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Here's what Comcast has to say for themselves:

http://www.comcast.net/help/

On Apple's site they give you a very easy to find listing of what they do and don't support. Once I finally found Comcast's Terms of Use (I had to go to Google to find it), and it basically says Comcast will block anything pretty much if they just feel like it. When they're a monopoly in the area, I'd think that is pretty much a no-no when they're the providers of an important service like the Internet (past dial-up, which isn't a competitor in any way). I think that either a) Comcast should be required to open it's network to competitors, or b) play fairly as a common carrier and just transmit data as they supposedly sell it.

If they had told me up front that they would be resetting peer-to-peer connections, I might be mad, but at least I'd know it up front and could choose to sign up with a service that doesn't do so.

While they don't explicitly say that they'll reset connections, their terms of service have always expressly forbidden running servers, and with the rise of P2P apps, that's been included as well. From their terms of service page:

Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:

xiv. run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

IANAL. Playing Devil's Advocate. :)

By signing up for and/or using the service, you agree to Comcast's AUP. According to Comcast's AUP, they can "terminate or suspend" your account if you fail to comply with the terms.

Instead of suspending or terminating the account, Comcast - recognizing the importance of the net and being connected - simply restricts / blocks / slows down the traffic associated with the excessive usage.

It is still possible to use BT, it will merely take longer.

Since the ports and protocol aren't vital to most people and the ways in which most people use the service (web, email, im), these actions only effect a minority of abusers who degrade the service for the majority.

I'm not sure how a class action lawsuit works (notice the "IANAL" at the start of this post? good), but if a jury is involved... the case faces an additional burden. Attempting to explain to the average person that BT traffic isn't just used to swap copyrighted material, but is also used to distribute Linux ISOs and WoW patches will only confirm in his mind that this is "geek shit" that he doesn't use and probably never will - and it may be responsible for his own slow connection at home.

From Comcast's AUP:

viii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;

-snip-

Comcast may provide versions of the Service with different speeds and bandwidth usage limitations, among other characteristics, subject to applicable Service plans. You shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network. In addition, you shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, disrupt, degrade, or impede Comcast's ability to deliver and provide the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services.

You further agree to comply with all Comcast network, bandwidth, and data storage and usage limitations. You shall ensure that your bandwidth consumption using the Service does not exceed the limitations that are now in effect or may be established in the future. If your use of the Service results in the consumption of bandwidth in excess of the applicable limitations, that is a violation of this Policy. In such cases, Comcast may, in its sole discretion, terminate or suspend your Service account or request that you subscribe to a version of the Service with higher bandwidth usage limitations if you wish to continue to use the Service at higher bandwidth consumption levels.

(financialwire.net via COMTEX News Network) -- October 1, 2007 (FinancialWire) The Acacia Technologies group of Acacia Research Corp. (NASDAQ: ACTG) has named Brad Brunell as senior vice president. Brunell joins Acacia from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), where during his 16 year career he held a number of management positions, including general manager of intellectual property licensing.

Prior to his role as GM, Brunell served as a senior director, where he focused on digital media adoption. This included key deals with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), leading the negotiating team for the settlement of the Intertrust patent litigation, and putting together the Content Guard ownership structure between Microsoft, Time Warner, and Thomson (NYSE: TOC). He also served on the board of Content Guard, a digital rights management patent licensing company.

His earlier career responsibilities as a group manager included managing business groups responsible for Microsoft's digital rights management technologies in the Windows client product group and business development for core audio/video technologies within the Windows platform.

I was on fire for at least 15 seconds, maybe more it's hard to tell with traumatic amnesia. I don't remember catching on fire, but I remember smothering foot high flames with my shirt sleeve for 15 seconds, then I remember pulling my hand out of a bucket of water that was across the room, so I can speak with some authority when I say if what he said happened, happened he'd look more like I did. I'm calling bullshit on that one, a slight scald from a overly warm battery sure, foot high flames stopped by "glossy" paper yeah right, sounds more like a bullshit entry to the Liability Lottery to me.

