Now Orange (new owners of Wanadoo) are offering free broadband. It’s essentially the same setup as TalkTalk but more expensive and with a more limited service. If you have a £30 a month mobile contract with Orange you get free broadband with 2GB transfer a month. Although that isn’t as good as £20.99 a month and 40GB that TalkTalk give you, you do still get the £30 a month mobile phone contract so it could still be better for many people.

OF course the advert should be banned for the same reason the TalkTalk advert was banned in theory. Or more correctly, the TalkTalk one should be unbanned…

But only 2GB a month?

After picking up a cheap blueprint (a DRMed copy of course) I am now an arms manufacturer and dealer in EVE Online.

I read that making money from selling self-manufactured items was difficult without Production Efficiency skill of 5 and I’m managing with 3. Although I’m not buying all the raw materials though. I buy the Tritanium which I needs loads of and mine the Nocxium myself. I think if I had to pay for the Nocxium then I’d be screwed…

And remember to get your free 14 day EVE Online trial.

One of the coolest features (well reasonably cool but practical) features of Windows Media Center is the ability to go to MSN TV and remotely set programs to record.

Unfortunately it’s not available in the UK (in fact I don’t think it’s available outside of North America). There is a less than ideal workaround though. You can run Media Center through remote access. You can’t play videos but the interface works well enough to set programs to record.

I’m assuming it will be available in other countries eventually.

It turns out that ASP.NET might not suck after all. Atlas for ASP.NET is a toolkit for doing AJAXy stuff.

Well in fact it is quite a bit more than that. It has many features of the Google Web Toolkit (except in ASP.NET instead of Java) including serializing server side objects for use client side use. Interesting it also has a lot in common with Backbase. It allows you to embed some nifty XML to define a user interface which is then interpreted by the Javascript to render real (X)HTML.

The final irony is that it’s pretty much free. Since it’s .NET, to really use it you need Visual Studio, but the Atlas part itself is free and should be perfectly usable with the Express version of the Visual Studio projects.

Considering the attention that Digital Rights Management is getting these days I found it funny that DRM is actually present within EVE Online.

To build things in EVE you use blueprints. There are originals which can make any number of items and copies which are licensed and only make a certain amount. Certain blueprints are very rare and this way the players controlling them can keep them rare.

Apparently Craig Charles was filmed smocking crack in a taxi. The most annoying aspect is the tabloids used headlines referring to him as a Coronation Street star.

Surely some clever Red Dwarf pun wouldn’t have been that difficult to come up with.

Since I joined the EVE Online affiliate scheme I figured I’d create one of my mini-themes for EVE. It has to be my favourite so far :D

The important part of the theme is the flash banner (it only appears on the actual post pages). Clicking this takes you to a free 14 day trial so you can try EVE out. Warning, it can become addictive very quickly!

EVE, EVE Online, MMORPG

Whether Windows Media Center can create video DVDs (that is DVDs that will play in a normal DVD player and not just a computer (or certain “posh” ones)) is a little hit and miss, mainly because of the complicated OEM nature of MCE. If you buy a media center PC from a shop you’re probably okay. If you buy the OEM version of MCE and install it yourself you’re probably out of luck. You see, MCE can’t do it by itself, it requires an extra piece of software called “Sonic” something. If you buy the normal OEM version of MCE you don’t get it - you have to buy the three pack which contains an “extras” disk. If you do buy the Sonic software separately (available from Sonic.com) it does work fine - albeit apparently not from the MCE interface. There is the distinct possibility I did something wrong so I’ll keep fiddling with it.

Well the comments by people having problems with TalkTalk are still trickling in and I’ve still yet to experience any of them. Although it does seem the biggest problem is customer service which I haven’t had reason to encounter yet.

I recently asked a football loving friend what would happen if the teams were tied at the end of the group stages. I mean completely tied (i.e. if there were no goals for instance). He didn’t know. Well unfrtounately the answer is that acomittee draws lots to decide who goes through.

Well in an interesting twist if England beat Sweden 2-0 and Trinidad & Tobago beat Paraguay 1-0, then lots will be drawn to decide which of Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago go though. Group B after such a result would be:

Team	Pts	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
England	9	3	3	0	0	5	0	+5
Sweden	4	3	1	1	1	1	2	-1
Trinidad and Tobago	4	3	1	1	1	1	2	-1
Paraguay	0	3	0	0	3	0	3	-3

If each of the teams in those matches scores the same number of goals in excess of those numbers the same result occurs (e.g. England 4-2 Sweden, Trinidad & Tobago 3-2 Paraguay.