..."I only know Windows" people in the IT department....I always wonder why people charged with making business decisions about/around linux choose to limit their own perspective by not using the product they're marketing. I'm pretty sure it's laziness.
Great post, will someone mod him up! Where are mod points when you need them.
For a few it is laziness, but not all. I have asked this question to many different management individuals up to and including the Vice Presidents of large telecommunications firms and the primary reason I am always given is the proprietary solution is 'safier'. A few have actively told me, "no one ever got fired for suggesting the proprietary solution". I would consider this the more dominant reason versus laziness.
Plug n Play use to be an issue, those of us who know realize that Linux and open systems has come a long way in that area. I pretty much plug n play everything today with Linux. I think many older IT professionals don't know and don't care to learn how much progress has been made in this area.
The ability to install from 'images' removes that objection. Best of all you will never have an open source vendor coming back to you and telling you that copy of the operating system and/or software application is "no longer valid" because you replaced a crashed hard disk with a new one. Better yet, open source does not care about the 'licensing' issue, therefore ghosting (Kickstarting) a desktop and/or server does not raise that ridiculous red flag. (Both of these things have been in the news of late, the proprietary company's response, "you must purchase a valid copy of the software", but it was legal...right, they don't believe you).
Viruses, phishing, scamming, etc... I know you can secure any server, however I also know there are more problems with one vendor then others...so why put myself in front of that bus! Not a matter of if, but rather when I will get creamed.
Sad really when you consider the per desktop cost of most proprietary solutions. It does not take many desktops before a company realizes a market advantage due to the lower costs of open source options. In our current economy, the time is now to suggest these options. Why waste money buying more processors and more memory (often at very high prices) when you can run Linux on 128 MB of RAM on a Pentium processor without problems. If you have 512 MB, 1GB or more of RAM, GREAT, the Linux operating system will not eat it up which means your applications have more memory available to them and they run so much faster! Heck they run in 256MB very well and scream at 512MB, 1 GB or more. Just another plus for open source over proprietary solutions.
As I read through the posts here I do NOT see anyone saying Outlook 'mail' is necessarily better then other email solutions. Rather its the merged calendar that everyone loves. The ability to create a meeting, have invitations sent out and confirmations received...sharing meeting materials where appropriate, etc... I have used it too, so understand, simple, focus on replacing that specific application for a better solution and by all means include the per user cost savings in your proposal.
Open Source needs to focus on the "Calendar / Meeting" part of their solutions specifically. Advertise the positives, more secure, faster, more compatible even with proprietary solutions. If the calendar and email are open source, you should have no problem getting access via the proprietary solution to them. Shame the opposite is NOT true...based on messages here - the proprietary solutions are not helping, why should they! Again in this economy, play up the higher costs associated with the proprietary solution....its only going to get more expensive not less in the future! Remind them what happens when the current Operating System is no longer supported and they 'force' you to spend money to upgrade. Isn't that a 'business' decision that the business should decide and not be force
... By missing the deadline, they missed the state's guarantee of their names appearing on the ballots....
Of course, it's possible that they could exclude them if they wanted to, because of the missed the deadline, but who would want to throw a monkey wrench that huge into the election process?
So Barr's making a mountain out of this molehill just makes Barr and Libertarians look bad.
Mountain out of a molehill. That was the point of my previous post. Tryin' to keep it real.
I disagree with you. Either we are a nation of laws or we are NOT. You should not be able to have it both ways, however I sadly admit that with enough money you can buy what you need.
Other parties (not just the Libertarian) have been kept off ballets for lesser reasons.
The law should be the law, if they don't like it they can change it and the new changes can apply to the next election after this one in 2012, but the law should be the law.
They missed it, period.
Besides what are you afraid of, afraid that your candidate might not win if NOT on the ballet! Welcome to the two party (we don't have a choice if we only have two) system. Sucks sometimes, doesn't it!
If the Republicans had honor, they would state for the record that the law is the law. And they should feel confident that their candidates name will get written in!
If they are afraid, then obviously the ballet system needs to be changed as it obviously prevents a third party from being successful in our current two party system and is unfair!
They should not have it both ways, McCain should NOT be on the ballet. Obama and Barr should be on the ballet. McCain should have to depend on 'write ins'.
Not that it matters, as I predict the Democrats will carry Texas this year anyway!
People are feed up with the Republicans for many, many reasons.
Makes me wonder how much it costs to build your own data center...will have to go searching for it.
Seems to me that they got one heck of a deal.
Purchasing well over $4 Billion ($72-$68) for only $250 million...seems like a deal to me!
Heck sell of the rest, use the profit to light up some dark fiber and offer true 100 MB upstream and 100MB downstream like they have had in Japan since 2000 - 2003!
I would be curious to know how much it would cost to build your own data center, air handlers, power backup, lightning protection, the works. Even better would be a way to figure how much it has cost others per square foot so that we can compare Apples and Apples would be great.
Makes me want to start saving my money for the next downturn in the market and see if I can buy a bargain or two! WOW.
Seems to me location is the most important, shortest fiber distance to at least two differently owned internet peering locations would do it!
Btw, I think a large part of the problem could have been avoided with a very light regulation: label as "dangerous" any mortgage other than a fixed rate, 20% down, 30-year, fully-amortizing, non-recourse, no-prepayment penalty.
Thanks allot, by your definition (my ex and I) could not have afforded our first two homes, she still lives in the second one with our kids, with my blessings, but that is not the point. And I plan to do all I can to help them all stay in there. It's better for our children!
The first house we put 5% down, ARM loan, with CAPS and we could not afford a 30 year fixed, we simply did not qualify. Just not enough credit history and I had purchased a car in H.S. and a house while in college, and we still did not qualify! She worked all through college and financed her own car. So its not like we did not have any credit history, just not enough for a 30 year fixed. Especially with that much down, 20% on a starter home...maybe if a rich in law gave you the money, otherwise most new wage earner's salaries will not allow them to save 20% to make the down payment UNTIL WELL AFTER THEIR CHILD BEARING YEARS and that seems counter productive to a healthy society. The 30 year fixed would have been nice and was our preference...just could not swing it. We could however afford the payments (though they would have been painful if they reached the cap) on the ARM; and taking the ARM allowed us to buy the house. Did not have any furniture, but at least we had a house with which to start a family! Hey we owned a door knob!
A few years into it, our finances improved and we could have refinanced, but decided to roll it over to a fixed loan which was an option we had.
After a third child, that house was too small, so 12 years after we purchased it, we sold at a modest profit (not enough after 12 years, especially after fees, but oh well) and purchased our second larger home (my third), going from a 3/2 to a 4/3 with enough room for the growing family. This time we were able to put 6% down, a bit more then the first one, but this house also cost more, so that 6% was over $12K as it was...while that might not seem like allot today, it was back then. Thanks to 12 years in that first house, we qualified for a 30 year fixed on the second house, but still not with a 20% deposit...could not have done that, even after 12 years. (My father told me he did not have investments until my brothers and I finished college...so too our extra money went to raising our children).
Now 8 - 10 years later, she is safe in a house big enough for her and the kids, with a fixed loan.