High power transmitter technology still relays on tubes.
This one http://home.comcast.net/~nwilson343/tubes/8974.html is 2 MW output power.

Here is the prefect example of the site that has google ads http://lorlov.home.comcast.net/ and it is still under $100 balance. Who wants to click on those ads in the first place. This is example why G00Gle 'looses' revenue :)

it's important to know exactly which garment is undergoing combustion in order to react in a correct and timely manner without unseemly haste or panic
I was on fire you insensitive clod, and without undue panic!

My firefox I have running under Linux has been crashing every now and then over the last few months. It doesn't stall; the process just dies. I've rarely had it happen, but members of my family report it happening quite often. Also, it freezes on occassion as well, and I have to ps ax | grep firefox it.

See, firefox isn't as great as some people make it out to be. After encountering this site (which debunks many of the myths surrounding firefox's superiority), I decided to try Opera 9, which I quite like and now use on all my machines.

"And JFTR: Opera fanboys (the few that I've encountered) are worse than Linux, Mac and Amiga fanboys combined." - by cp.tar (871488) on Friday September 07, @06:25AM (#20505367)

Ok, but how can we NOT be, when facts like this are available, that note Opera's superiority?

To wit (quoting another user here, who had misconceptions about multithreaded design of Opera, OR even other browsers, for example):

"I'd like a multi threaded browser" - by Bert64 (520050) on Friday September 07, @05:19AM (#20505053)

Opera runs 8 threads here (per taskmgr.exe &/or process explorer) in the Windows model!

Hey... check it yourself! Taskmgr.exe &/or Process Explorer (microsoft tools) can show you this all, easily...

---

Some added "FYI" for those of you comparing FireFox/IE/Opera (this one is about security, super-important in today's online world, especially):

Opera security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):

http://secunia.com/product/10615/?task=advisories

FireFox security advisories @ SECUNIA (43% unpatched):

http://secunia.com/product/12434/

IE 7 security advisories @ SECUNIA (56% unpatched):

http://secunia.com/product/12366/

---

Also, as far as speed comparisons? This is one that ALSO EXTOLLS OPERA's SPEED/EFFICIENCY BENEFITS over FF &/or IE here, & ON MULTIPLE OS PLATFORMS:

BROWSER SPEED COMPARISONS ON MANY TASKS & MULTIPLE OPERATING SYSTEM PLATFORMS:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

And, especially on Win32 OS', the most used PC platform/OS there is... & that one has MANY MORE evidences on many more types of browser activities, than this one that tests Opera 9.50's superiority in JavaScript parse & process (which this report on Opera here @ /. today, is about, ONLY):

http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/

---

The best parts are, OPERA IS FREE (as in BEER), & Opera has ALL of the features a body can need, WITHOUT using addons (though it has that via Opera widgets), & YET, Opera is LIGHTER ON MEMORY than FireFox &/or IE typically!

(You can check memory residency yourselves by loading FF, & Opera (& IE for Windows users) & test memory size occupancy via taskmgr.exe (or similar tools like Process Explorer) yourselves & see what I mean... I did so with FF 2.0.0.6, IE 7.x, & Opera 9.23.)

---

Opera also passed the "ACID2" test, for standards compliance (it is not alone here, but is over IE & FF, & it was the 6th browser to do so):

http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/12/1416222.shtml

---

And, Opera had features (like tabbed browsing) that other browsers (major 2 others in IE/FF) copied from it... note the article below!

FIREFOX MYTHS:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMyt hs.html

Yes, Opera had tabbed browsing before IE &/or FF, & other features as well.

Opera comes FULLY LOADED features-wise, with a built in email client, IRC client, RSS client, & more + yet eats less RAM than others, & addons only bloat IE &/or FF even more memory-occupancy-wise. (AND YES, Opera has addons as well in "opera widgets" (like .xpi addons for FF)...

