20 gigs? 20 gigs??? You could buy that for less than a dollar if you bought it in bulk. And that is what you wan't to call a reasonable cap?
Sure, getting bandwidth out to residential areas isn't free, but if it costs so much that 20GB per month is what you have to offer, then you really should go out of business.
Bulk bandwidth can be bought at prices between $5 and $10 per mbit. 1mbit is approximatly 324GB (and that would be bidirectional, so double that when discussing residential bandwidth limits).
Sure, that is for bulk bandwidth at good locations. It is obviously more expensive to get it out to residential areas. But don't come with your bullshit that bandwidth is expensive.
Of course 60GB/month is approximatly 185kbit/s which is 3% of that 6mbit dedicated link, meaning a bandwith cost of approximatly $5 per month. And I assume that dedicated 6mbit link is two ways, which further increases its value, and decreases the residential links that usually have very low upload speed.
Really, I don't expect to be able to max out a link 24/7 when on a residential connection, but I sure as heck expect to not have ridiciously low caps like 60GB per month.
Agreed. Although you used the wrong word. It isn't capitalism, but the free market that is supposed to work like that. Consumers that makes informed (although not always rational) decisions are the best way for an efficent market.
Capitalism and the free market are two completly different things. The free market is a very powerful mechanism for efficently distributing scarce goods by allowing each consumer to decide what is most important to him, while capitalism is about money and property being the center of everything. (IP is capitalistic, but not free market)
It is very possible to use free markets in non capitalistic systems. A near communistic system for example, could choose to not use the free market for salaries, but still keep it on the consumption side to determine resource allocations. And a capitalistic system does in no way have to be free market friendly. As a matter of fact, there is huge amount of resources spent in todays capitalistic societies to minimize the effect of the free market by misinforming consumers. Not to mention laws and regulations that are written to give specific companies unfair advantages.
Because you choose (or were born) in a civilized country. If you don't want to pay taxes, move to a country where you don't have to pay taxes.
Or if there are enough like minded people in your own country, you can vote in politicians that will lower the taxes in your own country. Of course, don't blame me when you get shot and killed by someone poor who just want money for his next meal.
Actually, the grandparent is correct in using the word training.
If you have a self learning algorithm, you program it into a computer. After that is done you train it for a specific task by feeding it data.
Programming is also often used when talking about living organisms. Specifically when dealing with brainwashing and conditioned responses. The main difference in meaning seems to be that training is used when the result is more fluid, while programming is more strict and focused. When they can be interchanged for each other, learning has a more positive tone, while programming sounds more negative.
Evolution is very easy to witness. Just look at a parent and child. That is evolution in action right there.
1. The child dna is based on the parent dna. (easy to see by observing likenesses between parent and child, and even easier to see in laboratories) 2. The dna differences causes the child and parent to have different chance of propagating offspring, for atleast some of the population. (more difficult too grasp for the layman, but the easiest example is to compare a healthy parent with a genetically sick child. It should be pretty clear that the child has lower chance of propagating)
1+2+some very basic math/statistics == evolution (or devolution actually, if you don't believe that a child could have a higher chance of propagating than its parent, which is a ridicioulus but a little more difficult to disprove)
Yup. The difference between an agnostic and a weak atheist is very simple.
The atheist says: "I don't believe in anything without evidence." The agnostic says: "It can't be proven either way, so I don't care."
It is a slight philosopical difference which does affect how you view the world, but in practice it has little difference. I used to be agnostic but gradually changed into an atheist because I found the atheist statement more to my liking. I still recognize atheists as they have a valid philosophical argument. I also recognize those who believe that a non specific god created the universe.
What I don't recognize however is people that try to use specific gods to argue morality or science. That is just plain bad philosophy and hurts society as a whole.
But by definition, if we exist in this universe, there is a 100% possibility of life in this universe. And saying god did it isn't an explaination either, since it wouldn't explain the existance of god.
