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Aussie National Broadband Network Will Be Gigabit
schmidty-au writes "NBN Co, the Australian Government company established to build Australia's national fibre-optic broadband network, announced today that, instead of the previously announced 100 Mbps network, it will provide 1 Gbps, within the existing AU$43 billion budget. Meanwhile, the Australian opposition, which has announced that it will scrap the network if it wins the 21 August election, and instead provide incentives to the private sector to improve the existing copper network, and to install wireless broadband (with promised peak speeds of 12 Mbps), does not understand or believe that this would be possible. The man who wants to be Australia's next Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said today 'This idea that "hey presto" we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet I find utterly implausible.'"
The man who wants to be Australia's next Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said today 'This idea that "hey presto" we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet I find utterly implausible.'" "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
The man who wants to be Australia's next Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said today 'This idea that "hey presto" we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet I find utterly implausible.'"
Yeah, and computers will never get faster, cheaper or smaller. What a tool.
Reorganise your spectrum so that you can deliver a gigabit per second over cellular protocols. Roll displaced services into cellular data. By all means pull fibre into the street, but then deploy microcells in high demand areas. The last step is always wireless anyway. In the future people won't install their own wifi if they can get a good service from a telco.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No thanks.
Tony Abbott apparently doesn't understand a thing about modern networking. Today's optic fibers can support frightening data rates, the limiting factor currenly is what the hardware on both sides is capable of. With the speeds of the high end of the market recently increasing to 40G and 100G (from 1G and 10G) per channel I would not be surprised if that jump suddenly made 1G FTTH possible. Investing in copper technology now is outrageous and a waste of money. Utilizing it for the last mile while you're not done rolling out fiber to each premise is acceptable at best. Wireless broadband might be acceptable for remote locations but even those base stations need a good fiber connection for their uplink.
Hopefully we do get the 1 Gbps internet. It was a good move, considering the fact that in 2018 100 mbps will be seen as sluggish compared to the world. Anything would be better than what we currently have though. Most people in the cities have around 2mbps, and the highest you can get (at a large premium) is around 30 mpbs. Plus the fact we have download caps of around 5-20 gigabytes on average, Australia's internet is horrible and in good need for a rehaul.
In the Senate, you can choose where the preferences go. Just vote below the line. There'd be no guessing then!
If you don't vote below the line, then you will basically find that the major parties watch huge swings in preferences to them, and start getting worried. If the Greens win seats for a number of Senators, then they'll have to deal with them though. I'd say take the risk: it's worth it, as the "risk" is low.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you don't want your preferences going to Labor, vote below the line.
Greens are currently on course to hold the balance of power in the senate. They've said many times that they're for the NBN, but they will block any attempt to implement the net filter.
There's always the Sex Party, they've got decent enough policies, no internet filtering, no internet spying, R Rating for games... What more could you want? http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php/policies
Do not underestimate the capacity of DWDM backbones. Also, realize that this gigabit speed is peak capacity, users will scarcely use this capacity for extended periods of time. I also expect that subscriptions will be differentiated with the 1G subscription being more expensive than less demanding plans. 100Mbps will be plenty for most users, but it would be great if customers with higher demands willing to pay the price could get a higher speed.
$43bn for speeds faster than what the internet naturally provides... There isn't a need for gigabit connections when the average pipeline of a website is less than a megabit. I suppose if you want to watch 75 HD porn videos at a time, now you'd get the chance
You're right, instead of spending $43bn on gigabit network now, we should spend $30bn on 1Mb now, then $30bn in 3 years on 5Mb, then $30bn in 6 years on 10Mb, then $30bn in 10 years on 100Mb, then...
-
I built in our Lab a 200 user multisegment LAN for $ 10.000, but for 600 nodes
as we have more computers than staff!
-
It was called Ethernet! -
Bob Metcalf - one of my heroes along with R.P. Stalman, R.Knuth, L. Thorvald and many many others including Richard P. Feynman.