APK

P.S.=> The order in which both dev tools &/or browsers passed ACID2 compliance, is as follows: Safari #1, Prince #2, Shiira #3, Konqueror #4, OPERA #5, iCab #6 ... Thanks here goes to rh0 (member 1

Note: Comcast reserves the right to immediately terminate the Service and the Subscriber Agreement if you engage in any of the prohibited activities listed in this AUP or if you use the Comcast Equipment or Service in a way which is contrary to any Comcast policies or any of Comcast's suppliers' policies. You must strictly adhere to any policy set forth by another service provider accessed through the Service.

vii. restrict, inhibit, or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to use or enjoy the Service, including, without limitation, posting or transmitting any information or software which contains a worm, virus, or other harmful feature, or generating levels of traffic sufficient to impede others' ability to send or retrieve information;

viii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;

xiv. run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

Note: Comcast reserves the right to immediately terminate the Service and the Subscriber Agreement if you engage in any of the prohibited activities listed in this AUP or if you use the Comcast Equipment or Service in a way which is contrary to any Comcast policies or any of Comcast's suppliers' policies. You must strictly adhere to any policy set forth by another service provider accessed through the Service.

vii. restrict, inhibit, or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to use or enjoy the Service, including, without limitation, posting or transmitting any information or software which contains a worm, virus, or other harmful feature, or generating levels of traffic sufficient to impede others' ability to send or retrieve information;

viii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;

xxii. interfere with computer networking or telecommunications service to any user, host or network, including, without limitation, denial of service attacks, flooding of a network, overloading a service, improper seizing and abuse of operator privileges and attempts to "crash" a host;

xviii. impersonate any person or entity, engage in sender address falsification, forge anyone else's digital or manual signature, or perform any other similar fraudulent activity;

Very cool (actually, it was "notched electron" and further reduced to "chipped quantum", and then later "nudged quanta"!). The wikipedia article has a link to the full text (written in 1961), as well.

From it:

[...] all of which were producing *books* in torrents.

How ahead of his time he was! :)

I also liked this gem:

[...] whole branches of knowledge could for the first time be put in a nutshell.

And, wow: he even envisioned Google, over 30 years before it came into existence (emphasis mine):

The position was well put indeed in a famous speech by Jzbl to the graduates of the Central Saturnian University, when he said that it was a source of great pride to him that although hardly anybody knew anything any longer, everybody now knew how to find out everything.

Well, I've never seen a broadband provider in the US advertise "unmetered" service. EVER. That's not what you get when you sign the service agreement.

Direct from Comcast AUP:

viii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;

Using 100% of your line speed 24/7 all month long will do the above. Not to mention there is one about using their service to download copyrighted content, regardless of performance degredation; you can have your service suspended. Anyone clearing 300GB/month cannot tell me all they download are demos and linux distros. I call Shenanigans to the nth degree on that one.

And for those complaining there is nothing about excessive b/w usage in comcasts AUP, I refer you directly to it: http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp as it is clearly there.

Try this list of additions.

run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;

You are right this is definitely a campaign against Firefox and has nothing to do with AdBlock. If you notice the links on the page this is from the same guy who wrote this garbage. I believe this was on slashdot a year ago or so.

http://home.comcast.net/%7Eonichelson/ONichelsonTU NGUSKA.pdf

A scientific fact is something real. "Granite is hard" "Water is soft" "Non-saline water freezes at 32 degrees celcius under 15 atmospheres of pressure".

If the globe is warmer (on average or specifically) then that is a fact.
WHY it is warmer will always be a theory.

There are many hypothesis about why we are measuring warmer temperatures.

Right now, in my opinion, there is too much money and political pressure involved to get good science.

anyway...
Definitions:

Theories, Laws, Hypothesis...

They say it well here: http://home.comcast.net/~fsteiger/theory.htm

As used in science, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. A clear distinction needs to be made between facts (things which can be observed and/or measured) and theories (explanations which correlate and interpret the facts.

