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Australian Man Uses 1TB of Mobile Data in a Single Day (stuff.co.nz)

An anonymous reader cites an amusing article on Stuff: When Telstra offered its mobile customers unlimited data for two separate days this year as compensation for network outages, some customers took it as a challenge to download as much as they possibly could in one day. On Sunday, 27-year-old Sydney resident John Szaszvari outdid himself and everyone else by ploughing through almost a whole terabyte of data. That's more than double what he managed during the first free data day in February -- an already mammoth 425GB.

107 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. This. by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is why we can't have nice things.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:This. by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, this proves that my phone provider's ridiculous cap of 200 MB per month truly is ridiculous!

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is why we can't have nice things.

      You just need to get an ISP with a rigorous electron/photon recycling program.

    3. Re:This. by Maritz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To stop morons from you from using wireless

      Why is it always just when you insult someone that your proof-reading skills disappear into the abyss... Now you just look plain silly, AC. ;)

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    4. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      But now that he's done downloading and has a backlog of things to watch, the network is less busy than it would be and you can have nice things.

    5. Re:This. by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite · · Score: 1

      I wonder how much 14 seasons of MythBusters, 24 seasons of The Simpsons would set you back in Australia?
      Or did he just admit to something he shouldn't, just to claim his 15 minutes...

    6. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      >> To stop morons from you from using wireless

      > Why is it always just when you insult someone that your proof-reading skills disappear into the abyss... Now you just look plain silly, AC. ;)

      Yeah, but that's not the core point here. He can insult others if that makes him feel some kind of weird satisfaction.

      The one thing he can't do is say BS -- and that's pretty much what he has managed to accomplish. Because he has been brainwashed into believing bandwidth is some scarce thing, I had to endure a dial-up connection recently (at a road, where cell phones should be pretty good!). Two weeks ago on a holiday I had to do with 2 Mbps while last year I had 6 Mbps with the same operator on the same spot.

      That's artificial scarcity, no doubt, created to make money on us -- and all the monkeys will beat the newbie who wants more speed.

    7. Re:This. by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is plenty of bandwidth to go around.

      That depends entirely where you are, and how many people are sharing the same cell tower/sector with you.

    8. Re:This. by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 1

      After your recycling program is implemented, you also need to dig up Claude Shannon and convince his dead corpse that it is possible to transmit an unlimited amount of data over a noisy channel using a finite chunk of spectrum.

    9. Re:This. by jittles · · Score: 5, Funny

      There is plenty of bandwidth to go around.

      That depends entirely where you are, and how many people are sharing the same cell tower/sector with you.

      We have no room for your "physics" nonsense around here, buddy. Go back to YouTube with all those ridiculous evolution and other psuedoscience videos. People come to Slashdot to discuss real science. Come back when you've finally learned the earth is flat.

    10. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why is it always just when you insult someone that your proof-reading skills disappear into the abyss... Now you just look plain silly, AC. ;)

      Not sure if /. does it or not but on Reddit when someone posts something the admins dislike they can use a "wand" to screw up the grammar in order to make people perceive them as idiots.

    11. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually it shows that the bandwidth that we all paid for is sitting mostly idle, in order to use the artificial scarcity for market segmentation. Remember, bandwidth cannot be saved or stored. None of that 1.4TB of data which that man transferred on those two days was borrowed from some other day or slowed anything down before or after those two days. That bandwidth was available right then and there, and had he not used it, it would have gone to waste.

    12. Re: This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you don't know what you're talking about, you might as well just stop talking.

      The air only has so much bandwidth, the tower is only fed with so much bandwidth.

      Yes, mobile providers oversubscribe. There's no getting around the fact that it makes sense to do.

      If you want every customer of a mobile provider to have their own time division slot in the air in the available frequency bands, then each sector (oversimplified to hell) can support somewhere around 250 concurrent customers. (I forget the exact number, someone please correct me)

      At about 1000 customers per base station, and a total install cost over 10 years (including maintenance, install, and some light upgrades) of $22mil, total cost per customer is around... $180/month.

      That's not including actual bandwidth costs (which are actually fairly trivial) but that tower is only going to be fed with maybe a 1gbps line (really high balling here..) So each customer gets 1/1Mbps.

    13. Re:This. by stephanruby · · Score: 2

      This is why we can't have nice things.