For keeping Ethernet free I forgive you many design errors at 3COM ;-)
$43bn for speeds faster than what the internet naturally provides... There isn't a need for gigabit connections when the average pipeline of a website is less than a megabit. I suppose if you want to watch 75 HD porn videos at a time, now you'd get the chance
Are you trying to say that "1Mb should be enough for anybody."?
No voting Green means finding their backroom deal includes trading a huge Emmisions Tax (what the greens want) for a internet filter (what labour wants)
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
No reason why Akamai, YouTube and Google can't have local caches.
In fact they would be friggin' crazy not to.
And Hulu etc apparently don't find the Australian market worth bothering with, anyway.
when they have to deal with download quotas?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
International links are a bottleneck everywhere, which is why people have devised clever ways around them. Seriously popular content is cached by transparent proxies or Content Delivery Networks such as Akamai which reside inside your high-speed network. Also, having a national high-speed network in a country with plenty of space will be very attractive to tech investors to actually move their data to Australia, bringing the data to you instead of having to pull it in from abroad.
NBN: Over 1000 Mega!
Abbott: O RLY?
NBN: YA RLY.
Abbott: NO WAI
NBN: WAI
so go to http://www.belowtheline.org.au/ and sort out who you're going to vote for. Print out the PDF and take it with you on voting day.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/quigley-nbn-co-to-deliver-1gbps-339301748.htm?omnRef=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com.au%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dnbn%2Bto%2Bdeliver%2B1gbps%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial%26client%3Dfirefox-a Sorry to put water on your fire; but this is for business only at the moment.
WTF? Knuth is a Republican? Nobody tells me anything anymore! I always thought he was a Democrat!
Not to mention that it's not going to be seriously a factorial to work this out. If you can work out who you want to vote for in the top 15-20 spots, and the ones you dislike the most (c'mon, I'm sure that the Communist Party, or the Christian Democratic Party must be at the bottom of a lot of people's list!) you put at right down the bottom, the rest you can just number in any way you like.
And if you can work out the top 15-20, then that's not even 20!, because you'll probably know what order to put it in. And interestingly, you have... "how to vote" suggestions to look at - who knows, they might be useful.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As a point of interest in my Sydney home I've had a optical fibre line ready to run since 1985, we found it when we added extra lines in 1995 (only needs final installation and connection) to date the only reason I haven't done this is the cost and charges quoted by Telstra (51% government owned formerly 100%) are ridiculous. Anyone who believes after we pay $43B for Gigabit fibre it will free or even cheap is smoking the funny stuff
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
True. But the Senate, as the house of review, is really where it all happens. Not to mention they have rotating 8 year terms.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Considering we've gone from, what, 14.4k to approaching Gb speeds in the space of less than 20 years? I don't think it's unreasonable to build in some future redundancy - after all, the majority of the cost is going to be physically putting the cable in place, the cost to increase the capacity of said cable is likely to be close to incidental.
Tony, please go back inside. You're embarrassing us in front of our international friends!
Akamai isn't everything, but it's certainly a serious chunk of content.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
No reason why Akamai, YouTube and Google can't have local caches.
Akamai puts caches pretty much close to *everywhere*, even in Down Under Land.
I personally dunno to what extent Google and YouTube park infrastructure of any sort Down Below.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
...the only connection OFF their little island will still only be carrier pigeons with Post-It notes. Enjoy your highspeed internet access! (To the rest of your little country.)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Not sure why we have a picture of the US flag, in an article about Australian politics.
Also I wonder why we aren't talking about Oracle taking google to court over patents in Java. Are the slashdot editors waiting to see if the topic goes away?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not 1mb, but 12mb should be plenty!
There is certainly not going to be any use in the future for more than 12mb. So Australia is in no danger of handicaping itself economicaly in a world that increasingly work with them intertubes.
If it was left to Telstra (as I believe is Abbot's plan), they'll just roll out 10b2 down every street. Guaranteed 10Mb to every home. I wonder what the contention rate will be like?
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
as an Aussie that lives in Sweden i can say this.
Oz has been held to ransom by Telsta for years.
finally they are getting a decent network and the opposition is playing politics with it.