None of this would have been possible if we would have been prevented by 'light regulation' from purchasing the first home. We could not have come up with that 20% down payment in either case. After having the first baby, it would have been harder, not easier. A larger down payment as a rule, no sir, no way, cannot agree with that.
The real crime is that both parties (Dems and Repubs) have put one part of the American dream, home ownership, out of reach of a married couple with ONLY two incomes. And with the higher cost of housing, requiring 20% in all circumstances, sorry but you would never get there with most jobs, the salaries are just not high enough! Of course you could adopt an alternative lifestyle and live with as many adults as would be required to put 20% down on a starter home. But that would go against most people's "moral" values, wouldn't it.
A hard and fast rule for all situations just does not make sense! Ultimately the personal responsibility in a 'free' society must remain with the individual. I suggest that there are acceptable circumstances for alternative mortgage vehicles other then 20% down and 30 year fixed, too simplistic and creates an unnecessary burden for some.
...You can copy pure software, but you can't copy dedicated chips....
One can only hope, the idea or writing one software program and/or game and compiling it one time and having that code run on all the available processors would be fantastic! Beyond belief!
In college we copied the Lotus 1-2-3 executable program to an eprom chip, put that chip on a card in an IBM PC (4 mhz processor, lol), I think on an adapter card and it executed so fast. An order of 30 - 40x over running the executable from the PC itself. We removed quite a few bottlenecks out of the equation by running it from that eprom! And from that eprom it was screaming! So combing functions on the processor, or set of processors removing potential bottlenecks (processor to system bus to graphics card bus to graphics card processor, with copying to/from memory sprinkled in for good measure) and having it all run faster makes perfect sense to me!
Wouldn't it be incredible to have 3 or more processors, geographically separated on the mother board, and combined with some 'display' capability (from each processor) that would allow rendering a 3D holographic image above the computer, doing away with the need for a monitor? One can dream....
ugh, set top boxes good if I want, bad if thrust upon me....
...Just because you can decode HDTV in software doesn't mean there still isn't huge momentum behind set top boxes and DTCP enabled GPU's.
Perhaps I am missing something, or looking at this from a different perspective then you are. So please forgive me if I miss interpret set top boxes. Since you mentioned DTCP, perhaps the momentum you are referring to is from the businesses specifically.
From a consumer or technical prospective, there is no momentum or genuine need for the set top box. The new HDTV's have everything I need to process and render any signal that the cable TV provider can send me. Not to mention I can hook a computer (w/ faster processor, more memory and more storage space) directly with fiber if I choose to that new HDTV. So from a technological stand-point the set top boxes are simply inferior and get in the way.
From a business model (forced on me by the Cable TV provider) there is a genuine need and very real momentum behind the set top box. But not for my benefit, but rather their need to control my service.
Sorry but when I hear set top box that is what comes to mind. All the new HDTV's have processors on board that make the set top boxes useless except of as you pointed out from a scrambler / de scrambler - DTCP reason.
Last time I spoke to a cable rep they tried to state that they no longer offered the non-DVD set top boxes, insisting I must accept the DVD set top box combo which of course is a little bit more expensive. Personally I would prefer to turn one of my extra computers into a DVD player, thankfully there are plenty of options available to do just that!
... The US Supreme Court disagrees with you. As do some of the USA's Founding Fathers, otherwise they would have signed their names on the Federalist Papers.
Falcon
Great reference Falcon, thank you. Made me think....
They might have reversed the decision, however the damage was done, IMO. It's not about the law, you could argue the legal system worked, but I do not think so. Especially given how fast time moves in and on the internet.
Rather I look at how much damage could have been done in the ensuing time frame before the corrections (freedoms repressed and/or made illegal) How many things could have been changed based on this obvious miscarry of justice based admittedly on miss interpretation of other case law? This would be an affront to every citizen's rights and freedoms over the next seven years before it was overturned?
Started in 1988 and finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States; No.93-986 in get this....drum roll please....on April 19, 1995.
From 1988 to 1995, 7 years later. What damage can be done to Freedom, rights, the internet in 7 years, to you personally.... (Might you even be 'disappeared' in the name of Homeland Security, National Security, the war against terror (with laws that restrict us, the terrorist indeed win) Don't get me wrong, I love the United States and would not want to live anywhere else, however I don't love the many abuses our own government inflicts on us, its citizens, in the name of some holier-then-thou purpose and I do try to vote to prevent it...failing badly so far....
If you don't believe that the US Government has experimented on us, its citizens, then you are ignoring facts of our History, I have military in my family, sadly some of our military are the biggest guinea pigs - its wrong and nothing will ever make it right!
Don't get mad at me for stating facts, and don't mod me down and make my karma worse, someone has already wrongly done this once. Supposedly it will even out over time, guess we will see!
What if actions take place in the next 2 or 3 years after an event that prevent the redress from happening 7 years later. I doubt that anyone ever went back and re-addressed that tax she was utilizing her rights of free speech in attempts to prevent.
You know the poem, "They came for the... others, and I said nothing... when they finally came for me, there was no one left to speak for me..."
7 years is a life time on the internet, based on SCRUM/AGILE principals, you could argue that 7 years is well over 42 years, that use to be a lifetime for many (2 months / scrum), many could effectively argue 84 years, that is a lifetime for many today (1 month / scrum), though I don't agree with those that argue more years then 84, (scrums shorter then 30 days) me does think they scrum much too fast for their teams own good.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under pen name S. G. Tallentyre, often mistakenly attributed to Voltaire, though many have searched and it does not appear in any of Voltaire's writings. I would change it to this "I dont have to agree with you, but I MUST defend with my life your RIGHT to say it, else I don't deserve that RIGHT! - lamapper, circa 2008. (yea I know not original, however I do believe that and think every American citizen
I was wondering, not trolling, this is an honest curiosity based on a past experience I had (explained after question for edification purposes)
The Question/Wondering:
Are there any other bottle necks that would create a FIFO (First in First out) serialized scenario regardless of whether you are using threads or processes? A Singe CPU (Processor vs dual CPUs)? The path to/from the CPU, Graphics processor, CRT Screen or Memory? The Path to/from the NIC (Network Interface Card) or WiFi? etc...
A story from my past where this issue came up as edification:
I was doing some contract SQL programming work for a telecommunications company. The company was utilizing IBM's OS/2 Operating System and OS/2's Database Manager for processing SQL queries.
The manager authoritatively stated that OS/2 was multi-threaded and multi-tasking so that no matter how many queries were sent, the smallest and fastest would finish first, then the next smallest and so on and so forth; until the largest/longest query finally finished. I was publicly scoffed at when I told the manager, based on my experience, that was not true. I was told who did I think I was. I explained that I had read a white paper written by the IBM Engineer that had designed and coded the Database Manager Engine where he stated that it was a FIFO model.
The manager still did not believe what I was stating and rather then argue, I offered a simple test case. Fortunately for me the manager agreed or I might have been looking for my next contract sooner rather then later. I submitted three SQL queries, one requesting hundreds of thousands of records from multiple databases, on requesting just a few pieces of information from a single database and another medium size query. I submitted the largest query first, the shortest second and the medium last.
