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I've seen local cable companies with a bottom tier of 1 GB/month. More expensive service gets you to 50 GB/month, but that's still not a lot, especially for a multi-person residence.

http://help.cableone.net/HSD/Plans/Data%20Plans/FAQ.aspx and note that their "Elite" data tier requires you to bundle phone, cable TV, and internet. They do have periods where usage does not count towards the cap, but that's still a pain in the ass.

The Xbox 360 can stream Netflix from a Vista Premium/Ultimate PC: http://myweb.cableone.net/eluttmann04/projects/vmcNetFlix/default.htm

Two nifty things about this plugin (aside from the fact htat it actually streams extenders!)
  - It uses the license from your PC, so the extender doesn't count as another of the 4 allowed devices.
  - It uses your watch instantly queue, but it can also download movies to a cache for later playback.

Or, if you are using Vista Media Center and are affected by the broadcast flag, just download VMC Netflix and play the "Watch Instantly" NBC shows on your TV, on demand, for no additional cost above and beyond your Netflix subscription. It works with xbox 360 extenders too.

I have CableOne as well.

So far I've had pretty good luck using Bittorrent with them and I rarely hit their limits (even though they are lower than they should be IMHO).

Here is a link to their AUP: http://cableone.net/internet/cmaup.asp
If you scroll down about 3/4 of the way down the page you'll see a link to their download and upload limits (threshold limits) based on the service you have with them.

The Cable One network is designed for typical usage by a computer user seated at his or her keyboard. Computer activity resulting in excessive or sustained bandwidth consumption such as from unattended computer activity may burden the network and such usage may be restricted. It is therefore essential that you comply with the current bandwidth, data throughput, file storage and other limitations on the Services. Users must ensure their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Cable One, Inc.) an unusually large burden on the network itself. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One provisions all customers with up to at least Standard Speeds or higher. Nearly all customers will experience Extended Speeds and remain provisioned at that level. Customers who exceed threshold limits remain at Standard speeds during the enforcement period. The enforcement period begins mid-afternoon and continues until approximately midnight. For example: A "Residential" customer getting extended speeds who consumes 675 MB during the measurement period will automatically change provisioning to Standard Speeds until midnight of that day. Cable One may, without notice, modify the speed, interrupt, or prohibit such data traffic. We also collect data on customer traffic pattern usage through the use of traffic management software. The analysis is provided as broad categories of usage and enables Cable One to modify, when necessary, the amount of bandwidth you have available for any general category of use if, in Cable One's sole judgment, your bandwidth consumption is excessive generally or in any particular category. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One residential or commercial customers may not resell, share, or otherwise distribute the Services or any portion thereof to any third party without the prior written consent of Cable One, Inc. For example, you cannot provide Internet access to others through a dial up connection, host shell accounts over the Internet, provide email or news service, send a news feed or redistribute Cable One Internet service via wireless network. The CableOne.Net residential service offering is a consumer product designed for your personal use of the Internet. For example, the service does not provide the type of security, upstream performance and total downstream throughput capability typically associated with commercial use. You may not run a server in connection with the CableOne.Net residential service, nor may you provide network services to others via the CableOne.Net residential service. The CableOne.Net residential service includes personal Web Space accounts for publishing personal Web pages. Examples of prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, running servers for mail (pop3 & smtp), http, https, ftp, irc, dhcp and multi-user interactive forums. For information about commercial Internet pricing, please see http://www.cableone.net/internet

Sorry about the wall of text, that's how they formatted it. Anyway, they're saying in plain english that they don't want anyone doing anything that's not "web surfing" with their high speed connection. They don't expect you to watch VIDEO or anything, but I have a

The Cable One network is designed for typical usage by a computer user seated at his or her keyboard. Computer activity resulting in excessive or sustained bandwidth consumption such as from unattended computer activity may burden the network and such usage may be restricted. It is therefore essential that you comply with the current bandwidth, data throughput, file storage and other limitations on the Services. Users must ensure their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Cable One, Inc.) an unusually large burden on the network itself. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One provisions all customers with up to at least Standard Speeds or higher. Nearly all customers will experience Extended Speeds and remain provisioned at that level. Customers who exceed threshold limits remain at Standard speeds during the enforcement period. The enforcement period begins mid-afternoon and continues until approximately midnight. For example: A "Residential" customer getting extended speeds who consumes 675 MB during the measurement period will automatically change provisioning to Standard Speeds until midnight of that day. Cable One may, without notice, modify the speed, interrupt, or prohibit such data traffic. We also collect data on customer traffic pattern usage through the use of traffic management software. The analysis is provided as broad categories of usage and enables Cable One to modify, when necessary, the amount of bandwidth you have available for any general category of use if, in Cable One's sole judgment, your bandwidth consumption is excessive generally or in any particular category. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One residential or commercial customers may not resell, share, or otherwise distribute the Services or any portion thereof to any third party without the prior written consent of Cable One, Inc. For example, you cannot provide Internet access to others through a dial up connection, host shell accounts over the Internet, provide email or news service, send a news feed or redistribute Cable One Internet service via wireless network. The CableOne.Net residential service offering is a consumer product designed for your personal use of the Internet. For example, the service does not provide the type of security, upstream performance and total downstream throughput capability typically associated with commercial use. You may not run a server in connection with the CableOne.Net residential service, nor may you provide network services to others via the CableOne.Net residential service. The CableOne.Net residential service includes personal Web Space accounts for publishing personal Web pages. Examples of prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, running servers for mail (pop3 & smtp), http, https, ftp, irc, dhcp and multi-user interactive forums. For information about commercial Internet pricing, please see http://www.cableone.net/internet

