I do not believe in homeopathy. When I learned of taking 1/1000th of a 'reagent' for a patient, I found it absurd that a three order of magnitude decrease of a substance would somehow make it 'better'. That was back in high school, some 40 years ago.
It's bunk. But why should it be regulated? It isn't going to do harm, other than perhaps someone not getting real medical treatment, but then again lots of people just don't go to doctors when they should.
Regulations in the US (and a lot of Europe) have gotten out of hand. Yes, things like homeopathy aren't useful, but they don't actively hurt either. So why have regulations?
I've long thought that the FDA should have radio and TV shows, where they describe products that they like and dislike, and explain why. You could still buy xyzzy, but you'd be warned that its useless, bad, or whatever.
Me, I'd listen carefully if I had reasoned pronouncements on health related items.
It won't bring the three dead people back, it doesn't solve anything, and while his guilt is not in question it helps perpetuate a system that has flaws, which cannot be corrected if an innocent person is executed.
Dzhokhar would be seen as a hero by some, as well.
I wish we would be useful if we spent just a fraction of the money used to kill him on figuring out why folks like him get radicalized. THAT would be useful.What good will it do to kill him?
It won't bring the three dead people back, it doesn't solve anything, and while his guilt is not in question it helps perpetuate a system that has flaws, which cannot be corrected if an innocent person is executed.
Dzhokhar would be seen as a hero by some, as well.
I wish we would be useful if we spent just a fraction of the money used to kill him on figuring out why folks like him get radicalized. THAT would be useful.
You likely do not have time to pull disks from systems, so pack computers and external drives first. Get blankets to protect things. Blankets start at the bottom to act like a shock absorber.
Things like networking gear and wireless stuff is irrelevant compared to the computers, and probably lighter. If you CAN, sure, save all that stuff too.
But the data comes first. Don't forget backups.
If there are computers with really really important or sensitive stuff, put those in someones car in the backseat, again with blankets. If I seem blanket obsessed, it's because I've found them to be available quickly either from individuals or stores. Yes, bubble wrap or sorbathane would be better but you aren't likely to have that stuff lying around.
Coming from academia there are some rather obscure subjects there, but why not read about the handling and management of chemicals? That which is not common is still useful. I daresay that skipping over the more "odd" things is an inditement of the educational system. Reading that which doesn't interest you at first is a great way to learn new things, just as reading political views you don't agree with might broaden your ideas.
Me, I'm going back to trough now. I only have about 50 of them,
Comments are a skill in and of themselves, which a whole lot of people never master.
I remember two people who worked at a place where I was programming. The first was a woman, freshly out of school who was taught that comments made the code. So she dutifully wrote beautiful comments on the theory of what the function was going to do, but also inline, especially for arcane things going on in an algorithm. All nicely spaced, neat. A marvel to behold. Problem was, the code this person did had some form of overflow condition (this was C) about every five lines, such that I knew if I poked at the code from a higher layer I could cause problems. And did, because I was trying to force the issue and have some kind of review go on.
The other person in the larger group was a 20ish male, who saw human interaction largely through the eyes of TV, and gaming / nerd get-togethers. Hardly a bad person, he just didn't seem to have humans around him when growing up (more than a trifle odd, even now--I met him again for the first time in 20 years; the only change was gray hair). He was one of the people I'd go to for help when I botched things, or wanted comments on an idea I had. His code often worked the first time run, and I'm not talking of little 10 line routines, but larger complex functions. His comments were about the opposite of the code, both in terms of spelling, grammar, and that ephemeral concept of how to communicate in general. Some sentences were better read thinking of them as RPN, and others simply defied standard logic. Comments that did survive that minimal test of English were often spelled in novel ways, causing euqal parts of head scratching and laughter. But the code was great!
I offer these two examples which while extremes, are examples that poke holes in the idea that there is a common relationship between comments and code. Certainly some people will fit that mold, but I think that more random than not.
October 18th is also its birthday
on
OpenBSD 4.6 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
OpenBSD is 14 as of today.
Today would be a great day for even a little gift.;-)
Though there might be a limit on how fast a computation can go, I would think that parallel systems will boost that far beyond whatever limit there may be. If we crash into a boundary, multiple systems--or hundreds of thousands of them--will continue the upward trend.
I suppose there is also the question of whether 10^16 more computing power "ought to be enough for anybody".;-)
This is correct. OpenBSD can be thought of as two parts, the OS itself and the ports/packages tree.