46 billion AUD = 20 billion Euro about.
Its allot of money but ITS WORTH IT, because it means that that ALL industries can reap the benefits.
Being connected and having a good connection is MANDATORY to do anything in todays world.
Not only that but i know for a fact that it also means all the other over the air networks get cheaper too.
For example a wimax network is going into Victoria as we speak. I know because my brother is in charge of that.
Having all that fibre available, means that so many other services also get better too is my point. Its like a catalyst.
i Sweden they have an OpenNET. which is a fibre backbone which is free.
So other companies can innovate on top of it. It allows everyone to get fibre if they want it.
So politicians down there in opposition get FUCKED (aussies swear allot).
People in OZ, you should write the everyone that will or wont listen demanding this stays on course and goes ahead.
Its a lifeline to allow Oz to jump ahead in terms of a civilisation !!!!!!
He finds it implausible because he's going to close our borders to the skilled immigrants required to build it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Let me guess: $10billion a year for 10 years - that should make it cost effective and entirely private.
Note he doesn't mention what 12mbit (I have that now in London) will cost the end user. It must be fun to be a Telco in Australia - both the government and the people pay you.
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
But you can only browse government approved sites.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
So in terms of just building a big 'ole WAN, no probably not too much more. Enterprise grade gig equipment still carries a non-trivial price premium over 100mb, but it isn't near the cost that actually laying the fiber will be. However remember that's only half the battle. There are two very other important things when you are talking an ISP:
1) Internal pipes. While you can, of course, oversubscribe lines and you'll do that, you cannot do it to an infinite fashion. What this means is if you have a switch full of people on gig, and you want them to see that gig a reasonable amount of time, you need to go 10gig for the uplink from that switch. Then that switch with all the 10gig ports is going to have to have something bigger up the chain, and currently there isn't anything on the ethernet standard. You find that the prices for this can go up extremely fast. Gig is cheap, 10 gig is not very cheap, faster is really expensive. When talking something on the scale of a nation, it means you will need some extremely heavy hitting high end connections. This is doable, but you are talking massive infrastructure. Like say you wanted to have all 1.6m people in Perth to have access, and you wanted to do an over subscription of 1000:1 at the high end. You'd need 40ish OC-768 lines headed out to the next level of your net to maintain that. Also that oversubsctiption rat might be a bit too aggressive for people to get their speed, and in that case you'd have to increase this.
2) Internet connections. The really expensive part, if you want this to be actual 1gbps network connections and not just some massive WAN, would be connections to other ISPs. This is particularly the case in Australia which is located out in the middle of nowhere. Massive, massive amounts of bandwidth would need to be purchased to other carriers in Asia and Hawaii and probably new cable run for it. This would incur a massive monthly charge since as it stands, Australia isn't going to get peering rates, there just isn't enough there to want to peer with (ISPs peer when they are roughly equal in terms of traffic needs).
If these aren't done, then what you has is a massive WAN, or perhaps even a massive collection of LANs. Delivering gig signaling to the house isn't hard. I could even be done over cable modem if people wanted, and fiber isn't a problem at all. The problem is then backing that gig up high up the chain and making it mean something, other than just a massive signaling rate.
Like at work, I have a gig to my desktop, however it'd be disingenuous to say I have a gig Internet connection. Why? Well that gig switch is shared with about 6 other people, all of whom have gig. It only then has a gig out to the floor switch for the building, which is shared with a bunch of room and servers. That has a redundant gig connection back to the building switch. That building switch has a gig connection to the distribution switch, one gig for hundreds of people in the building. That has 10 gig back to the core, and has probably 40-50 buildings on it. Then going off campus? About 500mbps (they may have upped it a bit) to the Internet and 2.4gbps to Internet 2. Not a slow connection, but not a gig by any means. 100mbit is about the max I get in real world usage, and then only on torrents and so on with other I2 sites involved. Also it only stays fast so long as people don't use their bandwidth all the time. If you do, you can rest assured you'll get a call. Everyone needs to use the network to get what they need, then back off and let others have a chance. No 24/7 torrenting (the students may, but the dorms have a heavy per dorm rate limit to deal with it).
