Actually I got those numbers wrong - they include home phone as well as internet.
A quick search for alternatives in Hamilton didn't turn up anything cheaper. Of course, Vodafone's internet division was a small ISP when I originally joined.:-)
Ignoring for the moment the fact that apparently TFA is about wholesale rather than retail pricing...
Based on the experience in New Zealand (which faced this problem earlier than elsewhere, due to the high cost of sending data underwater) most consumers prefer a fixed bill. Nowadays, after some initial thrashing around, most ISPs offer plans where if you exceed your data cap your bandwidth is cut down to a little better than modem speed, but you don't incur any extra charges. My ISP allows you to choose to pay an extra charge to increase your cap on a given month.
I expect eventually the rest of the world will catch up and offer similar schemes.
The problem is that most people don't use the internet at the same rate all the time. If you only use it now and then, the last thing you want is to be charged based on the assumption that you are using the maximum rate 24/7.
Remember that if lots of people are using the internet now and then, the total bandwidth (which is what actually costs money) will average out, more or less.
Um... that doesn't sound the slightest bit surprising. I'm fairly sure it's always been cheaper to move large amounts of data physically. Hence the old saying, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a van full of tapes" (or something like that).
There are regulators involved, yes? Surely they will be looking at the cost structure, and would call foul if there is any blatant overcharging? I suspect you are underestimating how much it actually costs to provide bandwidth - and don't forget that geography and economy of scale are both big factors.
Bandwidth is an ever-expanding resource, but someone has to pay for the expansion, and the extra operating costs.
Once upon a time, flat rate pricing was economically viable, in densely populated nations at any rate. Perhaps it will be again one day, if the cost of bandwidth falls enough. Right now, I don't believe it is.
That's because the pricing was originally based on typical usage patterns. In recent years, for reasons everyone already knows, average usage has sky-rocketed. Naturally prices are going to increase, this represents the increased costs of providing more total bandwidth.
New Zealand (and I believe Australia) have always had usage-based charging. The current Vodafone rate is NZ$80 per month with a 1GB cap, $90 per for 5GB, $100 per for 20GB. Forgive me if a 60GB cap doesn't seem like all that much of a hardship!
Use a different computer? Or a dial-up connection? Or download the network driver before performing the re-installation? Or use the drivers on the media which HP presumably provided with the computer? Or add a different network card temporarily... oh, wait, that's what you did... you didn't really need to reinstall after adding the wireless card, though. (On the other hand, Windows installs are so painless nowadays that may have been the easiest solution. We can call that one a tie if you like.)
The point is, this is a perfectly normal situation - one people deal with all the time - which has nothing to do with either the specific HP model or Windows 7. Heck, I recall a time when operating systems hardly ever shipped with drivers built in, so this was a process you went through essentially every single time you installed or reinstalled an OS [1]. There's no need to go blaming either Windows 7 or HP just because you actually had to do some of the work this time!
Sheesh. Young folk today, eh? Expect everything handed to them on a silver platter.
Harry.
[1] And the driver download was uphill both ways, in the snow.
Windows 7 will install perfectly well without a network connection. (Just to make sure, I postponed sending this until my test VM, sans network interface, had completed installing.)
My guess would be either you were using badly OEM'd install media (a practice I do wish MS would prohibit) or you don't know how to manually install device drivers.
... if you can afford it. I don't think it's overpriced per se, but the minimum purchase may put it out of reach of many small organisations. (And perhaps large organisations with tight IT budgets!)
Microsoft didn't do anything. This is a Secunia product, using a documented MS API.
It's still quite an exciting product for those of us who do have lots of Windows PCs to patch, except that (in my case) we probably won't be able to afford it.
I'm sure they aren't blocking any political web sites, but I don't understand how this is relevant. No ISP would agree to implement such a filter, and the DIA would have no legal grounds to create one. (The only two areas of their responsibility that relate directly to the internet are censorship compliance and money laundering/terrorist financing.)
I think most atheists object to the sexual abuse of children; I do, for one. Therefore, absent any specific evidence, I don't see any reason to presume a Christian agenda in filtering it. With respect, I think that living in New Zealand I'm better placed to judge the likelihood of there being any excessive Christian influence in our civil service - and make no mistake, such an influence would be considered excessive by our social norms. Christians and other theists in New Zealand are expected to keep their beliefs out of the workplace. (Atheist groups in America talk about closet atheists; in New Zealand, Christian groups talk about closet Christians. The social context is completely different here.)
