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You don't need to have backups of your data ...

Ha ha. Tell that to the owners of SideKick phones. The big sell was that people didn't need to worry because all their data was backed up to the cloud. Then Danger flubs a backup and restore and not only is all their data in the cloud lost, but it also resets their phones and erases all their data there too. Any time a user reprogrammed in their data they had in hard copy, it would sync with the empty server and destroy all that data again. After three weeks of that and dealing with the phone companies customer support, my friend bought a new phone swearing he will never own another phone that he can't backup himself.

I brought an ipad home from work for 2 weeks. Both my kids (gamer son, daughter) constantly used it the first few days. 2 weeks later I was the only one using it regularly and not for games. My son quickly reverted back to the DS, PSP, XBOX or PS3 to play games. Up until I brought an ipad home my daughter had a fund saving up for one. I think she spent it on clothes since then.. I haven't heard a peep.

The plural (singular?) of anecdote is not data. Luckily, we have data showing iPad use increases over time...

http://gigaom.com/apple/survey-ipad-is-replacing-computers-for-many/
----
Though the researchers originally thought the iPad might be passed off as a flashy device that held little long-term value, 77.6 percent of the users found their iPad usage went up after their initial "honeymoon" period. So, the iPad probably won't end up in your return pile shortly along with oddly-colored sweaters.
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1. Clippy: Misunderstood animated pedagogical agent or spawn of Satan? - Invokes Sun Tzu

2. Why People Hate the Paperclip: Labels, Appearance, Behavior, and Social Responses to User Interface Agents. Impressive 65 Page PDF available from this abstract page.

3. People Who Hate Clippy, the Stupid Paper Clip from Microsoft Word (Wartburg Chapter). Emergency outreach

4. Meme:Clippy. Fanpic uploads @ end.

5. On Youtube.

6. How I Made Clippy Lovable. Stanford again. What is it with these guys? You know their mascot is a tree?

7. DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS. I think my nose just started bleeding.

8. Et tu DARPA?.

9. Senor Pedaso Molesto de Matal NPR transcript.

10. Back At'chya. Remember before they became inertia?

11. Hark the Herald.. Wait, DIE DIE DIE. Just sayin'.

12. Reflection.

Happy Clippymas! Hope the leaks result in a zillion times the cogitation invested in Clippy..

Before embarking in this project, shouldn't he finish his replacement for BitTorrent he announced a few years back?

I'm sure the DNS project will be as successful as that one.

This article submission is pure FUD, and very misleading.

The issue at hand is Level 3 currently have a peering agreement. They send each other traffic at a 1:1 ratio, more or less. Level 3 acquired Netflix as a customer. The traffic ratio will now change to 5:1 in Level 3's favor. Anytime traffic is that out of balance, a commercial (monetary) peering arrangement is made. This has nothing to do with neutrality, or video, or netflix, or anything else. This is simply Level 3 whipping up the childlike fear of no net neutrality in hopes to gain a better peering agreement. Very Shady on their part, and very silly for anyone who gobbles it up.

http://gigaom.com/2010/11/29/level-3-comcast-in-a-cat-fight-over-online-video/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101129/17242612047/companies-come-out-woodwork-to-claim-comcast-is-violating-net-neutrality-exaggerations-abound.shtml

What can you buy for $1.3B, considered that SAP bought Sybase for $5.8B?

You can mine it indefinitely from seawater for about $70 per kg.

Huh apparently this is true. Sort of. It seems to be still in the "way too expensive and theoretical" stage.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lithium-squeeze/

Quotes:

"lithium [...] now costs less than a dollar per kilogram"
"researchers who worked on a seawater project in Japan for some 30 years concluded the technology was five times too expensive to commercialize"
"a company called Simbol Mining [is] now “exploring the feasibility” of drawing lithium from geothermal sources, and the Times reports that some 60 mining firms are conducting feasibility studies"

Running Linux on a 48-core system is boring, because it has already been run on a 64-core system in 2007 (at the time, Tilera said they would be up to 1000 cores in 2014; they're up to 100 cores per CPU now).

And Linux is a Johnnie come lately compare to the commercial Unices You could have gotten a Sun Enterprise 6500 with thirty CPUs in 1998, and a Sun Fire 15K with up to 106 UltraSPARC III processors in 2002; the Sun Fire E25K did 72 dual-core UltraSPARC IV+ processors in 2004.