      Starve a person for years and of course given an all-you-can-eat buffet he's going to binge eat until he busts a gut.

    14. Re:This. by SumDog · · Score: 1

      Wireless networks are no where near short of bandwidth. There was an article posted on Slashdot a few months back stating as much, at least in the US. Three in Ireland/UK offers unlimited (they throttle after 5GB) and back when I lived in the US I was on Sprint's unlimited plan. It's more than possible.

    15. Re:This. by PRMan · · Score: 2

      It's Muphry's Law...

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    16. Re:This. by sims+2 · · Score: 2

      Nice how they aren't rolling out landline broadband so they can get away with per bit billing isn't it?

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    17. Re:This. by mjwx · · Score: 2

      This is to say, he downloaded 1 TB on a mobile connection.

      People in Australia have been able to download 1TB per day on wired HFC/Fibre connections for years. You could even do it on ADSL if you're dedicated and close enough to an exchange.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    18. Re:This. by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Three in Ireland/UK offers unlimited (they throttle after 5GB)

      If they throttle after 5GB, it's not unlimited.

    19. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There is plenty of bandwidth to go around.

      That depends entirely where you are, and how many people are sharing the same cell tower/sector with you.

      And if his tower/cell had been crowded then he wouldn't have gotten the throughput that he did. 1 TiB during 24h is on average ~102Mbps (+ protocol overheads)

    20. Re:This. by operagost · · Score: 1

      I want to know what kind of phone he has. I assume mine would ignite if I tried to push that much data through it.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    21. Re: This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      1Gb uplink is only because they don't want to spend the extra $5k for a 10Gb or 40Gb uplink. On a $22mil install, that's free. When it comes to lots of clients, TDMA is sub-par to CDMA. In theory, a CDMA tower can support millions of connected devices, you just need enough processing power from the ASICs. CDMA scales nearly linearly with processing power, the number of towers, and the number of channels, while having virtually no issue with all towers using the same channels.

      Technology keeps making equipment cheaper and faster at a phenomenal rate, something close to 100% faster and 50% cheaper every year on average. That's 4x the bandwidth for the same cost. Instead of doing "light upgrades", maybe they need to make towers more modular to allow for semi-regular medium upgrades.

    22. Re:This. by Sax+Russell+5449D29A · · Score: 1

      True, It's a shame that they're using the limited amounts of gibibytes, we should save some for our children and all the children to come!

      --
      -SR
    23. Re: This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      also why feed each tower with only 1gbit, 10gbit or even 100gbit optics is already available, biggest part of cost is putting cable in ground anyway cable itself is cheap

    24. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Exactly! And that on a day when other people were doing the same thing as he: binging on downloads. Had there been true infrastructural limitations on what he COULD download, his speeds would have slowed to a crawl.

    25. Re:This. by mrvan · · Score: 2

      Am I the only one to have downloaded a linux ISO using 4G? It's south of 1G, but around 0.7 or so I think...

      (I'm on a 4G/month plan, so I shouldn't do it every day, but I can do it every week if I want :))

    26. Re:This. by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      You may want to check a dictionary before posting. Just saying.

      If it's throttled at 64kbps, then there's a limit of 21GB per month.

    27. Re:This. by cyn1c77 · · Score: 1

      This is why we can't have nice things.

      It's also a great way to help Telstra figure out who they need to throttle more carefully in the future.

      Way to stand out John!

    28. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Reddit is the "modern" slashdot, the 2010s decade equivalent, less marred in ancient 90s themed software. A feature that "advanced" won't exist here because it would be too difficult for the imbeciles responsible for such things here to code.

      Anyway, it isn't even necessary. People with such stupid things to say tend to fuck up the grammar all on their own.

    29. Re:This. by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      And that on a day when other people were doing the same thing as he: binging on downloads. Had there been true infrastructural limitations on what he COULD download, his speeds would have slowed to a crawl.

      Or maybe he's just lucky to be the only one close to the tower in a certain sector that's interested in binging on downloads that day.

    30. Re:This. by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      Anything that can go wrong will go worng?

    31. Re:This. by Alumoi · · Score: 1

      And if it's not throttled then there's a limit of XX GB per month, depending on your download speed. Still limited, by your definition.
      For me, unlimited internet access mean 'all I can download' Full stop. For you it seems unlimited means 'all I can download at maximum speed'.

