Re:More corporate BS
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: -1, Troll
>>>Second, "The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway" is just as clueless. The internet is the internet, whether you're accessing it from your phone or your PC. >>>
Unless you live somewhere, like rural Maryland, and have no other way to access the internet except via an expensive ~$100/month cellular plan. That's the path corporations leading us down. Or more correctly: The US FCC is leading us down that path.
Re:I Disagree with Some Parts of This Article
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I don't disagree. I've been saying for a couple days now that Free TV is dying, to be replaced by a pay-to-see model. And now this guy comes out with this:
>>>from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995. >>>
The corporations are leading us down a path towards $1000-to-2000 per year bills just so we can see the latest episode of Stargate, or hear the news, or get a warning about severe weather. What was once free, they are locking-up behind paywalls and ye are cheering it along as technological "advancement" when it's actually the opposite.
>>>So all of their private conversations are suddenly public record because they get paid with tax dollars?
No.
Because they have the ear of the US and EU leaders who are enforcing CO2 caps, and if these scientists' advice is to be followed rather than ignored, then they damn well better PROVE their case. "I say so and my data backs me up," is not sufficient. Show the data to other climatologists and let them confirm or refute the conclusion.
>>>it just means their pride got in the way of them doing the best job possible
Pride and an agenda. .
>>>they didn't want to publish results that said "climate change is a joke"
Then they should quit their jobs, because they are no longer scientists. They are ignoring the data. Might as well go write fiction instead - like maybe some submissions to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.
I've determined that warming-and-cooling are natural events. Just like the previous global warming periods of 10,000 BC (when the glaciers melted) and 3000-2000 BC (Egyptian golden age) and 300-1300 AD (Roman era and Feudal era). It was so warm they were growing wine in Scotland and Greenland was actually green.
Unless you think those events were caused by Caesar and his buds running-round in their SUVs, releasing lots of CO2, and warming everything up?
>>>Demanding greater transparency because a small number of people... made a poor judgment call is uncalled for.
You need to read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in which he makes the case that Non-transparency (i.e. hiding data) is what enables the old guard to protect their favorite theories. It happened to Kepler when he was afraid to publish his math proving the sun was the center of the solar system (he waited until he was on his deathbed). It happened to Galileo who was imprisoned by the Catholic Church. It happened to Planck for suggesting that lightwaves could travel through a vacuum instead of a medium like water. The journals refused to publish his work, because it challenged the prevailing theory and was considered "nuts".
It is censorship through suppression of minority views, and the only way to fight it is through openness (share the data).
>>>I pay almost exactly $15 for prepaid 4 GB via 3G
VirginMobile charges $50 for that much data, and that's the cheapest cellular provider I'm aware of - either in the US or the EU. And that's hardly a good bargain compared to FREE fm radio in the car, or $7/month satellite radio.
>>>n US such incentive doesn't exist because FCC requires phone companies maintain phone lines as well as wireless service.
No it doesn't. Verizon has been removing phone lines all over the place, and replacing it with FiOS. .
>>>Same goes with the television, requirement to support old TV technologies when free internet TV broadcast could address most (if not all) concerns is dumb.
Free TV streams 6000 gigabytes per month per channel. Show me any cellular service that can do the same. Most are capped at just 5 GB. Even the wired stuff is capped at 250 GB. Internet doesn't even close to offering the same 6 terabyte per month (time 20-40 channels) that free television offers.
>>>the internet companies just blew the money on booze
No actually the PHONE companies took the money and spent it on analog-to-digital phoneline upgrades to enable 56k internet. Why? *Because that's what the law said*. It helps if you read the actual 1996 Telecommunications Act. The phone companies did not misappropriate the funds; they spent it exactly the way Congress directed them to spend it (fiber -or- digital phone upgrades).
BTW why do you need 100 Mbit/s? It only takes 5 Mbit/s to carry a MPEG4-encoded HDTV stream; I suppose if you have 3 people in the same house but watching different channels, then you'd need 15 Mbit/s minimum. So what's the 100 Mbit/s line for? (just curious). ----- Plus this broadband plan will be for *wireless* internet and not the answer to your problem. I've never seen a wireless connection that fast. You should be contacting the FCC and saying this plan is unacceptable.