Multi-core is old hat for the non-Intel folk.

As Seymour Cray said: fast CPUs are easy, it's making fast /systems/ that's hard. You need good I/O to keep the CPUs fed.

Running Linux on a 48-core system is boring, because it has already been run on a 64-core system in 2007 (at the time, Tilera said they would be up to 1000 cores in 2014; they're up to 100 cores per CPU now).

As far as I know, Linux currently supports up to 256 CPUs. I assume that means logical CPUs, so that, for example, this would support one CPU with 256 cores, or one CPU with 128 cores with two CPU threads per core, etc.

From TFA:

In August of 2009, GPI was shut down by Washington state's Ecology Department who said GPI had "not provided adequate compliance with the environmental air quality regulations." This was cleared on September 8, 2010 by an EPA ruling that support's GPI's claim and reverses Washington state's Ecology Department's claim that placed the GPI process in the class of incinerators, which it is not.

So the government of my state caused major problems for GPI, and the federal government had to overrule the state. That's just great.

According to TFA, GPI's plant operates using "a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP)" yet the state Department of Ecology (DoE) insisted on regulating the plant as if it were an incinerator plant, which it clearly isn't.

We have a liberal Democrat for a governor, the Democrats have a complete lock on the state legislature, and plenty of liberal voters. Our governor claims to be in favor of the environment, in favor of business that helps the state, in favor of jobs, etc. Where was she when the state DoE was causing these problems?

I really wonder at the politics behind this. If this is random bureaucrats just being pointlessly bureaucratic, why didn't any other part of government get involved and help resolve this? Where were the state senators and representatives from the Pasco area? Did the governor just never hear of this, and if so, how is that possible?

If I were governor and something like this happened, I would very publicly intervene. There's no political downside! The governor has more power than bureaucrats at the DoE, and the voters would love to hear that a green energy project was helped out. So why didn't that happen?

P.S. This of course reminds me of the other thermal depolymerization plant, the plant in Carthage, Missouri that processed turkey offal into energy and fuel. That plant was shut down several times, over allegations of a bad smell; the bad smell was reported at least once on a day that the plant wasn't operating. Eventually they installed upgraded scrubbers on their exhaust stacks and resumed operation. The company, Changing World Technologies went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I guess the TDP plant was shut down. That seems crazy to me; the price of crude oil is high, so they should be able to run their plant at a profit. I guess they are just in too much trouble financially to even run the plant right now?

I hope this "CDP" plant in Pasco works out better than the Changing Worlds one did.

steveha

I can't find anything more recent, but Habbo Hotel is the only thing I see competing with WoW.

http://gigaom.com/2008/06/26/warcraft-no-longer-worlds-biggest-mmo/

... I don't know how you suckered me into doing your research for you. Are you a grad professor? ...

They were forced by the European Commission, which last year decided they had 3-4 years to standardize, Apple included. Some manufacturers were simply faster than Apple to deploy.

If Android continues to make inroads into iPhone territory tho it could hurt Apple's bottom line.

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/17/apple-snags-48-of-mobile-profit-pie/

Yes, very interesting and realistically just a way for the big telcos to not have to upgrade the wire and instead upgrade the modem and equip at the CO. Take a look at the graphic here.

Looks like today's announcement is the extension of existing work last year, but using 4 copper wires (ie, 2 phone lines).

What's interesting is noone mentions latency, and whether this actually will increase responsiveness or just throughput.

Umm... Yes it is : http://gigaom.com/2010/10/05/nielsen-android-surges-to-no-1-in-recent-sales/. You should provide link to keep some credibility around here.

Google must have "forced" Apple to drop Skyhook as well. Or maybe there were reasons to develop a competitor, rather than continue to deal with Skyhook. Like Apple did.

Seriously, when did "Oh no, we're being forced to compete! Let's sue everyone!" become an acceptable business plan?

It seems that patent portfolios is holding up the sale of Novell. http://gigaom.com/2010/09/16/novells-patents-are-complicating-its-sale/

Sure, here are some numbers.

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/

I doubt many cable companies, when faced with a loss of TV subscribers, will turn around and alienate their ISP subscribers with limitations on their service

Oh no, cable companies would never do such a thing!

I hope you're being sarcastic.