We do that at work to keep costs down and because it works well. It is just a big WAN, we aren't interested in actually providing 1gbps of Internet to each and every person. Fine, but we are realistic about that.
Same deal here but on a MUCH larger scale. Providing a fast connection to the home isn't the hard part. Having the infrastructure and connections higher up to maintain that
Everyone seems to be forgetting that the same party that is offering 1GBps "last mile" connectivity, is the same party that wants to filter the internet with a China link filter. redtube.com (42nd most vistited site on the whole interwebs) is blocked under the Hitler like filter. 1GBps "last mile" filtered internet vs 12Mbps unfiltered.. I think I'd go for the less "book burning" solution. Australia's biggest problem, even with ADSL2, is the international links. You can't go faster than the speed of light, and with 200ms latency to the USA (home of the interwebs), Australia will always be slow.
Uhg, I know what you mean.
I wish more people would realize how much of an idiot he is and just vote for **any** other choice. Right now we'd be better off with a figurehead Liberal or even *shudder* NDP leader.
it is D.
you are damned right!
thanks
It is C = B*log2 (1+S/N).
That would be Shanon's law. What it basically says is that the total amount of digital data you can get down a given channel is related to the bandwidth, in Hz of the channel, and the signal to noise ratio of that channel.
Now in the wireless world, the SNR is something you have to count on being pretty low. There's interference of plenty of kinds, including just general thermal noise, which goes up as frequency does. Plus unless you want to expend tons of power blasting it out, there's just little you can do. What that means is that to get high C, you need high B, meaning a high bandwidth signal. That means high carrier frequency. You can't very well have a 500MHz channel on a 100kHz carrier frequency.
The presents an additional problem. The higher the frequency of your signal, the less it travels. A 76Hz signal, which was really used by the American Seafarer to talk to subs, could go through the whole earth and took minutes to transmit a character. Something in the 50MHz area can go beyond the horizon, it can curve around the world, if conditions are good, and goes through buildings with ease but only at modem speeds. Now when you go to to say the 2GHz range, where we are talking for WiFi you can get good data speeds, probably 50ish mbps of actual throughput in the 2.4GHz band (and 100mbps or so in the 5GHz) but now it is direct line only and walls, trees, etc start to impede the signal. Hundred meters max, if you are really lucky. So let's go up to the 50 or 100GHz range. Here we can do 1gbps finally... And we have a signal that most windows will stop. It is also getting highly directional. Even the air attenuates the signal by a non-trivial amount, and rain can play hell on it.
So you find that at a 1gbps rate, wireless is getting to be of extremely limited use. Things not only are short range, but going in and out of buildings is problematic.
For interior coverage this might work, and I emphasize might as we've only just brought online 802.11n which caps out at a maximum theoretical transfer rate of about 200mbps (600mbps raw, it wastes about 2/3rds) and then only in the right conditions while using the whole frequency. All the real N hardware I've seen caps out at 100mbps actual (300mbps data rate) and even that is dicey in an actual house. My laptop rarely connects to my AP at more than about 100mbps raw data rate because it is a cheap WiFi card.
However for wider neighbourhood coverage? I don't see it happening.
Sorry man but fiber is king for bandwidth. The reason is again that pesky law. Light isn't in the GHz range, it is in the 100s of THz region. An IR laser might be 400THz. Also you can usually rely on a bit better SNRs in the optical cable. On top of that, you can shoot more than one colour of laser down a cable if you need to. So bandwidth ranges from insane up to OMGWTFBBW insane levels with no problem.
Wireless is neat and going nowhere, but it'll always be a second class citizen in terms of bandwidth. You tell me what technology can deliver wireless, and I'll show you a couple of order of magnitudes over that wired. Just how it goes.
I think I'll go with the Greens...
Please, think twice. Is this guy still on the Greens ticket? Because if this is the kind people they put up, then they don't sound very anti-filter to me.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
They can make Aussie content / data cap free! Just cap over seas data.
