Broadband speed con – it’s all our fault

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Dear readers of PC Pro, we owe you an apology. For many a year now we’ve been banging on about the fantasy “up to” speeds advertised by Britain’s broadband providers, and all along you didn’t really give a monkeys.

Despite buying broadband-themed issues of the magazine in record numbers, and filling our comments sections with gripes about your pitiful connection speeds, you never really cared that the “up to 24Mbits/sec” line you were sold was denying you access to publicly funded services such as the iPlayer or ruining your business, did you?

At least that’s what our spine-free advertising watchdogs are claiming. The consultation document released by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) shows remarkable disdain for the broadband public; a grudging irritation that they’ve been forced to even consider this issue after years of outright advertising abuse by Britain’s ISPs.

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What is the speed of encryption?

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Not a question I ever thought I would find myself asking, nor to be fair finding myself intrigued by the answer. Not even if we got into the hypothetical territory of quantum encryption where those wearing the white coats and bemused expressions will happily tell you that every possible encryption key can be tested simultaneously, resulting in encryption, and of course decryption, before you can stifle the yawn.

However, perhaps it is because it is a slow news day or I the fact that I need to get something geeky into my system following the mind-numbing experience that is shopping at Tesco, but a press release from Protegrity Corporation and Teradata managed to get me considering the speed of encryption question.

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