- And final thought. The US really isn't that far behind when compared to other continent-spanning federations: Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s U.S. 7.0 E.U. 6.6 Canada 5.7 Australia 5.1 China 3.0 Brazil 2.1 Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
And if you prefer to look on a state-by-state basis of the EU, US, and Canada then you get: Sweden 13 Mbit/s Delaware, Romania,Netherlands,Bulgaria 12 Washington,Rhode Island 11 Massachusetts 10 New Jersey,Virginia,New Hampshire,New York 9 British Columbia,Colorado,Connecticut,Arizona, Slovakia 8 Mbit/s
>>>moving all of that TV spectrum to a commons approach and letting dynamic spectrum access devices be commercially deployed will better utilize the spectrum.
Oh yeah that's another thing. During the Nashville flood, do you know what stopped working? Cellular networks (dynamic spectrum access devices) because the towers were covered with water or short-circuited. Do you know what still worked? Over-the-air television broadcasting from high ground.
The same was true during 9/11 in New York - cellphones stopped working (overloaded) but half the television transmitters were still broadcasting and still sending-out updates that citizens could watch. We HAVE to keep this service alive, if only so people can still get the weather and hear the news. It is illogical and foolish to put all your communication eggs into one basket.
It would also be nice to keep tv alive so it helps the poor and middle class. It provides a free tether to the world of entertainment, news, and government updates, rather than locking it up behind a ~$100 a month cellphone paywall.
>>>So you want mandate that the telcos use their revenue to spread DSL everywhere?
What part of "Use the already-existing Universal Service Fund to cover the costs" did you not comprehend? It's exactly the same method that was used to extend telephone access to rural communities in the 1930s. Now we'll use it to extend DSL Internet to rural communities.
And it doesn't have to be DSL. If for example Verizon would rather install FiOS they can (it's an equivalent service), but I suspect they'd choose DSL because it's much much cheaper. .
>>>Doesn't negate the fact that high BW television broadcasts are a waste of terrestrial spectrum
False fact. Over-the-air television uses about 1.5% of the usable spectrum - that's not a huge amount. PLUS it streams 19 Mbit/s or 6000 gigabytes per month per channel. That's a very good service, costs nothing, and not wasteful at all. Imagine trying to get 6000 gigabytes over your cellphone (most have 5GB cap) or wired internet (250GB cap). Not possible.
>>>I live in Canada. Free OTA is 3 channels analog channels. And this is in one of the top 3 cities for population.
Yep. You need to do the following:
- Wait for the analog shutoff at the end of 2011. Your 3 analogs will multiplex, and become 6 digital channels with new features like the movie channel, sports channel,retroTV channel, and so on.
- Upgrade to a larger antenna like the Channel Master 4228HD. For me that increased my channel count four times. If it does the same for you then you'll jump to about 24 channels overall. All free.
>>>Actually, the FCC has every right to do just that, being the very entity chartered by We The People to take care of Our common property.
Yeah except they aren't doing that. The FCC isn't listening to the majority of the people, and instead is listening to the siren call of the corporations (and $$$). They are repeating the mistake of channels 52-69 which were sold off to megacorps like ATT & Verizon who are just sitting on it, and doing nothing. These corporations purchased that spectrum for the purpose of locking-out competition. Now they are trying to do the same with channels 25 to 51 - lock them up and not use them.
Plus even if they did use them for, say cellphone-based television, it's still a shitty deal. I'd have to pay about $100 a month to use the channels that I've used for Free all my life. How is moving from free to a paywall an improvement? I hear people complain about New York Times and other papers moving behind paywalls. Well my complaint is the same - they are moving these channels behind a paywall.
"The People" would be better off to not lockup those channels into these megacorps, and instead allow it to continue to be used by local, community-based tv stations to provide Free streaming video content (6000 gigabytes per month per channel), as has been the case for the last ~70 years.
>>>Eliminating free OTA TV doesn't mean that free services will be eliminated entirely .