OpenBSD itself undergoes the most testing. This is not to say that the packages aren't tested, because they are. But the packages--some 5000 of them--can't be tested as much as the core OS. Still, the packages are of very high quality, and for most cases you do not have to compile things on your own for OpenBSD.
If a port is bad, ie it isn't compiling or some such, it simply isn't included in a release. If the port is a security horror, it isn't in the ports tree at all.
Me, I'd rather see the OS itself get the most scrutiny, given that endless numbers of good testers don't exist.
My cite for this? About 20 years of dealing with "modern" hardware, say going back to Sun stuff of the Sun-3 or -4 era. I used to be able to run Sun-4/670's for *years* at a time. Disks would fail but the machine just ran. Of course in 1989 it cost something like $100,000 for one, but it was built unlike anything today.
As for a maintenance nightmare, you need to have spare hardware. I agree, finding a replacement motherboard for a Dell GX200 would be hard today, so you gather several machines and have spares put on the floor, ready to be used on short notice.
Driver support isn't an issue. I run OpenBSD; what open source OS's have stopped supporting IDE disks, serial and parallel ports, and ethernet cards? I don't use anyting other than stock VGA and don't even have a monitor on the machines except for installs, and disk disasters (one of those in six years).
On power you are probably right. In terms of CPU power per watt, the old Dell's are probably worse. Except, spending $1000 for a new machine vs. nothing but a new disk/memory for an old machine leaves a lot of margin to pay for electricty, doesn't it?
I have 8 years of running older stuff at my current job. Problems come and go where I work, but the infrastructure I have has proven more reliable than the AC power that feeds the building.
Older machines are often built better than newer faster stuff. I have several of the white Dell Optiplex machines doing infrastructure stuff for me. Most have uptimes measured in the span between upgrades of my op system (OpenBSD).
It takes almost no more time to install on a 500MHz Dell than some 2.xGHz box. Yes, the disk may take longer to format--but how often are you going to be doing that?
Given the various quality problems with new systems, I'll stick with the older slower systems when I can, which is most of the time.
You haven't said what exactly these machines are going to be doing, but I fail to see why the extra time that one OS takes over another is a factor to deal with.
If it takes an extra 90 seconds to boot an OS that is stable and reliable, how does shaving that 90 seconds save anything?
Optimizing for boot time over everything else seems very foolish to me.
OpenBSD still uses GCC, version 3.3.5 on i386. I can't say which version is used on the other platforms.
You are talking of PCC, which is being worked on by some of the OpenBSD developers, but I think its a parallel project, see http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/ for more information.
Jem Matzen talked of this too, see http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/369/
Thats a questionable statement, that OpenBSD is primarily for firewalls. I'm writing this on an OpenBSD 4.1-current laptop (IBM A31p ThinkPad) and have used OpenBSD exclusively since 2001 for all my desktops. A lot of people are discovering that OpenBSD does really well as a desktop. With the introduction of 4.1, Open Office is supported, not to mention KDE, media stuff, a really outstanding population of wireless cards, etc. I think there are people who think of OpenBSD as a just a firewall; as good (well, wonderful) as pf is, there is so much more there.
I'm not unhappy to see the requirement go. I've been a ham for 30 years, and while I have seen useful (very useful) things done with code, I was never enamored with the idea of *having* to learn it up front. I did, though with struggling and headaches. The time came when my elmer gave me the code test and I passed, just barely.
As I see it today, getting people into ham radio is the important thing. Having to learn a particular mode before being allowed to join just doesn't make sense. And no one should think that having to know code was an effective barrier for the twits, such that they stayed out. In 1976 I heard language on 80M that was a great exercise in George Carlin's "7 dirty words"--and most of the speakers were Extra Class hams (highest license).
CW *is* useful though, and I've come to embrace it for the VHF/UHF weak signal stuff I've been doing, where at time the luxury of a voice just isn't there; things are too weak. Also Moonbounce will require me to reall learn CW, which I am working towards, equipment wise.
Yes, its the end of an era. But so what? Technology roars along, changing the way we communicate, but it has never changed the reasons for the 'why'.
If you are contemplating becoming a ham, great, please do so. If you are a ham and bemoan the lack of CW now, get off your duff and start a CW appreciation class! Show new hams *why* its cool (and it is, though it took me 20+ years to realize that), and get them hooked on it.
This has certainly been an interesting 24 hours. I wonder if some of the members of our current administration have heard the knock of reality on the door. I can only hope so.
I have T-Mobile. The T stands for tenuous, but when I'm near a tower the voice quality is excellent.
