It looks like we might finally get some move­ment on broad­band advert­ising in the UK. Ofcom, the tele­coms watch­dog, has made it clear that they con­sider many broad­band adverts mis­lead­ing, and they want to see changes next year.

This is great news, as far as it goes, but I can’t help noti­cing that they seem to be con­cern­ing them­selves solely with line-​​speed, and ignor­ing the much lar­ger issue of traffic-​​shaping and “acceptable-​​use policies.”

The South West Trains FAQ tells me whether I can expect to be able to access the net on their trains any time this decade:

Q: Does South West Trains have plans to intro­duce Wire­less Inter­net (WiFi) cap­ab­il­ity on its trains? This would be a wel­come addition.

A: Most train com­pan­ies are con­sid­er­ing the feas­ib­il­ity of intro­du­cing WiFi. It is not easy, as some early adop­ters have found. We need to ensure that tun­nels, embank­ments and the electro-​​magnetic envir­on­ment in gen­eral don’t affect inter­net access and that we can meet pas­sen­ger demand. We are keen to offer WiFi, but only when we are con­fid­ent in the suc­cess of our delivery.

Or the short version:

A: No.

I wrote, last week, about the state of broad­band advert­ising in the UK. Well, it looks like it’s not much bet­ter in the States, although over there, at least, com­pan­ies are being called to account for their lies.

Ars is report­ing that Ver­i­zon has been slapped with a pretty hefty fine for their not-​​so-​​unlimited broad­band pack­age. Here’s hop­ing that the trend crosses the Atlantic, and that band­width pro­viders in this coun­try start to be forced to advert­ise the product they actu­ally sell (or sell the product they advert­ise; I don’t care which.)

I’m glad to see that ofcom — the tele­coms reg­u­lator in the UK — had star­ted to ask broad­band pro­viders about their mis­lead­ing advert­ising, I just don’t think they’re going nearly far enough. They’re ask­ing the com­pan­ies to think about ways they can bet­ter inform cus­tom­ers about the band­width they’re likely to get. Well, I guess that’s bet­ter than noth­ing, but how about this instead; how about telling isps that they can no longer advert­ise their product based on some the­or­et­ical max­imum band­width that no user will actu­ally ever achieve? How about for­cing them to spe­cify a min­imum band­width pro­vi­sion that they guar­an­tee every user will actu­ally get? Can you ima­gine if food man­u­fac­tur­ers only had to tell you the the­or­et­ical max­imum amount of food that the pack­aging could con­tain, rather than what was actu­ally in there? No one would stand for that at all, but it’s exacty what broad­band oper­at­ors are cur­rently get­ting away with.

But, shock­ing though that is, I actu­ally don’t think it’s the worst thing about broad­band advert­ising in the UK. No, that hon­our goes to the ubi­quit­ous claims of “unlim­ited” broad­band — claims which are, by and large, lies.

There are a couple of ISPs that actu­ally mean it when they say “unlim­ited” (UKFSN and Be spring to mind,) but the vast major­ity of them enforce an “accept­able use policy,” which lim­its the amount you’re allowed to use the ser­vice. I hon­estly don’t under­stand how they get away with it. They make claims in their advert­ising that are quite clearly con­tra­dicted by their policies and practices.

Worse yet, these accept­able use policies are rarely expli­cit about how much band­width is too much, or what the isp will do about it if you exceed that limit; they’re a vague policy that the isp is free to decide on a case by case basis who is exceed­ing their usage limit and apply whatever sanc­tions they want — usu­ally a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in con­nec­tion speed. I far as I can see there is no earthly way that can be hon­estly squared with the claim that the ser­vice is “unlimited.”

Update 15÷10÷07: Looks like I was unne­ces­sar­ily easy on Be. Their accept­able use policy states:

If it’s felt that any Be member’s Inter­net activ­it­ies are so excess­ive that other mem­bers are det­ri­ment­ally affected, Be may give the mem­ber gen­er­at­ing the excess­ive web traffic a writ­ten warn­ing (by email or oth­er­wise). In extreme cir­cum­stances, should the levels of activ­ity not imme­di­ately decrease after the warn­ing, Be may ter­min­ate that member’s services.

