[quote]I guess this is just a semantic argument over "cheap". To me, $150 a month for a 10+mb internet feed an unlimited downloads is cheap. Ten years ago, I was paying more than that in long distance charges to swap warez at 28800 baud.[/quote]
Ten years ago was 1999. Could you really not get a 56k dialup connection through a local ISP phone number where you lived? I was lucky to be living on a campus at the time and swapping my warez at lightning speed, but even my parents had 56k AOL at home.
Beyond that I generally agree with your point in this thread. I'm very happy to see the companies clearly stating prices, tiers and caps, even if they are a little high. My only complaint is that there is not enough competition in the market, so I don't really know if $150 a month is reasonable for unlimited 10mb, or if it's a cash grab on the order of "20 cents per SMS".
[quote]I guess this is just a semantic argument over "cheap". To me, $150 a month for a 10+mb internet feed an unlimited downloads is cheap. Ten years ago, I was paying more than that in long distance charges to swap warez at 28800 baud.[/quote]
10 years ago was 1999. Could you really not get a 56k dialup connection to a local ISP at large in 1999 where you lived?
How is AA going to prevent me from setting up my Meraki repeater once I'm aboard and start re-selling their service for a lower price?
The fact that if you start hocking your nerdly wares up and down the aisle, someone is going to alert a flight attendant. It's the same reason you don't have people selling you non-internet goods on the airplane.
If you just repeat it to your 2 co-workers no one is going to care, it will just make you look cheap.
Societal pressure will do wonders for stopping shitty behavior in the real world. It works double plus good when everyone has spent at several hundred dollars to enter a confined space. This is why you DO have people hocking wares in the terminal, but not on the plane.
Does this mean I can opt out of my phone contract without penalty? I've been looking for a way to get on to a proper GSM carrier without paying the early termination fee. Or does it just mean I can opt out of the data sharing?
Some of use watch a lot of live sports, and there is no real way watch them online in good quality. You can't get them from Netflix because they are only of interest live.
Otherwise though I'd be glad to leave the cable company behind.
Sure -- far be it from me to start prancing around selling beer in Saudi Arabia. It would be ethically sound, but not super wise as I value my own life.
That said, I don't think the Sheriff in our example is accurately looking out for the best interests of those people whom he represents.
I can go out for a family of four in the nicest place in town and still pay under $30. One of the reasons that we switched to nice places was that fast food was getting close to that price for a family anyway.
Applebee's is the nicest place in your town or what?
Seriously though, link the site for your nice restaurant where a family of four can go and eat for $30. We'll be the judge of how nice it is.
I'm not the OP but if you'd like I can link you to 50 restaurants in Seattle where a $100 bill is not out of the question for 2 people.
Ah yes, failure of your academic education is certainly a pity. I know such a guy who now spends his days coding PIN numbers into ATM Machines so he can collect his paycheck earnings from the money bank.
You're not thinking like an American corporation. The correct answer to this (in their world) will be to sign contracts with Comcast/Verizon et al, so that their digital game downloads don't count against the cap. The two parties will exchange money, and the customer will have an option to add the "Digital Gamer Download" option to his Internet bill for, oh, say, $3.99 a month. Note this doesn't actually buy him any games, it will just exclude Preferred Game Distributors(tm) from his monthly quota.
Lots of money will change hands, the customers bill will go up with a recurring charge (the best kind of charge) and everything works out OK!
Maybe if Comcast/Verizon are feeling super-nice (read: Giant Game Company paid them a whole lot upfront, or they have to compete with the other half of the duopoly) they will offer you the Digital Gamer Bandwidth Exclusion Package from Preferred Game Distributors(tm) for FREE!!* ** ***
Oh, what's that? You want to download something from an independant games publisher who isn't part of the package? Well fuck you, that'll count against your bandwidth quota.
*with 2yr service commitment. **Early cancellation incurs a fee of $199. ***New subscribers only.
Have you ever used the google apps? They are actually very quick and responsive, and work in a similar way.
Just my anecdotal experience, but I spend most of my day in Google Docs spreadsheets that I think it is fair to call small (8 columns by somwhere between 20 and 100 rows). At any given time, there are zero to 3 people collaborating on the same document as me. It is slow as shit. I just sorted a 25 row column (just a simple A to Z sort), there was almost 5 seconds in between choosing the GUI function and seeing the result. It even lags when typing in a cell sometimes. I couldn't imagine doing development work in such an environment.
More importantly than the non real time nature of your anonymous post is the fact that if it's really bothering me, I can COMPLETELY hide it via my Slashdot preferences, or at very worst write a Firefox extension to do so (if Slashdot wasn't as full-featured) as my PC is an open platform.
