I'm paying $90/month for a dedicated server, 24/7 amazing tech support and 1.2TB bandwidth per month. How is $60/month for no dedicated server, crappy tech support and 40GB/month (0.04TB) any where near a reasonable offer?
That went through my head for a second too (I also have a couple colo'd servers). The colocation center has some huge cables, and they are splitting up the bandwidth. An OC-12 costs less than 12 times as much as an OC-1, and so on. The local loop cost is a significant portion of the......hmmm - wait a minute though. Once your signal gets to the wire center, they should be able to pull that same fat pipe there. It would seem that once you've paid for the local loop (whatever that is, presumably something less than the least expensive package), you should be able to saturate that line for something like 1/100th the cost of an OC-12 (don't know how much that is, but in urban areas I think T-3s used to be about $450 - it's been a long time since I was a generalist).
Is the problem the bandwidth sharing on the local loop? That would make sense - one cable line has less total bandwidth than 100 DSL lines, perhaps this is just a reflection of the fundamental falsehood that is IP/cable. Perhaps it will lead to the rebirth of DSL for high bandwidth users (not so much rebirth really - I'm using an ADSL line right now, but the rebirth in popular usage).
I guess I'm rambling - anybody with a better knowledge of the economics of bandwidth want to set me straight?
Finally - they are actually telling us exactly what product they are selling and letting us decide! That is a very good thing. It puts the power of the purse firmly in the hands of the consumer. (assuming, of course, that they do not have other hidden restrictions, like protocol throttling - which is admittedly a big assumption)
Most ISPs already have these limits in one way or another. Be it protocol throttling or canceling your account for excessive use, these limits exist. But most ISPs flat out lie to the consumer and say it is "unlimited". Selling a pig in a poke to the customer is not good for the customer. It is a violation of the most fundamental requirement of efficient capitalism; perfect information. We have that problem in all kinds of markets, and it is a load of crap.
I will always prefer products which clearly disclose their strengths and weaknesses and allow me to be the decider. I want the power of the purse. I want to vote with my dollars. But when you're being sold a lie, you can't make that decision fairly. This is a very good thing.
Perhaps not the first to go down, but I think the odds approach 100%. The peer-to-peer Internet, with its implicit equality for all servers, lacks the degree of barriers to entry that corporations need to "create" wealth. It is already dying through direct corporate action (protocol throttling, port blocking, etc), and there will be government intervention soon enough. Look for copyright, child porn, botnets, etc to be the excuses used to require licensing of servers.
Radio was unrestricted in its early days. Unrestricted mass communication is extremely detrimental to authoritarian governments. Net neutrality prevents ISPs and backbone providers from getting their vig. Nobody benefits from a peer-to-peer Internet except We The People, and most of us don't know that is the case, nor why. Show me something that does not have populist support, and does stand to allow profiteering and control if destroyed - and I'll show you a very tenuous place to stand.
That is one of the most thought provoking posts I have read on this esteemed forum in some time. And despite the trolls and rabble (which are part of the fun, after all), that is saying something.
Voice actors are unionised. So he can't haggle for his own contract, but he has to agree to one that the industry and unions have worked out previously. If he wants percentages, he'd have to leave the union (and then be fairly unemployable) or get the union to renegotiate its contracts (which I guess is what the whole point of the article is).
Ummm, you're high. The levels set by the union are the minimum. If he accepts less he gets booted out of the union. But he can make more all day long.
You don't see Mel Gibson getting paid scale, do you?
Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to,
Sorry suffering artist actor guy, but you're wrong. Having played about 50 hours of GTA:IV now, I have to say that my strongest connection in the game is to the physics engine. The driving is simply sublime.
Second is the sandbox model, which Take Two has been developing since the first GTA.
After that, it's the graphics engine, the story, the object models, and the textures - not necessarily in that order.
Then, maybe, the voice and movement actors. And I darned well expect my $60 to go to what makes the game great, not your nose-bent-out-of-joint sense-of-entitlement ass. Get back behind the counter and make me my coffee.
Of the 50 hours of GTA:IV I have played, maybe two of them have been listening to your sorry ass. The other 48 have been engrossed in the brilliant game engine. You want someone to get royalties? Give it to the physics developers.
