I've had Verizon's 5/2 service since December 2005. Prior to that I had Verizon/GTE DSL, since 2000. In both cases the service was highly available and met the specifications. With DSL we had, at most, 2 or 3 short (less than an hour) outages in over 5 years. With FiOS we've had no outages whatsoever in nearly 2 years (it's also used to carry our phone service). I regularly use BitTorrent (Azureus client) and both download and upload rates meet the 5/2 specification, though I ususally cap the upload rate at 200KBps (so, roughly 1.6Mbps) to allow for other ACK traffic: I can browse and watch streaming videos with no noticable degradation while Azureus is doing 600KBps/200KBps (4.8Mbps/1.6Mbps).
For the DSL service from 2000 to 2005 and the FiOS since 2005 I've paid between $30 and $35 per month. I live near Dallas, Texas, USA.
Because I'm able to download, through BitTorrent, so much good material over the internet (mainly British television shows) I haven't needed any kind of cable TV service. I'm happy!
An idea I've had for a while is to have radar detectors broadcast their "finds" to other radar detectors nearby, such that motorists would have an earlier warning. If each detector could broadcast a "primary-alert" to other units within, say, a half-mile range and those units in turn could broadcast a "secondary-alert" to other units within another half-mile range then a "suitably equipped motorist" could avoid radar guns over a mile away.
A couple of issues that restrict this idea are:
1) The marketing momentum required to establish this kind of "radar detector network". This idea won't work until there are lots of motorists using a detector of this type.
2) Legal issues - many countries and USA states ban the use of radar detectors - it's likely that even more would ban the use of "networkable" radar detectors.
An extension of the whole idea of course, is a tie-in with in-car GPS units, such that the detector could broadcast the precise GPS coordinates of the radar gun, that could be displayed on GPS units in the area.
I'm surprised that there has been no mention of another advantage that Firewire has over USB: daisy-chaining. That means that, when using several devices, far fewer ports are required by any one device, including (usually) a PC.
What a pity too, that Powered USB can't aspire to Firewire's superior variable voltage capability.
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Actually, the environment is a global issue. One in which the USA is far behind most 1st world countries.
I've had Verizon's 5/2 service since December 2005. Prior to that I had Verizon/GTE DSL, since 2000. In both cases the service was highly available and met the specifications. With DSL we had, at most, 2 or 3 short (less than an hour) outages in over 5 years. With FiOS we've had no outages whatsoever in nearly 2 years (it's also used to carry our phone service). I regularly use BitTorrent (Azureus client) and both download and upload rates meet the 5/2 specification, though I ususally cap the upload rate at 200KBps (so, roughly 1.6Mbps) to allow for other ACK traffic: I can browse and watch streaming videos with no noticable degradation while Azureus is doing 600KBps/200KBps (4.8Mbps/1.6Mbps).
For the DSL service from 2000 to 2005 and the FiOS since 2005 I've paid between $30 and $35 per month. I live near Dallas, Texas, USA. Because I'm able to download, through BitTorrent, so much good material over the internet (mainly British television shows) I haven't needed any kind of cable TV service.
I'm happy!
Yes, outdoors.
A couple of issues that restrict this idea are:
1) The marketing momentum required to establish this kind of "radar detector network". This idea won't work until there are lots of motorists using a detector of this type.
2) Legal issues - many countries and USA states ban the use of radar detectors - it's likely that even more would ban the use of "networkable" radar detectors.
An extension of the whole idea of course, is a tie-in with in-car GPS units, such that the detector could broadcast the precise GPS coordinates of the radar gun, that could be displayed on GPS units in the area.
Now, where's that patent form ...
I'm surprised that there has been no mention of another advantage that Firewire has over USB: daisy-chaining. That means that, when using several devices, far fewer ports are required by any one device, including (usually) a PC. What a pity too, that Powered USB can't aspire to Firewire's superior variable voltage capability.