The manager assumed the shortest query would finish first.
Even after the second smaller query did not finish until after the larger first query the manager refused to believe the results.
Even though IBM advertised and marketed OS/2 to be able to run multiple processes and tasks concurrently, the database engine could not. Therefore the database engine was the bottle neck in this scenario.
My question is is there a bottle neck that would prevent any browser (Chrome, IE-the-next-one, FireFox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, etc... (or any of the other 19+ browsers...)) from running either processes or threads concurrently? A bottle neck that would 'serialize' the request regardless how the browser implemented this?
What about any of the following within the computer. The data bus? The CPU (single vs dual CPUs)? NIC Cards? WiFi? Any data path related to or other then the computer's data bus? Note: in one of these responses, a slashdotter mentioned that the child of a parent would be sand boxed with the same processor, even if the computer had more then one processor...that was interesting and informative, thank you!
I honestly don't know and welcome reading from anyone who does.
While I was not physically present when they physically took the ice cores - and if that is required as proof for you - nothing anyone says here is going to matter anyway.
Either it is true or not. If true, for me its proof positive that many in the scientific community may be right and Global Warming is real.
Where other measures (i.e. temperature, ozone, size of the ice sheet, and so many others) do seem to be cyclical; the concentration of gases in the ice core samples does NOT, according to the scientist who take them, show a cycle with the gases specifically. Instead they have only increased over time. Further they stated that those gases related to industrialized society (which can occur in nature also) have increased at a faster, more significant rate then ever in the history of the planet.
Evidently the gases are trapped in the ice when the ice froze thousands and/or millions of years ago.
as it puts one more dagger into the idea that memories are not stored in the mind but the "soul." (Whatever that is.)
Plus, of course, the scientific value of studying the brain.
I did not take it this way at all. I personally believe there is 'memory' in both the mind and the soul. Until I am made aware of facts to the contrary, for me our minds hold our most recent memories from this current lifetime.
Perhaps one day we will find proof of information specifically related to 'memory' is pre stored in our DNA and RNA, that would be fascinating as well.
With the soul, I believe that information is stored through lifetimes of experience via reincarnation.
As for me, proof of a 'soul' the following come to mind: a) A soul has a weight, a mass that can be measured when someone passes away. Often referred to as the weight of the soul. b) When someone passes, the light or spark that you see in their eyes seems to disappear - not sure of a way to quantify that. c) There have been multiple instances where enough facts (in some cases hundreds of years old) have been researched and IMO past lives verified. The cases I find most interesting are the ones where young children have mentioned facts that were later verified as being true. The one where a young boy nagged his parents to take him to meet and talk to his wife from his last life is particularly interesting to me. According to his wife, now an elderly woman, this young boy knew things about her and her late husband that she had had never told anyone.
I mean no disrespect toward you or anyone else religion and spiritual believe system! I believe we each must derive our faith, religion and spiritual belief system at our own pace, in our own time and ultimately alone. I further believe that my 'faith' does not 'negate' your 'faith' or anyone else and wish more people were as understanding, flexible and more importantly 'tolerant' of other's belief systems.
It's not what IE8 does, its what IE8 does not do and has not done that has been in the standards for over 4 years now.
M$ actions with the standard settings for 2.0 speaks for itself and it is pathetic! They have no excuse so don't 'try' to give them one.
This is the best thing about Google having a browser, M$ will suddenly want to support the standards, finally. And they will not be able to so easily do their own monopolistic browser junk in order to put down the competition. It's about time!
Many Firefox users will go to chrome, in the near term it will have more impact of FF then IE. However in the long term, IE will be impacted more as chrome firmly targets Microsoft Office users!
Remember for hand-helds code needs to be small, fast and use as little memory as possible.
Ultimately, in the long term, I believe this will be a win for developers, though in the short term it could be a little frustrating. Thanks to M$ and IE, we have been forced to get use to this!
are attacks by M$ on marketshare, profit and their attempts to dominate the market.
More important then any of that is that if M$ can turn off your computer (auto-updae, validation fails, etc....) until you purchase a 'valid' copy (especially when you are already running a validly purchased copy) well let's say it would not be a smart business decision to allow any other company to turn off your computer and put you out of business until you pay them more money.
Would also not be smart to be in bed with them until they learn enough about your vertical market to take your customers away from you. Funny that there are plenty of examples of companies (corporate corpses) who did just this.
I call it ironic.
Of course its hardly intelligent to allow your engineering, development and computer coding to go offshore so that your products can be stolen either and plenty of companies have and continue to do this.
I call that ironic as well, even if it has nothing specific to do with M$ specifically.
... For developers who care, it can be customised in CSS using min/max-width and min/max-height.)
Of course even if you are a developer that cares, does not mean that IE will care.
I should probably check first and admit that I have not, its just that I am so sick of having to write special CSS to accomodate IE when they have and continue to actively avoid bringing the IE browser to web standards.
I can't be the only one sick of IE ignoring web standards, or am I the only one?
If it lets me see images all the way down to the ocean (all over the world) then its not evil.
If they stop you from zooming closer at say 50% of the way and put a message that states, "We are sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom level for this region. Try zooming out for a broader look." then they are EVIL!
If it allows me to see everything down to the 50 cm level it is NOT EVIL.
If anything is 'sensor'ed for me, then it is EVIL!...because you asked.
Yes, ubuntu server is indeed every bit as solid as RHEL or SLES, and enterprise support contracts are available from canonical....I remember oracle telling me in 1998 that they don't support linux, and that I should try sco. muahaha.
I was in a telecommunications company at that time, heavy Oracle, some DB2 and some other databases also. We were also a heavy Sun and IBM shop running IBM OS/2 and Microsoft on the desktops, except in development where everything was Unix, Sun and Solaris.
I too heard Oracle say that they would never run Oracle on Linux...thanks for the memory!
Another thought, as many developers look for new jobs, I like many, look for companies that leverage Linux. I have and will continue to say NO to Microsoft ONLY and Oracle ONLY shops.
Oh BTW, MySQL most definitely will scale, its fun to see companies wake up to this fact and migrate away from Oracle, saving hundreds of thousands in the process.
After over 10 years of living there (Microsoft especially and Oracle..) I can see the writing on the wall, and want to have a more prosperous and even more successful future.
A mixed Linux and "other" shop is okay too, as is a Linux ONLY shop. I see a future there!
However, if the company is not leveraging Linux to profit their bottom line, then I question the ability and knowledge of upper management. Perhaps they are simply too slow, which jeopardizes my job in the future.
In this, or any economy, I cannot afford to be put out of a job due to poor business decisions.
...3) Cascading interlocking licenses and requirements (you "need" oracle, which requires RHEL, so you "need" a contract) That is a bad economic structure which will eventually be worked around or eliminated.
Great post...
The last one is the best reason to move away from a company if possible. Nothing I hate more in hearing that I must update A before I update B.
Even worse is having to update both A and B before I update C. Especially when all I need is C and I am technically competent to KNOW that C will run just fine without updating A and/or B.