Trying to determine the best phone is just about impossible however, because of the variations in the phones themselves. Sad to say, but after the "bag phones" each generation after got a little worse in terms of build quality. I have a V66 from Motorola, which I've dived into a couple of times now, to tweak things and make it more reliable. My wife's V66 was never as sensitive as mine, such that in null spots I could often get a signal and make a call when hers could not. Looking around for others with T-Mobile at school she found the T610 which performed better than her phone, so I scrounged one up on Ebay. I must say, this phone does a great job of picking up *everything* in a room. You could consider it a bugging device almost....But it wasn't as sensitive as the one that convinced her to get one, which was another data point that todays phones are really rather random in terms of their quality.
I think the best bet is to buy a phone at some place where you can take it back if you don't like it.
BPL is one of those things which sounds good or at least interesting at the start, but the deeper you go the less decent it gets.
The problem boils down to the fact that a BPL system emits RF (radio frequency) energy, causing interference to entities that use those frequencies. The FCC has been put into an interesting spot here, as they realize that the problems generated by it are real, but are also being pushed by the Bush administration to move forward on this.
Ham radio operators are definitely negatively affected by this. Hams by their nature deal with "weak signals", which the noise generated by BPL tends to clobber, making many of the "shortwave" (ie, below 30MHz) bands less than useful.
If you care to see a pretty good response to this go to www.arrl.org and look for BPL.
This is a real horror for hams. Least anyone think that ham radio is out of date in this era of advanced technology, talk with officials down south who dealt with Katrina, or in Neq York City on September 11th. BPL pits big money interests against litterally amateurs, with the latter group figting back, and being at least partly successful, in getting the FCC to deal/recognize interference complaints, and getting these systems cleaner.
What will happen, I cannot say. But I look to systems in Europe and Asia where broadband exists and doesn't use BPL, and see systems which offer far better service.
--STeve Andre' amateur callsign WB8WSF
Field Day in Ann Arbor, Michigan
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If anyone is interested in seeing ham radio in operation, come to Domino's Farms Saturday, and look for the antennas by the Petting Farm. We'll have HF ("shortwave" radio), and VHF/UHF radios and hopefully an Oscar station. We'll be trying to listen to some of the stronger stations that do Moonbounce, too.
Ham Radio isn't dying exactly--the numbers have stayed fairly static for the last several years, and in fact have risen in the last 10 or so, with the 'no code' Technician license. But it needs more people, thats certain.
Space exploration can be expensive. Thats the nature of the game.
But the rewards from the information that little teaspoon of starstuff might contain, well, thats beyond measure. You can't put a price tag on how valuable that is.
Well, I suppose it depends on where you are, and what kind of speed you get.
I've seen "wireless!!!" connections that were indeed 802.11b access, but with a 128K ISDN connection behind it. Or another with a web proxy which completely messed web access up, or....
So it depends. A well running system that costs something is going to be more useful than a free one that isn't.
For general wandering on the net paying that kind of money doesn't make sense, but for anyone travelling around, it could well.
If the charge increment is less than a full hour, a 15 minute block would cost $2.50. I'd happily pay that. My laptop could suck down my mail, upload off-line written mails and still let me check a few news sites, all for $2.50.
Sure, I'd rather pay $5 an hour or less, but these things do cost, and the mentality of "the net must be free!" really can't go on forever. What I'm hoping for are *reasonable* charges for things in the future.
Anyone who uses the net for anything related to a business use shouldn't see an hourly cost as being bad. At $10/hr they might not see as much use as $5/hr, and if thats the case then the market place is going to the give propriators a whack on their heads, won't it.
In my case, I'd likely use a $5/hr system several times more than a $10/hr system, but if I'm in Podunk nowhere $2.50 for 15 minutes isn't going to seem too bad.
No, I am not naive. I understand that the people in America have somehow lost the willingness to deal with their government. When that happens, the greedy monied interests find it far easier to slitherin and do what they do best, namely look out for their own interests and further them.
Apathy rules. What percentage of people vote on anything today?
The American government is a massive, lumbering beast. It's direction can be changed, however. All it takes is participation. Wether we will ever see that is a question beyond the scope of this discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the book "Mutant 59: The plastic eaters"
I do not believe in homeopathy. When I learned of taking 1/1000th of a 'reagent' for a
patient, I found it absurd that a three order of magnitude decrease of a substance would
somehow make it 'better'. That was back in high school, some 40 years ago.