I'd be a lot more sensitive to the demands of anonymous callers to remain anonymous if my cell phone could be configured to 100% drop them: Not assign a silent tone to UNKNOWN or RESTRICTED, not push them to my voice mail, just 100% drop them so on my end they never existed, like I can do with your post. But I can't because my cellphone is a shitty closed platform.
I can't even pay for the privledge to do so because they won't sell it to me.
If a candidate presented a platform of "No income tax for CA, NY, TX, IL and FL! 80% income tax for the midwest and rockies!" they could easily win the election and there would be nothing the midwest, rockies, or even the south could do to stop it.
I think everyone is ok with what happens to the phone system during emergencies/major events. But if the sound on your phone line was sorta crackly all the time, and you got "all circuits filled" messages back weekly with the excuse being "too many people are conducting phone calls" even though it was a normal Thursday with no local emergencies, you'd probably be pissed your telco didn't upgrade their equipment.
I don't think the issue is so much that games companies can't find good writers, it's more they won't pay for it. So you get some designer/coder throwing shit together at the last minute.
Wow, what the hell dude. I Google-mapped Richfield, MN, expecting it to be up by Duluth or something and thus proving your point. It's smack in the heart of the MSP metro area! It's in freaking Minneapolis. The whole city of Richfield is in Minneapolis. Deal with it.
The other thing is that Nintendo's target market probably buys fewer games per console. How many games does the average Nintendo customer buy a month? I'm not talking about "hardcore" gamers, I'm talking about the average person with a Nintendo console. I would be hard-pressed to say its more than 1 a month.
I'd say its way less than that. I'm a somewhat casual gamer (I enjoy the AAA games, but have little play time so only buy a few and they last me forever) looking back over my last 4 or 5 consoles, I'd say I buy 10 to 15 games per console LIFETIME (3-4 years?). Anecdotal of course, but I think 1 game a month is quite a bit.
Re:Again showing why bandwidth caps are backwards
on
Bandwidth Use In MMOs
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· Score: 1
There you go, it seems you were wrong and corporations actually love us all and will take a 10% drop in revenue in the name of fairness.
Hey, at least I made up plausible numbers. Why would the company give up 10% of its revenue in this situation?
Slashdot Mirror
[quote]I guess this is just a semantic argument over "cheap". To me, $150 a month for a 10+mb internet feed an unlimited downloads is cheap. Ten years ago, I was paying more than that in long distance charges to swap warez at 28800 baud.[/quote]
Ten years ago was 1999. Could you really not get a 56k dialup connection through a local ISP phone number where you lived? I was lucky to be living on a campus at the time and swapping my warez at lightning speed, but even my parents had 56k AOL at home.
Beyond that I generally agree with your point in this thread. I'm very happy to see the companies clearly stating prices, tiers and caps, even if they are a little high. My only complaint is that there is not enough competition in the market, so I don't really know if $150 a month is reasonable for unlimited 10mb, or if it's a cash grab on the order of "20 cents per SMS".
[quote]I guess this is just a semantic argument over "cheap". To me, $150 a month for a 10+mb internet feed an unlimited downloads is cheap. Ten years ago, I was paying more than that in long distance charges to swap warez at 28800 baud.[/quote]
10 years ago was 1999. Could you really not get a 56k dialup connection to a local ISP at large in 1999 where you lived?
Call me when your puny machine can play the king of all arcade games, USA vs USSR bubble hockey.
How is AA going to prevent me from setting up my Meraki repeater once I'm aboard and start re-selling their service for a lower price?
The fact that if you start hocking your nerdly wares up and down the aisle, someone is going to alert a flight attendant. It's the same reason you don't have people selling you non-internet goods on the airplane.
If you just repeat it to your 2 co-workers no one is going to care, it will just make you look cheap.
Societal pressure will do wonders for stopping shitty behavior in the real world. It works double plus good when everyone has spent at several hundred dollars to enter a confined space. This is why you DO have people hocking wares in the terminal, but not on the plane.
Does this mean I can opt out of my phone contract without penalty? I've been looking for a way to get on to a proper GSM carrier without paying the early termination fee. Or does it just mean I can opt out of the data sharing?
Sports.
Some of use watch a lot of live sports, and there is no real way watch them online in good quality. You can't get them from Netflix because they are only of interest live.
Otherwise though I'd be glad to leave the cable company behind.
Sure -- far be it from me to start prancing around selling beer in Saudi Arabia. It would be ethically sound, but not super wise as I value my own life.
That said, I don't think the Sheriff in our example is accurately looking out for the best interests of those people whom he represents.
You don't have any ethical obligation to conform to unjust laws.
I can go out for a family of four in the nicest place in town and still pay under $30. One of the reasons that we switched to nice places was that fast food was getting close to that price for a family anyway.
Applebee's is the nicest place in your town or what?