I call that the Microsoft Roller Coaster and have gotten off. Never again will I be forced to update my operating system, only because I want to update only one application. Nor will my system be 'automatically updated' so that I am put in hell when it does not work. There is a reason its caused the 'bleeding edge' and anything in production has no business being forced there. This is a 'business decision' that each business should be able to make independently when it is cost effective for them to do so, without threatening their revenue stream.
Just say NO to Genuine Advantage, because it is anything but genuine and is definitely NOT an Advantage.
... As the rest of the world goes to faster (FTTH/ADSL2) solutions...I had a 50/100MB link (FTTH) in Japan... for about $45 USD a month, No caps on the connection...Where is any source of consumer protection in the US? The FCC is incompetent....
You are right, our elected officials abandoned us back in 1996 and continue to leave us without. The FCC's actions dictate that you are right, the FCC is incompetent, sad for US consumers!
Bandwidth CAPS and throttling is 'another' shot at a 'pay as you go' system where the caps are so low, as with most cell phone providers, that you will have no choice but to pay more. If not now, then definitely down the road...WAKE UP USA consumers before its too late! Okay, 250 MB might seem like allot now, but do you honestly believe they will not 'lower' those caps over time and give you, yet another excuse! Also future applications might require more bandwidth. I can think of some virtual reality applications that would be nice to have if we had 100MB / 100MB...like remote Medical diagnosis and treatment. (It's not that far fetched). What kind of bandwidth might those types of applications require just to run!
Of course only companies in other countries have enough bandwidth to make the attempt, we are at a competitive disadvantage here in the USA, thanks primarily to our anti-American Cable companies.
Net Neutrality is another shot at ultimately 'limiting' you and controlling you for their financial benefit. We MUST have NET NEUTRALITY! It's imperative for any freedom loving American.
Anyone who opposes Net Neutrality or supports bandwidth throttling) are simply and sadly miss-informed. WAKE UP!
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0711/ - 13 countries have better service then the United States...not Japan getting 100MB (that's up and downstream for those that care, for between $20 - $45 depending on who you talk to, but typically less then $30 per month)
A washington post article about Japan's 100MB / 100MB access was removed or I would have linked to it, perhaps you can search for what I put here in quotes and find it or something similiar:
"Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace," said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT's senior manager for public relations. "The experience of the last seven years shows that sometimes you need a strong federal regulatory framework to ensure that competition happens in a way that is constructive," said Vinton G. Cerf, a vice president at Google. In the United States, a similar kind of competitive access to phone company lines was strongly endorsed by Congress in a 1996 telecommunications law. But the federal push fizzled in 2003 and 2004, when the Federal Communications Commission and a federal court ruled that major companies do not have to share phone or fiber lines with competitors. The Bush administration did not appeal the court ruling.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/google-plans-undersea-pacific-cable/#comment-269961 - good comment, Japan having 100MB since 2003. Article should give all hope, as Google is laying fiber across the ocean. Also giving hope, plenty of 'dark' fiber in the USA that can be bought and lit up...can't happen soon enough.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/10/AR2008071003327.html - by John Dunbar; 7/11, 2008; Head FCC recommends punishing Comcast for blocking internet traffic. "The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles.";"Martin said Comcast has "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so."
http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html - Telecommunications Act of 1996; Our government let us down, had this gone in favor of consumers, we would probably have 100MB / 100MB in this country as early as of 2000.
Search online for "Net Neutrality" to learn more, the article I had was removed, surprise, surprise.
You're right. It's not whining for you to be consistently complaining about changes to your service which had been well publicized already.
...
The Japanese (they have 100 MB / 100 MB for less then $30 per month on fiber) have already publicly stated that it only costs them $5.00 OR LESS to provide their service to the public.
They can afford it, they just don't want to improve it...and would rather milk people like you that 'enable' them too.
And it won't be your ISP's problem when your $30 internet goes to $300 a month because your ISP had to buy a huge chunk of upstream capacity, will it?
I see you bought the cable TV provider's hype.
In Japan, thanks to government intervention (we should have had this back in 1996, but the US Government let consumers down) with NTT, they have had 100MB / 100MB (yes, up and down stream) for less then $30 per month since 2003.
While in other countries, Canada and the US included, the companies have NOT replaced outdated infrastructure with fiber (as competition will eventually force them to do anyway...of course at that time I will NEVER go back to them, they blew it and blew my trust in them and continue to blow it since 1996). They made their choice, their bed, they can lie in it.
At least Google is starting to lay fiber across the ocean....so one day. And there is allot of 'dark' fiber already laid, waiting to be lit up. What would 40% of the US Cable Televsion / Internet market be worth? Someone will see the potential and start lighting up fiber. In the meantime, every time I move, I look for a building and/or community that has a fiber connection available at a reasonable price...one day I will live in such a place...one day soon! On that day I will never look back!
A Japanese telecom official told everyone in a press conference that it only costs them $5.00 or LESS to provide what they provide.
Stop defending ISPs that are racing to the bottom, they do NOT deserve it! Nor do they deserve your business and patronage. WAKE UP!
... The name of a switch or router that provides cumulative bandwidth usage would have been useful and informative for everyone.
Assuming your ISP would let you use that router or switch anyway! And to add insult to injury they don't give you any effective method to measure your usage...and they could do this if they wanted too, but then you - the customer - would know quantitatively that they are screwing you. They don't want you to have proof.
And don't forget that they already send the TCP equivalent of a 'kill' switch randomly for certain types of communication. You don't have to believe me, just check into on your own....
"...ran a tool called a packet sniffer3 while attempting to "seed" (i.e., offer to others for download) files on BitTorrent and discovered unexpected TCP RST packets that were causing inbound connections to his computer to die." - from an article online from the EFF, "How Do We Know Comcast Is Forging Traffic?" from November 2007.
Comcast was first up in Canada, back in 2000, now in Texas Time Warner is doing this stuff...as of 2007. Chances are your ISP will as well.
And in Japan, where they spent money to improved their infrastructure (thanks to government intervention) bring in Fiber instead of taking advantage of customers, they have 100MB / 100MB (up and down stream) for between $20 - $30 per month.
It is obvious by the documentation made available that Mr. Nissan used his family name years before the auto company used it. By all rational thought he should be entitled to not only keep using it, but damages from Nissan. Also Nissan should be prevented from using it at all.
Here is a case where the US Courts initially got it wrong seemed to redress the situation by awarding ultimately to Mr Nissan, but IMO they (US.Courts did not go far enough). Mr Nissan should not only have received 100% of his lawyers fees, but damages to boot plus the company Nissan should be fined for wasting the courts time as it was obvious to them, that Mr Nissan had an obvious precedent in using his family name.
This should have been a no-brain er. It's pathetic and should be an eye-opener to how many abuse the court system and waste tax payer dollars.
I have no problem with an entity bringing a law suit, however I ask that they pay for it, rather then any tax dollars of U.S. Citizens. And when it is obvious that the entity is wasting the courts time, they (and their lawyers) should be fined accordingly.
Perhaps then, frivolous lawsuits would be stopped.