It's bunk. But why should it be regulated? It isn't going to do harm, other than perhaps
someone not getting real medical treatment, but then again lots of people just don't go
to doctors when they should.
Regulations in the US (and a lot of Europe) have gotten out of hand. Yes, things like
homeopathy aren't useful, but they don't actively hurt either. So why have regulations?
I've long thought that the FDA should have radio and TV shows, where they describe
products that they like and dislike, and explain why. You could still buy xyzzy, but you'd
be warned that its useless, bad, or whatever.
Me, I'd listen carefully if I had reasoned pronouncements on health related items.
What good will it do to kill him?
It won't bring the three dead people back, it doesn't solve anything, and while
his guilt is not in question it helps perpetuate a system that has flaws, which
cannot be corrected if an innocent person is executed.
Dzhokhar would be seen as a hero by some, as well.
I wish we would be useful if we spent just a fraction of the money used
to kill him on figuring out why folks like him get radicalized. THAT would
be useful.What good will it do to kill him?
It won't bring the three dead people back, it doesn't solve anything, and while
his guilt is not in question it helps perpetuate a system that has flaws, which
cannot be corrected if an innocent person is executed.
Dzhokhar would be seen as a hero by some, as well.
I wish we would be useful if we spent just a fraction of the money used
to kill him on figuring out why folks like him get radicalized. THAT would
be useful.
I wish Boback the best of luck on this show, and lots more in the future.
Imagine, if people start thinking of science folks as neat...
First, triage the equipment.
You likely do not have time to pull disks from systems, so pack computers and
external drives first. Get blankets to protect things. Blankets start at the bottom
to act like a shock absorber.
Things like networking gear and wireless stuff is irrelevant compared to the
computers, and probably lighter. If you CAN, sure, save all that stuff too.
But the data comes first. Don't forget backups.
If there are computers with really really important or sensitive stuff, put
those in someones car in the backseat, again with blankets. If I seem
blanket obsessed, it's because I've found them to be available quickly
either from individuals or stores. Yes, bubble wrap or sorbathane would
be better but you aren't likely to have that stuff lying around.
Yes, these books are useful.
Coming from academia there are some rather obscure subjects
there, but why not read about the handling and management of
chemicals? That which is not common is still useful. I daresay
that skipping over the more "odd" things is an inditement of the
educational system. Reading that which doesn't interest you at
first is a great way to learn new things, just as reading political
views you don't agree with might broaden your ideas.
Me, I'm going back to trough now. I only have about 50 of
them,
Comments are a skill in and of themselves, which a whole lot of people never master.
I remember two people who worked at a place where I was programming. The first
was a woman, freshly out of school who was taught that comments made the code.
So she dutifully wrote beautiful comments on the theory of what the function was
going to do, but also inline, especially for arcane things going on in an algorithm. All
nicely spaced, neat. A marvel to behold. Problem was, the code this person did
had some form of overflow condition (this was C) about every five lines, such that
I knew if I poked at the code from a higher layer I could cause problems. And did,
because I was trying to force the issue and have some kind of review go on.
The other person in the larger group was a 20ish male, who saw human interaction
largely through the eyes of TV, and gaming / nerd get-togethers. Hardly a bad person,
he just didn't seem to have humans around him when growing up (more than a trifle
odd, even now--I met him again for the first time in 20 years; the only change was
gray hair). He was one of the people I'd go to for help when I botched things, or
wanted comments on an idea I had. His code often worked the first time run, and
I'm not talking of little 10 line routines, but larger complex functions. His comments
were about the opposite of the code, both in terms of spelling, grammar, and that
ephemeral concept of how to communicate in general. Some sentences were
better read thinking of them as RPN, and others simply defied standard logic.
Comments that did survive that minimal test of English were often spelled in
novel ways, causing euqal parts of head scratching and laughter. But the code
was great!
I offer these two examples which while extremes, are examples that poke holes
in the idea that there is a common relationship between comments and code.
Certainly some people will fit that mold, but I think that more random than not.
OpenBSD is 14 as of today.
Today would be a great day for even a little gift. ;-)
Though there might be a limit on how fast a computation can go, I would think that
parallel systems will boost that far beyond whatever limit there may be. If we crash
into a boundary, multiple systems--or hundreds of thousands of them--will continue
the upward trend.
I suppose there is also the question of whether 10^16 more computing power "ought ;-)
to be enough for anybody".
That is absolutely one of the most intelligent things I have ever heard
of the US armed forces doing.
Well, that and letting Haynes design T-shirts, and letting go of the 20+
page specifications for fruitcakes.