Note also that the same law that prohibits child pornography in New Zealand also prohibits pornographic material involving scatophilia or urophilia. Those clauses were added as a compromise to gain the support of a Christian faction for the legislation. If the filter had been driven by a Christian agenda it would almost certainly have included this class of material.
Finally, I would note that the censorship compliance division, responsible for the filter, are the same folk who rate pornographic videos in New Zealand. The relevant laws give them enough wiggle room to be much more restrictive than they are, so I conclude they are doing their job responsibly and without pushing any personal agendas.
I do have a reference for an article about the consortium - probably the same one you've already read, but on the offchance anybody else is interested:
Yeah, sorry, I don't know exactly where I first heard about it. I want to say it was in the Herald, perhaps one or two years back, but I couldn't swear to that - I work in IT, so it might have been bought to my attention by a coworker.
I'm just saying the DIA weren't keeping it secret. The newspapers just didn't seem to think it was much of a story.
It's not all that complicated, you just have to look at it from the right perspective.
Most ISPs in NZ probably trust the DIA. Our civil service, by and large, is fairly trustworthy, so this wouldn't be particularly surprising. (We lack the American tradition of always mistrusting any part of the government as a matter of principle.)
The filter appears to be technically sound, and to have minimal impact on the ISP and customers.
It seems likely that many customers would be in favour of an anti-child-porn filter, and only a few would object. Probably a PR win on the whole, or at worst only a slight downside.
The ISP management (like most people) are probably opposed to child porn as a matter of principle, so if it doesn't cost them much to filter it out, why not? I suspect at the end of the day this may have been the bottom line in many cases.
Management might also be worried that one of their customers will turn out to be running a child-porn server, and want to paint themselves in the best possible light in advance as it were.
No doubt there are other possible motivations. I see no reason to dream up conspiracy theories to explain it.
I doubt it. The filter comes from the civil service. To make it mandatory, parliament would have to intervene. That might happen later, but there's no talk about it at the moment, and it isn't likely to happen simply because ISPs don't voluntarily sign on.
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If you did that, you'd price yourself out of the market.
In the article you reference, Mr. Hobbs says that caps are necessary to retain long-term profitability. I don't see that this supports your position.
Actually I got those numbers wrong - they include home phone as well as internet.
A quick search for alternatives in Hamilton didn't turn up anything cheaper. Of course, Vodafone's internet division was a small ISP when I originally joined. :-)
Ignoring for the moment the fact that apparently TFA is about wholesale rather than retail pricing ...
Based on the experience in New Zealand (which faced this problem earlier than elsewhere, due to the high cost of sending data underwater) most consumers prefer a fixed bill. Nowadays, after some initial thrashing around, most ISPs offer plans where if you exceed your data cap your bandwidth is cut down to a little better than modem speed, but you don't incur any extra charges. My ISP allows you to choose to pay an extra charge to increase your cap on a given month.
I expect eventually the rest of the world will catch up and offer similar schemes.
I suspect that Bell's prices are based on their costs. If not, surely the regulators will notice?
My bandwidth allocation is 1GB/month, although I'm considering paying the extra to up it to 2GB. For conventional web and email, that's plenty.
The problem is that most people don't use the internet at the same rate all the time. If you only use it now and then, the last thing you want is to be charged based on the assumption that you are using the maximum rate 24/7.
Remember that if lots of people are using the internet now and then, the total bandwidth (which is what actually costs money) will average out, more or less.
That's silly. Both of those factors affect the cost to your ISP, so of course they will both affect your cost.
Um ... that doesn't sound the slightest bit surprising. I'm fairly sure it's always been cheaper to move large amounts of data physically. Hence the old saying, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a van full of tapes" (or something like that).
There are regulators involved, yes? Surely they will be looking at the cost structure, and would call foul if there is any blatant overcharging? I suspect you are underestimating how much it actually costs to provide bandwidth - and don't forget that geography and economy of scale are both big factors.
Bandwidth is an ever-expanding resource, but someone has to pay for the expansion, and the extra operating costs.
Once upon a time, flat rate pricing was economically viable, in densely populated nations at any rate. Perhaps it will be again one day, if the cost of bandwidth falls enough. Right now, I don't believe it is.
That's because the pricing was originally based on typical usage patterns. In recent years, for reasons everyone already knows, average usage has sky-rocketed. Naturally prices are going to increase, this represents the increased costs of providing more total bandwidth.
New Zealand (and I believe Australia) have always had usage-based charging. The current Vodafone rate is NZ$80 per month with a 1GB cap, $90 per for 5GB, $100 per for 20GB. Forgive me if a 60GB cap doesn't seem like all that much of a hardship!