If the article in question does anything, it is argue for two things. The existance of multiple universes, and that we are most likely alone in this universe. And that is if you agree with the numbers in the article, which are up for debate.
"And if there wasn't any demand, then there wouldn't be any supply."
This is the best one. As long as music keeps being manufactured and sold, I won't listen to anyone crying wolf. Obviously it is still profitable, because otherwise any sane businessman would move to another business.
I specifically disagree with the US constitution on this issue. Promoting Science & Arts isn't useful. If the free market has tought us anything, it is that having people decide what they want to pay for creates a far more efficent market.
It is not like there aren't companies that have experience at censoring cartoons. Just look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing_of_anime_in_American_distribution/ to see some nice examples how some animes have been butchered in the US. Redrawing cigarettes into toothpicks or lollipops are among things that already has happened.
And if disney decides to redraw some of their previous cartoons, I doubt they would even call it a special edition. They would start shipping the new version and abandon the old one. That is how censoring is done today. Pretend the censored version is the original version, and everyone except a minority of people that the rest of the population ignores anyway, will believe that they are watching the original. Of course, sometimes a news paper take note and writes about it, but the majority of changes goes unnoticed to the public.
Best of all, by having strong copyright laws, it is possible to punish anyone trying to show the uncensored versions. And everything is completly legal and constitutional, because the goverment isn't doing the censoring itself. They are just preventing people from showing material that has been phased out.
Why you want "optimal social production" of entertainment products? It would most likely just result in too much funneling of money into the entertainment industry that could be better spent elsewhere.
When it comes to entertainment (and most areas of products actually), I am more inclined to believe that aiming for "optimal social consumption" is more aligned with the good of society. Piracy has increased social consumption and is therefore a huge sucess for society in general. (Being an area of consumption that doesn't waste scarce resources is also a huge bonus.)
There is of course a limit, where piracy becomes so big that the funneling away of money from the creating of new IP, decreases the quality and quantity of new IP, which leads to decreasing consumption. However, that doesn't seem to have happened so far.
The electoral college is pretty meaningless and only affects the election of least concern when it comes to election reform. Yup, you heard me right. It is useless to try to reform how the president is elected. Any political election that involves selecting a single person becomes nothing more than a popularity contest. It doesn't matter how you count and weigh the votes. The problem is that there is only one person being elected and he is supposed to represent all the opinions of the people, which is impossible.
Unfortunally the US as well as the UK if I understand it correctly uses single person elections to elect the Parliment/Congress/Senate also. Each availible spot is regionally divided and turned into meaningless popularity contests. Even if a party represents the opinion of 10% of the population they will get 0% of the representation if they are spread geographically evenly. Representative elections where the percentage of votes from the whole nation is used are much more democratic in that they allow the selected representatives to more accuratly represent the people and allow for minority views to get a word in.
There is of course still other problems with representation. For some reason it is assumed that rich/well-educated people are better at representing the people, which from my experience is a severly flawed idea. If you elect rich, well-educated people you will get laws that cater to rich, well-educated people. That kind of corruption is exactly what is happening in the US.
Personally I think that randomocracy is the way to go for getting representatives that represent the people. Still, it is also possible to make traditional systems better by limiting the time that any one politician can serve, removing the idea of career politicians.
Which is why I said statistically. If you are an average person, the whole cost gets pushed back on you. Also, falling for advertising is the norm, not the exception which makes it quite different from insurance.
Of course, if you are far above the average at resisting advertising, it may be proftiable to you. However, that just means that the rest of the population will be subsidising your cable watching. The advertising money paying for the tv has to come from somewhere, and however you look at it, the trail always leads back to the consumers that watch the advertising in the first place.
But the ads aren't free. For every dollar an ad costs it redirects more than one dollar of your spendings to another product, or it wouldn't be worth spending the money on the ad in the first place. (This is statistically speaking over the whole population of course)
And where does the money that the advertisers pay the cable company come from. It is added to the cost of the products you buy of course.