    32. Re:This. by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure why this was modded down. Remeber when AT&T made a recent stink about how their mean old unlimited customers were destroying their network because they were using Netflix and the like? Last night I saw an AT&T ad advertising their 'unlimited if you are also a satellite customer' data service to.... stream video just like Netflix. I think we all get that there are physical limitations to using the wireless spectrum, but the AC is correct that those limitations have nothing to do with the current pricing models being used by these companies. It is, indeed, a cash grab. In fact AT&T was recently nailed on that. Don't forget that AOL was a really successful company despite metered billing and poor service amongst a sea of better alternatives, it's a classic story in the industry that all these other CEOs are trying to mimic.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    33. Re:This. by subh_arya · · Score: 1

      Well isn't Shannon's theory (more specifically the constraints on channel bandwidth) is already been replaced by Compressive Sensing?

      --
      A computer scientist is someone who, when told to Go to Hell sees the "go to" rather than the destination, as harmful.
    34. Re: This. by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      Got a few examples of that?

    35. Re:This. by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      For me, unlimited internet access mean 'all I can download' Full stop.

      If it's throttled at 64 kbps, or even 128 kbps, you can't download everything you want. Most web sites will time out before they're done loading, and video streaming becomes impossible.

      For you it seems unlimited means 'all I can download at maximum speed

      Not maximum, but a useful speed.

    36. Re:This. by JazzLad · · Score: 1

      Not true. I have unlimited 128kbps and I can do 'most anything online I need to, save Netflix. 'Course, I have a wired internet connection at the house (and work, etc), so this is just for when I am out and about, but webpages load fine & I can even listen to Pandora (though admittedly, there is some buffering time between tracks - but not much).

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    37. Re:This. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Nope. They all left. That means you got stuck with me. Sorry 'bout that.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    38. Re: This. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      They're referencing something known as "fiduciary duty" which, as near as I can tell, nobody actually understands that comments about it. They're convinced that it means a company must make as much profit as possible and at any cost. I am not quite sure where this notion comes from but, I can assure you, no such regulations exist. Yes, there's a fiduciary duty. No, it's not even remotely like what people claim.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    39. Re:This. by Alumoi · · Score: 1

      Well. I don't stream music/movies, I download them for later viewing, so even my old dial-up modem does its job :P
      As for the rest, browsing the web with ublock and noscript takes care of sites timing out.
      So I get unlimited 'internet' even if I'm capped.

    40. Re: This. by elmer+at+web-axis · · Score: 1

      Telstra need to embrace this. Run an advert with him give him a silly award or something a good PR person could spin this to be a real winner. 'Our network is so good look what you can do!!'

    41. Re:This. by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Anything that can go wrong will go worng?

      Yes, that was indeed the joke. Well done.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    42. Re:This. by stoatwblr · · Score: 1

      Observation from 25 years of network and WANs:

      Your top 5% consumers this year are pushing about as many bits apiece as your average consumer will next year.

      Use them as your canaries. If you can't cater to their loads then you're already on a path to pain and mass customer loss.

    43. Re:This. by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      If it's throttled at 64 kbps, or even 128 kbps, you can't download everything you want. Most web sites will time out before they're done loading, and video streaming becomes impossible.

      Strange, but I used to use video conferencing on dial-up at 30 kbps up / 56 kbps down kbps. Now, I'm not going to claim that it was 4k ultra-def 3dTV standard (or whatever this weeks buzz word is). But it was adequate for conversation with colleagues, and hooking the webcam up to the microscope to show them what I was talking about. Limited to 2-hour time chunks, of course, after which I had to dial in again. But it worked.

      You might wish to revisit the definition of "impossible"

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. Hero? by mekkab · · Score: 1

    He may not be the hero we want, but he's the hero we deserve. Good on ya, mate!

    --
    In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
  3. Remember John Szaszvari! by Sneftel · · Score: 2

    All ye who would piss and moan about capped network plans: Consider how much of your unlimited internet plan's cost would be subsidizing some stoner's gigantic Simpsons hoard. Hint: It's bigger than yours.

