Ok, so now in addition to Newsgroups, P2P, and streaming video, we're supposedly packet shaping FTP as well? People, seriously here, if we were to packet shape something, it would be because the service in question is killing our bandwidth capacity. FTP, like newsgroups, doesn't even come close to hurting our capacity. P2P does. Video might someday. Its the inclusion of these other services that screams "fake" to me in this whole story. I'm sorry your speeds dropped lysacor, and it probably is a legitimate problem, either on our side, or somewhere inbetween, but I can guarantee you that it isn't an intentional packet shaping policy. And yes, the Dallas area of TWC has been changing. There has been a large amount of work since the Comcast transition, and some of it has likely resulted in your current issues.
About the "level 2" technician, and the other comments saying "Well the call center told me so!", I'm sorry, but you got fed a line. "Packet shaping" is a good enough way to get a caller off the line without troubleshooting a problem. Its a crap way to help a customer, but its a call center, and it is going to happen. Trust me, this is the kind of thing that I would have to know about if it was to happen.
I'm not saying you can't download illegal files off of newsgroups. I'm telling you its an insignificant amount of bandwidth, so why should we care? P2P we might care about, but newsgroups? That isn't anything we're concerned about from a traffic standpoint.
I work in one of the 5 TWC Regional Data Centers. There was no memo like this on Wednesday, nor have I ever seen such a memo. Reading it, you can clearly see that its a faked up story, as it mentions applications that take "lots of bandwidth". I'm sorry, but the people who write our memos wouldn't use verbage like this. Excessive maybe, considerable surely, but not "lots". On top of that, do you really think that TWC Corporate would send out a memo to announce this? I can guarantee you that if and when we do start packet shaping your traffic, it won't be announced to the world. And finally, the story itself is false. We haven't, nor have we any plans what so ever to start doing this. And come on, newsgroups? You think newsgroups are killing our bandwidth? That's just silly.
This is pleasantly untrue. If you have a TV with a QAM tuner, or any device with a QAM tuner, you would be able to pick up the HD signals for the local broadcasters just fine. Also, since we're talking about local broadcast here, you could go one step further and pick up an OTA and HD tuner and not have to have cable at all. Not to mention what has been already said, that you could still pick up a non-dvr hd box. So you can still get your hd without one of their boxes.
Wow, for some reason I thought you had a DVR as well, which in retrospect would be silly. A 3250 and 3100 should only download guide data either when you request it (by going further than 7 days out in the guide), or when it boots up. Guide data is carried In band on the bfs carrier and loaded when the box boots up, so it really shouldn't interfere with the operation of the box. And it really really shouldn't suddenly make it so that the box goes to 16 instead of 106 or whatever.
And here's the real rub, the 3250HD and the 3100HD run completely different code bases. It really can't be a code issue there. Same thing with a HD and non HD. Completely different code. Now one thing, the box may turn itself off or discontinue video after a certain (long) period of time, something like 8 hours without user input, at the minimum. Its unlikely it would actually reboot during this. Are you daisy-chaining the coax input, first going to the Tivo, then going to the cable box, or are you using video outs from the cable box to feed the Tivo?
This is totally incorrect. You have to have 2 way communication for the device to request a new stream for Switched Video to work. As the channels aren't being broadcast unless someone is watching it, your device (cable box) has to ask for a new session to be set up. Cablecards and other one way devices cannot access Switched Video content.
Oddly enough, none of your described symptoms have much to do with the code. The current approved code is 1.4.2 for Sara (SciAtl) boxes. The idea of the box crashing every single wednesday, due to a recording, really can't have much to do with it. I assume you've swapped your cable box out? The one real advantage you have here is the ability to get a new one for free, so if you haven't yet, do so. The Tivo can't really cause the SA box to crash, since its just going to communicate via an IR transmitter, which the box will just view as the remote control. Honestly this sounds like bad hardware, but it could be a bug. But i've had to deal with the SA boxes a lot lately, and I haven't heard anything like this at all.