I can't believe I actually wrote 3d instead of third. I usually write out full words, even when chatting, and although I am not a native english speaker, I usually don't spell incorrectly.
While I may have been a little unclear in the original post, I didn't actually say anything directly contradictoy.
Buying a product of a different brand is buying something you otherwise wouldn't, at the expense of the first brand. Of course, in some cases it may not differ much in what you get, while in others there is a much larger difference. When posting my original post I was thinking of entertainment products (very good target for advertising due to low margin costs), which probably is why I phrased it as I did. Entertainment is one of the more flexible areas when it comes to being affected by advertising. A music cd purchase can easily turn into a movie purchase as they counts against a common entertainment budget for most people.
"That would explain why I've spend hundreds, nay thousands of dollars purchasing items I don't need over the last year - because I've been seduced by the advertising I'm exposed to daily.
Oh, wait. I haven't."
Of course not. The point of advertising isn't to convince you to buy products that you never would buy otherwise. Most everyone could see through that. The real point of advertising a product, is that the next time you go to the store to buy a product of that type, you will buy the advertised brand instead of the competitors brand, based on a sense of familarity, instead of any better considerations.
And I would be very surprised if you were somehow immune to it. Everyone thinks they are, but it is rarely the case. If you are the exception, I have to apologize.
I prefere getting the tampon commercials. Atleast that way I am not brainwashed into buying something I otherwise wouldn't. Of course, the optimal solution to avoid the subtle brainwashing is to use adblocking and adskipping to avoid ads completly.
And, no I don't think brainwashing is a harsh word to use. Ads are designed specially to make you buy products you otherwise wouldn't, mostly by making you feel more familiar and comfortable with the product. Many slashdot readers probably think that they are above getting tricked by commercials, but that is the delusion that adcompanies want you to believe. Intelligence doesn't matter into it, because ads plays on more primal instincts. The only way to get away from it is to avoid the ads completly.
One common argument for ads is that they inform you of products, but that is a very weak argument. Ads are very rarely informative. Information in general is better left to 3d party reviews. Of course, with the reach of todays marketing departments it is difficult to know how influenced the 3d party reviewers are, but it is atleast trying.
So how do this tie in with online tracking. It is simple, The more accuratly that they can advertise products that you could be convinced into buying, the more powerfully they are able to change your opinions.
Randomocracy is a very nice idea in my opinion. It is a combination of direct democracy and statistics.
Also, while the average person may not be the brightest, they aren't that much worse than most politicians. If anything, I think that a random selection of common people have a larger knowledge and experience base than a random selection of politicians.
Actually listening to politicians, it is obvious that they aren't brighter than the average person. Or do you think that saying that "The internet is a series of tubes" expresses some kind of superior intelligence. If politicians are good at anything, it is the art of being elected, which has little to nothing to do with making decisions in goverment.
From my viewpoint, QoS and End Point Differentiation are just two different parts of Net Neutrality. If a company are using their own protocol, ISPs can blackmail that company by threatening non neutrality. If a company is using their own IP, ISPs can blackmail that company by threatening non neutrality.
Just because QoS can make it easier for some network administrators, doesn't mean that it doesn't have anything to do with neutrality. Calling only one of those two net neutrality is just as stupid and idiotic as the naming of the US PATRIOT act.
While crowds can make good decisions while lacking knowledge, they are quite sensitive to disinformation such as advertising and propaganda.
Usually, lack of knowledge will lead to differences in opinion that cancel each other out, but with disinformation, that lack of knowledge is transformed into something far more dangerous.
And no, this isn't bashing the bush administration. It is bashing the whole political system as well as the mass media and much more. A society based on lies will not function well.
Slashdot Mirror
Long months you have. :)
There are 2592000 seconds in a 30 day month. Which as I posted above is 324GB per month for a 1mpbs line.
Anyway, your breakdown of what ISPs must consider when buying bandwidth is good.
60.000.000.000 *8 / 24 / 30 / 60 / 60 = 185185
:)
so you are even more right than you thought you were.