    --
    The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
    1. Re:Remember John Szaszvari! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      A heavy user may raise costs because of increased bandwidth usage, but the only thing more expensive than that is to not have the heavy user. The lost income paying for the expensive infrastructure is more detrimental than the heavy user using an "unfair" share of the bandwidth. For any large ISP with proper peering contracts, bandwidth is the cheapest part of being an ISP. Customer service is the single most expensive cost, but I don't heavy people complaining about heavy complaint customers. It's cheaper to add more bandwidth than to add more customer care representatives to handle complaints about not having enough bandwidth.

  4. Begs the question... by Pollux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article...

    And then the downloads began: 14 seasons of MythBusters; 24 seasons of The Simpsons; the entire Wikipedia database; Microsoft software for his job; updates for his Xbox games; and "a lot of random other stuff". He also synced all his Spotify playlists offline..."It's always movie/TV night at my house at the moment."

    With all that binge-watching, when does he ever has any time to do his job?

    1. Re:Begs the question... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Funny

      His job is posting pro Msft comments on Slashdot...

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Begs the question... by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      With all that binge-watching, when does he ever has any time to do his job?

      What makes downloading = watching?

      He said it himself. "It's always movie/TV night at my house at the moment". Maybe he does his job during the day.

    3. Re:Begs the question... by Shatrat · · Score: 1

      In keeping with your lack of user ID you seem to have no idea what you're talking about.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    4. Re:Begs the question... by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      I think most programmers actually like silence or very specify types of music at low volume.

      I am not sure how someone could concentrate with video and human dialog playing in front of them unless it was completely tuned out and ignored... but then what is the point?

      That said, I have somewhat learned to live with the TV on in the background since my computer is in the living room. I would not call myself a programmer, but I have written some complex Perl and PowerShell scripts... and I find it much harder to concentrate on those types of tasks with the TV on.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  5. 11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by redelm · · Score: 1

    Do the math: this works out to an average of 11.6 Mbytes/s . Just about the same as a saturated 100baseT. He must have used a fleet of [cloned/family] devices, each on good towers.

    1. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by danbob999 · · Score: 2

      This is doable on LTE.

    2. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by burtosis · · Score: 1

      Sounds like they will need to do another free day due to an outage of service. This could be a recursive problem...

    3. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which is why every time they roll out new networking technology and tell us a) how awesome it is, and b) that we should splash out on a new phone to use it ... that I have no choice but to think "yeah, sure, in theory, but you'll never upgrade your system to allow anything like the demo".

      Every time they tell us how awesome the network is, how fast it will be, and all of the cool things we'll be able to do with it, they then turn around and say "but you can't really use it because if everybody did that the network would collapse".

      This stuff is pure marketing lies. They're never going to give you even a fraction of what the marketing campaign about how awesome it is tells you you're going to get.

      If they showed you what you'd really be getting, they'd be advertising a Ferrari, and giving you a Ford Pinto. It's all lies. I just have no idea how such blatantly false advertising is even legal.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      He must have used a fleet of [cloned/family] devices, each on good towers.

      Or just one LTE-A connection which according to the article he has. I'm not sure about you but at the moment I've got 1 bar signal strength and I've no problem getting getting over 100Mbps.

    5. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Every time they tell us how awesome the network is, how fast it will be, and all of the cool things we'll be able to do with it, they then turn around and say "but you can't really use it because if everybody did that the network would collapse".

      This stuff is pure marketing lies. They're never going to give you even a fraction of what the marketing campaign about how awesome it is tells you you're going to get.

      Except we have no problem getting the advertised speeds, so FUD much? Yeah it's got a limited download capacity but faster is still faster, and not waiting for a page to load is a shitload better than waiting for a page to load.

    6. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Well, except it's not FUD. It's fact.

      What they fail to tell you is they have no intention of letting you use those speeds for anything more than a trivial amount of data.

      The ad campaign is always "look at all the super awesome stuff you'll be able to to", and the fine print basically says "well, you can only do a little of that before we change our minds and restrict it".

      They say "wow, you can totally stream 4K movies" or whatever the lie is this week, followed by "well, streaming on 4K movie will go over your cap in the first 12 minutes and then you'll need to spend hundreds of extra dollars".

      They do it with broadband. They do it with mobile.

      Your average telco marketing is lying bullshit which makes it look like they're selling you far more than they really are. Followed by the other shoe dropping and them saying "OK, not really, that's just marketing, we're not actually giving you that".

