My take on this is that CA massively fucked up deregulation, by establishing perverse incentives to reduce capacity and/or manipulate pricing, combined with strong disincentives to establish new capacity. The ISO is trying mightily to keep the network running, but customers are getting crappy service.
I'm a pretty serious capitalist, but I must say that the LA Dept. of Water and Power is looking pretty good right now (their role in Tank Girl notwithstanding!)
Yes, they will. Not everyone has a UPS. Also, when the blackouts are over, the demand will presumably be less, so this won't matter as much. Remember that rolling blackouts are only needed at peak utilization times, and when utilization is below peak, there's capacity available to meet this increased demand.
In the Bay Area, Transit Info has schedules, maps, and info on a huge variety of transit providers, most or all of which are public-sectoragencies or nonprofit corporations. Since the Bay Area's transit infrastructure is highly Balkanized (something like 30 agencies!) this is the best way to get information on how to get around - and it's very simple, user-friendly, and not cluttered with the kind of noise you usually get from overzealous web designers.
This should be an example to anyone designing a web site distributing customer information, in my opinion.
"Right now, the discount retailers are just absorbing the loss, but this is worrying
for everybody in the industry because it sets the tone at the consumer level that
CDs should be $10 or less," said one music distribution exec.
Well, CDs should be $10 or less. And now everyone knows that!
Well, the real issue is that California is failing to manage its electrical grid properly. Of course heavy users needs to conserve to handle the temporary spot shortage, but this too shall pass. It doesn't necessarily make sense to forget about putting tech in your house, so long as you're willing to pay the bills, just because California is fucking up deregulation.
:
FEAR OF PUBLIC OUTCRY CITED: Despite the relatively small risk, an interagency group led by the Justice Department was ``extremely unhappy at the prospect of a 14-month mass de-orbit,'' a background paper handed out at the Pentagon said. ``The group worried that this might create widespread anxiety and lead to a public outcry for ill-considered government action,'' the document said.
The Pentagon got a global phone system real cheap. They can encrypt all their transmissions, with add-ons or Iridium's existing feature set, and they have unlimited (well, up to the capacity anyway) use of the thing. Plus all the relationships with the local PTTs are toast, so they don't have to worry about China Telecom controlling them when the Green Berets are roaming around Tibet. Sounds like a great deal for the taxpayer!
Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics has a cartoon about a guy named Carl who crashes his car after drinking and driving. After the main cartoon (which is interesting mainly as an example of how stories can be very long or very short with the same basic elements), there are alternative versions; in one, as I recall, Carl says he's driving away to Borneo. This reaction ensues. The absurdity is that (a) Borneo is very far away from the US; and (b) you can't drive your car there, as it's surrounded by ocean.
Not to mention that bandwidth is a lot easier to advertise...
True enough! People buying ISP service can understand things like bandwidth (of course), reliability/uptime, and even peering quality much better than complex priority protocols that require administration. So the marketers focus on that, and QoS withers on the vine.
Good point! It's not the ISP networks responsible for servers getting/.ed, for example - it's the lack of power on the server side. It's been quite a while since ISP networks have been the culprit for any major network failures - even the famous Victoria's Secret debacle was primarily a server issue.
The vendors have been pushing QoS for years. Yet nobody uses it. Why?
Because nobody is willing to pay for it. Customers of ISP service, given the choice between more bandwidth and priority, always buy more bandwidth with the same dollars. Bandwidth is cheaper and cheaper to provide; priority is expensive. These trends are, if anything, accelerating as DWDM and the like make it ever cheaper to cram more gigabits of traffic onto the same fiber.
Of course bad guys like cable carriers may use QoS to implement CoS (Crappiness of Service) for their less favored customers, but as options increase, customers of such will switch away.
It's like soccer in the US: QoS is the wave of the future - and always will be!
Did y'all see the url (http://www.law.stanford.edu/e2e/)? Who had the bright idea that yet another letter-2-letter (L2L, you heard it here first!) combination would make sense in this case?
A slight correction: you need to dial 1 for calls outside your area code, not generally for toll calls (these days). In the old days you did have to dial 1 for toll calls outside your local calling area (1-777-FILM) but this has been replaced by 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX.
I personally find the dial 1 requirement convenient as it is universal. It's like area codes in many other countries that all begin with 0 (in Japan: Tokyo=03, Osaka=06, Kyoto=075); all LD calls begin with the same digit, so it's very difficult to forget that you're dialing LD.
It is true that mandatory 10 digit dialing would open up more area codes. But unless you spend most of your day making long distance calls (I do, but I don't think most people do) the inconvenience of having to type in - and remember! - all those extra digits is a problem.
The issue of accidentally paying for a toll call is not significant - LD is dirt cheap these days. But the benefits don't outweigh the current convenience of 7 digit dialing within an area code. Better number conservation is still the right answer, as it has been for many years.