True but I don't think it's necessary to eliminate free over-the-air television at all. Here's my broadband plan (note broadband means greater than telephone narrowband) (i.e. >>4000 hertz):
- Take a page out of the FDR years which mandated telephone companies must wire all homes with telephone lines - Update the law so it says telephone companies must provide DSL (or FiOS or equivalent service) to all homes by 1/1/2012 - Use the already-existing Universal Service Fund (USF) to cover the costs
Done. Since 99.9% of homes have telephone wires running into them, there's no digging required. No manual labor. No disruption. Simply install a ~$100 DSLAM box in each neighborhood. Within a year's time, virtually everyone would have access to 1000 kbit/s or more service. That's 20+ times faster than what they had before (28k or 56k).
Over time those DSLs would be phased-out and upgraded to fiber, but as of 2012 the US Congress could claim, "Not one single american citizen is still stuck on dialup." They might even be able to use it for the reelection campaign.
>>>I assure you that I had no idea it was limited to 1hr
So you're admitting you don't do research before buying. That's kinda sad. In 1976 VHS was rleased with 4 hours capability while Betamx still only had 1 hour. Obviously most customers don't just buy products - they ask questions from the Sears salesman - and recording 4 hours sounds like a better deal. Especially if you want to record a primetime block from 8 to 11, or the four-hour football game or race. You couldn't do it with Betamax.
Therefore VHS quickly took the lead. It was the only practical choice for people wanting to timeshift television.
>>>You most certainly can afford to lay down fiber,
How? Borrow more money from China? They've already said they won't be loaning us any more. A few million here-and-there but not billions. .
>>>ou can afford to cover your entire populations healthcare needs
Again: How? Borrow more money from China? Also what you describe is a monopoly, and our US government monopolies don't really work too good. Amtrak's almost-bankrupt, post office almost a trillion in debt, Social Security and Medicare (basically healthcare for old people) now have empty accounts, and government-run schools turn out kids dumber than a kid in South Africa. Letting the US Congress form a government-run hospital monopoly would be extremely bad, even if China did loan us the money to do it.
>>>build on the advantage of 70 years of technological advancement
I've never met such a load of impatient people. Even if it only takes phone companies 25 years (i.e. 2015) from the birth of the WWW to put high-speed in mountain/rural homes, which is 1/3 as long as it took for the telephone to spread, you'd still complain that they took too long. - Reminds me of when my kid was 3 and wanted her cookie NOW instead of waiting until tomorrow when I go to the grocery store to buy some. Impatience.
>>>High speed delivery != twisted pair
Japan is the #1 country in the world for internet speed. You know what technology they use? DSL. They have a few fiber optics and coaxial cables too, but the most popular technology is just the common twisted-pair line.
Then why is the original poster criticizing the US Government for not providing 100 Mbit/s when 10 or 25 is enough? That's like saying, "The US Congress is to blame because I don't have 20,000 megahertz CPU yet." It will come eventually - just be patient - but for now you really don't need it, so it's pointless to be bitching about it.
Maximum. The average speed stored on disc is only 25 Mbit/s. Cable or broadcast HDTV is much, much less - 9 Mbit/s for MPEG2 and 4.5 for MPEG4, and since we were talking about streaming video (broadcast) that was my basis.
Anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything. Greece is one of the slowest states, whether you're looking at EU states or US states. It's average speed is slower than both the US and Canada, about equal to the United Arab Emirates, and only +1 Mbit/s faster than backwards rural states like Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska.
>>>I seriously doubt I'm getting 10Mbit... when I'm only paying for 2Mbit
Apparently you've never heard of NetBurst or PowerBoost or whatever it's called. The cable company does indeed give you 10 Mbit/s for the first minute of a download, before it drops back down to 2 Mbit/s. .
>>>One, how many non-geeks run speedtest?
Quite a few - like gamers or just curious people. Speedtest's numbers have also been found to match-up with the numbers of other surveys and studies, which confirms their accuracy. They are within +/- 10% of one another. .
>>>as it says I'm just 150 miles from Springfield,MO, when in reality I'm more like 400.