When dingos fly!
It can be done with that amount of money or even less if you can keep the pirates and looters
from running off with the money.
Now that is nary impossible, especially seeing how they control the government and the corporations.
If this $43 billion was turned over to a Co-op with TRUE TRANSPARENCY it could be done
by the ppl who actually want this system and only run it to the ppl that want it initially.
If half the country wouldn't pay for it or use it, then why even install it to them initially.
Good odds the single mode fiber is already in place between the cities, and the only
real issue is the last mile.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Better deal would be to just upgrade those willing to pay for the jump in speed.
I am willing to bet that there is fiber between the cities already.
So it is more of a last mile issue.
If only half the ppl would pay for the faster service then only install
it for those ppl.
They could do an automated phone survey to find out how many ppl
want it in each area, and do one area at a time to work out
the bugs and other issues, then roll it out further.
$30 bn for 1 mega-bit is a bad deal seeing how 100 Mb has been
around for over a decade.
You can get a used 1 Gig-E card on ebay right now for $35.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Governments have been rickrolled by lobbyists far too much for far too long. The govt is for the people so therefore the people get rickrolled. That's the idea. A friend of mine worked for a tech company (Plessies ?) back in the 1980s, when fibre-optic was getting attention. They [Plessies] tendered for a FO network which was to cost in the 10s of millions at that time. At least, the beginnings of a major network, even before Internet. Obviously, if that had been done at the time, Australia would/could have been world leaders in this area. An important milestone was crushed to dust as the Government greased their behinds in acceptance of the aforementioned lobbyists. i.e. The monopoply that is now know as Telstra.
Surely you'd need at least 640!
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Guess I'm the only Aussie nerd here who thinks this network is a joke.
43 billion dollars in a country with a property pricing crises, water crises, not much (if any?) sustainable energy.
Seriously, it's a joke (and I'm no liberal either) :/
Fuck the NBN, more important things to worry about
They park a lot of infrastructure down here (well, the same amount as you'd expect in any developed country, at least). Youtube and Google content all comes from a local server to which I get a 20ms ping to. So it's definitely hosted in Australia.
If you'd have said six months ago that Tony Abbott had a good chance of being Prime Minister, you'd have been mercilessly mocked. Back then, Kevin Rudd was the Most. Popular. Prime Minister. Ever. for some reason and the Liberal party was in a complete mess.
Now, Kevin Rudd is nursing some knife wounds in his back delivered by his deputy not even two months ago and Tony "Mr Personality" Abbott is in the running for the top job. How did it all go so wrong? Well, that's a long story...
It's not really about applications that need 1 Gbit. The network might be theoretically capable of that, but ISPs are highly unlikely to offer that speed on residential plans any time soon.
Consumers in the NBN pilot areas (in Tasmania) who are already using the network are being offered plans from ISPs ranging from 25/2 Mbit, to 100/16 Mbit. Most people are choosing the 25 or 50 Mbit plans ... few need 100 Mbit at this point in time, and Gbit would be ridiculous overkill.
But in 10, 20, 30 years time, it's nice to know the network can handle Gbit to the home, because it will be needed then. I mean even in my small three person household, we have 7 internet connected devices already. If all of them need data at once, you can definitely feel the slowdown, even on my relatively fast ADSL2+ connection. So I think there will always be a need for higher speeds as more and more devices in the home rely on Internet connectivity.
Tony abbots so-called "broadband plan" does NOTHING to address the market dominance of Telstra in so many areas of this country or the fact that so many areas of the country cant get ADSL at all because Telstra would rather push NextG than install more ADSL hardware (mostly because it has to allow other ISPs to provide service over the ADSL hardware but not over NextG wireless)
Thats not true, none of the current concrete plans are proposing to use ADSL, all of them are proposing to use Ethernet.
There isn't a need for gigabit connections when the average pipeline of a website is less than a megabit.
I'm sick and tired of this bullshit argument from people who can't see further than the nose on their face. There has NEVER been a need for more bandwidth. NEVER! Look into history:
- We used to surf text based BBS at 9600 baud. Man that was fast and worked well. You don't need 14.4k baud to do that any faster, but it came anyway.