Lol. Seems you're so deep into your case of fanboyitis that you wouldn't recognize reality if it hit you with a clue stick in the face. Android has been sustaining about a 100% growth PER QUARTER for the last year. While Apple were touching themselves for selling 1.4 million iphone 4 handsets a week after their launch event, android was silently sustaining 160k+ activations per day, the equivalent of a launch event every week!

Moreover, that you think it is not designed as a device shows you have no clue what you are talking about. Android is just as much an appliance as iOS is. With over 100k apps in Android's market and growing faster than iOS's, the app count e-peen wars are just as obsolete as the p&s megapixel wars. Many thousands of great apps, and many more shitty, on both sides.

Show the average consumer what they have to do to get there music onto a galaxy s phone and they'll look at you dumbfounded and just use their iPod.

Yeah right. Plug your generic usb cable in and drag'n'drop as if onto a usb stick. Or use any media manager you might be using to sync playlists and the songs within. On the iPod? Locked into crappy iTunes, and god forbid you'd want to add that one song from a friend's computer you haven't synced from? Yeah, it'll wipe your iOS's whole app and music library, which you'll have to go through the hassle of re-syncing when you get back to your home pc. Pure win, right?

Despite the hype, BlackBerry still has a bigger market share than Android and iPhone.[1]

Not for long, according to your own citation. Just looking at the graph you referenced, it seems Android is poised to overtake RIM in the US by next quarter.

A month or so ago, I ran across an article, pitched to small-business operators, about how to make the best use of free WiFi at Starbuck's, for your business. and while I found the article itself reasonable enough, a few of the commenters in the comment thread made me very glad I don't operate a coffee shop. There is evidently an entitlement sub-culture out there that really believes that, by providing free WiFi, coffee shops have effectively invited people to come in and operate their business full-time, hold meetings, and so forth, and if these proud representatives of the new economy deign to buy a drink, well, isn't that lucky for the coffee shop?

It's easy to see where a few such individuals could poison the atmosphere the coffee shop was trying to cultivate, causing their free WiFi experiment to fail.

PS: Finally found the article, it's here. Repeating for emphasis that, IMHO, the article itself provides reasonable-seeming guidelines, it was the commenters that scared me.

I get good internet in Anchorage AK, and that city has half the population of the state. Actually, internet in Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks is pretty good and those areas make up about 70% of the state.

Same goes for Nevada, the bulk of the population are in Reno and Las Vegas, both have very good connectivity. Kansas has most of it's population to the east and theres alot of broadband there.

Better examples of states that suck for broadband would be the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, West Virgina or Hawaii. Non-centralized populations, vast distances or disruptive geography.

http://gigaom.com/2008/05/27/report-state-of-broadband-according-to-akamai/

Live map
http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/

Just because you can drop in a bigger engine, all-wheel-drive transmission, new suspension, and turbocharge a Honda Civic does not make these actions "features" of the car; it's not even close.

Sure, you can modify anything, but isn't the rating of a piece of hardware only considered regarding how it is when it is shipped to the customer?

Regarding jailbreaking and going to jail; I figure that if Apple had a monopolistic hold on its markets (say smart phones), it would definitely try to prosecute some people to make a point. The last thing they want at the moment is to have people being outwardly unhappy with their hardware as well as receiving negative press regarding their products (especially since image is a large factor of their business model). This might sway people to buy competitor's products.
On a side note, if you're going to reply to this thread saying something like "iPhone already has a smartphone monopoly," there are many sources saying they're not quite there at the moment, so check your facts instead of stating hype or personal belief.

They truly do believe you can get 10 mbps for 80 bucks a month. Guess what, there is no way you can actually get such a connection.

Actually you CAN get bandwidth that cheap in the datacenter, granted that all the infrastructure is easier to implement than running last-mile lines...

Here are some convenient wholesale numbers from a couple years ago:
http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/wholesale-internet-bandwidth-prices-keep-falling/

And I personally buy bandwidth for even cheaper, though not as much of it... I buy for roughly $5.50 per Mbps (up to 10Mbps), and though the SLA is not as strong as if I purchased a wholesale connection like an ISP would, it is *effectively* 99.999% reliable and I effectively DO get all the bandwidth I pay for (e.g. if it's oversold, then someone else is subsidizing my bandwidth, because it doesn't seem oversold to me). Not to mention the fact that my cost covers maintenance of the datacenter (power, cooling, security, employees, etc) and their peering...