Just wanted to get it out there in case the U.K. wants to bring me up on charges. Come on you authoritarian assholes, I dare you. Scientology is a cult. Mormonism is a cult. Christianity is a cult. Islam is a cult. (and by leaving them out, my intent is that followers of Judaism feel insulted for being excluded (chosen at random) (and yes, they too are a cult))
Aside from the heinous idea that a person feeling insulted should be sufficient to inhibit free speech, how about the anthropological (as opposed to bullshit media bigotted "big means good, small means bad") definition of cult:
cult
In anthropology, an organization for the conduct of ritual, magical, or other religious observances. Many so-called primitive tribes, for example, have ancestor cults, in which dead ancestors are considered divine and activities are organized to respect their memory and invoke their aid. A cult is also a religious group held together by a dominant, often charismatic individual, or by the worship of a divinity, an idol, or some other object. (See animism, fetish, and totemism.)
Thank you, Houghton Mifflin Science Dictionary. Here's a quick note: they're all cults. They all engage in brainwashing too. Look up the definition, then tell me what those repetitive chants and rituals are. If you can come up with a consistent definition of brainwashing that does not include the ritual repetitive chanting at Sunday morning services, I will concede the point. Feeling insulted by the truth is all real sad and everything, but, um, tough shit. Stop being a cult and I'll stop calling you a cult.
And blow me, England. Hey, there's an idea! What say The Queen blows me? She's got a purty mouth. No, I'm not talking about Charles. I would never use queen as a derogatory term for a poofter - being a poofter like Prince Charles is a personal choice and I fully support his lifestyle (though I am not sure I support his closeting of it).
And with that, a little bow. Thank you for playing, England.
A corporation which has a fiat monopoly in many places (granted by local governments) has been using their monopoly to degrade one company's service. A practice for which they are already under investigation by congress. And now they are investing in that company's competition.
I gotta say that again, because I can barely believe it.
A company which has government granted monopolies in many communities has been degrading a company's service. They have come under congressional scrutiny for this behavior. And, while still under investigation, they are investing in a competing company.
The chutzpah is truly impressive. I haven't seen a pair like that in a very long time.
How completely pathetic is our monopoly abuse enforcement that a company would actually try this? would think this is a low-risk move?
The world would belong to Geeks IF they show some business sense instead of bringing Dalek toys to work.
Fine, that's cool. But if that is your attitude, I don't ever want to hear again about the shortage of engineers. If you're going to look down your nose at engineers, treat them as inferiors, and not pay them on the same scale as managers, there are going to be fewer of them every year, and those who are in the field will be worse. You want business sense from engineers, but anyone with any business sense goes into management so they can get respect and pay.
You don't have to understand what we do, or why we do it the way we do. But if you're not going to pay for and respect those who do the job, good people will not enter the field, and those stuck in the position are going to have bad attitudes. You claim you understand business but clearly you do not understand the most basic fundamentals of leadership, like motivation.
Of course there's a shortage of engineers when managers have the asshole attitude you are displaying. What do you expect?
So let me see if I understand this: You can get a degree in engineering, and if you stay in engineering your salary will cap out in the $100k - $250k range.
Or, you can get a degree in management, and your salary range at the same level of achievement as the engineer in the previous sentence will be in the $250k - $1m range. And you'll have the option of going senior executive, and hitting numbers 20 times that.
And management is not harder than engineering. (different skill set, and hard, but not harder)
Gwarsh, I just can't understand why there's a shortage of engineers. Oh well, perhaps someday this inscrutable enigma will be solved.
Is there a good reason that common carrier non-discrimination was removed from data networks?
Does that reason outweigh the benefits of a non-discriminatory communications network?
Should we not restore at least the non-discrimination provisions of common carrier for data networks?
Would non-discrimination not automatically, and with minimal government interference for good actors, result in net neutrality?
The only downside I can immediately come up with is that less regulation means less opportunity for graft. But I cannot see a desire to engage in graft as a valid economic priority.
Tell me what you are selling me. If I choose to buy it, then give it to me. That sounds like what Comcast is proposing. That's my kind of free market right there.