And those dedicated lines are both download and upload which differs from residential lines that usually are very limited in upload.
"twenty gigs or so per month"
20 gigs? 20 gigs??? You could buy that for less than a dollar if you bought it in bulk. And that is what you wan't to call a reasonable cap?
Sure, getting bandwidth out to residential areas isn't free, but if it costs so much that 20GB per month is what you have to offer, then you really should go out of business.
http://www.isp-planet.com/business/2007/bandwidth_price_2008_bol.html
Bulk bandwidth can be bought at prices between $5 and $10 per mbit. 1mbit is approximatly 324GB (and that would be bidirectional, so double that when discussing residential bandwidth limits).
Sure, that is for bulk bandwidth at good locations. It is obviously more expensive to get it out to residential areas. But don't come with your bullshit that bandwidth is expensive.
Of course 60GB/month is approximatly 185kbit/s which is 3% of that 6mbit dedicated link, meaning a bandwith cost of approximatly $5 per month. And I assume that dedicated 6mbit link is two ways, which further increases its value, and decreases the residential links that usually have very low upload speed.
Really, I don't expect to be able to max out a link 24/7 when on a residential connection, but I sure as heck expect to not have ridiciously low caps like 60GB per month.
Agreed. Although you used the wrong word. It isn't capitalism, but the free market that is supposed to work like that. Consumers that makes informed (although not always rational) decisions are the best way for an efficent market.
Capitalism and the free market are two completly different things. The free market is a very powerful mechanism for efficently distributing scarce goods by allowing each consumer to decide what is most important to him, while capitalism is about money and property being the center of everything. (IP is capitalistic, but not free market)
It is very possible to use free markets in non capitalistic systems. A near communistic system for example, could choose to not use the free market for salaries, but still keep it on the consumption side to determine resource allocations. And a capitalistic system does in no way have to be free market friendly. As a matter of fact, there is huge amount of resources spent in todays capitalistic societies to minimize the effect of the free market by misinforming consumers. Not to mention laws and regulations that are written to give specific companies unfair advantages.
Because you choose (or were born) in a civilized country. If you don't want to pay taxes, move to a country where you don't have to pay taxes.
Or if there are enough like minded people in your own country, you can vote in politicians that will lower the taxes in your own country. Of course, don't blame me when you get shot and killed by someone poor who just want money for his next meal.
Actually, the grandparent is correct in using the word training. If you have a self learning algorithm, you program it into a computer. After that is done you train it for a specific task by feeding it data.
Programming is also often used when talking about living organisms. Specifically when dealing with brainwashing and conditioned responses. The main difference in meaning seems to be that training is used when the result is more fluid, while programming is more strict and focused. When they can be interchanged for each other, learning has a more positive tone, while programming sounds more negative.
Evolution is very easy to witness. Just look at a parent and child. That is evolution in action right there.
1. The child dna is based on the parent dna. (easy to see by observing likenesses between parent and child, and even easier to see in laboratories)
2. The dna differences causes the child and parent to have different chance of propagating offspring, for atleast some of the population. (more difficult too grasp for the layman, but the easiest example is to compare a healthy parent with a genetically sick child. It should be pretty clear that the child has lower chance of propagating)
1+2+some very basic math/statistics == evolution (or devolution actually, if you don't believe that a child could have a higher chance of propagating than its parent, which is a ridicioulus but a little more difficult to disprove)
Yup. The difference between an agnostic and a weak atheist is very simple.
The atheist says: "I don't believe in anything without evidence."
The agnostic says: "It can't be proven either way, so I don't care."
It is a slight philosopical difference which does affect how you view the world, but in practice it has little difference. I used to be agnostic but gradually changed into an atheist because I found the atheist statement more to my liking. I still recognize atheists as they have a valid philosophical argument. I also recognize those who believe that a non specific god created the universe.
What I don't recognize however is people that try to use specific gods to argue morality or science. That is just plain bad philosophy and hurts society as a whole.
