISPs are often owned by the same people who own the infrastructure.

So, what I'd like to ask Simon: is Telecom actually blocking Skype, right now? Or is the press release just motivated by the fact that they're blocking other forms of peer to peer communications? I don't see Skype on the list of shaped applications, so is it just the fact that, as the press release says, "they are able to" block applications that has us worried? And if they're not blocking Skype now, isn't it a bit of a slippery slope argument to say that blocking BT, ED2k, etc., will lead to blocking VOIP?

I mean, I agree that network neutrality is very important. I just don't see (ineffective) P2P shaping as particularly threatening to neutrality - yet.