Sorry about the wall of text, that's how they formatted it. Anyway, they're saying in plain english that they don't want anyone doing anything that's not "web surfing" with their high speed connection. They don't expect you to watch VIDEO or anything, but I have a

i downloaded several iso's last year and the year before via ftp (3-5gb at a sitting) and no complaints, life went on. cableone's biggest concern seems to be maintaining a network that everyone can use, but in a libertarian fashion, so no one gets kicked unless they do something stupid (which i haven't seen).

Honourable mention should go to some Free Software games - whilst obviously not as good as those produced by professional games companies, they are still very playable, and improving all the time. Since I am into RPG's, my two favourites are:

- Nazghul/Haxima : http://myweb.cableone.net/gmcnutt/nazghul.html

- Lost Labyrinth: http://www.lostlabyrinth.com/

Does anybody else have any recommendations for good FOSS games ?

So, it seems it is now up to YOU to show a case of an ISP contract where they DO explicitly mentioned throttling.

From my old provider: cableone.net.

Scroll down to the section titled Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations. That section (in fact most of the AUP) was in the contract I signed when I signed up for their service, although there have been some minor modifications since then.

BWA HA HA HA HAHA HA AHAH HA!!!

*cough*

Used Office recently?

• Should the application title come first (Excel) or last (Word)?
• Should the document title appear in square brackets (PowerPoint) or not (Word)?
• Should we even show the application title? (Preview)
• Should the application's icon appear in the title bar (Outlook) or not (Preview)?
• Should there be four dots on the left underneath the menu (Outlook) or three (everything else)?

Here's another doozy. Tried printing or saving recently? This one speaks for itself.

If this counts as "seamless interface design with other Microsoft products," I'll eat my mouse pad.

You guys are making me sad... check out my prices: http://cableone.net/internet/plans.asp

$100/mo for 4Mbps. Cableone is the only provider in my area, and I can't even get DSL. :(

My Mac mini next to my Shuttle SB61G2 V3.

And a side shot.

My Mac mini next to my Shuttle SB61G2 V3.

And a side shot.

Checking out the responses, it looks noone watched "Unscrewed with Martin Sargent".

It was a segment on his show, but it really was more about 'oh look, i found this supermodels website, here's some pix' than 'girls in technology'. I don't have high expectations. The funny thing is, I'm a cableone subscriber (pity me) and I got their "plus package" solely for TechTV. Looks like I'll be dropping that soon.

Also, did anyone notice DanHuard's little blog post about TSS having fake calls is now gone? He's emptied his blog for some reason.

Checking out the responses, it looks noone watched "Unscrewed with Martin Sargent".

It was a segment on his show, but it really was more about 'oh look, i found this supermodels website, here's some pix' than 'girls in technology'. I don't have high expectations. The funny thing is, I'm a cableone subscriber (pity me) and I got their "plus package" solely for TechTV. Looks like I'll be dropping that soon.

Also, did anyone notice DanHuard's little blog post about TSS having fake calls is now gone? He's emptied his blog for some reason.

When I bought my Garmin Etrex, I wanted to use it to store mountain bike rides and overlay them with maps.

Dave Wissenback's free program "allows you to plan and record your hiking and mountain bike trips with a Garmin eTrex GPS receiver and share your local knowledge of trails with others. You can also use the program to print topographic maps with these trails, either on a single page or as a mosaic on many sheets of paper. And you can use the program to visualize planned or past trips in 3D by virtually flying across a landscape of colorized aerial photographs draped over a three dimensional terrain model."

The lack of free, accurate, detailed and comprehensive GIS data is *the* canonical problem obstructing development of free GIS software. We are talking about current street-level data, points of interest, geographic features, topographic data etc., preferably on a global scale.

There is certainly free data for various regions (esp. US, various sources already mentioned) and some of it is detailed and accurate, but it is generally not even close to the quality that users expect in comparison to commercial mapping products.