If you don't want sleazy back-room tactics, and you do want the consumer to have the power of the purse, then putting the limits right on the label is exactly the right solution. If you are a high bandwidth user, you should be paying more. The only other option is for them to optimize their network for the heart of the market, which is exactly what they've been doing, and which results in extreme dissatisfaction for the tails of the market.
Assuming that this is meant to replace a broken network (ie: one on which some packets travel better than others), I am 100% in favor of it. It is exactly the way a market economy is supposed to work. Tell me what is for sale. If I buy it, give it to me exactly as offered. No hidden bullshit.
If that is what Comcast is doing, I applaud them, and I will finally get off my crappy DSL service (and get cable teevee again... and watch too much of it... on second thought - maybe I don't like this idea, haha).
Although in all fairness, this does not fit in the "can find a post-worthy link in under 15 seconds on the first attempt" category and so may not qualify. Or perhaps this book doesn't count because it is a compilation of many pieces on "How to Program Linux", rather than a single original work.
But then, I tend to look for the simple explanation; he took a few too many shots to the head when playing football in high school.
MADD is trolling to get some screen time on the back of Rockstar. The game clearly states and demonstrates that drunk driving is bad. They are just after the press coverage. Don't feed the trolls.
Lots of people are saying, "100% uptime of a particular machine is neither necessary nor desirable, full failover is better. Full failover is the only way to handle catastrophic hardware failures." Or something to that extent.
But this isn't about 100% uptime. It's about not having to reboot for a kernel upgrade. You should still have hot failover if you want HA, this just removes one more thing that requires a reboot.
It's like people saying, "I don't mind rebooting after installing Office, I don't expect 100% uptime from my workstation." Of course you don't need to be able to do software installs without rebooting. But isn't it nice to have that option available?
Same with this. When (and if) it gets stabilized and standardized, you'll use it. Not for 100% uptime, just because it's nice to not be required to reboot to enable a particular software install.
As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."'
Are they serious? "We're assholes, and we've been caught, and being caught being an asshole makes the world think you're an asshole, which would be bad for business. Therefore, we should not allow the courts to expose the fact that we're assholes. Our precious money stream relies on being able to be assholes without getting caught." I hope the judge hit their lawyer in the face with a shovel before saying, "denied."
but enabled literally anyone with basic SQL knowledge to put his neighbor/boss/enemies on the sexual offender list.
Why would anyone care if they were put on this list?
This issue has gone to the Supreme Court and they have ruled that these lists are not punishment, and hence does not run afoul of restrictions against ex post facto punishment or due process. So if it is not punishment, why would anyone care if they are on the list?
As a consumer and not a content provider, I believe the consumer should pay. I should purchase a certain level of service. The ISP should tell me what level of service they offer, I should make my decision, then they should provide that level of service. And the penalties for anti-trust violations and monopoly violations should be astronomical.
Why? Because I want to be the person that controls the purse strings. I want to be the person deciding what level of service is appropriate. The last thing I want is for a few dozen major players to make that decision without my direct input.
The person closest to the purse strings makes the decisions. That means that if you want to make the decisions, you have to be the person closest to the purse strings. You want to be the person who is getting charged for QoS. That gives you the power to decide what QoS should be. The last thing I want (and the last thing I think any of us want) is for Internet service to work the way cell phones do.
Please, charge me. Give me the power of the purse. In an amoral capitalist economy, the power of the purse is the only power that matters. Unless we're figuring on going socialist, I want to be the decider.
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I'm paying $90/month for a dedicated server, 24/7 amazing tech support and 1.2TB bandwidth per month. How is $60/month for no dedicated server, crappy tech support and 40GB/month (0.04TB) any where near a reasonable offer?
...hmmm - wait a minute though. Once your signal gets to the wire center, they should be able to pull that same fat pipe there. It would seem that once you've paid for the local loop (whatever that is, presumably something less than the least expensive package), you should be able to saturate that line for something like 1/100th the cost of an OC-12 (don't know how much that is, but in urban areas I think T-3s used to be about $450 - it's been a long time since I was a generalist).