And basing decisions here in the U.S. on court decisions of courts in other countries (with obvious philosophical differences to issues such as: individual rights, citizenship, ownership, freedom, separation of church vs state, etc...) is just crazy! Many of our politicians seem not to get it and the founders of the Constitution provided ample warning....will we listen?
Slashdot Mirror
..."I only know Windows" people in the IT department....I always wonder why people charged with making business decisions about/around linux choose to limit their own perspective by not using the product they're marketing. I'm pretty sure it's laziness.
Great post, will someone mod him up! Where are mod points when you need them.
For a few it is laziness, but not all. I have asked this question to many different management individuals up to and including the Vice Presidents of large telecommunications firms and the primary reason I am always given is the proprietary solution is 'safier'. A few have actively told me, "no one ever got fired for suggesting the proprietary solution". I would consider this the more dominant reason versus laziness.
Plug n Play use to be an issue, those of us who know realize that Linux and open systems has come a long way in that area. I pretty much plug n play everything today with Linux. I think many older IT professionals don't know and don't care to learn how much progress has been made in this area.
The ability to install from 'images' removes that objection. Best of all you will never have an open source vendor coming back to you and telling you that copy of the operating system and/or software application is "no longer valid" because you replaced a crashed hard disk with a new one. Better yet, open source does not care about the 'licensing' issue, therefore ghosting (Kickstarting) a desktop and/or server does not raise that ridiculous red flag. (Both of these things have been in the news of late, the proprietary company's response, "you must purchase a valid copy of the software", but it was legal...right, they don't believe you).
Viruses, phishing, scamming, etc... I know you can secure any server, however I also know there are more problems with one vendor then others...so why put myself in front of that bus! Not a matter of if, but rather when I will get creamed.
Sad really when you consider the per desktop cost of most proprietary solutions. It does not take many desktops before a company realizes a market advantage due to the lower costs of open source options. In our current economy, the time is now to suggest these options. Why waste money buying more processors and more memory (often at very high prices) when you can run Linux on 128 MB of RAM on a Pentium processor without problems. If you have 512 MB, 1GB or more of RAM, GREAT, the Linux operating system will not eat it up which means your applications have more memory available to them and they run so much faster! Heck they run in 256MB very well and scream at 512MB, 1 GB or more. Just another plus for open source over proprietary solutions.
As I read through the posts here I do NOT see anyone saying Outlook 'mail' is necessarily better then other email solutions. Rather its the merged calendar that everyone loves. The ability to create a meeting, have invitations sent out and confirmations received...sharing meeting materials where appropriate, etc... I have used it too, so understand, simple, focus on replacing that specific application for a better solution and by all means include the per user cost savings in your proposal.
Open Source needs to focus on the "Calendar / Meeting" part of their solutions specifically. Advertise the positives, more secure, faster, more compatible even with proprietary solutions. If the calendar and email are open source, you should have no problem getting access via the proprietary solution to them. Shame the opposite is NOT true...based on messages here - the proprietary solutions are not helping, why should they! Again in this economy, play up the higher costs associated with the proprietary solution....its only going to get more expensive not less in the future! Remind them what happens when the current Operating System is no longer supported and they 'force' you to spend money to upgrade. Isn't that a 'business' decision that the business should decide and not be force
I disagree with you. Either we are a nation of laws or we are NOT. You should not be able to have it both ways, however I sadly admit that with enough money you can buy what you need.
Other parties (not just the Libertarian) have been kept off ballets for lesser reasons.
The law should be the law, if they don't like it they can change it and the new changes can apply to the next election after this one in 2012, but the law should be the law.
They missed it, period.
Besides what are you afraid of, afraid that your candidate might not win if NOT on the ballet! Welcome to the two party (we don't have a choice if we only have two) system. Sucks sometimes, doesn't it!
If the Republicans had honor, they would state for the record that the law is the law. And they should feel confident that their candidates name will get written in!
If they are afraid, then obviously the ballet system needs to be changed as it obviously prevents a third party from being successful in our current two party system and is unfair!
They should not have it both ways, McCain should NOT be on the ballet. Obama and Barr should be on the ballet. McCain should have to depend on 'write ins'.
Not that it matters, as I predict the Democrats will carry Texas this year anyway!
People are feed up with the Republicans for many, many reasons.
Seems to me that they got one heck of a deal.
Purchasing well over $4 Billion ($72-$68) for only $250 million...seems like a deal to me!
Heck sell of the rest, use the profit to light up some dark fiber and offer true 100 MB upstream and 100MB downstream like they have had in Japan since 2000 - 2003!
I would be curious to know how much it would cost to build your own data center, air handlers, power backup, lightning protection, the works. Even better would be a way to figure how much it has cost others per square foot so that we can compare Apples and Apples would be great.
Makes me want to start saving my money for the next downturn in the market and see if I can buy a bargain or two! WOW.
Seems to me location is the most important, shortest fiber distance to at least two differently owned internet peering locations would do it!
Btw, I think a large part of the problem could have been avoided with a very light regulation: label as "dangerous" any mortgage other than a fixed rate, 20% down, 30-year, fully-amortizing, non-recourse, no-prepayment penalty.
Thanks allot, by your definition (my ex and I) could not have afforded our first two homes, she still lives in the second one with our kids, with my blessings, but that is not the point. And I plan to do all I can to help them all stay in there. It's better for our children!
The first house we put 5% down, ARM loan, with CAPS and we could not afford a 30 year fixed, we simply did not qualify. Just not enough credit history and I had purchased a car in H.S. and a house while in college, and we still did not qualify! She worked all through college and financed her own car. So its not like we did not have any credit history, just not enough for a 30 year fixed. Especially with that much down, 20% on a starter home...maybe if a rich in law gave you the money, otherwise most new wage earner's salaries will not allow them to save 20% to make the down payment UNTIL WELL AFTER THEIR CHILD BEARING YEARS and that seems counter productive to a healthy society. The 30 year fixed would have been nice and was our preference...just could not swing it. We could however afford the payments (though they would have been painful if they reached the cap) on the ARM; and taking the ARM allowed us to buy the house. Did not have any furniture, but at least we had a house with which to start a family! Hey we owned a door knob!
A few years into it, our finances improved and we could have refinanced, but decided to roll it over to a fixed loan which was an option we had.
After a third child, that house was too small, so 12 years after we purchased it, we sold at a modest profit (not enough after 12 years, especially after fees, but oh well) and purchased our second larger home (my third), going from a 3/2 to a 4/3 with enough room for the growing family. This time we were able to put 6% down, a bit more then the first one, but this house also cost more, so that 6% was over $12K as it was...while that might not seem like allot today, it was back then. Thanks to 12 years in that first house, we qualified for a 30 year fixed on the second house, but still not with a 20% deposit...could not have done that, even after 12 years. (My father told me he did not have investments until my brothers and I finished college...so too our extra money went to raising our children).
Now 8 - 10 years later, she is safe in a house big enough for her and the kids, with a fixed loan.
None of this would have been possible if we would have been prevented by 'light regulation' from purchasing the first home. We could not have come up with that 20% down payment in either case. After having the first baby, it would have been harder, not easier. A larger down payment as a rule, no sir, no way, cannot agree with that.