Well, it would make sense to have something documenting the difference between the open-source/Linux palmtops and what's available for the obvious market leader, namely Palm, that would be enormously useful to post here. (Note that a Palm device is used to signify the category!) Can someone knowing these features well post such a comparison? I bet it would be modded up in a hurry.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe he should eat his column if it doesn't happen?
Everyone has a Nerf gun and uses it without hesitation when his peers screw up.
Well, if that's the problem, customers should order Duron Ultra Deluxe High Gloss rather than the flat eggshell variety!
Sheesh, for that you could build your own version of xml.
But is it Insightful?
just use a tape drive, with data quality DATs? HP has made them for years.
Wait a minute! I for one have lots of geek friends. Wouldn't it be good to make them happy by buying them geek toys?
My take on this is that CA massively fucked up deregulation, by establishing perverse incentives to reduce capacity and/or manipulate pricing, combined with strong disincentives to establish new capacity. The ISO is trying mightily to keep the network running, but customers are getting crappy service.
I'm a pretty serious capitalist, but I must say that the LA Dept. of Water and Power is looking pretty good right now (their role in Tank Girl notwithstanding!)
Yes, they will. Not everyone has a UPS. Also, when the blackouts are over, the demand will presumably be less, so this won't matter as much. Remember that rolling blackouts are only needed at peak utilization times, and when utilization is below peak, there's capacity available to meet this increased demand.
This should be an example to anyone designing a web site distributing customer information, in my opinion.
"Right now, the discount retailers are just absorbing the loss, but this is worrying for everybody in the industry because it sets the tone at the consumer level that CDs should be $10 or less," said one music distribution exec.
Well, CDs should be $10 or less. And now everyone knows that!
Sheesh.
Well, the real issue is that California is failing to manage its electrical grid properly. Of course heavy users needs to conserve to handle the temporary spot shortage, but this too shall pass. It doesn't necessarily make sense to forget about putting tech in your house, so long as you're willing to pay the bills, just because California is fucking up deregulation.
Mercury News report
: FEAR OF PUBLIC OUTCRY CITED: Despite the relatively small risk, an interagency group led by the Justice Department was ``extremely unhappy at the prospect of a 14-month mass de-orbit,'' a background paper handed out at the Pentagon said. ``The group worried that this might create widespread anxiety and lead to a public outcry for ill-considered government action,'' the document said.
The Pentagon got a global phone system real cheap. They can encrypt all their transmissions, with add-ons or Iridium's existing feature set, and they have unlimited (well, up to the capacity anyway) use of the thing. Plus all the relationships with the local PTTs are toast, so they don't have to worry about China Telecom controlling them when the Green Berets are roaming around Tibet. Sounds like a great deal for the taxpayer!
Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics has a cartoon about a guy named Carl who crashes his car after drinking and driving. After the main cartoon (which is interesting mainly as an example of how stories can be very long or very short with the same basic elements), there are alternative versions; in one, as I recall, Carl says he's driving away to Borneo. This reaction ensues. The absurdity is that (a) Borneo is very far away from the US; and (b) you can't drive your car there, as it's surrounded by ocean.
" Unfortunately the graphic doesn't appear to be on McCloud's web site. Oh well.
Okay, Jon, so how much are you willing to pay for it? That's the key question.
True enough! People buying ISP service can understand things like bandwidth (of course), reliability/uptime, and even peering quality much better than complex priority protocols that require administration. So the marketers focus on that, and QoS withers on the vine.
Good point! It's not the ISP networks responsible for servers getting /.ed, for example - it's the lack of power on the server side. It's been quite a while since ISP networks have been the culprit for any major network failures - even the famous Victoria's Secret debacle was primarily a server issue.
Because nobody is willing to pay for it. Customers of ISP service, given the choice between more bandwidth and priority, always buy more bandwidth with the same dollars. Bandwidth is cheaper and cheaper to provide; priority is expensive. These trends are, if anything, accelerating as DWDM and the like make it ever cheaper to cram more gigabits of traffic onto the same fiber.
Of course bad guys like cable carriers may use QoS to implement CoS (Crappiness of Service) for their less favored customers, but as options increase, customers of such will switch away.
It's like soccer in the US: QoS is the wave of the future - and always will be!
Must be a Stanford MBA...
I personally find the dial 1 requirement convenient as it is universal. It's like area codes in many other countries that all begin with 0 (in Japan: Tokyo=03, Osaka=06, Kyoto=075); all LD calls begin with the same digit, so it's very difficult to forget that you're dialing LD.
The issue of accidentally paying for a toll call is not significant - LD is dirt cheap these days. But the benefits don't outweigh the current convenience of 7 digit dialing within an area code. Better number conservation is still the right answer, as it has been for many years.
One word: Barf.
Well, it would make sense to have something documenting the difference between the open-source /Linux palmtops and what's available for the obvious market leader, namely Palm, that would be enormously useful to post here. (Note that a Palm device is used to signify the category!) Can someone knowing these features well post such a comparison? I bet it would be modded up in a hurry.