Study: Internet will slow by 2010

If you have a fast broadband Internet connection, enjoy it while it's still fast. According to a study by Nemertes Research, video and interactive web sites will begin to overwhelm Internet service providers as early as 2010.

"Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it's back to the bad old days of dial-up," Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson told USA Today. "The cool stuff that you'll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won't do it."

According to the report, cable and phone companies, which provide 94% of the United States' broadband access, must invest about $55 billion to upgrade their networks to cope with the coming bottleneck. That is far more than planned, says Nemertes.

The biggest upgrades will need to be made in upstream data capacity. Until recently, the web was mainly read-only, and service providers built their networks around downloading. But with the explosion of video and photo sharing, self publishing (blogging, etc.), and bandwidth-intensive activities like video conferencing, networks will begin to feel the strain on the upstream end.

"Two years ago, nobody knew what YouTube was," said Johnson. "Now, it's generating 27 petabytes of data per month."

Much of the cost of upgrading will be in installation of higher-capacity lines, according to the Nemertes study. Verizon's new fiber optic service, FiOS, which reaches 1.3 million users in the US (myself included) is a start, but the study implies that the upgrade may not be happening fast enough to stave off an impending bandwidth crunch.

The news was reproduced from ReadWriteWeb

Singapore lifts ban on Mass Effect game

It’s pretty silly for Singapore to ban the game Mass Effect just because it contains some lesbian sex scenes. MDA was obviously only looking at the sexual content of Mass Effect and possibly also did not like the occasional use of the word “bastard” and at least one aggressive use of the word “bitch”. Thank goodness, they lifted the ban and allowed it to be released after all under an M18 rating. Adults like me who love gaming can finally get the originals from the stores in Singapore and need not worry about breaking the law by downloading it secretly from the internet. The article below was reproduced from Straits Times.

MDA lifts ban on game with same-sex love scene
By Leung Wai-Leng

In a reversal of its earlier decision, the Media Development Authority (MDA) has decided to allow role-playing game Mass Effect to be released here under an M18 rating.

The Board of Film Censors (BFC) said in a statement on Friday evening that it will selectively use games ratings to 'enable highly anticipated games to be launched in Singapore' until it puts in place a games classification system in January.

The statement said that 'this will allow such games to enter the market with immediacy and give the industry and members of the public a better understanding of the benefits of the proposed games classification system'.

Mass Effect was banned earlier for containing a same-sex love scene, making Singapore the only country to disallow its sale. It caused a furore among local and international gamers.

Other games with graphic violence such as popular action game Assassin's Creed - released this week - was allowed on store shelves after distributors affixed a consumer advisory label declaring the game 'Not to be sold to young children'.