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    7. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What they fail to tell you

      They don't fail to tell me anything. The listed speeds as well as the data caps are listed in the advertisements in full. No one lists anything as unlimited here. Also no one lists things you're not able to do because we have a consumer watchdog which ensure that companies are punished for misleading advertising.

      They tell you how much faster downloads are when talking about speed.
      They tell you how much more you can download when talking about caps.
      They tell you you can stream movies from select services which are unmetered.

      By the way you can stream 4k on a standard LTE connection. Theoretically you could stream 12 at once on Telstra's LTE-A network.

      Your average telco marketing is lying bullshit which makes it look like they're selling you far more than they really are.

      No, YOUR average telco is. Not every country lets companies get away with unrestricted advertising that isn't based on fact and people generally need a basis for comparison. Advertising a 300Mbps network is useless when all you have to go on is "That's like 37MB/s man!" No they need to show people in a format they can understand like Mp3s or Youtube videos which is good because at least it tells the uninformed something about performance other than a meaningless number.

    8. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2

      If they showed you what you'd really be getting, they'd be advertising a Ferrari, and giving you a Ford Pinto. It's all lies. I just have no idea how such blatantly false advertising is even legal.

      More like a leasing service where you get a Ferrari but only 1 hour per day. Which would actually be a great deal. If it actually worked out that a number of people didn't have to commute at the exact same time and each of you could commute to work in a Ferrari for the price of owning a Ford Pinto.

      Network Bandwidth is such that it is beneficial to have extremely high speed in bursts with caps. Imagine the scenario where you want to watch a Movie. It is 5GB and you can't stream it. You either have to wait say 24 hours at slow speed to download it. Or you can download it at 100MB/s and watch it in a couple minutes. Both use "5GB" of data but the infinite burst speed is a better value for the customer. Just like only having 1 hr a day of drive time is actually more valuable to most customers than 24 hours of owning a ford pinto. If you only use 1 hr a day of commuting it might as well be a fancy car than having a shitty car sit in your driveway or parking lot for 23 hours a day.

    9. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      Actually it is more like selling a ford pinto, but stating that it can out accelerate the ferrari, and has a top speed better than the ferrari (only when falling out of a plane).

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    10. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by Cimexus · · Score: 1

      Nope - single phone tethered to his laptop apparently. He was using Telstra's 4GX network which can easily give in the range of 200-300 Mbps downstream if you're close-ish to a tower. So averaging 11.6 MB/s is perfectly doable.

      Here's another article with some more info on this guy and some speedtests etc: http://www.canberratimes.com.a...

    11. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      With proper scheduling, you can fairly distribute bandwidth on a millisecond basis. Why not let "hogs" makes use of idle bandwidth?

      Because then everybody would be hogging, and there would be no idle bandwidth left.

    12. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by redelm · · Score: 1

      Apologies for forgetting to capitalized MBytes which was spelt out for clarity, but the title was correctly MB and no confusion should have occurred. I avoid bits/s unless talking directly of transmission speeds, not delivered TBytes since there is a variable amount of overhead (possibly negaive in the case of compression!)

    13. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      Rereading my comment, I came across like a jackass and would like to apologize. My comment was meant to be thoroughly tongue-in-cheek, but as I read it again, I have no idea what I was thinking, since my comment doesn't convey that intent at all. Again, I apologize.

    14. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by jrumney · · Score: 1

      Not just wireless either. When my fibre connection was 50Mbps, I used to routinely measure it at between 60 and 70Mbps - it was as if they were giving me a minimum guaranteed speed of 50Mbps and bumping it a bit to make sure. After they upgraded it to 300Mbps, I now get about 70-80Mbps most days, the 300 is definitely a theoretical peak burst speed.

  6. Re:Let me guess by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

    Works of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Beethoven performed live in theaters and concert halls in Sydney and Melbourne?

    Maybe a just a lot of pr0n.....?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  7. Re: Let me guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    4K porn should die. The lower resolutions smoothed out those little skin imperfections. Now every wrinkle is a canyon. And 60 fps? What's wrong with Reverse Cowgirl Anal at 30 fps?

  8. 994GB of Horse Porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    994GB.

    neigh!

  9. Re:Seems impossible by Maritz · · Score: 1

    He might have had a bunch of devices all downloading on the same plan.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  10. Porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's a lot of porn.