Check out the Scientific Atlanta (PDF) MCP 100. Cable Box + DVD Burner + DVR. Record to disk and burn to dvd from disk or live stream. Should hit market sometime next year. Played around with em at CES. Pretty nice actually.
So I work with an MSO and handle as one of my duties most of the engineering side of cable card deployment. And I've got to say, there was never a more broken bastard of a technology released upon the consumer. While I fully support the concept of a PCMCIA like card to handle authorization for copy protected items, it brings a whole crush of issues along with it in its current form. Here are a few of my favorites.
First, its unidirectional. The biggest thing the cable industry has done in the last 5 years is finally finally get to a two-way system. Its pretty crap, but at least its IP. CableCard 1.0 is a step backwards. All it does is hand off a decryption key to the host TV that it receives from the cable headend.
As a sub to the above, the lack of bidirectional communication means we can't do any remote diagnostics or QOS of these things in the field. Unless the customer is a techie troubleshooting these things is a nightmare. Add to that the fact that unlike the standardized cable box platform (OMG Monopoly) every set handles decoding, channel mapping, etc in a slightly different manner. While the OCAP standards provide for guidelines, the different TV makers take some considerable liberty with implementation. Some TV's may do a fantastic job of decoding HD content, while others do an absolutely horrid job of it. They also have serious issues with MPEG2 audio streams, which some of the broadcasters still ship to MSO's.
Second, and this is the killer here for the customer, any and all of the current CableCard TV's will have to be replaced or have a costly upgrade module added to allow them to do CableCard 2.0 (bidirectional). You have to have some mechanism for modulating QPSK traffic back up to the headend. I hear Panasonic got a spec approved for a 2.0 TV, but AFAIK it isn't near production yet. Odds seem to be that within a year to two most of the new TV's will be 2.0. So both the consumer and the MSO will be stuck with these 1.0 cards and sets floating around that can't do half of what the new sets will be able to do.
I could go on, but its stressing me out to think about it. Basically, Cable Boxes suck, Cable Cards swallow.
Part of the naming policy is to prevent people from giving themselves the appearance of a PVP rank they don't actually have. Don't ask me how this could be exploited, but that's the justification for it. And in your case, you did have part of your name that might have been mistaken as identifying you as a badass pvp'er. There have been many worse forced naming changes, where there was no apparent logic in the change, but in this case it doesn't appear you have much of an argument. Cmdr is an abbreviation of Commander.
On the actual meat of your article though, I completely identify with the attachment one forms to ones name. I've used CheSera pretty much everywhere for the last few years, and luckily enough this name is unique enough to make this possible. One route WoW should IMHO take to help create stronger player identity in the game is to allow for customization of armor/appearance. At this point you can't change your appearance in any meaningful way. Sub 60 you get some uniqueness due to your armor, but in the end game every character starts to look the same based on class. I play a druid in an end game raiding guild, and with most of the druids in Cenarion gear, its pretty much impossible to tell us apart at a glance. Same goes for any class. If blizzard allowed for cosmetic alterations to armor, be it color, insignia, or something, you could create identity that way. Hell, make it a profession.
But it was called the audiotron, and it cost $399 brand new. Admittidly it didn't have a wireless nic in it, or a cd-burner, but I can't see how the additional $400 is required to integrate those two. Also, a brand new xbox costs far less, and you can have XBMC up and running in no time. That gets you movies, music, images, and hey, yeah, games too.
One other thing, this device claims to be all about quality of sound. Well, sorry, these are still MP3's, and your quality of sound is dictated by the source material. Your 96khz mp3 won't sound any better here than on your computer speakers. Same goes for your cd probably. Unless all your music is on DVD-Audio, which this thing can't play, you probably wouldn't ever notice a diffrence.