(my previous post should have started with "not even close"...)

It wasn't about "phones sold", but marketshare, supposedly... Besides, the former is also certainly inconsistent, not the least because smartphone sales are still growing rapidly and with great room to grow - that wouldn't be possible if they were already at 75%...you would hear "smartphones are close to saturating the sales!"

Isn't the turnover time pretty much 2 years? (yeah, some people keep mobile phones longer...and some change them every few months; I suspect those two groups mostly cancel each other out in a way that makes them insignificant)
If there are 234 million mobile phones in the US, that would mean an average sales of 10 million monthly; 30 million per quarter. And that's probably way too cautious, considering that in Q2 2008 (a long time ago...and outside holiday season) 42 million were sold. So, it's safe to assume that during last holiday season...50 million were sold?

And...
http://gigaom.com/2010/03/27/when-it-comes-to-apps-feature-phones-are-the-new-black/

those passé, non-OS handsets that account for a whopping 83 percent of the overall U.S. handset market

^that was a three-month average ending in December; pretty much representing pre-holiday numbers. If between that period, and data from the end of February (showing feature phones at around 80%), probably up to 50 million phones was sold...then most of them certainly were not smarpthones (because smartphones were owned by only 45 million people at the end! And that represents a growth of 21% from pre-holiday season!) Not even close to half. The change in overall smartphone marketshare would have been way bigger.

Or...remember that global shipments of Symbian handsets in 2009 were only 80 million units...even though it has 47% of global sales (and barely anything in the US)
Also global shipments for iPhone were 25 million units (global!); now, with 50 million mobile phones shipped in the US in that quarter above - for smartphones in the US to have even 50% of sales (and considering US iPhone share of them), there would be really no iPhones left for the rest of the world. Not to mention if that would be 75%...

For perspective, keep in mind that Nokia sells half a billion phones annually. That's an order of magnitude more than total number of iPhones made, ever.

Yes, but server maintenance is a fixed cost, not a marginal cost, and bandwidth is cheap. How cheap? Will, according to some digging I've done, in San Francisco (near the center of many tech businesses in the US) bandwidth for large companies in 2008 was around $10-$14 per Mbps per month for a 1GigE connection. For a 10GigE connection, the price was around $4 per Mbps per month. Assuming they are always sending out at peak capacity, this comes out to a cost of about 3.7 cents per GB (with a 1 GigE) or 1.2 cents per GB (with a 10 GigE). Assuming Sony has a 10 GigE hookup, that's about 5 cents for a 4 GB file. Not zero, but pretty close.

This is anything but an unrelated "business opportunity".
Google owns huge datacenters. Google has been known to purchase gobs of dark fibre, at this point I imagine they might very well have sufficient connectivity between their datacenters to sustain operations. Throw in their own little grid (a bunch of thorium reactors, perhaps?) and, given enough thorium, they become self-sufficient. Throw in some wireless connectivity with base stations (remember the 700 MHz spectrum auction? Remember Google's bid?) linked to their fibre network and powered through their grid and you get a self-sustaining ad distribution network that'll reach the whole U.S. without needing any partners.

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Will "don't be evil" cancel that?

Umm, why should they have all the fun?

http://gigaom.com/2009/02/01/by-2012-koreans-will-get-a-gigabit-per-second-broadband-connection/

As difficult as it might be to roll it out. There is NO doubt we would find a use for it.

I for one live in a house with a fiber box on my property.. and Lovely ATT only wants to use Copper "mind you I have a conduit from the box to my house!!" as well as giving me less speed than Comcrap and charging more. Seems like the competition is no competition at all.

2007: Youtube accounts for 10% of all traffic
2008: Youtube accounts for 35% of all streaming video; Streaming media accounts for 50% of all internet traffic. Doing the math, that puts Youtube around 12-15% of *all* traffic.

There's no good alternative because there's no good alternative.

Not sure about that. Take a look at this and there is this

Gigaom: Michelle Lee, Google Deputy General Counsel, on why Google sought the patent, and whether or not Google would seek to enforce its patent rights: "Like other responsible, innovative companies, Google files patent applications on a variety of technologies it develops. While we do not comment about the use of this or any part of our portfolio, we feel that our behavior to date has been inline with our corporate values and priorities."

