virgin media

Lone Anon hater claims responsibility for Pirate Bay attack

A person who claims to be a former member of the Anonymous hacker group has claimed responsibility for knocking The Pirate Bay offline for over a day.

The claim is unconfirmed but a person calling himself "Nyre" left a message on Pastebin yesterday, saying he was the person who launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on The Pirate Bay, one of the world's best-known file-sharing services. The site was back up this morning.

As for the reason Nyre claims to have launched the attack: "The Pirate Bay was a press-release Website for Anonymous." … Read more

Virgin Media launches TiVo box in U.K.

Good news, square-eyes: TiVo is back in Britain. Virgin Media launched its TiVo-powered set-top box this week, allowing your telly to access an app store and record things it thinks you'll like. Magic powers, basically.

The TiVo set-top box includes a whopping 1TB hard drive, which means you'll be able to store huge amounts of television, even in high definition. It has two tuners, with a third tuner being added in 2011.

Crave UK got a quick look at the box and it's everything we wanted: an incredible PVR with a powerful recommendation engine and a brand … Read more

Virgin Media to offer 100Mbps broadband

Virgin Media plans to roll out a broadband service that tops out at 100 megabits per second to residential customers by the end of the year.

The company said Thursday that it will use its fiber-based network to deliver the new high speeds. Virgin Media, which provides broadband, TV, phone and/or mobile phone service to roughly 4.1 million homes across the U.K., currently offers 10Mbps, 20Mbps, and 50Mbps tiers of broadband service. And soon it will be delivering 100Mbps, the company said.

The company says the 100Mbps service will allow users to download a music album in … Read more

Virgin-Universal deal may hit 'persistent' file sharers

The U.K.'s Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using information provided to it by Universal Music.

The ISP announced on Monday that it would, before Christmas, launch an all-you-can-eat music download service for its users, based on a monthly subscription fee. The tracks will all be DRM-free.

"In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network," a statement read. "This will involve implementing a range … Read more

Virgin to migrate customers onto Google Mail

Virgin Media plans to move all its home broadband customers onto the Google Mail platform, the company said on Wednesday.

Google's Web-based e-mail service is known as Google Mail in the UK and Germany, and Gmail in the rest of the world.

According to the Internet service provider, the Web-mail rollout will extend to all of its 4 million home broadband customers, but there will be a delay before it reaches everybody. While the customers will be moved off Virgin Media's existing e-mail platform, they will be able to retain their existing e-mail addresses.

The company said the rollout will be one of the largest deployments to date of Google Partner Edition Apps, which lets businesses and individual customers use Google's communication and collaboration applications under their own domain names.

"New customers signing up will get it now and we will start to roll it out to all our customers but it will take time for everyone to get it," a spokesperson for Virgin Media told ZDNet UK.

The service, which will provide each user with 7GB of e-mail storage, will be piloted by the first 20,000 new customers, Virgin Media said in a statement. The full launch to all new customers will follow "shortly," the company said, after which existing customers will be migrated across to the new service. They will be able to keep their existing @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com, or @virgin.net e-mail addresses, or sign up for new @virginmedia.com e-mail addresses. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 702: Design to annoy

Yes, Microsoft has come clean and admitted that it designs User Account Control, those little pop-ups that happen when you install software for instance, which were in fact designed to annoy you. They hoped it would make software better. We don't think it worked. Also, Rafe gets Blockblustery, and we take on Virgin Media's load of bollocks. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 702

Psystar’s OpenMac Apple clone is close to a cease and desist order http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/14/ psystars-openmac-clone-is-close-to-a-cease-and-desist-order/ http://www.macrumors.com/2008/04/14/ openmac-promises-399-headless-mac-but-not-from-apple/

Vista’s UAC security … Read more

Episode 620: Not safe for trademark

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BBC's iPlayer to launch in late July, Mac and Vista support on the way

The BBC's iPlayer will be making it's official, public beta debut July 27 to U.K. residents who are legal TV license holders--a yearly taxation system that pays for TV ownership and usage. The small desktop software client allows users to download and view episodes or entire series of BBC television programming on their PCs.

In addition to launching the Windows client, the BBC will also be rolling out integration of the iPlayer to the BBC's U.K. site, and later to YouTube. The team behind it is also working on versions of the iPlayer client … Read more