To give you an idea of the effort involved in assembling maps from available GIS sources, I have heard that Microsoft's mapping team has over a hundred GIS developers constructing the maps for their MapPoint/Streets&Trips/AutoRoute products. And MS mostly just assemble data they license from various commercial sources (which has already been cleaned and standardised before it reaches MS). These maps are actually very good for the price (I use them for driving around US and Europe). MS maps don't yet cover regions outside US and Europe because of lack of available mapping data in a usable format.

No flames please about US free data being sufficient - I am talking about the general problem, and although US free data is much much better than most places, it is still not up to the quality of commercial data.

Having said all that, there are some interesting projects using free data - e.g. Wissenbach Map uses free topographic and aerial maps and exchanges data with GPS receivers. There are also a large number of free programs (e.g. GPSBabel) for exchanging data with GPS receivers and the map file formats used by various GPS software vendors, and mapping programs which require the user to supply maps. Search for GPS or GIS on SourceForge for more projects. I also recall a project in Thailand where a couple of guys created their own maps by riding all over the country with GPS receivers and painstakingly adding information like road and location names.

Various people have suggested projects to develop an open source database of GIS to rival the commercial sources. That would enable a large number of cool apps that are not feasible otherwise. But this would be an enormous project - both the data collection and assembling it into maps. E.g. certain GIS data vendors have a number of vans out permanently driving US streets with GPS receivers - trying to cover all streets and keep them updated. They do this because the free data is too inaccurate and outdated.

Yeah but the torque to horsepower ratio sucks on sportbikes, and the rpms are way too high. You have to rev the shit out of them to get anything worthwhile. Granted, they are impressive little engines, but not for cars or carboats. The Subaru engine has plenty of torque (which is necessary for a 4wd car anyway).

Heh, well... how many kids you got at your school? How big is your campus?

You'd be surprised. U of I had an enrollment of 11,635 in 2001, while BSU had 16,287 in 2001.

They have to give us more money, because we live in the middle of a wheat field.

Valid Point. I've been to Moscow :)

anyways... you may rock us in football... but, bring the drinking team up, and you'll get your ass pummeled :)

Oh I have no doubt we'd be pwned in drinking. Half of my best friends in the "McCall Varsity Drinking Squad" (McCall, ID is my original hometown) went to U of I, for which I present Exhibit A which further reinforces your "wheat field" premise :)

Send a petition to the goatse man! Bring him back!

The Way Things Go is a half hour recording of the performance of a rube goldberg machine. All sorts of physical and chemical reactions happening in a row. You may have seen the Honda "Cog" advertisement that ripped it off.

If you have the right mindset, it's riveting from beginning to end.

That is the problem, people here in south east idaho think they can get around with out having to have repeaters, or signal amplification equipment, and so the people who live where Qwest Communications is too lazy to roll out DSL, or Cable One Television dont want to work with the coax to make it so cable broadband is available. I personally think it is shit, that people can get away with over pricing, like Cable one and their 40.00 bill if you have cable internet. more Subscribers=more revenue-overhead=Lower prices for the end user. I wish they would make it available for everyone!

AT&T@Home "traded" the cable system here (Boise, ID) for another near SanFran. The new company CableOne promptly capped download speeds to 400k. For an extra $15/month I am getting 800k (200k up), still about one quarter the speed of AT&T@Home. I used to regularly get 3.1 to 3.2Mbps. I don't know if this is a "trend" nationwide, but it appears that Comcast may also be headed in the same direction with their "new" network. Notice they say, "Faster than dial-up, faster than DSL*", not very encouraging for all you Comcast folks.

Yeah, I must agree (One day it could be you too).

One day it *was* me, our AT&T@Home service was sold, traded, or whatever to a very lame cable operator who raised prices and capped download speeds. I never imagined that the day would come when I would be missing AT&T. I used to get a 3 Mbps connection regularly. Now I pay $15 more per month for something *they* call 1/2 T1 speed, 800K down, 200K up, not very broad broadband (See it here). It is better than Qwest's DSL and the only other game in town. Count yer blessings and pray AT&T doesn't sell you to someone else, or put some screws to you one day down the road.

At least CD-R (or even CR-RW) is fairly viable, if a little harder to automate (you can't just tar the files to a device).

Actually, you can. <shameless_plug> Check out cdbackup. </shameless_plug> I wrote it specifically to allow for this.

This is from the FAQ from my cable provider:

Q. If I have two computers do I need two cable modems?
A. No. By design, you will use only one cable modem in your house. You should consult with a computer dealer on how to configure a small network using a proxy-type router in your house. We will configure only one modem per residence or business.

They pretty much encourage you (by telling you how) to set up a home network! Pretty good policy.