The real crime is that both parties (Dems and Repubs) have put one part of the American dream, home ownership, out of reach of a married couple with ONLY two incomes. And with the higher cost of housing, requiring 20% in all circumstances, sorry but you would never get there with most jobs, the salaries are just not high enough! Of course you could adopt an alternative lifestyle and live with as many adults as would be required to put 20% down on a starter home. But that would go against most people's "moral" values, wouldn't it.
A hard and fast rule for all situations just does not make sense! Ultimately the personal responsibility in a 'free' society must remain with the individual. I suggest that there are acceptable circumstances for alternative mortgage vehicles other then 20% down and 30 year fixed, too simplistic and creates an unnecessary burden for some.
...You can copy pure software, but you can't copy dedicated chips....
One can only hope, the idea or writing one software program and/or game and compiling it one time and having that code run on all the available processors would be fantastic! Beyond belief!
In college we copied the Lotus 1-2-3 executable program to an eprom chip, put that chip on a card in an IBM PC (4 mhz processor, lol), I think on an adapter card and it executed so fast. An order of 30 - 40x over running the executable from the PC itself. We removed quite a few bottlenecks out of the equation by running it from that eprom! And from that eprom it was screaming! So combing functions on the processor, or set of processors removing potential bottlenecks (processor to system bus to graphics card bus to graphics card processor, with copying to/from memory sprinkled in for good measure) and having it all run faster makes perfect sense to me!
Wouldn't it be incredible to have 3 or more processors, geographically separated on the mother board, and combined with some 'display' capability (from each processor) that would allow rendering a 3D holographic image above the computer, doing away with the need for a monitor? One can dream....
ugh, set top boxes good if I want, bad if thrust upon me....
...Just because you can decode HDTV in software doesn't mean there still isn't huge momentum behind set top boxes and DTCP enabled GPU's.
Perhaps I am missing something, or looking at this from a different perspective then you are. So please forgive me if I miss interpret set top boxes. Since you mentioned DTCP, perhaps the momentum you are referring to is from the businesses specifically.
From a consumer or technical prospective, there is no momentum or genuine need for the set top box. The new HDTV's have everything I need to process and render any signal that the cable TV provider can send me. Not to mention I can hook a computer (w/ faster processor, more memory and more storage space) directly with fiber if I choose to that new HDTV. So from a technological stand-point the set top boxes are simply inferior and get in the way.
From a business model (forced on me by the Cable TV provider) there is a genuine need and very real momentum behind the set top box. But not for my benefit, but rather their need to control my service.
Sorry but when I hear set top box that is what comes to mind. All the new HDTV's have processors on board that make the set top boxes useless except of as you pointed out from a scrambler / de scrambler - DTCP reason.
Last time I spoke to a cable rep they tried to state that they no longer offered the non-DVD set top boxes, insisting I must accept the DVD set top box combo which of course is a little bit more expensive. Personally I would prefer to turn one of my extra computers into a DVD player, thankfully there are plenty of options available to do just that!
... The US Supreme Court disagrees with you. As do some of the USA's Founding Fathers, otherwise they would have signed their names on the Federalist Papers.
Falcon
Great reference Falcon, thank you. Made me think....
They might have reversed the decision, however the damage was done, IMO. It's not about the law, you could argue the legal system worked, but I do not think so. Especially given how fast time moves in and on the internet.
Rather I look at how much damage could have been done in the ensuing time frame before the corrections (freedoms repressed and/or made illegal) How many things could have been changed based on this obvious miscarry of justice based admittedly on miss interpretation of other case law? This would be an affront to every citizen's rights and freedoms over the next seven years before it was overturned?
Started in 1988 and finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States; No.93-986 in get this....drum roll please....on April 19, 1995.
From 1988 to 1995, 7 years later. What damage can be done to Freedom, rights, the internet in 7 years, to you personally .... (Might you even be 'disappeared' in the name of Homeland Security, National Security, the war against terror (with laws that restrict us, the terrorist indeed win) Don't get me wrong, I love the United States and would not want to live anywhere else, however I don't love the many abuses our own government inflicts on us, its citizens, in the name of some holier-then-thou purpose and I do try to vote to prevent it...failing badly so far....
If you don't believe that the US Government has experimented on us, its citizens, then you are ignoring facts of our History, I have military in my family, sadly some of our military are the biggest guinea pigs - its wrong and nothing will ever make it right!
Don't get mad at me for stating facts, and don't mod me down and make my karma worse, someone has already wrongly done this once. Supposedly it will even out over time, guess we will see!
What if actions take place in the next 2 or 3 years after an event that prevent the redress from happening 7 years later. I doubt that anyone ever went back and re-addressed that tax she was utilizing her rights of free speech in attempts to prevent.
You know the poem, "They came for the ... others, and I said nothing ... when they finally came for me, there was no one left to speak for me ..."
7 years is a life time on the internet, based on SCRUM/AGILE principals, you could argue that 7 years is well over 42 years, that use to be a lifetime for many (2 months / scrum), many could effectively argue 84 years, that is a lifetime for many today (1 month / scrum), though I don't agree with those that argue more years then 84, (scrums shorter then 30 days) me does think they scrum much too fast for their teams own good.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under pen name S. G. Tallentyre, often mistakenly attributed to Voltaire, though many have searched and it does not appear in any of Voltaire's writings. I would change it to this "I dont have to agree with you, but I MUST defend with my life your RIGHT to say it, else I don't deserve that RIGHT! - lamapper, circa 2008. (yea I know not original, however I do believe that and think every American citizen
...(You were right, they serialize objects).
I was wondering, not trolling, this is an honest curiosity based on a past experience I had (explained after question for edification purposes)
The Question/Wondering:
Are there any other bottle necks that would create a FIFO (First in First out) serialized scenario regardless of whether you are using threads or processes? A Singe CPU (Processor vs dual CPUs)? The path to/from the CPU, Graphics processor, CRT Screen or Memory? The Path to/from the NIC (Network Interface Card) or WiFi? etc...
A story from my past where this issue came up as edification:
I was doing some contract SQL programming work for a telecommunications company. The company was utilizing IBM's OS/2 Operating System and OS/2's Database Manager for processing SQL queries.
The manager authoritatively stated that OS/2 was multi-threaded and multi-tasking so that no matter how many queries were sent, the smallest and fastest would finish first, then the next smallest and so on and so forth; until the largest/longest query finally finished. I was publicly scoffed at when I told the manager, based on my experience, that was not true. I was told who did I think I was. I explained that I had read a white paper written by the IBM Engineer that had designed and coded the Database Manager Engine where he stated that it was a FIFO model.
The manager still did not believe what I was stating and rather then argue, I offered a simple test case. Fortunately for me the manager agreed or I might have been looking for my next contract sooner rather then later. I submitted three SQL queries, one requesting hundreds of thousands of records from multiple databases, on requesting just a few pieces of information from a single database and another medium size query. I submitted the largest query first, the shortest second and the medium last.
The manager assumed the shortest query would finish first.
Even after the second smaller query did not finish until after the larger first query the manager refused to believe the results.
