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User: Bengie

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  1. Re:Go ALL THE WAY OUT! on ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 · · Score: 1

    You can get 144 strand fiber cables for $0.1/foot in bulk. The COAX they use is about $1-$2/foot in bulk. COAX has about a 20gb/s limit. A single strand of fiber is well over 16tb/s, but lets ignore that for now. COAX is about 10x more expensive than fiber and if you assume 1gb/strand, the COAX is also 7x slower. The head units are also more expensive, and so is operational costs.

    What would you normally do if something was 10x more expensive, 7x slower, more expensive to maintain, and more prone to issues? Just wait a few year till COAX is more like 1,000 times slower, but still costs 10x more per foot.

    The fastest commercially available optical system over a single fiber is 16tb/s, but the fastest optical system in research is 1pb/s over a single fiber, but very expensive new research fiber.

  2. Re:Who buys recycled copper? on Some Londoners Cut Off As Failed Copper Thieves Take Fiber · · Score: 1

    A truck full of manhole covers is a truck with broken springs. Holy crap that would weigh a lot. I appreciate the analogy but I really liked the image it put in my head. Some poor bastard with a crappy old truck trying to haul manhole covers that weigh 100lb each.

  3. Re:No copper on Some Londoners Cut Off As Failed Copper Thieves Take Fiber · · Score: 1

    Many fiber cables have a tracer line that allows them to be metal detected from above ground. I don't think it's copper, but it is metal. The fiber cable running from my box to my house has a really thick portion that is about the same thickness as COAX, and the fiber cable is attached to the side of it, which is really thin, like the thickness of the USB cord attached to my mouse.

  4. Re:Yes it IS how PON (Passive Optical Networks) wo on ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 · · Score: 1

    (Moreso, since the many different-colored laser transcievers are pricey.)

    Modern fiber ONTs have programmable lasers. They can very selectively tune the wavelengths used, down to the nano-meter of the wavelength used. They can also tune the bandwidth, spread, and guard size. Even the shape of the wave form. All packed into a $150 chunk of technology.

  5. Re:The upper limit... on ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 · · Score: 1

    that phone company active equipment on each customer premises filters out all but the traffic intended for that subscriber

    The ONTs on the same segment can not talk directly to each other because of the way the optics work. This means each ONT can safely communicate to the head unit what encryption key to use with out allowing the other ONTs to listen in. GPON uses 128bit AES with rolling keys. If the data isn't meant for you, you won't be able to decrypt it.

  6. Re:Go ALL THE WAY OUT! on ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 · · Score: 1

    USA is one of the most dense, what are you talking about?

  7. Re:Go ALL THE WAY OUT! on ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 · · Score: 1

    And that's just regular DSL and Cable. How much do you think it'd cost to do fiber?

    Less than the copper, that's for sure. Fiber is cheaper. The only time fiber is not cheaper is when the copper already exists, and even then, the fiber will pay itself back in savings in 5 years or less.

  8. Re:Just to get this straight on Google Fiber In Austin Hits a Snag: Incumbent AT&T · · Score: 1

    I was reading about a few cases where the local land owners successfully sued a telecom for using easements. The state said the telecom had permission, but then the land owners turned around and got $150/foot plus a cut of future revenue generated by the lines. They did this in several different states. I'm sure the local populace could make it a huge headache for AT&T.

  9. Re:Still won't fix monopolies on ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 · · Score: 1

    Current GPON is actually 20km ranges with 40km for "long range" versions that are more expensive. If you use Point-to-Point fiber, which is about 3% more expensive, you can get 80km without issue. That's about 20,000 square kilometer coverage for a single CO. You could cover the entire state of Illinois with only 8 locations.

  10. WTF? on Wikipedia's Lamest Edit Wars · · Score: 1

    Rowling is on record claiming she pronounces her name like 'rolling'. An irate editor argues that this is a 'British' pronunciation and the 'American" pronunciation of her name should also be noted.

    What would the purpose be to telling Americans how to pronounce her name the "American way"? They should already be incorrectly pronouncing her name that way already. You pronounce someone's name how they want it pronounced, assuming they don't have some strange sound that you can't reproduce, then you just try your best.

  11. Re:Wise on FreeBSD Developers Will Not Trust Chip-Based Encryption · · Score: 1

    In our Universe, the act of measuring changes the result in a random way. Good luck. While it is possible that our Universe doesn't have true randomness, to anything inside the Universe, there is no way of knowing.

  12. Re:Wise on FreeBSD Developers Will Not Trust Chip-Based Encryption · · Score: 1

    I love entering passwords on 10,000 servers when they need to reboot. Lets see.. I know, lets hardcode the password into a script and encrypt the key.. There! Secure!