That's 100% accurate. They are measuring from your *ISP* location not your location. Of course that does not matter where you are actually sitting - they are just measuring speed.
"120 megahertz will be reallocated from television to a spectrum auction" - FCC's Rural Broadband Report. It was discussed her on slashdot about a week ago when Obama announced he supports the plan.
In my region which is shared by Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg, there will only be enough room in the shrunken spectrum (2 to 24) to support 6 channels per city. That's simply not enough.
Most of the things you list (except hulu) work at dialup speeds. Yes even youtube can be watched over a 56k modem. These items were invented before high-speed was commonplace, so there was a need for broadband.
To install 1000 megabit lines when there's no need is putting the cart before the horse. Like when Senator Byrd built a bridge in West Virginia that literally went nowhere. He thought building the bridge would lead to expansion of the nearby city, but even now 10 years later the bridge is never used by anyone. It makes little sense to build infrastructure for traffic that doesn't yet exist.
>>>What do you need a 3 GHz Pentium for? What do you need 512M RAM for? What do you need a 300G hard drive for? Of course, the answers to those questions are blindingly obvious now, but they weren't then. >>>
Yeah well here you're wrong. I bought this machine in 2002 and I knew exactly why I needed those speeds and space. The 3 GHz because my old 1 GHz was too slow to play HD videos. The 512 megabytes because my old 64 MB machine suffered from hard drive thrashing (i.e. I wanted more speed). And the 300 gig drive for storing my music and video collection. I had specific tasks in mind that made the upgrade desirable, but I can not think of any reason why I would need faster than a ~15 Mbit/s connection.
That's enough room to handle 3 HD streams for 3 residents, and the 100 Mbit/s is extreme overkill. Like getting breast implants when you are already Dolly Parton. Or a 300 MPH car to drive to work. That would be nice but it isn't needed, and it certainly isn't a failure on the part of the government not to provide the service. It's a luxury not a need.
. . "Bullshit - the only show on television that makes an argument with a pair of double-Ds!" - Penn Jilette
Slashdot Mirror
>>>Second, "The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway" is just as clueless. The internet is the internet, whether you're accessing it from your phone or your PC.
>>>
Unless you live somewhere, like rural Maryland, and have no other way to access the internet except via an expensive ~$100/month cellular plan. That's the path corporations leading us down. Or more correctly: The US FCC is leading us down that path.
I don't disagree. I've been saying for a couple days now that Free TV is dying, to be replaced by a pay-to-see model. And now this guy comes out with this:
>>>from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995.
>>>
The corporations are leading us down a path towards $1000-to-2000 per year bills just so we can see the latest episode of Stargate, or hear the news, or get a warning about severe weather. What was once free, they are locking-up behind paywalls and ye are cheering it along as technological "advancement" when it's actually the opposite.
>>>So all of their private conversations are suddenly public record because they get paid with tax dollars?
No.
Because they have the ear of the US and EU leaders who are enforcing CO2 caps, and if these scientists' advice is to be followed rather than ignored, then they damn well better PROVE their case. "I say so and my data backs me up," is not sufficient. Show the data to other climatologists and let them confirm or refute the conclusion.
>>>it just means their pride got in the way of them doing the best job possible
Pride and an agenda.
.
>>>they didn't want to publish results that said "climate change is a joke"
Then they should quit their jobs, because they are no longer scientists. They are ignoring the data. Might as well go write fiction instead - like maybe some submissions to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.
Done.
I've determined that warming-and-cooling are natural events. Just like the previous global warming periods of 10,000 BC (when the glaciers melted) and 3000-2000 BC (Egyptian golden age) and 300-1300 AD (Roman era and Feudal era). It was so warm they were growing wine in Scotland and Greenland was actually green.
Unless you think those events were caused by Caesar and his buds running-round in their SUVs, releasing lots of CO2, and warming everything up?
>>>Demanding greater transparency because a small number of people... made a poor judgment call is uncalled for.