Use a different computer? Or a dial-up connection? Or download the network driver before performing the re-installation? Or use the drivers on the media which HP presumably provided with the computer? Or add a different network card temporarily ... oh, wait, that's what you did ... you didn't really need to reinstall after adding the wireless card, though. (On the other hand, Windows installs are so painless nowadays that may have been the easiest solution. We can call that one a tie if you like.)
The point is, this is a perfectly normal situation - one people deal with all the time - which has nothing to do with either the specific HP model or Windows 7. Heck, I recall a time when operating systems hardly ever shipped with drivers built in, so this was a process you went through essentially every single time you installed or reinstalled an OS [1]. There's no need to go blaming either Windows 7 or HP just because you actually had to do some of the work this time!
Sheesh. Young folk today, eh? Expect everything handed to them on a silver platter.
Harry.
[1] And the driver download was uphill both ways, in the snow.
You could probably have obtained the drivers from HP's website, even if they didn't provide a driver CD. It's not exactly rocket science.
Windows 7 will install perfectly well without a network connection. (Just to make sure, I postponed sending this until my test VM, sans network interface, had completed installing.)
My guess would be either you were using badly OEM'd install media (a practice I do wish MS would prohibit) or you don't know how to manually install device drivers.
The school in question reports the incident rather differently.
Microsoft didn't do anything. This is a Secunia product, using a documented MS API.
It's still quite an exciting product for those of us who do have lots of Windows PCs to patch, except that (in my case) we probably won't be able to afford it.
I'm sure they aren't blocking any political web sites, but I don't understand how this is relevant. No ISP would agree to implement such a filter, and the DIA would have no legal grounds to create one. (The only two areas of their responsibility that relate directly to the internet are censorship compliance and money laundering/terrorist financing.)
I think most atheists object to the sexual abuse of children; I do, for one. Therefore, absent any specific evidence, I don't see any reason to presume a Christian agenda in filtering it. With respect, I think that living in New Zealand I'm better placed to judge the likelihood of there being any excessive Christian influence in our civil service - and make no mistake, such an influence would be considered excessive by our social norms. Christians and other theists in New Zealand are expected to keep their beliefs out of the workplace. (Atheist groups in America talk about closet atheists; in New Zealand, Christian groups talk about closet Christians. The social context is completely different here.)
Note also that the same law that prohibits child pornography in New Zealand also prohibits pornographic material involving scatophilia or urophilia. Those clauses were added as a compromise to gain the support of a Christian faction for the legislation. If the filter had been driven by a Christian agenda it would almost certainly have included this class of material.
Finally, I would note that the censorship compliance division, responsible for the filter, are the same folk who rate pornographic videos in New Zealand. The relevant laws give them enough wiggle room to be much more restrictive than they are, so I conclude they are doing their job responsibly and without pushing any personal agendas.
I do have a reference for an article about the consortium - probably the same one you've already read, but on the offchance anybody else is interested:
$900m plan to open NZ internet tap
Yeah, sorry, I don't know exactly where I first heard about it. I want to say it was in the Herald, perhaps one or two years back, but I couldn't swear to that - I work in IT, so it might have been bought to my attention by a coworker.
I'm just saying the DIA weren't keeping it secret. The newspapers just didn't seem to think it was much of a story.
It's not all that complicated, you just have to look at it from the right perspective.
Most ISPs in NZ probably trust the DIA. Our civil service, by and large, is fairly trustworthy, so this wouldn't be particularly surprising. (We lack the American tradition of always mistrusting any part of the government as a matter of principle.)
The filter appears to be technically sound, and to have minimal impact on the ISP and customers.
It seems likely that many customers would be in favour of an anti-child-porn filter, and only a few would object. Probably a PR win on the whole, or at worst only a slight downside.
The ISP management (like most people) are probably opposed to child porn as a matter of principle, so if it doesn't cost them much to filter it out, why not? I suspect at the end of the day this may have been the bottom line in many cases.
Management might also be worried that one of their customers will turn out to be running a child-porn server, and want to paint themselves in the best possible light in advance as it were.
No doubt there are other possible motivations. I see no reason to dream up conspiracy theories to explain it.
Just my opinion, but I don't think this would fly in NZ. At best it would be a big gamble.
I doubt it. The filter comes from the civil service. To make it mandatory, parliament would have to intervene. That might happen later, but there's no talk about it at the moment, and it isn't likely to happen simply because ISPs don't voluntarily sign on.
New Zealand is not a particularly religious nation. Technically I think theists are still in the majority, but most are non-practising.
It is pretty unlikely that the filter in question was introduced as part of a Christian agenda.