  13. Re:Billions are larger than millions on Newly Discovered Greenhouse Gas Is 7,000 Times More Powerful Than CO2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    While methane does have a higher infrared cross-section than carbon dioxide, it is not that much higher;

    http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html Methane is about 20x more effective than CO2 at greenhouse warming over the period of 100 years. I personally think a 20x increase is more than "not much higher".

  14. Re:Why? on Google's Plan To Kill the Corporate Network · · Score: 1

    There is a large amount of bacteria that is just fine in your lower intestines, but with wreak havoc higher in the chain.

  15. Re:WTF? on Open Source 'Wasn't Available' Two Years Ago, Says UK Gov't IT Project Chief · · Score: 2, Informative

    But nothing is truly free because of the requirement of "time". What does cost more money is legal issues that can easily arise from proprietary software. License management has its own cost.

  16. Re:congrats guys and gals on Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo Form Alliance Against NSA · · Score: 1

    So has Google. They have spent a lot of money on lawyers to fight for user rights to not have to turn over data to the NSA or even just to notify the end user of the request. A good portion of the time, they can't release this info because they're gagged from notifying the end user.

  17. Re:congrats guys and gals on Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo Form Alliance Against NSA · · Score: 1

    He no longer needs to pay for the Internet, so he's saving lots of money!... but how did he post?!

  18. Re:Not a problem on Scientists Discover Huge Freshwater Reserves Beneath the Ocean · · Score: 1

    In a trillion years, we won't see most of the Universe, at our current rate of expansion.

  19. Re:Yo Dawg I Heard You Like Water on Scientists Discover Huge Freshwater Reserves Beneath the Ocean · · Score: 1

    If people reproduce to the point of non-sustainability, then yes. Ignoring reality is not going to help anyone in the long run. The Earth has limited resources, but the universe is practically limitless. Invest into space programs and lets start expanding.

  20. Re:Yo Dawg I Heard You Like Water on Scientists Discover Huge Freshwater Reserves Beneath the Ocean · · Score: 2

    If they didn't, they would have made a military large enough to compete with ours. A single large military can bring stability. Not to say everything will be fair, but few would be willing to fight. If another military is causing stability, there is little reason to invest into your own. By lack of action, other nations have effectively outsourced to the USA.

  21. Re:OTOH... on FCC Chair: It's Ok For ISPs To Discriminate Traffic · · Score: 1

    In this case, latency is correlated with throughput because of physics. The parallel lines must be in sync, and in order to remain in sync, they must have low latency. This is how parallel buses work.

  22. Re:Write limits on Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014 · · Score: 1

    They're rated for 1000 cycles, but many places have been torture testing them and getting closer to 3,500 cycles.

  23. Re:fuck yes on Supreme Court To Review Software Patents · · Score: 1

    MPEG-LA said that it is impossible to ever create any kind of video codec that won't run afoul of their patents. They claim to have patented an infinite number of ideas.

  24. Re:Duh on U.S. Measles Cases Triple In 2013 · · Score: 1

    I find it even more ridiculous people get vaccinated for the flu these days.

    Other than reducing Flu caused deaths by about 50%, yeah. If you could reduce cancer cases by 50%, would you? Or would you just shrug it off and say "Most people will die of old age anyway"?

  25. Re:Sounds catchy, but no, Comcast 7%-10% profit on FCC Chair: It's Ok For ISPs To Discriminate Traffic · · Score: 1

    "$63 billion in revenue" Of which 35bil was operational expenses, which could be reduced 20% if they went all fiber. That would save them $7bil per year, all the while being able to offer 1gb/1gb internet. They could double their net profit. Verizon claims to be saving $100m/year just by switching over 4% of their user base to fiber.

    You are also looking at Comcast's entire income. Once you exclude the huge prices content providers charge them for TV, ESPN, Football exclusives, etc, their profit margins are much higher. On the internet side of things, Comcast is making a killing, and that could increase that even more by going fiber. Better yet, drop TV, but that would reduce revenue and it works as a way to hold on to customer base. There is a huge group of older people who pay $100/month for the deluxe TV package, and that's too much to not hang on to.

    At one point there was a cable consultant who had been in the business for 20+ years and had worked with all of the biggest ISPs in the USA and around the world. He said your average cable provider is probably paying about $4/month for those $100 packages that they sell people, and that includes all costs. The infrastructure was laid many years ago and they upgrade very slowly.

    Get this, Comcast claims they recently spent $200bil upgrading their network, which passes about 60mil houses. The average cost per house for the $200bil came out to around $2,500. For $2,200 per house, they could have ran fiber, and that, assuming they have no current fiber infrastructure already in place. So they could have saved money up-front, plus an additional $7bil/year.