  11. Re:Let me guess by cogeek · · Score: 1

    My thoughts exactly... hopefully he has enough to keep him busy and off the interwebs for at least a year or two.

  12. It is called Pareto principle by Trachman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Download the list of users.
    2. Sort by the usage
    3. Select the top user

    For the selected user publicly start shaming, start puffing cheeks and rolling eyes.

    Well, that is statistics... You will always have a percentile that uses more service than others. The question is why this is a surprise.

    Mr Vilfredo Pareto discovered this phenomena 120 years ago.

    1. Re:It is called Pareto principle by VorpalRodent · · Score: 4, Funny

      Mr Vilfredo Pareto discovered this phenomena 120 years ago.

      This was all the more impressive considering the limited 4G coverage at the time.

      --
      Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
    2. Re:It is called Pareto principle by jgtg32a · · Score: 1

      TIL another name for the "80-20 rule"

  13. Instead of real downloads... by swb · · Score: 2

    He should have had a way to just pump /dev/random across the cellular network and into /dev/null on the receiving side.

    His mistake was actually downloading real data instead of just trying to see how much crap he could push through the network.

    1. Re:Instead of real downloads... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      He should have had a way to just pump /dev/random across the cellular network and into /dev/null on the receiving side.

      Which is why plans have caps.

    2. Re:Instead of real downloads... by Shatrat · · Score: 1

      /dev/random slows way way down after a few megabits when it runs out of seeded random numbers pulled from mouse movements or whatever. Been a while since I read up on it. /dev/zero is much much faster for filling up hard drives et cetera.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    3. Re:Instead of real downloads... by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      /dev/random slows way way down after a few megabits

      That's why there is /dev/urandom. It uses a lot of CPU though. On my system, /dev/urandom to /dev/null runs at 21MB/sec, whereas /dev/zero runs at 7GB/sec.

    4. Re:Instead of real downloads... by tomhath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...and to keep idiots from pumping /dev/random across the cellular network and into /dev/null in order to burn bandwidth for the sake of burning bandwidth.

  14. Japanese Man eats 59 hotdogs in one day by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 4, Funny

    World amazed by new record.

    "I never thought he would do it," said one spectator.

    "I came here thinking I would win, and then this happened," said a contestant, followed by several expletives.

    "You've gotta respect that," explained one of the judges.

    "I agree. This is big important news," said a Slashdot editor.

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
  15. Re:Seems impossible by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    Trivial on LTE-A. Telstra has a theoretical maximum of 300Mbps, Optus has 180Mbps.

  16. Re:Seems impossible by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    Or just one LTE-A phone. Telstra's network supports Cat 6 LTE (300Mbps)

  17. Maths? by sycodon · · Score: 1

    1 terabyte in 24 hours comes to 41.6 gigabytes an hour.

    Is this AT&T billing rules?

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:Maths? by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      Which comes to over 10 MB per second.

    2. Re:Maths? by Cimexus · · Score: 1

      Yep, that sounds about right. Telstra's 4GX network (which this guy used) regularly gives in the range of 200-300 Mbps downstream if you're close-ish to a tower. 10 MB/s average is quite doable on this network.

      Australia's wired broadband isn't particularly great by global standards, but it does have some of the best/fastest wireless out there.

    3. Re:Maths? by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Are you sure that's MB and not Mb?

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    4. Re:Maths? by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      Take one terabyte per day and divide by 86,400 seconds per day. It's a little over 10 MB per second.

  18. The unrelenting march of technological progress by red_dragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This 1 TB/day threshold rang a bell as I remembered a BSD trumpeting a similar record, albeit in the opposite direction, in the late 1990s... and sure enough, Slashdot covered it back then:

    Wcarchive Does 1.39tb In 24 Hours

    Back then people had serious discussions about what sort of storage controller, network interface, and upstream connectivity was needed to achieve this result. Nowadays we can stuff that same performance in a trouser pocket. What an age to live in.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
    1. Re:The unrelenting march of technological progress by operagost · · Score: 1

      Awesome find!

      RIP, Walnut Creek. Loved picking up CD-ROMs of the archive at Micro Center when my download speed was 50Kbps...

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    2. Re:The unrelenting march of technological progress by suupaabaka · · Score: 1

      Wonder what we'll have (or stuff in our trouser pocket) 20 years hence?