A fact is something that is supported by unmistakeable evidence. For example, the Grand Canyon cuts through layers of different kinds of rock, such as the Coconino sandstone, Hermit shale, and Redwall limestone. These rock layers often contain fossils that are found only in certain layers. Those are the facts.

And here: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawth eory.htm
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is an educated guess, based on observation. Usually, a hypothesis can be supported or refuted through experimentation or more observation. A hypothesis can be disproven, but not proven to be true.

Theory
A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. A theory is valid as long as there is no evidence to dispute it. Therefore, theories can be disproven. Basically, if evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, then the hypothesis can become accepted as a good explanation of a phenomenon. One definition of a theory is to say it's an accepted hypothesis.

Law
A law generalizes a body of observations. At the time it is made, no exceptions have been found to a law. Scientific laws explain things, but they do not describe them. One way to tell a law and a theory apart is to ask if the description gives you a means to explain 'why'.

Example: Consider Newton's Law of Gravity. Newton could use this law to predict the behavior of a dropped object, but he couldn't explain why it happened.

---

I have also read elsewhere that really Newton's "laws" are only called laws because of history. If they were formulated today, they would be called Newton's theory of gravity.

But the Java pop-up you can't stop has been around FAR longer than that: http://home.comcast.net/~wolfand/
"Little do you know, a real person made this page."

Bah. Tunguska wasn't an impact event, it was a weapons test. (pdf alert)

Reminds me of a little something called SPACOM...

"Cuts through this tomato like it was a tin can!"
"Snapples caps off of jugs, jars, and the baby!"
"And boy does it catch fish!"

They also hate KMail, Linspire, Thunderbird, and Eudora, even though they have instructions on the Comcast website on how to set these things up to work with the Comcast email servers. They actively sit around and brood with their hatred for alternative browsers, even though their help site has instructions on how to make Firefox your default browser. They hate Firefox, Opera, Camino, and Safari, even though they say these browsers will work with their service.

Yep, they hate anything that's not from Microsoft.

They also hate KMail, Linspire, Thunderbird, and Eudora, even though they have instructions on the Comcast website on how to set these things up to work with the Comcast email servers. They actively sit around and brood with their hatred for alternative browsers, even though their help site has instructions on how to make Firefox your default browser. They hate Firefox, Opera, Camino, and Safari, even though they say these browsers will work with their service.

Yep, they hate anything that's not from Microsoft.

They also hate KMail, Linspire, Thunderbird, and Eudora, even though they have instructions on the Comcast website on how to set these things up to work with the Comcast email servers. They actively sit around and brood with their hatred for alternative browsers, even though their help site has instructions on how to make Firefox your default browser. They hate Firefox, Opera, Camino, and Safari, even though they say these browsers will work with their service.

Yep, they hate anything that's not from Microsoft.

For all interested parties, there is more info on the Maelstrom II short movie here:

http://home.comcast.net/~jeroen-lapre/ArthurCClark e/MaelstromII/MaelstromII.html

Couple this with a nice, but small capacitor, with a capacity for 2-3 shocks (probably 5-15mA per discharge will be sufficient), and you've got a nice little pacemaker that recharges itself.

The USA is becoming a police state: http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html

I'm sorry but I've got to ask the question: How many years since the last time you used MythTV? I find MythTV very easy to use[1].

It's slow and clunky

I run a shared backend and frontend on my Athlon 2000 server which has 3 tuners. When I have 3 recordings active it takes a couple of seconds to start playing a video but other than that..

uses an odd format

My DVB-T recordings come out as bog standard MPEG-2 files. If you're using analog tuners, there are tools available to transcode the Nupple format. mythtranscode even comes with MythTV and has a GUI frontend called MythArchive that can even burn video DVDs.

and has a god-awful interface

I'm running the MePo Theme on my frontend and I love it.

It's so ridiculously focused on TV that you have to go up 5 levels of menus, then down 5 more, to look through the other videos you have available.

