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On Monday, AT&T Customers Enter Era of Broadband Caps
theodp writes "The Age of Broadband Caps begins Monday, with AT&T imposing a 150 GB cap on DSL subscribers and 250 GB for UVerse users, and keeping the meter running after that. The move comes as AT&T's 16+ million customers are increasingly turning to online video such as Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming service instead of paying for cable. With AT&T's Man in the White House, some fear there's a 'digital dirt road' in America's future. Already, the enforcement of data caps in Canada has prompted Netflix to default to lower-quality streaming video to shield its users from overage fees."
LOL, the West is starting to fall so far behind now.
If your idea of quality of life is sitting at your computer playing WoW all day in a cramped apartment, yes.
First you guys lost all of your industry to Asia.
Outsourced - bad, but nowhere near as bad as "lost" may imply. As quickly as tax stops favouring outsourcing and workers abroad start getting treated like human beings, it'll come back onshore.
Most of your university-level STEM students are foreigners.
There are more people living outside the US than inside. Everyone wants to study in the US. So there are more foreigners in US universities.
The United States has had a particularly bad flare-up of religious stupidity over the past few decades.
No, it hasn't. Religious influence on law and culture has been rampant throughout the life of North America. But enclaves of religious stupidity have received an inordinate amount of airtime recently - partly as a neat distraction from important stuff, and partly because it makes the strange new breed of Fanatical Atheist feel better about himself.
The American Dollar is devaluing extremely quickly.
Compared to which other period of fluctuation?
Now you can't even get Internet access that's comparable to what some Asian nations had a decade ago!
Oh no! And twenty years ago hardly anyone could get the Internet at all. We must have been as neanderthals.
LOL, the West is starting to fall so far behind now.
If your idea of quality of life is sitting at your computer playing WoW all day in a cramped apartment, yes.
China
First you guys lost all of your industry to Asia.
Outsourced - bad, but nowhere near as bad as "lost" may imply. As quickly as tax stops favouring outsourcing and workers abroad start getting treated like human beings, it'll come back onshore.
China
Most of your university-level STEM students are foreigners.
There are more people living outside the US than inside. Everyone wants to study in the US. So there are more foreigners in US universities.
China!!!
The United States has had a particularly bad flare-up of religious stupidity over the past few decades.
No, it hasn't. Religious influence on law and culture has been rampant throughout the life of North America. But enclaves of religious stupidity have received an inordinate amount of airtime recently - partly as a neat distraction from important stuff, and partly because it makes the strange new breed of Fanatical Atheist feel better about himself.
China???
The American Dollar is devaluing extremely quickly.
Compared to which other period of fluctuation?
China!
Now you can't even get Internet access that's comparable to what some Asian nations had a decade ago!
Oh no! And twenty years ago hardly anyone could get the Internet at all. We must have been as neanderthals.
LOL China!
If you wish to get some of that bandwidth back, especially as an "end user" who is paying a monthly billing to ISP/BSP's like AT&T instituting this? You can... easily & here is how + why:
Use a custom HOSTS file!
It can gain you added online "layered security" (the best thing we have really to date), better speed, and even better "anonymity" (vs. DNS request logs, &/or DNSBL), but perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY is, it gets you more "bang for your buck" for your monthly bill... and folks? IT IS NOTICEABLE SPEED, and yes, NOTICEABLY BETTER SECURITY, period, if done right!
On this issue of "bandwidth caps" by ISP/BSP's, specifically however:
It can help you in 2 capacities vs. this, for:
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1.) Conserving bandwidth YOU PAY FOR (after all folks - IT IS YOUR MONEY)
AND
2.) GAINING BACK SPEED YOU PAY FOR THAT YOU ARE WASTING LOADING ADBANNERS!
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In fact, I'll post the ENTIRE "gamut" of WHY A HOSTS FILE IS SUPERIOR TO BOTH AdBlock &/or DNS servers alone, right now:
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20++ ADVANTAGES OF HOSTS FILES OVER DNS SERVERS &/or ADBLOCK ALONE for added layered security:
1.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program).
2.) Bad news: ADBLOCK CAN BE DETECTED FOR: See here on that note -> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
HOSTS files are NOT BLOCKABLE by websites, as was tried on users by ARSTECHNICA (and it worked, proving HOSTS files are a better solution for this because they cannot be blocked & detected for, in that manner), to that websites' users' dismay:
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT FROM ARSTECHNICA THEMSELVES:
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An experiment gone wrong - By Ken Fisher | Last updated March 6, 2010 11:11 AM
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
"Starting late Friday afternoon we conducted a 12 hour experiment to see if it would be possible to simply make content disappear for visitors who were using a very popular ad blocking tool. Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn't see our content."
and
"Our experiment is over, and we're glad we did it because it led to us learning that we needed to communicate our point of view every once in a while. Sure, some people told us we deserved to die in a fire. But that's the Internet!"
Thus, as you can see? Well - THAT all "went over like a lead balloon" with their users in other words, because Arstechnica was forced to change it back to the old way where ADBLOCK still could work to do its job (REDDIT however, has not, for example). However/Again - this is proof that HOSTS files can still do the job, blocking potentially malscripted ads (or ads in general because they slow you down) vs. adblockers like ADBLOCK!
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3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF, Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.
4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 4-7 next below).
5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, hosts do (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw ->
The way AT&T is measuring it also adds in the protocol overhead, which can be 10% or more. They measure it at the DSLAM, not the customer modem. For instance they show me uploading 10 GB and downloading 97 GB this month. The only uploads I have did for the entire month is some emails that might contain a picture or two, nothing with a large file attachment and I do not use any P2P software that would be uploading. The previous month the overhead that they measured was enough to put me over their 150 GB limit for DSL.
They need to improve their online usage tool too. It is only updated weekly until you go over their limit so you really don't have a precise way to measure daily usage, other than my router which doesn't match what they say I use.