But by definition, if we exist in this universe, there is a 100% possibility of life in this universe. And saying god did it isn't an explaination either, since it wouldn't explain the existance of god.
If the article in question does anything, it is argue for two things. The existance of multiple universes, and that we are most likely alone in this universe. And that is if you agree with the numbers in the article, which are up for debate.
"And if there wasn't any demand, then there wouldn't be any supply."
This is the best one. As long as music keeps being manufactured and sold, I won't listen to anyone crying wolf. Obviously it is still profitable, because otherwise any sane businessman would move to another business.
I specifically disagree with the US constitution on this issue. Promoting Science & Arts isn't useful. If the free market has tought us anything, it is that having people decide what they want to pay for creates a far more efficent market.
It is not like there aren't companies that have experience at censoring cartoons. Just look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing_of_anime_in_American_distribution/ to see some nice examples how some animes have been butchered in the US. Redrawing cigarettes into toothpicks or lollipops are among things that already has happened.
And if disney decides to redraw some of their previous cartoons, I doubt they would even call it a special edition. They would start shipping the new version and abandon the old one. That is how censoring is done today. Pretend the censored version is the original version, and everyone except a minority of people that the rest of the population ignores anyway, will believe that they are watching the original. Of course, sometimes a news paper take note and writes about it, but the majority of changes goes unnoticed to the public.
Best of all, by having strong copyright laws, it is possible to punish anyone trying to show the uncensored versions. And everything is completly legal and constitutional, because the goverment isn't doing the censoring itself. They are just preventing people from showing material that has been phased out.
Why you want "optimal social production" of entertainment products? It would most likely just result in too much funneling of money into the entertainment industry that could be better spent elsewhere.
When it comes to entertainment (and most areas of products actually), I am more inclined to believe that aiming for "optimal social consumption" is more aligned with the good of society. Piracy has increased social consumption and is therefore a huge sucess for society in general. (Being an area of consumption that doesn't waste scarce resources is also a huge bonus.)
There is of course a limit, where piracy becomes so big that the funneling away of money from the creating of new IP, decreases the quality and quantity of new IP, which leads to decreasing consumption. However, that doesn't seem to have happened so far.
The electoral college is pretty meaningless and only affects the election of least concern when it comes to election reform. Yup, you heard me right. It is useless to try to reform how the president is elected. Any political election that involves selecting a single person becomes nothing more than a popularity contest. It doesn't matter how you count and weigh the votes. The problem is that there is only one person being elected and he is supposed to represent all the opinions of the people, which is impossible.
Unfortunally the US as well as the UK if I understand it correctly uses single person elections to elect the Parliment/Congress/Senate also. Each availible spot is regionally divided and turned into meaningless popularity contests. Even if a party represents the opinion of 10% of the population they will get 0% of the representation if they are spread geographically evenly. Representative elections where the percentage of votes from the whole nation is used are much more democratic in that they allow the selected representatives to more accuratly represent the people and allow for minority views to get a word in.
There is of course still other problems with representation. For some reason it is assumed that rich/well-educated people are better at representing the people, which from my experience is a severly flawed idea. If you elect rich, well-educated people you will get laws that cater to rich, well-educated people. That kind of corruption is exactly what is happening in the US.
Personally I think that randomocracy is the way to go for getting representatives that represent the people. Still, it is also possible to make traditional systems better by limiting the time that any one politician can serve, removing the idea of career politicians.
Which is why I said statistically. If you are an average person, the whole cost gets pushed back on you. Also, falling for advertising is the norm, not the exception which makes it quite different from insurance.
Of course, if you are far above the average at resisting advertising, it may be proftiable to you. However, that just means that the rest of the population will be subsidising your cable watching. The advertising money paying for the tv has to come from somewhere, and however you look at it, the trail always leads back to the consumers that watch the advertising in the first place.