Seriously though, link the site for your nice restaurant where a family of four can go and eat for $30. We'll be the judge of how nice it is.
I'm not the OP but if you'd like I can link you to 50 restaurants in Seattle where a $100 bill is not out of the question for 2 people.
Ah yes, failure of your academic education is certainly a pity. I know such a guy who now spends his days coding PIN numbers into ATM Machines so he can collect his paycheck earnings from the money bank.
You're not thinking like an American corporation. The correct answer to this (in their world) will be to sign contracts with Comcast/Verizon et al, so that their digital game downloads don't count against the cap. The two parties will exchange money, and the customer will have an option to add the "Digital Gamer Download" option to his Internet bill for, oh, say, $3.99 a month. Note this doesn't actually buy him any games, it will just exclude Preferred Game Distributors(tm) from his monthly quota.
Lots of money will change hands, the customers bill will go up with a recurring charge (the best kind of charge) and everything works out OK!
Maybe if Comcast/Verizon are feeling super-nice (read: Giant Game Company paid them a whole lot upfront, or they have to compete with the other half of the duopoly) they will offer you the Digital Gamer Bandwidth Exclusion Package from Preferred Game Distributors(tm) for FREE!!* ** ***
Oh, what's that? You want to download something from an independant games publisher who isn't part of the package? Well fuck you, that'll count against your bandwidth quota.
*with 2yr service commitment.
**Early cancellation incurs a fee of $199.
***New subscribers only.
I love PC gaming too man, but the couch is mighty comfortable.
Have you ever used the google apps? They are actually very quick and responsive, and work in a similar way.
Just my anecdotal experience, but I spend most of my day in Google Docs spreadsheets that I think it is fair to call small (8 columns by somwhere between 20 and 100 rows). At any given time, there are zero to 3 people collaborating on the same document as me. It is slow as shit. I just sorted a 25 row column (just a simple A to Z sort), there was almost 5 seconds in between choosing the GUI function and seeing the result. It even lags when typing in a cell sometimes. I couldn't imagine doing development work in such an environment.
More importantly than the non real time nature of your anonymous post is the fact that if it's really bothering me, I can COMPLETELY hide it via my Slashdot preferences, or at very worst write a Firefox extension to do so (if Slashdot wasn't as full-featured) as my PC is an open platform.
I'd be a lot more sensitive to the demands of anonymous callers to remain anonymous if my cell phone could be configured to 100% drop them: Not assign a silent tone to UNKNOWN or RESTRICTED, not push them to my voice mail, just 100% drop them so on my end they never existed, like I can do with your post. But I can't because my cellphone is a shitty closed platform.
I can't even pay for the privledge to do so because they won't sell it to me.
If a candidate presented a platform of "No income tax for CA, NY, TX, IL and FL! 80% income tax for the midwest and rockies!" they could easily win the election and there would be nothing the midwest, rockies, or even the south could do to stop it.
ummm... Congress?
Apparently you never lived in a small enough population state. We only get 1 representative in congress (as it should be).
Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel
I think everyone is ok with what happens to the phone system during emergencies/major events. But if the sound on your phone line was sorta crackly all the time, and you got "all circuits filled" messages back weekly with the excuse being "too many people are conducting phone calls" even though it was a normal Thursday with no local emergencies, you'd probably be pissed your telco didn't upgrade their equipment.
I have..I acquired most of my actual CDs from 1991-2000 or so, and they are utterly scratched to shit.
http://www.snopes.com/business/money/pennies.asp
Stop anthropomorphizing nature! Under normal conditions, a large majority of us would be dead in childbirth, etc etc etc.
I don't think the issue is so much that games companies can't find good writers, it's more they won't pay for it. So you get some designer/coder throwing shit together at the last minute.
Wow, what the hell dude. I Google-mapped Richfield, MN, expecting it to be up by Duluth or something and thus proving your point. It's smack in the heart of the MSP metro area! It's in freaking Minneapolis. The whole city of Richfield is in Minneapolis. Deal with it.
The other thing is that Nintendo's target market probably buys fewer games per console. How many games does the average Nintendo customer buy a month? I'm not talking about "hardcore" gamers, I'm talking about the average person with a Nintendo console. I would be hard-pressed to say its more than 1 a month.
I'd say its way less than that. I'm a somewhat casual gamer (I enjoy the AAA games, but have little play time so only buy a few and they last me forever) looking back over my last 4 or 5 consoles, I'd say I buy 10 to 15 games per console LIFETIME (3-4 years?). Anecdotal of course, but I think 1 game a month is quite a bit.
There you go, it seems you were wrong and corporations actually love us all and will take a 10% drop in revenue in the name of fairness.
Hey, at least I made up plausible numbers. Why would the company give up 10% of its revenue in this situation?