Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been urged to halt the extradition to the US of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.

Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, faces up to 70 years in prison if found guilty in the US of breaking into military computers.

Supporters held a vigil and delivered a letter to Downing Street calling for him to be tried in the UK instead.

Campaigners said the fact that Mr McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome should be taken into account.

Decision due

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon trespassed on networks owned by Nasa, the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Defense in 2001 and 2002.

Despite taking his appeal to the House of Lords last year, he lost a six-year legal battle to avoid extradition.

The European Court of Human Rights also declined to back Mr McKinnon’s case against extradition.

A decision on his proposed extradition is expected at a High Court hearing on 20 January.

Article continues here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7768394.stm

Virgin Media looks set to launch its 50Mb broadband on December 15 after inviting journalists to a mystery event.

Although the company has thus far declined to give a firm date for the launch of its 50Mb service, it has always maintained that it would be before the end of the year.

Now, journalists have been told to ‘hold the date’ on December 15 – where the company will almost certainly show off the fastest broadband in the UK.

Preparation

The fibre optic service will speed past everything currently available – and Virgin Media has been working towards the launch for months.

The company has already publicised the failure of online speed testers to cope with the speed of ultra-fast broadband in the run up to the launch, after public trials of the service in Kent showed up major discrepancies.

The 50Mb modem has already been unveiled, with TechRadar bringing you the first pictures, and we’ll make sure that you are updated as the service launches across the UK.

Unsuprisingly, a spokesperson for the company refused to comment on our speculation.

By Patrick Goss

News source: TechRadar.com

Note: Look’s like Patrick can’t spell.

YouTube rolled out an exciting change to all of its users today, by expanding the width of their videos to widescreen (16:9), from the previous standard format (4:3), making the player 960 pixels wide.

A post, in the YouTube Blog, confirmed that all previous 4:3 aspect ratio videos will all still be watchable, and play just fine. This highly anticipated update to go widescreen comes as a surprise to many, as some dislike the change to the player going widescreen, where most think the change was needed to the aging player. This update could be the start of more changes to come, after YouTube announced it will be selling keyword searches to users and businesses.

News source: Neowin.net

Virgin Media will double the number of hours it throttles the bandwidth of customers who hammer its network day and night, changes to its traffic management policy have revealed.

The tightened regime means that between 10am and 3pm subscribers to its “M”, “L” and “XL” packages will have their connection throttled for five hours if they download more than their full speed ration.

The decision follows recent regional testing of extended restrictions in London and the North West. Previously the brakes were only slammed on for five hours if limits were exceeded at any point between 4pm and 9pm.

Now, “M” customers who bust 900MB during the day will have their theoretical maximum download halved from 2Mbit/s to 1Mbit/s. “L” and “XL” users’ usual headline speeds of 10MBit/s and 20MBit/s will be slowed by three quarters if they break daytime download limits of 2400MB and 6000MB respectively.

Full article and traffic management policy here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/virgin_media_daytime_restrictions/

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett has attacked the principle of net neutrality, whereby internet service providers do not interfere with or degrade the speed at which content is delivered from websites to consumers, branding it as “b****cks”.

Berkett’s cable operator ranks as the second largest internet service provider in the UK with approximately 3.6m customers.

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, Berkett said that “this net neutrality thing is a load of b****cks”, and revealed that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster than others.

Feeding into the debate between internet service providers and the BBC over iPlayer, Berkett even warned that public service broadcasters who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin’s subscriber base would end up in “bus lanes”, effectively having their content delivered to consumers at a lower speed.

Thus far, Ofcom has made little comment on the network neutrality debate. In 2007, long before the current iPlayer discussions, the then Ofcom policy chief Douglas Scott indicated that the regulator planned a “hands off” approach to the issue. Scott has since departed the regulator for Channel 4.

News source: Digital Spy

Personally I think this guy is talking b****cks himself and should shut the hell up and get his companies house in order before bashing the main founding principals of the internet.

Thousands of Virgin Media customers have had their broadband disconnected following problems with a routine maintenance procedure.

The problem hit customers nationwide on Monday night, with some customers re-connected within 10 minutes, while others had to wait several hours.

Virgin Media has said it is does not know how many of its 3.6 million broadband customers were hit overall.

A spokesman said Virgin was working to reconnect the remaining “few thousand”.

The problem was caused when the routine maintenance caused Virgin’s set-top boxes and modems to lose their “leased” IP address, the unique number that identifies them on the internet.

The set-top boxes and modems automatically attempted to “renew” the lease, but demand for potentially hundreds of thousands of new IP addresses hit Virgin’s own routers which handle the requests.

The problem hit not just broadband connections, but also the firm’s on demand and interactive services, which are delivered over the net.

A spokesman for Virgin Media advised customers to re-start their modems and set-top boxes.

He added: “Most of the problems occurred in the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands and the majority of affected customers regained their service shortly after midnight.

“Our engineers are currently working to restore the few remaining connections as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Virgin said it had not yet identified the problem during the maintenance which had caused the issue.

News source: BBC News

The government is to draw up a battle plan on the best way to roll out next-generation broadband networks.

It will share best practice from high-speed pilots around the UK as well as lay out the business case for future investment in high-speed networks.

The agreement came out of a broadband summit chaired by Competitiveness Minister Stephen Timms.

Mr Timms said ultra-fast broadband would be a key technology for Britain.

He welcomed Virgin Media’s announcement that it will be launching a 50Mbps (megabits per second) broadband service in the UK in 2008.

“This is an important stride towards full next-generation access in the UK which I’m sure others will want to match,” he said.

Full article on BBC Technology News

Virgin Media has begun upgrading exchanges to 20MB today.

According to several members at Cable Forum the upgrades have begun today and will continue throughout a range of areas until the end of summer.

Virgin has provided a schedule which is fairly blank at the moment.

Have you been upgraded? Please leave a comment.

News soruce: Neowin.net

Note: I have rebooted my cable modem and appear to be getting the 20Mb service and I’m in the Farnborough (GU14) area, so anyone in the GU14 and immediate area should be able to receive this service.