But the ads aren't free. For every dollar an ad costs it redirects more than one dollar of your spendings to another product, or it wouldn't be worth spending the money on the ad in the first place. (This is statistically speaking over the whole population of course)
And where does the money that the advertisers pay the cable company come from. It is added to the cost of the products you buy of course.
I can't believe I actually wrote 3d instead of third. I usually write out full words, even when chatting, and although I am not a native english speaker, I usually don't spell incorrectly.
While I may have been a little unclear in the original post, I didn't actually say anything directly contradictoy.
Buying a product of a different brand is buying something you otherwise wouldn't, at the expense of the first brand. Of course, in some cases it may not differ much in what you get, while in others there is a much larger difference. When posting my original post I was thinking of entertainment products (very good target for advertising due to low margin costs), which probably is why I phrased it as I did. Entertainment is one of the more flexible areas when it comes to being affected by advertising. A music cd purchase can easily turn into a movie purchase as they counts against a common entertainment budget for most people.
"That would explain why I've spend hundreds, nay thousands of dollars purchasing items I don't need over the last year - because I've been seduced by the advertising I'm exposed to daily.
Oh, wait. I haven't."
Of course not. The point of advertising isn't to convince you to buy products that you never would buy otherwise. Most everyone could see through that. The real point of advertising a product, is that the next time you go to the store to buy a product of that type, you will buy the advertised brand instead of the competitors brand, based on a sense of familarity, instead of any better considerations.
And I would be very surprised if you were somehow immune to it. Everyone thinks they are, but it is rarely the case. If you are the exception, I have to apologize.
I prefere getting the tampon commercials. Atleast that way I am not brainwashed into buying something I otherwise wouldn't. Of course, the optimal solution to avoid the subtle brainwashing is to use adblocking and adskipping to avoid ads completly.
And, no I don't think brainwashing is a harsh word to use. Ads are designed specially to make you buy products you otherwise wouldn't, mostly by making you feel more familiar and comfortable with the product. Many slashdot readers probably think that they are above getting tricked by commercials, but that is the delusion that adcompanies want you to believe. Intelligence doesn't matter into it, because ads plays on more primal instincts. The only way to get away from it is to avoid the ads completly.
One common argument for ads is that they inform you of products, but that is a very weak argument. Ads are very rarely informative. Information in general is better left to 3d party reviews. Of course, with the reach of todays marketing departments it is difficult to know how influenced the 3d party reviewers are, but it is atleast trying.
So how do this tie in with online tracking. It is simple, The more accuratly that they can advertise products that you could be convinced into buying, the more powerfully they are able to change your opinions.
Randomocracy is a very nice idea in my opinion. It is a combination of direct democracy and statistics.
Also, while the average person may not be the brightest, they aren't that much worse than most politicians. If anything, I think that a random selection of common people have a larger knowledge and experience base than a random selection of politicians.
Actually listening to politicians, it is obvious that they aren't brighter than the average person. Or do you think that saying that "The internet is a series of tubes" expresses some kind of superior intelligence. If politicians are good at anything, it is the art of being elected, which has little to nothing to do with making decisions in goverment.
From my viewpoint, QoS and End Point Differentiation are just two different parts of Net Neutrality. If a company are using their own protocol, ISPs can blackmail that company by threatening non neutrality. If a company is using their own IP, ISPs can blackmail that company by threatening non neutrality.
Just because QoS can make it easier for some network administrators, doesn't mean that it doesn't have anything to do with neutrality. Calling only one of those two net neutrality is just as stupid and idiotic as the naming of the US PATRIOT act.
And they even got a lot of free advertising a.k.a. "news".
That isn't to say that the idea doesn't work. It is just that you can't test it like this and claim to be scientific.
While crowds can make good decisions while lacking knowledge, they are quite sensitive to disinformation such as advertising and propaganda.
Usually, lack of knowledge will lead to differences in opinion that cancel each other out, but with disinformation, that lack of knowledge is transformed into something far more dangerous.
And no, this isn't bashing the bush administration. It is bashing the whole political system as well as the mass media and much more. A society based on lies will not function well.