Here's a post from GigaOM that basically says that Google stabbed Motorola's Droid in the back to deliver this, despite the fact that Droid has a keyboard and Nexus One does not and so it's fair game.

That was picked up by TheRegister which for some bizarre reason sees this as a reason for Moto to run home to the warm embrace of Microsoft, as if the whole Sendo Maneuver had not happened (even though they reported it), and as if Google had actually done something dastardly. Now it's in the Mainstream press [Businessweek.com] and by Tuesday they'll be trying to meme it.

I'm doing what I can but we need more fans of open systems to get out there and make fun of these idiots or they will continue to spew their nonsense and Joe Sixpack might believe them and then we won't get our cool new stuff. Slashdot is popular but there are a lot of other sites out there like cnet, zdnet, Google Groups and Yahoo where this nonsense might take root. People who know stuff need to go from here to there and put the word out that we'd like some shiny new Tegra 2 or Android slates, a Nexus One, and a Droid under our tree at Christmas and anybody that opposes that is a Luddite.

Here's a post from GigaOM that basically says that Google stabbed Motorola's Droid in the back to deliver this, despite the fact that Droid has a keyboard and Nexus One does not and so it's fair game.

That was picked up by TheRegister which for some bizarre reason sees this as a reason for Moto to run home to the warm embrace of Microsoft, as if the whole Sendo Maneuver had not happened (even though they reported it), and as if Google had actually done something dastardly. Now it's in the Mainstream press [Businessweek.com] and by Tuesday they'll be trying to meme it.

I'm doing what I can but we need more fans of open systems to get out there and make fun of these idiots or they will continue to spew their nonsense and Joe Sixpack might believe them and then we won't get our cool new stuff. Slashdot is popular but there are a lot of other sites out there like cnet, zdnet, Google Groups and Yahoo where this nonsense might take root. People who know stuff need to go from here to there and put the word out that we'd like some shiny new Tegra 2 or Android slates, a Nexus One, and a Droid under our tree at Christmas and anybody that opposes that is a Luddite.

FCC Takes on Cable But Not Carriers With National Broadband Plan

The actual presentation from the meeting is included in the article.

I am anxiously awaiting for this to be approved: "Mandate a home gateway device. Require MVPDs to provide a small, low-cost device whose functionality is to bridge the proprietary MVPD network elements (conditional access, tuning & reception functions) to common, open standard, widely used in home communications interfaces; enables a retail navigation device to operate on all MVPD platforms."

I'm hoping that means unencrypted channel streams in-house over Ethernet.

The truth is out there. See here, here, here, and here for starters. Keep in mind that's all from 2008 and the price trend has continued.

If you don't believe that a connection costs the same saturated as it does idle, consult any networking manual and try to come up with ANY mechanism that would make a busy circuit more costly.

The truth is out there. See here, here, here, and here for starters. Keep in mind that's all from 2008 and the price trend has continued.

If you don't believe that a connection costs the same saturated as it does idle, consult any networking manual and try to come up with ANY mechanism that would make a busy circuit more costly.

Games are good for your eyesight, social life, physical health, learning, stress, language skills and economy, among other things.

Oh, and gaming addiction is mostly bunk.

"I'm already questioning whether the extremely autocratic "all data in the cloud" model that Google is pursuing will alienate users. I question whether people trust the cloud to that extent, and I know I love many of my local software applications and utilities"

Why not run your apps and your data from a portable USB device.

Hmmm.... is this setup a realisation of this release from Nvidia in March

Nvidia Touts New GPU Supercomputer
http://gigaom.com/2009/05/04/nvidia-touts-new-gpu-supercomputer/

Another 'standalone' GPGPU supercomputer, without the Infiniband switch
University of Antwerp makes 4000EUR NVIDIA supercomputer
http://www.dvhardware.net/article27538.html

For now only VZW and Sprint have announced they're going to LTE

Uh, no, I'm not sure where you got that, but you're pretty much completely and utterly wrong.

First, Sprint is using WiMax, not LTE for their 4G solution. They are experimenting with LTE, but as recently as a few months ago, their CEO was bashing it publicly.

Furthermore, both AT&T and T-Mobile have made it very clear that they plan to roll out LTE.

It doesn't really matter what they use it for, now does it? The fact that they choose to use MySQL at all shows they put an amount of faith into it. You don't store data in a database because you want to lose it, right?