- Fast forward to Command and Conquer, the lag was fine at 14.4k and it worked well. You don't need 56kbps baud to do that any faster, but it came anyway.
- The internet became a whirlwind of heavily compressed crap. The most demanding part of loading any webpage was the geocities background. We didn't need DSL or cable, but it came anyway.
- Now the internet is fatter than yo mamma. Slashdot is a page that is half a megabyte of HTML and JavaScript alone. Youtube is streaming content in what is loosely defined as HD. The average game fuelled by desire for no lag, but also a 100% identical scene for all players on the server has a netcode that just plain hurts on anything below ADSL2 / Cable. A company has even started providing games that are rendered on their servers and streamed to your computer in high def.
And finally, half the world is running on a technology that requires you to be within 5km of your exchange. I'm happy that I get 20Mbps sync on my ADSL2+ connection. I'm happy for YOU if YOU are happy with your current connection, but the fact of the matter is that current technology just sucks for distances. I have a friend who lives close enough that I often walk to his house. He has the same ADSL2 provider as I do, and he syncs at less than half the speed. You should watch the 1080p videos load on his machine before you say that we shouldn't upgrade our bandwidth.
I'm happy that people like you don't make decisions, or I'd be posting this from my BBS. Do you have any idea how dull a text terminal looks on a big and colourful LCD monitor?
You have to remember that the NBN isn't just about home users; it will be available to the vast majority of business premises as well. Our company already uses 1GB network connections between our offices and our data centre. We are located in state capitals so we can get that bandwidth at reasonable prices, but if we had an office in a smaller town we would be out of luck. Having 1GB/s available means that smaller businesses will have access to lots of new services; hosted/cloud servers, off-site backup, HD video conferencing...
As other posters have said, most home users don't even need 100 Mb/s but there may be some who do and there will certainly be some businesses that do. The major cost component of the NBN is physically installing the fibre. Installing copper would cost about the same. Arguing against the cost of the NBN based on the speeds it supports being unnecessary is like arguing against the cost of building a suburban street because someone says it can support a 65 ton tank at its maximum design capacity. Although the maximum capacity will never be needed, a lower capacity road would cost the same.
While I am not convinced that a government can manage a project of this size without cost blow outs, at least the Labour government has a vision to provide a universal level of infrastructure. The Liberal plan will leave us with the same patchy mix of over-serviced cities and under-serviced rural areas.
As for why focusing on wireless is a bad idea, refer to the very informative posts in this thread on the relationship between speed and the spectrum required. If we can't deliver better than 20Mb/s over a few kilometres using copper. how can we expect wireless to do better when it is a much more restricted medium.
I think it is kinda true :)
From what I have read on the Tasmanian trial roll out, they are providing an ADSL service for those that don't want full speed. The advantage is that they can continue to use their existing ADSL modem/router.
Saying that only new houses would be able to get the Ethernet service is wrong, however. Cable TV is available to older houses that don't have a cable outlet or a satellite dish; When you sign-up they come and install it for you. Installing an Ethernet socket in an existing house is no more difficult than a cable TV point - a couple of hundred dollars, or maybe nothing if you sign a minimum term contract.
... then the cost of money goes down. I'm not an economist, but $30 billion in 10 years wont be worth as much as $30 billion today. Avoiding large initial capital costs can be a good thing. Considering neither of the major parties are opposing the internet filter, they wont be getting my vote.
The other really nice thing about ethernet is that as well as keeping it open they have kept compatibility for a very long time. Equipment for twisted pair always seems to support falling back to slower speeds and with relatively cheap converters one can easilly hook up really old equipment with a AUI or BNC too.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You think Telstra would actually *do* that?
What does their history show?
Gross inefficiency. No I don't think they'd use 10b2 but I do think they'd use a proprietary technology to make life difficult for competitors. For evidence I submit the original cable modems. It wasn't for many years until they moved to a recognised standard.
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.