You need to read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in which he makes the case that Non-transparency (i.e. hiding data) is what enables the old guard to protect their favorite theories. It happened to Kepler when he was afraid to publish his math proving the sun was the center of the solar system (he waited until he was on his deathbed). It happened to Galileo who was imprisoned by the Catholic Church. It happened to Planck for suggesting that lightwaves could travel through a vacuum instead of a medium like water. The journals refused to publish his work, because it challenged the prevailing theory and was considered "nuts".
It is censorship through suppression of minority views, and the only way to fight it is through openness (share the data).
>>>I pay almost exactly $15 for prepaid 4 GB via 3G
VirginMobile charges $50 for that much data, and that's the cheapest cellular provider I'm aware of - either in the US or the EU. And that's hardly a good bargain compared to FREE fm radio in the car, or $7/month satellite radio.
>>>n US such incentive doesn't exist because FCC requires phone companies maintain phone lines as well as wireless service.
No it doesn't. Verizon has been removing phone lines all over the place, and replacing it with FiOS.
.
>>>Same goes with the television, requirement to support old TV technologies when free internet TV broadcast could address most (if not all) concerns is dumb.
Free TV streams 6000 gigabytes per month per channel. Show me any cellular service that can do the same. Most are capped at just 5 GB. Even the wired stuff is capped at 250 GB. Internet doesn't even close to offering the same 6 terabyte per month (time 20-40 channels) that free television offers.
>>>the internet companies just blew the money on booze
No actually the PHONE companies took the money and spent it on analog-to-digital phoneline upgrades to enable 56k internet. Why? *Because that's what the law said*. It helps if you read the actual 1996 Telecommunications Act. The phone companies did not misappropriate the funds; they spent it exactly the way Congress directed them to spend it (fiber -or- digital phone upgrades).
P.S.
>>>100Mbs
BTW why do you need 100 Mbit/s? It only takes 5 Mbit/s to carry a MPEG4-encoded HDTV stream; I suppose if you have 3 people in the same house but watching different channels, then you'd need 15 Mbit/s minimum. So what's the 100 Mbit/s line for? (just curious). ----- Plus this broadband plan will be for *wireless* internet and not the answer to your problem. I've never seen a wireless connection that fast. You should be contacting the FCC and saying this plan is unacceptable.
- And final thought. The US really isn't that far behind when compared to other continent-spanning federations:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s
U.S. 7.0
E.U. 6.6
Canada 5.7
Australia 5.1
China 3.0
Brazil 2.1
Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
And if you prefer to look on a state-by-state basis of the EU, US, and Canada then you get:
Sweden 13 Mbit/s
Delaware, Romania,Netherlands,Bulgaria 12
Washington,Rhode Island 11
Massachusetts 10
New Jersey,Virginia,New Hampshire,New York 9
British Columbia,Colorado,Connecticut,Arizona, Slovakia 8 Mbit/s
>>>moving all of that TV spectrum to a commons approach and letting dynamic spectrum access devices be commercially deployed will better utilize the spectrum.
Oh yeah that's another thing. During the Nashville flood, do you know what stopped working? Cellular networks (dynamic spectrum access devices) because the towers were covered with water or short-circuited. Do you know what still worked? Over-the-air television broadcasting from high ground.
The same was true during 9/11 in New York - cellphones stopped working (overloaded) but half the television transmitters were still broadcasting and still sending-out updates that citizens could watch. We HAVE to keep this service alive, if only so people can still get the weather and hear the news. It is illogical and foolish to put all your communication eggs into one basket.
It would also be nice to keep tv alive so it helps the poor and middle class. It provides a free tether to the world of entertainment, news, and government updates, rather than locking it up behind a ~$100 a month cellphone paywall.
>>>So you want mandate that the telcos use their revenue to spread DSL everywhere?
What part of "Use the already-existing Universal Service Fund to cover the costs" did you not comprehend? It's exactly the same method that was used to extend telephone access to rural communities in the 1930s. Now we'll use it to extend DSL Internet to rural communities.
And it doesn't have to be DSL. If for example Verizon would rather install FiOS they can (it's an equivalent service), but I suspect they'd choose DSL because it's much much cheaper.
.