This is a gross exaggeration. See the screenshots linked to above. "Media Library" contains "Watch Recordings" which is for TV recordings (third screenshot) and the next item down is "Watch Videos" which lists all my XviD, VIDEO_TS, etc files as they are laid out on disk from my file server (which happens to be the same box).

And to get back to the TV programs? Yep, just as many steps.

Press the back button twice (once to leave Videos, again to return to Main Menu). Or if you have spare keys on your remote, you can bind buttons to jump straight to whatever screen you want.

[1] Yes it is harder to setup than some other solutions and there's far more configuration options that can be a bit confusing (hint: defaults are generally fine).

If you can get your tuners working (I'll assume DVB tuners) in Xine or similiar or even just scanning correctly (tzap, scan), it's an apt-get and 10 minutes of configuring your channels and playing with some preferences to suit your taste. There's many howtos out there on how to do all this.

</rant>

Doesn't hurt as much as you'd imagine, the pain overwhelms before the mind can process it into anything like hurt or agony. After the blisters break open and big flaps of skin fall away so the air can hit the raw nerve ending that's when it starts to hurt

I don't see it...

Wait. You mean I have to go to a special other website? linux.dell.com? This means you have to choose which operating system you want before you even begin. How the hell is some grandmother supposed to choose anything but Windows if there's no mention of Ubuntu anywhere on www.dell.com?

This is pathetic. I want to see Windows and Ubuntu next to one another on the choose operating system option menu so the consumers can see there are other options. This is depressing.

Many moons ago, I was amazed by the transforming Beetle that Michael Smith produced http://www.themichaelsmith.com/animations/VWHiRes. mpg. After watching it I hoped that someone would make a movie and hire this guy. Now I see that he's done it again with a Nissan 350Z http://home.comcast.net/~themichaelsmith/TransZ.mp g!!! Personally I prefer the look of his robot as opposed to those in the trailer for some reason... Sav

Actually, there's a plugin.. nsplugin wrapper. It'll let you run the 32-bit flash plugin in 64-bit Firefox on 64-bit Linux. I've been playing with it all morning.

Slashdot is broken:

Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 35 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

I have a rotary phone at home too (I love retro stuff).
Mine is the old-fashioned type that has the separate part you speak into on its own cord. And the ringer consists of brass bells and a small brass hammer...that sucker is LOUD. I mean waking the dead loud. I love it. I'm glad my landline provider still supports rotary. :)
Here's a pic.

Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:

I refuse to give up my lawful pornographic material stored on my own computer just so I can switch away from DSL.

I think their reasoning is more like:

Exposure is Truth

Disclosure is Duty

Hidden is Guilty

Self is Wrong

States have secrets worth protecting, people have secrets worth revealing.

Really though, Big Brother did not justify himself this way. He'd just throw you in jail until you were ready to say how much you loved the state and then murder you. Thank goodness the US does not have prisons where you can be thrown without charge and murdered for spite without a fair trial. Stuff like that would make the US a police state. Thinking otherwise is a thought crime that will put you on a domestic spying list. Can't let one or two bad apples sink the whole country!

read it Neo Eugenics

GNU/Linux is a memory hog, particularly when GUI interfaces are involved.

1) It's not called GNU/Linux, no matter how much you want it to be, until Linus changes the trademark.

2) When you're writing your own GUI, you can make it smaller and lighter than GNOME or what have you. Reference FBUI which would run on a fucking game boy if you could get the rest of the kernel there.

Go back to the early pieces on OLPC: how many people kept saying that (Nick) Negroponte was either deluded or lying about the cost, and that by the time it came out, the OLPC would cost almost exactly what a cheap laptop with Windows cost? Surprise -- that's exactly what happened.

Yes, now they say it will cost $170. But the price will come down with production, assuming anyone actually ponies up the cash.

I was going to wait til "Mr Slippery" contacted me...

don't forget the roots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=True_Nam es&oldid=116683982Vernor Vinge
And in case you've never read it...
http://home.comcast.net/~kngjon/truename/truename. htmlThe novella

- the mailman