This is correct. OpenBSD can be thought of as two parts, the OS itself
and the ports/packages tree.
OpenBSD itself undergoes the most testing. This is not to say that the
packages aren't tested, because they are. But the packages--some
5000 of them--can't be tested as much as the core OS. Still, the packages
are of very high quality, and for most cases you do not have to compile
things on your own for OpenBSD.
If a port is bad, ie it isn't compiling or some such, it simply isn't included
in a release. If the port is a security horror, it isn't in the ports tree at
all.
Me, I'd rather see the OS itself get the most scrutiny, given that endless
numbers of good testers don't exist.
My cite for this? About 20 years of dealing with "modern" hardware, say going back to Sun stuff of the Sun-3 or -4 era. I used to be able to run Sun-4/670's for *years* at a time. Disks would fail but the machine just ran. Of course in 1989 it cost something like $100,000 for one, but it was built unlike anything today.
As for a maintenance nightmare, you need to have spare hardware. I agree, finding a replacement motherboard for a Dell GX200 would be hard today, so you gather several machines and have spares put on the floor, ready to be used on short notice.
Driver support isn't an issue. I run OpenBSD; what open source OS's have stopped supporting IDE disks, serial and parallel ports, and ethernet cards? I don't use anyting other than stock VGA and don't even have a monitor on the machines except for installs, and disk disasters (one of those in six years).
On power you are probably right. In terms of CPU power per watt, the old Dell's are probably worse. Except, spending $1000 for a new machine vs. nothing but a new disk/memory for an old machine leaves a lot of margin to pay for electricty, doesn't it?
I have 8 years of running older stuff at my current job. Problems come and go where I work, but the infrastructure I have has proven more reliable than the AC power that feeds the building.
Older machines are often built better than newer faster stuff. I have several of the white Dell Optiplex machines doing infrastructure stuff for me. Most have uptimes measured in the span between upgrades of my op system (OpenBSD).
It takes almost no more time to install on a 500MHz Dell than some 2.xGHz box. Yes, the disk may take longer to format--but how often are you going to be doing that?
Given the various quality problems with new systems, I'll stick with the older slower systems when I can, which is most of the time.
You haven't said what exactly these machines are going to be doing, but I fail to see why the extra time that one OS takes over another is a factor to deal with.
If it takes an extra 90 seconds to boot an OS that is stable and reliable, how does shaving that 90 seconds save anything?
Optimizing for boot time over everything else seems very foolish to me.
OpenBSD still uses GCC, version 3.3.5 on i386. I can't say which version is used on the other platforms.
You are talking of PCC, which is being worked on by some of the OpenBSD developers, but I think its a parallel project, see http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/
for more information.
Jem Matzen talked of this too, see http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/369/
Thats a questionable statement, that OpenBSD is primarily for firewalls.
I'm writing this on an OpenBSD 4.1-current laptop (IBM A31p ThinkPad) and
have used OpenBSD exclusively since 2001 for all my desktops. A lot of
people are discovering that OpenBSD does really well as a desktop. With
the introduction of 4.1, Open Office is supported, not to mention KDE,
media stuff, a really outstanding population of wireless cards, etc. I
think there are people who think of OpenBSD as a just a firewall; as
good (well, wonderful) as pf is, there is so much more there.
I'm not unhappy to see the requirement go. I've been a ham for
30 years, and while I have seen useful (very useful) things done
with code, I was never enamored with the idea of *having* to learn
it up front. I did, though with struggling and headaches. The
time came when my elmer gave me the code test and I passed, just
barely.
As I see it today, getting people into ham radio is the
important thing. Having to learn a particular mode before
being allowed to join just doesn't make sense. And no one
should think that having to know code was an effective barrier
for the twits, such that they stayed out. In 1976 I heard
language on 80M that was a great exercise in George Carlin's
"7 dirty words"--and most of the speakers were Extra Class
hams (highest license).
CW *is* useful though, and I've come to embrace it for
the VHF/UHF weak signal stuff I've been doing, where at
time the luxury of a voice just isn't there; things are
too weak. Also Moonbounce will require me to reall learn
CW, which I am working towards, equipment wise.
Yes, its the end of an era. But so what? Technology
roars along, changing the way we communicate, but it has
never changed the reasons for the 'why'.
If you are contemplating becoming a ham, great, please
do so. If you are a ham and bemoan the lack of CW now,
get off your duff and start a CW appreciation class!
Show new hams *why* its cool (and it is, though it took
me 20+ years to realize that), and get them hooked on it.