>>>Doesn't negate the fact that high BW television broadcasts are a waste of terrestrial spectrum
False fact. Over-the-air television uses about 1.5% of the usable spectrum - that's not a huge amount. PLUS it streams 19 Mbit/s or 6000 gigabytes per month per channel. That's a very good service, costs nothing, and not wasteful at all. Imagine trying to get 6000 gigabytes over your cellphone (most have 5GB cap) or wired internet (250GB cap). Not possible.
>>>I live in Canada. Free OTA is 3 channels analog channels. And this is in one of the top 3 cities for population.
Yep. You need to do the following:
- Wait for the analog shutoff at the end of 2011. Your 3 analogs will multiplex, and become 6 digital channels with new features like the movie channel, sports channel,retroTV channel, and so on.
- Upgrade to a larger antenna like the Channel Master 4228HD. For me that increased my channel count four times. If it does the same for you then you'll jump to about 24 channels overall. All free.
>>>Actually, the FCC has every right to do just that, being the very entity chartered by We The People to take care of Our common property.
Yeah except they aren't doing that. The FCC isn't listening to the majority of the people, and instead is listening to the siren call of the corporations (and $$$). They are repeating the mistake of channels 52-69 which were sold off to megacorps like ATT & Verizon who are just sitting on it, and doing nothing. These corporations purchased that spectrum for the purpose of locking-out competition. Now they are trying to do the same with channels 25 to 51 - lock them up and not use them.
Plus even if they did use them for, say cellphone-based television, it's still a shitty deal. I'd have to pay about $100 a month to use the channels that I've used for Free all my life. How is moving from free to a paywall an improvement? I hear people complain about New York Times and other papers moving behind paywalls. Well my complaint is the same - they are moving these channels behind a paywall.
"The People" would be better off to not lockup those channels into these megacorps, and instead allow it to continue to be used by local, community-based tv stations to provide Free streaming video content (6000 gigabytes per month per channel), as has been the case for the last ~70 years.
>>>Eliminating free OTA TV doesn't mean that free services will be eliminated entirely
.
True but I don't think it's necessary to eliminate free over-the-air television at all. Here's my broadband plan (note broadband means greater than telephone narrowband) (i.e. >>4000 hertz):
- Take a page out of the FDR years which mandated telephone companies must wire all homes with telephone lines
- Update the law so it says telephone companies must provide DSL (or FiOS or equivalent service) to all homes by 1/1/2012
- Use the already-existing Universal Service Fund (USF) to cover the costs
Done. Since 99.9% of homes have telephone wires running into them, there's no digging required. No manual labor. No disruption. Simply install a ~$100 DSLAM box in each neighborhood. Within a year's time, virtually everyone would have access to 1000 kbit/s or more service. That's 20+ times faster than what they had before (28k or 56k).
Over time those DSLs would be phased-out and upgraded to fiber, but as of 2012 the US Congress could claim, "Not one single american citizen is still stuck on dialup." They might even be able to use it for the reelection campaign.
>>>I assure you that I had no idea it was limited to 1hr
So you're admitting you don't do research before buying. That's kinda sad. In 1976 VHS was rleased with 4 hours capability while Betamx still only had 1 hour. Obviously most customers don't just buy products - they ask questions from the Sears salesman - and recording 4 hours sounds like a better deal. Especially if you want to record a primetime block from 8 to 11, or the four-hour football game or race. You couldn't do it with Betamax.
Therefore VHS quickly took the lead. It was the only practical choice for people wanting to timeshift television.
>>>You most certainly can afford to lay down fiber,
How? Borrow more money from China? They've already said they won't be loaning us any more. A few million here-and-there but not billions.
.
>>>ou can afford to cover your entire populations healthcare needs
Again: How? Borrow more money from China? Also what you describe is a monopoly, and our US government monopolies don't really work too good. Amtrak's almost-bankrupt, post office almost a trillion in debt, Social Security and Medicare (basically healthcare for old people) now have empty accounts, and government-run schools turn out kids dumber than a kid in South Africa. Letting the US Congress form a government-run hospital monopoly would be extremely bad, even if China did loan us the money to do it.