So, like most of the oth­ers, they’re say­ing “if you use too much band­width we’ll ter­min­ate your con­tract.” Not their unwill­ing­ness to say what “too much band­width” actu­ally is. That’s exactly the sort of inform­a­tion they should be leg­ally required to dis­close in their advert­ising (or at least in their con­tract,) not just allowed to make up as they go along.

Both PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins have been scammed into giv­ing inter­views for a cre­ation­ist pro­pa­ganda movie. When they were approached, the movie was appar­ently titled Cross­roads, and had the fol­low­ing synopsis

It’s been the cent­ral ques­tion of human­ity through­out the ages: How in the world did we get here? In 1859 Charles Dar­win provided the answer in his land­mark book, “The Ori­gin of Spe­cies.” In the cen­tury and a half since, bio­lo­gists, geo­lo­gists, phys­i­cists, astro­nomers and philo­soph­ers have con­trib­uted a vast amount of research and data in sup­port of Darwin’s idea. And yet, mil­lions of Chris­ti­ans, Muslims, Jews and other people of faith believe in a lit­eral inter­pret­a­tion that humans were craf­ted by the hand of God. This con­flict between sci­ence and reli­gion has unleashed pas­sions in school board meet­ings, courtrooms and town halls across Amer­ica and beyond.

Now that the movie is ready for release we dis­cover that it’s actu­ally titled Expelled: No Intel­li­gence Allowed and that it’s the usual reli­gious attack on sci­ence, com­bined with the now famil­iar claim that the only reason any­one believes in “Dar­win­ism” is that there’s some secret police force root­ing out the dis­sent­ers and ruin­ing their careers before they can speak out:

Unlike some other doc­u­ment­ary films, Expelled doesn’t just talk to people rep­res­ent­ing one side of the story. The film con­fronts sci­ent­ists such as Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delu­sion, influ­en­tial bio­lo­gist and athe­ist blog­ger PZ Myers and Eugenie Scott, head of the National Cen­ter for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion. The cre­at­ors of Expelled crossed the globe over a two-​​year period, inter­view­ing scores of sci­ent­ists, doc­tors, philo­soph­ers and pub­lic lead­ers. The res­ult is a start­ling rev­el­a­tion that free­dom of thought and free­dom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-​​funded high schools, uni­ver­sit­ies and research institutions.

What’s the bet­ting that their claim to not just rep­res­ent one side of the story isn’t entirely accur­ate? The way they got inter­views with at least two of their enemies doesn’t exactly demon­strate a com­mit­ment to the truth.

PZ expresses sur­prise that they felt the need to lie to him to get the inter­view; after all, he’s not exactly known for being shy about arguing with the faith­ful. I’m temp­ted to sug­gest that the cre­ation­ists, and espe­cially their well oiled PR machine, have got so used to lying whenever sci­ence is so much as men­tioned, that they just for­got there was any other way to com­mu­nic­ate. Actu­ally, though, I sus­pect they had good reas­ons to lie. PZ might have been will­ing to show up if he’d known the real reason for the inter­view, but he’d also have been much less will­ing to be led in the inter­view, much more on his guard and much less likely to acci­dent­ally say some­thing that could be used to make him look bad. But quite aside from that, I just don’t think PZ was their main event. It’s no insult to the man — reg­u­lar read­ers will know I have noth­ing but respect for him — but to the cre­ation­ists he’s a bonus item; they were after Dawkins, who’s well known for not debat­ing, or giv­ing inter­views to creationists.

It’ll be inter­est­ing to see what the movie’s like; I doubt it’ll get a cinema release in the UK, but I’m sure I’ll man­age to track it down some­how. I don’t hold out any hope that any of the sci­ent­ists’ inter­views will have been used com­plete, and the under­hand method they used to to get them doesn’t allow me to believe that even the spirit of what they said will be left intact, but it might at least be good com­edy to see just how ter­ribly their words have been twisted.

Noth­ing to add to this (except that this is exactly the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from Sal Cor­dova,) just read this. How can these people claim to be mor­ally super­ior to us Athe­ists? Really?