--STeve Andre'
wb8wsf
grid sqare EN82
This has certainly been an interesting 24 hours. I wonder if some
of the members of our current administration have heard the knock
of reality on the door. I can only hope so.
I have T-Mobile. The T stands for tenuous, but when I'm
...But it wasn't as
near a tower the voice quality is excellent.
Trying to determine the best phone is just about impossible
however, because of the variations in the phones themselves.
Sad to say, but after the "bag phones" each generation after
got a little worse in terms of build quality. I have a V66
from Motorola, which I've dived into a couple of times now,
to tweak things and make it more reliable. My wife's V66
was never as sensitive as mine, such that in null spots I
could often get a signal and make a call when hers could
not. Looking around for others with T-Mobile at school she
found the T610 which performed better than her phone, so I
scrounged one up on Ebay. I must say, this phone does a
great job of picking up *everything* in a room. You could
consider it a bugging device almost.
sensitive as the one that convinced her to get one, which
was another data point that todays phones are really rather
random in terms of their quality.
I think the best bet is to buy a phone at some place where
you can take it back if you don't like it.
BPL is one of those things which sounds good or at least interesting
at the start, but the deeper you go the less decent it gets.
The problem boils down to the fact that a BPL system emits RF (radio
frequency) energy, causing interference to entities that use those
frequencies. The FCC has been put into an interesting spot here, as
they realize that the problems generated by it are real, but are also
being pushed by the Bush administration to move forward on this.
Ham radio operators are definitely negatively affected by this. Hams
by their nature deal with "weak signals", which the noise generated
by BPL tends to clobber, making many of the "shortwave" (ie, below
30MHz) bands less than useful.
If you care to see a pretty good response to this go to www.arrl.org
and look for BPL.
This is a real horror for hams. Least anyone think that ham radio
is out of date in this era of advanced technology, talk with officials
down south who dealt with Katrina, or in Neq York City on September 11th.
BPL pits big money interests against litterally amateurs, with the latter
group figting back, and being at least partly successful, in getting
the FCC to deal/recognize interference complaints, and getting these
systems cleaner.
What will happen, I cannot say. But I look to systems in Europe
and Asia where broadband exists and doesn't use BPL, and see systems
which offer far better service.
--STeve Andre'
amateur callsign WB8WSF
If anyone is interested in seeing ham radio in operation, come to Domino's Farms Saturday, and look for the antennas by the Petting Farm. We'll have HF ("shortwave" radio), and VHF/UHF radios and hopefully an Oscar station. We'll be trying to listen to some of the stronger stations that do Moonbounce, too.
Ham Radio isn't dying exactly--the numbers have stayed fairly static for the last several years, and in fact have risen in the last 10 or so, with the 'no code' Technician license. But it needs more people, thats certain.
Space exploration can be expensive. Thats the nature of the game.
But the rewards from the information that little teaspoon of starstuff might contain, well, thats beyond measure. You can't put a price tag on how valuable that is.
Well, I suppose it depends on where you are, and what kind of speed you get.
....
I've seen "wireless!!!" connections that were indeed 802.11b access, but with a 128K ISDN connection behind it. Or another with a web proxy which completely messed web access up, or
So it depends. A well running system that costs something is going to be more useful than a free one that isn't.
For general wandering on the net paying that kind of money doesn't make sense, but for anyone travelling around, it could well.
If the charge increment is less than a full hour, a 15 minute block would cost $2.50. I'd happily pay that. My laptop could suck down my mail, upload off-line written mails and still let me check a few news sites, all for $2.50.
Sure, I'd rather pay $5 an hour or less, but these things do cost, and the mentality of "the net must be free!" really can't go on forever. What I'm hoping for are *reasonable* charges for things in the future.
Anyone who uses the net for anything related to a business use shouldn't see an hourly cost as being bad. At $10/hr they might not see as much use as $5/hr, and if thats the case then the market place is going to the give propriators a whack on their heads, won't it.
In my case, I'd likely use a $5/hr system several times more than a $10/hr system, but if I'm in Podunk nowhere $2.50 for 15 minutes isn't going to seem too bad.
No, I am not naive. I understand that the people in America have somehow lost the willingness to deal with their government. When that happens, the greedy monied interests find it far easier to slitherin and do what they do best, namely look out for their own interests and further them.
Apathy rules. What percentage of people vote on anything today?
The American government is a massive, lumbering beast. It's direction can be changed, however. All it takes is participation. Wether we will ever see that is a question beyond the scope of this discussion.