That went through my head for a second too (I also have a couple colo'd servers). The colocation center has some huge cables, and they are splitting up the bandwidth. An OC-12 costs less than 12 times as much as an OC-1, and so on. The local loop cost is a significant portion of the...
Is the problem the bandwidth sharing on the local loop? That would make sense - one cable line has less total bandwidth than 100 DSL lines, perhaps this is just a reflection of the fundamental falsehood that is IP/cable. Perhaps it will lead to the rebirth of DSL for high bandwidth users (not so much rebirth really - I'm using an ADSL line right now, but the rebirth in popular usage).
I guess I'm rambling - anybody with a better knowledge of the economics of bandwidth want to set me straight?
Finally - they are actually telling us exactly what product they are selling and letting us decide! That is a very good thing. It puts the power of the purse firmly in the hands of the consumer. (assuming, of course, that they do not have other hidden restrictions, like protocol throttling - which is admittedly a big assumption)
Most ISPs already have these limits in one way or another. Be it protocol throttling or canceling your account for excessive use, these limits exist. But most ISPs flat out lie to the consumer and say it is "unlimited". Selling a pig in a poke to the customer is not good for the customer. It is a violation of the most fundamental requirement of efficient capitalism; perfect information. We have that problem in all kinds of markets, and it is a load of crap.
I will always prefer products which clearly disclose their strengths and weaknesses and allow me to be the decider. I want the power of the purse. I want to vote with my dollars. But when you're being sold a lie, you can't make that decision fairly. This is a very good thing.
Perhaps not the first to go down, but I think the odds approach 100%. The peer-to-peer Internet, with its implicit equality for all servers, lacks the degree of barriers to entry that corporations need to "create" wealth. It is already dying through direct corporate action (protocol throttling, port blocking, etc), and there will be government intervention soon enough. Look for copyright, child porn, botnets, etc to be the excuses used to require licensing of servers.
Radio was unrestricted in its early days. Unrestricted mass communication is extremely detrimental to authoritarian governments. Net neutrality prevents ISPs and backbone providers from getting their vig. Nobody benefits from a peer-to-peer Internet except We The People, and most of us don't know that is the case, nor why. Show me something that does not have populist support, and does stand to allow profiteering and control if destroyed - and I'll show you a very tenuous place to stand.
That is one of the most thought provoking posts I have read on this esteemed forum in some time. And despite the trolls and rabble (which are part of the fun, after all), that is saying something.
Thank you for the interesting perspective.
Voice actors are unionised. So he can't haggle for his own contract, but he has to agree to one that the industry and unions have worked out previously. If he wants percentages, he'd have to leave the union (and then be fairly unemployable) or get the union to renegotiate its contracts (which I guess is what the whole point of the article is).
Ummm, you're high. The levels set by the union are the minimum. If he accepts less he gets booted out of the union. But he can make more all day long.
You don't see Mel Gibson getting paid scale, do you?
Not informative.
Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to,
Sorry suffering artist actor guy, but you're wrong. Having played about 50 hours of GTA:IV now, I have to say that my strongest connection in the game is to the physics engine. The driving is simply sublime.
Second is the sandbox model, which Take Two has been developing since the first GTA.
After that, it's the graphics engine, the story, the object models, and the textures - not necessarily in that order.
Then, maybe, the voice and movement actors. And I darned well expect my $60 to go to what makes the game great, not your nose-bent-out-of-joint sense-of-entitlement ass. Get back behind the counter and make me my coffee.
Of the 50 hours of GTA:IV I have played, maybe two of them have been listening to your sorry ass. The other 48 have been engrossed in the brilliant game engine. You want someone to get royalties? Give it to the physics developers.