Something went seriously wrong with their update here I think. In RTCW test v1 I could run it fine at 1024x768 at 32 bit textures, now anytime I push the rez over 640x480 I lag obscenely. My ping times remain decent, but the game is unplayably slow. Especially when I dare to leave the confines of the bunker. I wonder if there are any v1 servers left.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so now in addition to Newsgroups, P2P, and streaming video, we're supposedly packet shaping FTP as well? People, seriously here, if we were to packet shape something, it would be because the service in question is killing our bandwidth capacity. FTP, like newsgroups, doesn't even come close to hurting our capacity. P2P does. Video might someday. Its the inclusion of these other services that screams "fake" to me in this whole story. I'm sorry your speeds dropped lysacor, and it probably is a legitimate problem, either on our side, or somewhere inbetween, but I can guarantee you that it isn't an intentional packet shaping policy. And yes, the Dallas area of TWC has been changing. There has been a large amount of work since the Comcast transition, and some of it has likely resulted in your current issues.
About the "level 2" technician, and the other comments saying "Well the call center told me so!", I'm sorry, but you got fed a line. "Packet shaping" is a good enough way to get a caller off the line without troubleshooting a problem. Its a crap way to help a customer, but its a call center, and it is going to happen. Trust me, this is the kind of thing that I would have to know about if it was to happen.
I'm not saying you can't download illegal files off of newsgroups. I'm telling you its an insignificant amount of bandwidth, so why should we care? P2P we might care about, but newsgroups? That isn't anything we're concerned about from a traffic standpoint.
I work in one of the 5 TWC Regional Data Centers. There was no memo like this on Wednesday, nor have I ever seen such a memo. Reading it, you can clearly see that its a faked up story, as it mentions applications that take "lots of bandwidth". I'm sorry, but the people who write our memos wouldn't use verbage like this. Excessive maybe, considerable surely, but not "lots". On top of that, do you really think that TWC Corporate would send out a memo to announce this? I can guarantee you that if and when we do start packet shaping your traffic, it won't be announced to the world. And finally, the story itself is false. We haven't, nor have we any plans what so ever to start doing this. And come on, newsgroups? You think newsgroups are killing our bandwidth? That's just silly.
This is pleasantly untrue. If you have a TV with a QAM tuner, or any device with a QAM tuner, you would be able to pick up the HD signals for the local broadcasters just fine. Also, since we're talking about local broadcast here, you could go one step further and pick up an OTA and HD tuner and not have to have cable at all. Not to mention what has been already said, that you could still pick up a non-dvr hd box. So you can still get your hd without one of their boxes.
Wow, for some reason I thought you had a DVR as well, which in retrospect would be silly. A 3250 and 3100 should only download guide data either when you request it (by going further than 7 days out in the guide), or when it boots up. Guide data is carried In band on the bfs carrier and loaded when the box boots up, so it really shouldn't interfere with the operation of the box. And it really really shouldn't suddenly make it so that the box goes to 16 instead of 106 or whatever.
And here's the real rub, the 3250HD and the 3100HD run completely different code bases. It really can't be a code issue there. Same thing with a HD and non HD. Completely different code. Now one thing, the box may turn itself off or discontinue video after a certain (long) period of time, something like 8 hours without user input, at the minimum. Its unlikely it would actually reboot during this. Are you daisy-chaining the coax input, first going to the Tivo, then going to the cable box, or are you using video outs from the cable box to feed the Tivo?
This is totally incorrect. You have to have 2 way communication for the device to request a new stream for Switched Video to work. As the channels aren't being broadcast unless someone is watching it, your device (cable box) has to ask for a new session to be set up. Cablecards and other one way devices cannot access Switched Video content.
Oddly enough, none of your described symptoms have much to do with the code. The current approved code is 1.4.2 for Sara (SciAtl) boxes. The idea of the box crashing every single wednesday, due to a recording, really can't have much to do with it. I assume you've swapped your cable box out? The one real advantage you have here is the ability to get a new one for free, so if you haven't yet, do so. The Tivo can't really cause the SA box to crash, since its just going to communicate via an IR transmitter, which the box will just view as the remote control. Honestly this sounds like bad hardware, but it could be a bug. But i've had to deal with the SA boxes a lot lately, and I haven't heard anything like this at all.