But, to answer your question, a quick Google learns Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia store all of their important data in MySQL databases. I know Google doesn't use MySQL for searches, but they do store other stuff. I'm not sure what Nokia does, but they do seem to like MySQL a lot.

is it's a much much better Address Book than anything else out there

It's not better for me than my address book, and I don't need a Facebook account to use it.

and they've built forums, messaging, invites, picture sharing, etc. on top of it.

I have those now, I'm using Slashdot right now. I used to use Yahoo! Messenger, I've shared photos, and done other things too. I don't need Facebook to do all those.

The lack of spam is a nice side effect too.

Lack of spam?

Falcon

Wow. reading all of your comments it seems that it is hard to see from a US-citizen standpoint what President Obama brought in a global context.
I assume that is because he is both 'boss' in internal and foreign countries matters, and US-citizens seem to focus on what is hot in their country right now (read: health care).
Obama brought a climate change in a global context. He introduced a different way of talking to each other on a global scale. Before it was always US the supernation can do anything. Now we are seeing each other as partners. (I didn't say he invented that rhetoric.)
Russia is/was still seen as some kind of ambivalent enemy. Recently the US has started more of a partner-relationship with Russia, and it lead from a horse-trading tactic to a discussion of understanding each others worries.

The pie is not limited. That is one result of the Harvard Negotiation project btw. Read up about it.

Maybe the US is not ready for a health program yet, maybe it is. Within the US, maybe Obama changed the way of forming a public opinion a little bit from debates to discussions?

Either way, in a global context, the few months have made a huge difference in the global climate, reduced fear, and drew a brighter future. Obama was not the only one participating, but he was/is a major player (a catalyst if you will).

Some facts
  - No wars were started by the US
  - the Taliban said they just wanna be left alone and not want to attack anymore
  - Russia retracted the rocket defense system, general disarming got one step closer

The world and the relationships between states are getting more complicated these days. It used to be "the Russians do this", it is getting more like "The kurds, which make up x% of the population in z, have the problem of y."
I got off-topic. Sorry. NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.

If you are paying $2million/year for the bandwidth of a small company that doesn't have a large web site and doesn't do digital distribution, you're overpaying by a whole lot.

It sounds like:
A. you're getting majorly ripped off
B. your company claiming to be spending $2m/year but in fact paying a lot less and pocketing the rest of the money
C. all the computers in your company are a zombies spamming 2 million emails per day and performing dos attacks
D. your employees are undercover couriers for 0day warez scene
E. you're an idiot who really doesn't know anything and you make up nonsense

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/wholesale-internet-bandwidth-prices-keep-falling/

Not sure which Nokia you used last, but they've "improved" their phones by no longer shipping a SIP client with more recent models. Although hilariously enough they've left the configuration options in place, so you can waste your time setting it up, then find you can't actually make any calls with it.

http://gigaom.com/2008/08/23/no-voip-in-new-nokia-n-series-devices-is-nokia-turning-its-back-on-voip/

Here's why they'll NEVER open-source skype: http://gigaom.com/2009/07/30/will-skypes-founders-put-the-kibosh-on-ebays-ipo-plans/ http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56U03D20090731 http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,,25862165-5013040,00.html

It's 'hot off the presses' new, and appearently just a way of selling a particular brand of 'netbooks'.

A bit like how nVidia 'invented' the GPU back when the GeForce first came out by coining a new name for graphics acceleration cards.

For 2007 it was 3rd which is certainly up there in "one of the.." territory.

http://gigaom.com/2007/06/13/top-ten-most-popular-mmos/

Perhaps their numbers have gone down some but they are still one of the big ones.

Oh and to justify it to the boss, I'd cite the recent court case which states ISPs may not discriminate against P2P traffic. i.e. It's effectively illegal to filter traffic, but not illegal to implement metered usage such that customers reduce usage voluntarily.

Minor point, but it was an FCC hearing against Comcast not a court case. Part of the problem was that Comcast ran around terminating connections behind your back -- and without notifying customers via TOS or any other method.

When it comes to throttling, seanadams had it exactly right: you have to provide the auto-throttle option so that people don't get slammed with a huge bill at the end of the month. Very few people want to sit around adding up their monthly bandwidth usage, so it's a good idea to start warning users as they approach the limit. Unless, of course, slamming people with a huge overage bill is part of your revenue-maximizing business model.