Even though IBM advertised and marketed OS/2 to be able to run multiple processes and tasks concurrently, the database engine could not. Therefore the database engine was the bottle neck in this scenario.
My question is is there a bottle neck that would prevent any browser (Chrome, IE-the-next-one, FireFox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, etc... (or any of the other 19+ browsers...)) from running either processes or threads concurrently? A bottle neck that would 'serialize' the request regardless how the browser implemented this?
What about any of the following within the computer. The data bus? The CPU (single vs dual CPUs)? NIC Cards? WiFi? Any data path related to or other then the computer's data bus? Note: in one of these responses, a slashdotter mentioned that the child of a parent would be sand boxed with the same processor, even if the computer had more then one processor...that was interesting and informative, thank you!
I honestly don't know and welcome reading from anyone who does.
Either it is true or not. If true, for me its proof positive that many in the scientific community may be right and Global Warming is real.
Where other measures (i.e. temperature, ozone, size of the ice sheet, and so many others) do seem to be cyclical; the concentration of gases in the ice core samples does NOT, according to the scientist who take them, show a cycle with the gases specifically. Instead they have only increased over time. Further they stated that those gases related to industrialized society (which can occur in nature also) have increased at a faster, more significant rate then ever in the history of the planet.
Evidently the gases are trapped in the ice when the ice froze thousands and/or millions of years ago.
as it puts one more dagger into the idea that memories are not stored in the mind but the "soul." (Whatever that is.)
Plus, of course, the scientific value of studying the brain.
I did not take it this way at all. I personally believe there is 'memory' in both the mind and the soul. Until I am made aware of facts to the contrary, for me our minds hold our most recent memories from this current lifetime.
Perhaps one day we will find proof of information specifically related to 'memory' is pre stored in our DNA and RNA, that would be fascinating as well.
With the soul, I believe that information is stored through lifetimes of experience via reincarnation.
As for me, proof of a 'soul' the following come to mind: a) A soul has a weight, a mass that can be measured when someone passes away. Often referred to as the weight of the soul. b) When someone passes, the light or spark that you see in their eyes seems to disappear - not sure of a way to quantify that. c) There have been multiple instances where enough facts (in some cases hundreds of years old) have been researched and IMO past lives verified. The cases I find most interesting are the ones where young children have mentioned facts that were later verified as being true. The one where a young boy nagged his parents to take him to meet and talk to his wife from his last life is particularly interesting to me. According to his wife, now an elderly woman, this young boy knew things about her and her late husband that she had had never told anyone.
I mean no disrespect toward you or anyone else religion and spiritual believe system! I believe we each must derive our faith, religion and spiritual belief system at our own pace, in our own time and ultimately alone. I further believe that my 'faith' does not 'negate' your 'faith' or anyone else and wish more people were as understanding, flexible and more importantly 'tolerant' of other's belief systems.
And I would like to believe that we have improved upon it. Especially over the last 200+ years....
IE8 does this too, btw.
It's not what IE8 does, its what IE8 does not do and has not done that has been in the standards for over 4 years now.
M$ actions with the standard settings for 2.0 speaks for itself and it is pathetic! They have no excuse so don't 'try' to give them one.
This is the best thing about Google having a browser, M$ will suddenly want to support the standards, finally. And they will not be able to so easily do their own monopolistic browser junk in order to put down the competition. It's about time!
Many Firefox users will go to chrome, in the near term it will have more impact of FF then IE. However in the long term, IE will be impacted more as chrome firmly targets Microsoft Office users!
Remember for hand-helds code needs to be small, fast and use as little memory as possible.
Ultimately, in the long term, I believe this will be a win for developers, though in the short term it could be a little frustrating. Thanks to M$ and IE, we have been forced to get use to this!
... IE, ...Active-X, ... Silverlight, (are) ... attack...
I would add that any tool that:
Requires the Microsoft OS
Requires you update your Microsoft OS to use
are attacks by M$ on marketshare, profit and their attempts to dominate the market.
More important then any of that is that if M$ can turn off your computer (auto-updae, validation fails, etc....) until you purchase a 'valid' copy (especially when you are already running a validly purchased copy) well let's say it would not be a smart business decision to allow any other company to turn off your computer and put you out of business until you pay them more money.
Would also not be smart to be in bed with them until they learn enough about your vertical market to take your customers away from you. Funny that there are plenty of examples of companies (corporate corpses) who did just this.
I call it ironic.
Of course its hardly intelligent to allow your engineering, development and computer coding to go offshore so that your products can be stolen either and plenty of companies have and continue to do this.
I call that ironic as well, even if it has nothing specific to do with M$ specifically.
... For developers who care, it can be customised in CSS using min/max-width and min/max-height.)
Of course even if you are a developer that cares, does not mean that IE will care.
I should probably check first and admit that I have not, its just that I am so sick of having to write special CSS to accomodate IE when they have and continue to actively avoid bringing the IE browser to web standards.
I can't be the only one sick of IE ignoring web standards, or am I the only one?
Is a Google satellite evil or not evil? Discuss.
If it lets me see images all the way down to the ocean (all over the world) then its not evil. If they stop you from zooming closer at say 50% of the way and put a message that states, "We are sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom level for this region. Try zooming out for a broader look." then they are EVIL! If it allows me to see everything down to the 50 cm level it is NOT EVIL. If anything is 'sensor'ed for me, then it is EVIL! ...because you asked.
Yes, ubuntu server is indeed every bit as solid as RHEL or SLES, and enterprise support contracts are available from canonical. ...I remember oracle telling me in 1998 that they don't support linux, and that I should try sco. muahaha.
I was in a telecommunications company at that time, heavy Oracle, some DB2 and some other databases also. We were also a heavy Sun and IBM shop running IBM OS/2 and Microsoft on the desktops, except in development where everything was Unix, Sun and Solaris.
I too heard Oracle say that they would never run Oracle on Linux...thanks for the memory!
Another thought, as many developers look for new jobs, I like many, look for companies that leverage Linux. I have and will continue to say NO to Microsoft ONLY and Oracle ONLY shops.
Oh BTW, MySQL most definitely will scale, its fun to see companies wake up to this fact and migrate away from Oracle, saving hundreds of thousands in the process.
After over 10 years of living there (Microsoft especially and Oracle..) I can see the writing on the wall, and want to have a more prosperous and even more successful future.
A mixed Linux and "other" shop is okay too, as is a Linux ONLY shop. I see a future there!
However, if the company is not leveraging Linux to profit their bottom line, then I question the ability and knowledge of upper management. Perhaps they are simply too slow, which jeopardizes my job in the future.
In this, or any economy, I cannot afford to be put out of a job due to poor business decisions.
...3) Cascading interlocking licenses and requirements (you "need" oracle, which requires RHEL, so you "need" a contract) That is a bad economic structure which will eventually be worked around or eliminated.
Great post...
The last one is the best reason to move away from a company if possible. Nothing I hate more in hearing that I must update A before I update B.
Even worse is having to update both A and B before I update C. Especially when all I need is C and I am technically competent to KNOW that C will run just fine without updating A and/or B.