Check out the Scientific Atlanta (PDF) MCP 100. Cable Box + DVD Burner + DVR. Record to disk and burn to dvd from disk or live stream. Should hit market sometime next year. Played around with em at CES. Pretty nice actually.
So I work with an MSO and handle as one of my duties most of the engineering side of cable card deployment. And I've got to say, there was never a more broken bastard of a technology released upon the consumer. While I fully support the concept of a PCMCIA like card to handle authorization for copy protected items, it brings a whole crush of issues along with it in its current form. Here are a few of my favorites.
First, its unidirectional. The biggest thing the cable industry has done in the last 5 years is finally finally get to a two-way system. Its pretty crap, but at least its IP. CableCard 1.0 is a step backwards. All it does is hand off a decryption key to the host TV that it receives from the cable headend.
As a sub to the above, the lack of bidirectional communication means we can't do any remote diagnostics or QOS of these things in the field. Unless the customer is a techie troubleshooting these things is a nightmare. Add to that the fact that unlike the standardized cable box platform (OMG Monopoly) every set handles decoding, channel mapping, etc in a slightly different manner. While the OCAP standards provide for guidelines, the different TV makers take some considerable liberty with implementation. Some TV's may do a fantastic job of decoding HD content, while others do an absolutely horrid job of it. They also have serious issues with MPEG2 audio streams, which some of the broadcasters still ship to MSO's.
Second, and this is the killer here for the customer, any and all of the current CableCard TV's will have to be replaced or have a costly upgrade module added to allow them to do CableCard 2.0 (bidirectional). You have to have some mechanism for modulating QPSK traffic back up to the headend. I hear Panasonic got a spec approved for a 2.0 TV, but AFAIK it isn't near production yet. Odds seem to be that within a year to two most of the new TV's will be 2.0. So both the consumer and the MSO will be stuck with these 1.0 cards and sets floating around that can't do half of what the new sets will be able to do.
I could go on, but its stressing me out to think about it. Basically, Cable Boxes suck, Cable Cards swallow.
Rank 11 Alliance: Commander
Part of the naming policy is to prevent people from giving themselves the appearance of a PVP rank they don't actually have. Don't ask me how this could be exploited, but that's the justification for it. And in your case, you did have part of your name that might have been mistaken as identifying you as a badass pvp'er. There have been many worse forced naming changes, where there was no apparent logic in the change, but in this case it doesn't appear you have much of an argument. Cmdr is an abbreviation of Commander.
On the actual meat of your article though, I completely identify with the attachment one forms to ones name. I've used CheSera pretty much everywhere for the last few years, and luckily enough this name is unique enough to make this possible. One route WoW should IMHO take to help create stronger player identity in the game is to allow for customization of armor/appearance. At this point you can't change your appearance in any meaningful way. Sub 60 you get some uniqueness due to your armor, but in the end game every character starts to look the same based on class. I play a druid in an end game raiding guild, and with most of the druids in Cenarion gear, its pretty much impossible to tell us apart at a glance. Same goes for any class. If blizzard allowed for cosmetic alterations to armor, be it color, insignia, or something, you could create identity that way. Hell, make it a profession.
But it was called the audiotron, and it cost $399 brand new. Admittidly it didn't have a wireless nic in it, or a cd-burner, but I can't see how the additional $400 is required to integrate those two. Also, a brand new xbox costs far less, and you can have XBMC up and running in no time. That gets you movies, music, images, and hey, yeah, games too.
One other thing, this device claims to be all about quality of sound. Well, sorry, these are still MP3's, and your quality of sound is dictated by the source material. Your 96khz mp3 won't sound any better here than on your computer speakers. Same goes for your cd probably. Unless all your music is on DVD-Audio, which this thing can't play, you probably wouldn't ever notice a diffrence.
Something went seriously wrong with their update here I think. In RTCW test v1 I could run it fine at 1024x768 at 32 bit textures, now anytime I push the rez over 640x480 I lag obscenely. My ping times remain decent, but the game is unplayably slow. Especially when I dare to leave the confines of the bunker. I wonder if there are any v1 servers left.