Brilliant! Thanks for the post :) (you're already at 5)
Just wanted to get it out there in case the U.K. wants to bring me up on charges. Come on you authoritarian assholes, I dare you. Scientology is a cult. Mormonism is a cult. Christianity is a cult. Islam is a cult. (and by leaving them out, my intent is that followers of Judaism feel insulted for being excluded (chosen at random) (and yes, they too are a cult))
Aside from the heinous idea that a person feeling insulted should be sufficient to inhibit free speech, how about the anthropological (as opposed to bullshit media bigotted "big means good, small means bad") definition of cult:
cult
In anthropology, an organization for the conduct of ritual, magical, or other religious observances. Many so-called primitive tribes, for example, have ancestor cults, in which dead ancestors are considered divine and activities are organized to respect their memory and invoke their aid. A cult is also a religious group held together by a dominant, often charismatic individual, or by the worship of a divinity, an idol, or some other object. (See animism, fetish, and totemism.)
Thank you, Houghton Mifflin Science Dictionary. Here's a quick note: they're all cults. They all engage in brainwashing too. Look up the definition, then tell me what those repetitive chants and rituals are. If you can come up with a consistent definition of brainwashing that does not include the ritual repetitive chanting at Sunday morning services, I will concede the point. Feeling insulted by the truth is all real sad and everything, but, um, tough shit. Stop being a cult and I'll stop calling you a cult.
And blow me, England. Hey, there's an idea! What say The Queen blows me? She's got a purty mouth. No, I'm not talking about Charles. I would never use queen as a derogatory term for a poofter - being a poofter like Prince Charles is a personal choice and I fully support his lifestyle (though I am not sure I support his closeting of it).
And with that, a little bow. Thank you for playing, England.
In other news... Oil companies erect large billboards to block naturally generated windpower in an effort to negate the power generated.
Pickens made his initial big money in oil and is still heavily invested in it.
I gotta say, this is impressive.
A corporation which has a fiat monopoly in many places (granted by local governments) has been using their monopoly to degrade one company's service. A practice for which they are already under investigation by congress. And now they are investing in that company's competition.
I gotta say that again, because I can barely believe it.
A company which has government granted monopolies in many communities has been degrading a company's service. They have come under congressional scrutiny for this behavior. And, while still under investigation, they are investing in a competing company.
The chutzpah is truly impressive. I haven't seen a pair like that in a very long time.
How completely pathetic is our monopoly abuse enforcement that a company would actually try this? would think this is a low-risk move?
Very well put. Thank you.
The world would belong to Geeks IF they show some business sense instead of bringing Dalek toys to work.
Fine, that's cool. But if that is your attitude, I don't ever want to hear again about the shortage of engineers. If you're going to look down your nose at engineers, treat them as inferiors, and not pay them on the same scale as managers, there are going to be fewer of them every year, and those who are in the field will be worse. You want business sense from engineers, but anyone with any business sense goes into management so they can get respect and pay.
You don't have to understand what we do, or why we do it the way we do. But if you're not going to pay for and respect those who do the job, good people will not enter the field, and those stuck in the position are going to have bad attitudes. You claim you understand business but clearly you do not understand the most basic fundamentals of leadership, like motivation.
Of course there's a shortage of engineers when managers have the asshole attitude you are displaying. What do you expect?
So let me see if I understand this: You can get a degree in engineering, and if you stay in engineering your salary will cap out in the $100k - $250k range.
Or, you can get a degree in management, and your salary range at the same level of achievement as the engineer in the previous sentence will be in the $250k - $1m range. And you'll have the option of going senior executive, and hitting numbers 20 times that.
And management is not harder than engineering. (different skill set, and hard, but not harder)
Gwarsh, I just can't understand why there's a shortage of engineers. Oh well, perhaps someday this inscrutable enigma will be solved.
Two quick observations:
The frequency of 3's in the first stanza is disproportionately high.
The pattern '1,1,1,2,1' appears several times in the third stanza.
Is there a good reason that common carrier non-discrimination was removed from data networks?
Does that reason outweigh the benefits of a non-discriminatory communications network?
Should we not restore at least the non-discrimination provisions of common carrier for data networks?
Would non-discrimination not automatically, and with minimal government interference for good actors, result in net neutrality?
The only downside I can immediately come up with is that less regulation means less opportunity for graft. But I cannot see a desire to engage in graft as a valid economic priority.
Tell me what you are selling me. If I choose to buy it, then give it to me. That sounds like what Comcast is proposing. That's my kind of free market right there.