I call that the Microsoft Roller Coaster and have gotten off. Never again will I be forced to update my operating system, only because I want to update only one application. Nor will my system be 'automatically updated' so that I am put in hell when it does not work. There is a reason its caused the 'bleeding edge' and anything in production has no business being forced there. This is a 'business decision' that each business should be able to make independently when it is cost effective for them to do so, without threatening their revenue stream.
Just say NO to Genuine Advantage, because it is anything but genuine and is definitely NOT an Advantage.
... As the rest of the world goes to faster (FTTH/ADSL2) solutions ...I had a 50/100MB link (FTTH) in Japan ... for about $45 USD a month, No caps on the connection...Where is any source of consumer protection in the US? The FCC is incompetent....
You are right, our elected officials abandoned us back in 1996 and continue to leave us without. The FCC's actions dictate that you are right, the FCC is incompetent, sad for US consumers!
Bandwidth CAPS and throttling is 'another' shot at a 'pay as you go' system where the caps are so low, as with most cell phone providers, that you will have no choice but to pay more. If not now, then definitely down the road...WAKE UP USA consumers before its too late! Okay, 250 MB might seem like allot now, but do you honestly believe they will not 'lower' those caps over time and give you, yet another excuse! Also future applications might require more bandwidth. I can think of some virtual reality applications that would be nice to have if we had 100MB / 100MB...like remote Medical diagnosis and treatment. (It's not that far fetched). What kind of bandwidth might those types of applications require just to run!
Of course only companies in other countries have enough bandwidth to make the attempt, we are at a competitive disadvantage here in the USA, thanks primarily to our anti-American Cable companies.
Net Neutrality is another shot at ultimately 'limiting' you and controlling you for their financial benefit. We MUST have NET NEUTRALITY! It's imperative for any freedom loving American.
Anyone who opposes Net Neutrality or supports bandwidth throttling) are simply and sadly miss-informed. WAKE UP!
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0711/ - 13 countries have better service then the United States...not Japan getting 100MB (that's up and downstream for those that care, for between $20 - $45 depending on who you talk to, but typically less then $30 per month)
A washington post article about Japan's 100MB / 100MB access was removed or I would have linked to it, perhaps you can search for what I put here in quotes and find it or something similiar:
"Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace," said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT's senior manager for public relations. "The experience of the last seven years shows that sometimes you need a strong federal regulatory framework to ensure that competition happens in a way that is constructive," said Vinton G. Cerf, a vice president at Google. In the United States, a similar kind of competitive access to phone company lines was strongly endorsed by Congress in a 1996 telecommunications law. But the federal push fizzled in 2003 and 2004, when the Federal Communications Commission and a federal court ruled that major companies do not have to share phone or fiber lines with competitors. The Bush administration did not appeal the court ruling.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/google-plans-undersea-pacific-cable/#comment-269961 - good comment, Japan having 100MB since 2003. Article should give all hope, as Google is laying fiber across the ocean. Also giving hope, plenty of 'dark' fiber in the USA that can be bought and lit up...can't happen soon enough.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/10/AR2008071003327.html - by John Dunbar; 7/11, 2008; Head FCC recommends punishing Comcast for blocking internet traffic. "The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles.";"Martin said Comcast has "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so."
http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html - Telecommunications Act of 1996; Our government let us down, had this gone in favor of consumers, we would probably have 100MB / 100MB in this country as early as of 2000.
Search online for "Net Neutrality" to learn more, the article I had was removed, surprise, surprise.
...
You're right. It's not whining for you to be consistently complaining about changes to your service which had been well publicized already.
...
The Japanese (they have 100 MB / 100 MB for less then $30 per month on fiber) have already publicly stated that it only costs them $5.00 OR LESS to provide their service to the public.
They can afford it, they just don't want to improve it...and would rather milk people like you that 'enable' them too.
WAKE UP, your being duped!
And it won't be your ISP's problem when your $30 internet goes to $300 a month because your ISP had to buy a huge chunk of upstream capacity, will it?
I see you bought the cable TV provider's hype.
In Japan, thanks to government intervention (we should have had this back in 1996, but the US Government let consumers down) with NTT, they have had 100MB / 100MB (yes, up and down stream) for less then $30 per month since 2003.
While in other countries, Canada and the US included, the companies have NOT replaced outdated infrastructure with fiber (as competition will eventually force them to do anyway...of course at that time I will NEVER go back to them, they blew it and blew my trust in them and continue to blow it since 1996). They made their choice, their bed, they can lie in it.
At least Google is starting to lay fiber across the ocean....so one day. And there is allot of 'dark' fiber already laid, waiting to be lit up. What would 40% of the US Cable Televsion / Internet market be worth? Someone will see the potential and start lighting up fiber. In the meantime, every time I move, I look for a building and/or community that has a fiber connection available at a reasonable price...one day I will live in such a place...one day soon! On that day I will never look back!
A Japanese telecom official told everyone in a press conference that it only costs them $5.00 or LESS to provide what they provide.
Stop defending ISPs that are racing to the bottom, they do NOT deserve it! Nor do they deserve your business and patronage. WAKE UP!
... The name of a switch or router that provides cumulative bandwidth usage would have been useful and informative for everyone.
Assuming your ISP would let you use that router or switch anyway! And to add insult to injury they don't give you any effective method to measure your usage...and they could do this if they wanted too, but then you - the customer - would know quantitatively that they are screwing you. They don't want you to have proof.
And don't forget that they already send the TCP equivalent of a 'kill' switch randomly for certain types of communication. You don't have to believe me, just check into on your own....
"...ran a tool called a packet sniffer3 while attempting to "seed" (i.e., offer to others for download) files on BitTorrent and discovered unexpected TCP RST packets that were causing inbound connections to his computer to die." - from an article online from the EFF, "How Do We Know Comcast Is Forging Traffic?" from November 2007.
Comcast was first up in Canada, back in 2000, now in Texas Time Warner is doing this stuff...as of 2007. Chances are your ISP will as well.
And in Japan, where they spent money to improved their infrastructure (thanks to government intervention) bring in Fiber instead of taking advantage of customers, they have 100MB / 100MB (up and down stream) for between $20 - $30 per month.
Here is a case where the US Courts initially got it wrong seemed to redress the situation by awarding ultimately to Mr Nissan, but IMO they (US.Courts did not go far enough). Mr Nissan should not only have received 100% of his lawyers fees, but damages to boot plus the company Nissan should be fined for wasting the courts time as it was obvious to them, that Mr Nissan had an obvious precedent in using his family name.
This should have been a no-brain er. It's pathetic and should be an eye-opener to how many abuse the court system and waste tax payer dollars.
I have no problem with an entity bringing a law suit, however I ask that they pay for it, rather then any tax dollars of U.S. Citizens. And when it is obvious that the entity is wasting the courts time, they (and their lawyers) should be fined accordingly.
Perhaps then, frivolous lawsuits would be stopped.
And basing decisions here in the U.S. on court decisions of courts in other countries (with obvious philosophical differences to issues such as: individual rights, citizenship, ownership, freedom, separation of church vs state, etc...) is just crazy! Many of our politicians seem not to get it and the founders of the Constitution provided ample warning....will we listen?
Thanks for the link it was insightful.