>>>build on the advantage of 70 years of technological advancement
I've never met such a load of impatient people. Even if it only takes phone companies 25 years (i.e. 2015) from the birth of the WWW to put high-speed in mountain/rural homes, which is 1/3 as long as it took for the telephone to spread, you'd still complain that they took too long. - Reminds me of when my kid was 3 and wanted her cookie NOW instead of waiting until tomorrow when I go to the grocery store to buy some. Impatience.
>>>High speed delivery != twisted pair
Japan is the #1 country in the world for internet speed. You know what technology they use? DSL. They have a few fiber optics and coaxial cables too, but the most popular technology is just the common twisted-pair line.
>>>You're right -- 10 or 25Mbps is plenty for now
Then why is the original poster criticizing the US Government for not providing 100 Mbit/s when 10 or 25 is enough? That's like saying, "The US Congress is to blame because I don't have 20,000 megahertz CPU yet." It will come eventually - just be patient - but for now you really don't need it, so it's pointless to be bitching about it.
>>>BlueRay is ~40-54mbit/sec
Maximum. The average speed stored on disc is only 25 Mbit/s. Cable or broadcast HDTV is much, much less - 9 Mbit/s for MPEG2 and 4.5 for MPEG4, and since we were talking about streaming video (broadcast) that was my basis.
>>>everyone I know
Anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything. Greece is one of the slowest states, whether you're looking at EU states or US states. It's average speed is slower than both the US and Canada, about equal to the United Arab Emirates, and only +1 Mbit/s faster than backwards rural states like Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska.
>>>I seriously doubt I'm getting 10Mbit... when I'm only paying for 2Mbit
Apparently you've never heard of NetBurst or PowerBoost or whatever it's called. The cable company does indeed give you 10 Mbit/s for the first minute of a download, before it drops back down to 2 Mbit/s.
.
>>>One, how many non-geeks run speedtest?
Quite a few - like gamers or just curious people. Speedtest's numbers have also been found to match-up with the numbers of other surveys and studies, which confirms their accuracy. They are within +/- 10% of one another.
.
>>>as it says I'm just 150 miles from Springfield,MO, when in reality I'm more like 400.
That's 100% accurate. They are measuring from your *ISP* location not your location. Of course that does not matter where you are actually sitting - they are just measuring speed.
"120 megahertz will be reallocated from television to a spectrum auction" - FCC's Rural Broadband Report. It was discussed her on slashdot about a week ago when Obama announced he supports the plan.
In my region which is shared by Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg, there will only be enough room in the shrunken spectrum (2 to 24) to support 6 channels per city. That's simply not enough.
Most of the things you list (except hulu) work at dialup speeds. Yes even youtube can be watched over a 56k modem. These items were invented before high-speed was commonplace, so there was a need for broadband.
To install 1000 megabit lines when there's no need is putting the cart before the horse. Like when Senator Byrd built a bridge in West Virginia that literally went nowhere. He thought building the bridge would lead to expansion of the nearby city, but even now 10 years later the bridge is never used by anyone. It makes little sense to build infrastructure for traffic that doesn't yet exist.
>>>What do you need a 3 GHz Pentium for? What do you need 512M RAM for? What do you need a 300G hard drive for? Of course, the answers to those questions are blindingly obvious now, but they weren't then.
>>>
Yeah well here you're wrong. I bought this machine in 2002 and I knew exactly why I needed those speeds and space. The 3 GHz because my old 1 GHz was too slow to play HD videos. The 512 megabytes because my old 64 MB machine suffered from hard drive thrashing (i.e. I wanted more speed). And the 300 gig drive for storing my music and video collection. I had specific tasks in mind that made the upgrade desirable, but I can not think of any reason why I would need faster than a ~15 Mbit/s connection.
That's enough room to handle 3 HD streams for 3 residents, and the 100 Mbit/s is extreme overkill. Like getting breast implants when you are already Dolly Parton. Or a 300 MPH car to drive to work. That would be nice but it isn't needed, and it certainly isn't a failure on the part of the government not to provide the service. It's a luxury not a need.
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. "Bullshit - the only show on television that makes an argument with a pair of double-Ds!" - Penn Jilette