If you don't want sleazy back-room tactics, and you do want the consumer to have the power of the purse, then putting the limits right on the label is exactly the right solution. If you are a high bandwidth user, you should be paying more. The only other option is for them to optimize their network for the heart of the market, which is exactly what they've been doing, and which results in extreme dissatisfaction for the tails of the market.
Assuming that this is meant to replace a broken network (ie: one on which some packets travel better than others), I am 100% in favor of it. It is exactly the way a market economy is supposed to work. Tell me what is for sale. If I buy it, give it to me exactly as offered. No hidden bullshit.
If that is what Comcast is doing, I applaud them, and I will finally get off my crappy DSL service (and get cable teevee again... and watch too much of it... on second thought - maybe I don't like this idea, haha).
when you go to the Linux section and look for "How to Program Linux" you're not gonna find it, because it doesn't exist.
It did take me about 15 seconds to find a good link for this one: http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-White-Papers-Compilation/dp/1576104737
Although in all fairness, this does not fit in the "can find a post-worthy link in under 15 seconds on the first attempt" category and so may not qualify. Or perhaps this book doesn't count because it is a compilation of many pieces on "How to Program Linux", rather than a single original work.
But then, I tend to look for the simple explanation; he took a few too many shots to the head when playing football in high school.
MADD is trolling to get some screen time on the back of Rockstar. The game clearly states and demonstrates that drunk driving is bad. They are just after the press coverage. Don't feed the trolls.
Lots of people are saying, "100% uptime of a particular machine is neither necessary nor desirable, full failover is better. Full failover is the only way to handle catastrophic hardware failures." Or something to that extent.
But this isn't about 100% uptime. It's about not having to reboot for a kernel upgrade. You should still have hot failover if you want HA, this just removes one more thing that requires a reboot.
It's like people saying, "I don't mind rebooting after installing Office, I don't expect 100% uptime from my workstation." Of course you don't need to be able to do software installs without rebooting. But isn't it nice to have that option available?
Same with this. When (and if) it gets stabilized and standardized, you'll use it. Not for 100% uptime, just because it's nice to not be required to reboot to enable a particular software install.
As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."'
Are they serious? "We're assholes, and we've been caught, and being caught being an asshole makes the world think you're an asshole, which would be bad for business. Therefore, we should not allow the courts to expose the fact that we're assholes. Our precious money stream relies on being able to be assholes without getting caught." I hope the judge hit their lawyer in the face with a shovel before saying, "denied."
Study finds FLOSS is saving corporations and individuals $60 Billion / year.
It's all in how you look at it.
but enabled literally anyone with basic SQL knowledge to put his neighbor/boss/enemies on the sexual offender list.
Why would anyone care if they were put on this list?
This issue has gone to the Supreme Court and they have ruled that these lists are not punishment, and hence does not run afoul of restrictions against ex post facto punishment or due process. So if it is not punishment, why would anyone care if they are on the list?
Part of the problem is that in many places cybercrime pays much better than legitimate work, including security research.
Another part of the problem is that our cyber enforcement budget leans heavily toward pornography, gambling, and copyright.
Yet another part is that corporations and politicians are unwilling to kill their fatted calf that is "legitimate" UCE.
As a consumer and not a content provider, I believe the consumer should pay. I should purchase a certain level of service. The ISP should tell me what level of service they offer, I should make my decision, then they should provide that level of service. And the penalties for anti-trust violations and monopoly violations should be astronomical.
Why? Because I want to be the person that controls the purse strings. I want to be the person deciding what level of service is appropriate. The last thing I want is for a few dozen major players to make that decision without my direct input.
The person closest to the purse strings makes the decisions. That means that if you want to make the decisions, you have to be the person closest to the purse strings. You want to be the person who is getting charged for QoS. That gives you the power to decide what QoS should be. The last thing I want (and the last thing I think any of us want) is for Internet service to work the way cell phones do.
Please, charge me. Give me the power of the purse. In an amoral capitalist economy, the power of the purse is the only power that matters. Unless we're figuring on going socialist, I want to be the decider.
Lets just hope those [patent licensing] terms are pro open source.
I'm going to hope for a pony too! A flying one!