    3. Re:The unrelenting march of technological progress by ponraul · · Score: 1

      proof that bsd is dead

    4. Re:The unrelenting march of technological progress by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Back then people had serious discussions about what sort of storage controller, network interface, and upstream connectivity was needed to achieve this result. Nowadays we can stuff that same performance in a trouser pocket. What an age to live in.

      Some things never change though.

      Virgin then - virgin now.

      Guess the computer usage haven't changed much either. I use Windows 10 now but even still I don't have functional sleep (IE/Edge still suck too.)
      Internet-dating has caught up and now is even more looks-minded than actual party-"dating."

  19. What a pig by Blake1024 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is inconsiderate people like this that causes the rest of us to have caps in the first place. Yea, yea, I know - any company with more than $100 is evil, and this guy is "the people" so whatever he does is good. Give me a break.

  20. Balancing act by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Marketers have a dilemma. Advertising "unlimited data" is simple and enticing as a sales pitch. However, a small percentage of customers WILL take full advantage of it.

    If the marketers counter that by stating limits and disclaimers, which they have to do if they don't want to be sued, then they get less sales because the conditions and disclaimers scare away a fair amount of customers.

    They are trying to decide if having more customers is worth living with a few bad apples (from their perspective) who run up the data.

    The best pricing in my opinion would be priced increments, such as N bytes included in the base plan, and $X more for every Y bytes over N, with a PROMPT confirming you wish to pay for the next increment of Y.

    However, don't outright cut it off if payment is not approved, but rather gradually throttle it heavier and heavier, but don't charge for the overages. The throttle-time would be allowed to consume say up to 25% of Y without the extra payment (although that's a minor issue), until the data flow is zero. That way if you are in the middle of something and can't stop to answer a prompt, it doesn't outright stop.

    It's a "soft and friendly wall". And it can bring in nice revenue for the service provider as people readily approve increments. It's convenient for BOTH SIDES once they buy into it.

    But this approach is hard to word in a contract that makes sense to most customers. It's the "logical" way to do it, in my opinion, but hard to describe to typical customers, and that's why marketers don't do it that way.

    I don't fully blame the service providers, they are just trying to compete with other service providers in the same boat. And you could blame the consumers for not being patient enough to research the details (if presented with such a plan), but humans are humans.

    Maybe we need a little socialism to force a common set of plan options, with the above being one of them. People will get used to it. They sometimes don't know what's good for them until they see it in action for a while.

    1. Re:Balancing act by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      What "reasonable" means should not be written into a law, but instead common sense should be used when interpreting it.

      For consumer products that often backfires in practice because too many will test the limit and the legal system tends to favor consumers under vagueness (at least outside of Texas). It's better to spell it out, and not call it "unlimited" unless it really is.

  21. Re:Disappointed by sims+2 · · Score: 1

    Looks like it would have been roughly $10,000 AUD otherwise. (about $7500 USD)

    It would take me about 12 days to hit that amount on the cellular here maxed out 24hr/day.

    --
    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  22. Stargate Atlantis needs to come back! by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Stargate Atlantis needs to come back!

    1. Re:Stargate Atlantis needs to come back! by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

      I am an avid sci-fi fan (books mostly) and have always meant to watch SG but never have.

      I know that there are hundreds of episodes of untapped sci-fi if I ever get really bored.

      It's like my emergency escape pod... just sitting there waiting... but if I watch it, I lose the safety net.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  23. ...and "a lot of random other stuff" by Justt+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

    That's a lot of porn!

  24. Average Speed by neanderslob · · Score: 1

    If my math is correct, that's over 10 megs/second average for the whole day. ...how!?

  25. This is why caps cannot be justified. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    They're just another money-grab promoted under the name of "decency" and "fairness".

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  26. Daaammmmmnnnnnnn..... by RLU486983 · · Score: 1

    that's one serious porn addiction!!

  27. Amazed.. by Victorytractors · · Score: 1

    What he downloaded and the mobile company gave him the speed... usually when you get free data. speed suckss.......

  28. Re: Let me guess by war4peace · · Score: 1

    What's wrong with Reverse Cowgirl Anal at 30 fps?

    Looks crappy in slow motion. Also VSync :)

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  29. Wow by jaq1an · · Score: 1

    I struggle to hit my 15Gb data limit