I think the Mac Engineers might not like you insulting their sacred fireball. That "gay swirly" thing is the logo for McMaster Engineering. http://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/
Kipling pranks at McMaster are occassionally creative, but I've seen more stupidity than creativity in the past few years. I admit up front my bias at being a Comp Sci graduate and resenting the forced merger with the Computer and Software engineers and coming under the evil shadow of their malevolent dictator.
That aside, Kipling has oft been at the root of distruction and vandalism. HOG and Kipling can be seen spraypainted on many signs, buildings, and sidewalks all over campus from Kiplings past. One year they actual released chickens in the middle of the Engineering building while the nursing students had set up their projects in the main hall for educating students on health issues, causing great stress to both the nursing students and the chickens. Laugh if you want, but I don't find the ruination of someone's school project and the injury of innocent animals entertaining - nor do I see that it shows any creativity or skill. The car on the roof of the library awning, while interesting, was also dangerous to passers by and damaged property. Silly Engineers.
I believe my favorite prank, because it was both harmless and amusing, was when they chalked every sidewalk on the campus to have road symbols, including dividing and passing lines, stop lines at intersections, etc.
I worked for a large producer of telecom equipment at one point, and from my perspective, it's all about bandwidth. Lack of it causes providers to have to lease more (many small/medium providers lease bandwidth!), or buy more equipment. You mention routers, but you seem to be forgetting Amps, Regens, and plenty of other equipment that gets the data from here to there. It's EXPENSIVE. And although newer equipment is better able to make use of existing fibre through (D)WDM, more powerful lasers, et cetera (can you tell yet I was in optical...) that new equipment costs a bundle, runs hotter, consumes more power, and requires technical expertise. All of which cost even more money.
You're also cracked if you think that electricity doesn't vary by bandwidth. More powerful lasers + more airconditioning equipment + power for every additional bay/card...it adds up.
In addition, property requirements are not the unimportant consideration you seem to think they are. Besides the PTE/LTE equipment at your local ISP, the pipelines run through farmers fields and other such ridiculous locations. These aren't big office buildings. The bays weigh alot, are very large, and have large power requirements. When they have to add more equipment and there isn't any room, they have to renovate/rebuild the site or buy more powerful equipment.
You are also talking about labour as if it was all customer service personnel. How about the network maintenance personnel who have to go out to the fields and add new cards, activate new wavelengths (for optical) and reconfigure networks to give you all that bandwidth? I know for a fact that not so long ago (and this may still be true) the carriers were devoting much of their tech labour resources to squeezing as much bandwidth as possible out of their existing equipment. When you're at the "squeezing" point, you don't get much bang for your buck. A lot of labour for a moderate (at best) gain.
The carriers can't afford to buy new equipment. For a while, some of the larger carriers were taking advantage of the multitude of failures in start-up carriers to snatch up equipment that was being sold off. That resource is no doubt dried up, even though the demand for bandwidth has not.
Let the people who use it pay for it. Somebody has to, and I don't feel like subsidising bandwidth hogs.
Mr. W has been moderately sick this past year, and had to make 3 trips to the doctor. He really had to go - his boss was going to fire him if he didn't do something about the grapefruit-size abscess festering on the back of his head and the odour from the gangrene in his left foot was getting unbearable. We suspect he has an undiagnosed brain tumour, but since nobody can smell that he hasn't had it checked out. His kids have had to make 3 trips to the doctor as well: 1 required an MRI, one has cystic fibrosis, and one of the poor dears needs a liver transplant. His wife Explora has been very ill and had to make emergency trips to the hospital 7 times.
Mr. L and his family each made two trips to the doctor. The whole family got the flu, plus they each had their yearly checkup.
STATISTICS SAY:
Q: Mr. W, how many trips to the doctor have you had this year?
A: 3 trips.
Q: Mr. L, how many trips to the doctor have you had this year?
A: 10 trips, but that includes my family.
CONCLUSION:
(drumroll please)
Mr. W is healthier than Mr. L.
Let's give him health insurance.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the Mac Engineers might not like you insulting their sacred fireball. That "gay swirly" thing is the logo for McMaster Engineering. http://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/
Kipling pranks at McMaster are occassionally creative, but I've seen more stupidity than creativity in the past few years. I admit up front my bias at being a Comp Sci graduate and resenting the forced merger with the Computer and Software engineers and coming under the evil shadow of their malevolent dictator.
That aside, Kipling has oft been at the root of distruction and vandalism. HOG and Kipling can be seen spraypainted on many signs, buildings, and sidewalks all over campus from Kiplings past. One year they actual released chickens in the middle of the Engineering building while the nursing students had set up their projects in the main hall for educating students on health issues, causing great stress to both the nursing students and the chickens. Laugh if you want, but I don't find the ruination of someone's school project and the injury of innocent animals entertaining - nor do I see that it shows any creativity or skill. The car on the roof of the library awning, while interesting, was also dangerous to passers by and damaged property. Silly Engineers.
I believe my favorite prank, because it was both harmless and amusing, was when they chalked every sidewalk on the campus to have road symbols, including dividing and passing lines, stop lines at intersections, etc.
Keep Dreaming.
I worked for a large producer of telecom equipment at one point, and from my perspective, it's all about bandwidth. Lack of it causes providers to have to lease more (many small/medium providers lease bandwidth!), or buy more equipment. You mention routers, but you seem to be forgetting Amps, Regens, and plenty of other equipment that gets the data from here to there. It's EXPENSIVE. And although newer equipment is better able to make use of existing fibre through (D)WDM, more powerful lasers, et cetera (can you tell yet I was in optical...) that new equipment costs a bundle, runs hotter, consumes more power, and requires technical expertise. All of which cost even more money.
You're also cracked if you think that electricity doesn't vary by bandwidth. More powerful lasers + more airconditioning equipment + power for every additional bay/card...it adds up.
In addition, property requirements are not the unimportant consideration you seem to think they are. Besides the PTE/LTE equipment at your local ISP, the pipelines run through farmers fields and other such ridiculous locations. These aren't big office buildings. The bays weigh alot, are very large, and have large power requirements. When they have to add more equipment and there isn't any room, they have to renovate/rebuild the site or buy more powerful equipment.
You are also talking about labour as if it was all customer service personnel. How about the network maintenance personnel who have to go out to the fields and add new cards, activate new wavelengths (for optical) and reconfigure networks to give you all that bandwidth? I know for a fact that not so long ago (and this may still be true) the carriers were devoting much of their tech labour resources to squeezing as much bandwidth as possible out of their existing equipment. When you're at the "squeezing" point, you don't get much bang for your buck. A lot of labour for a moderate (at best) gain.
The carriers can't afford to buy new equipment. For a while, some of the larger carriers were taking advantage of the multitude of failures in start-up carriers to snatch up equipment that was being sold off. That resource is no doubt dried up, even though the demand for bandwidth has not.
Let the people who use it pay for it. Somebody has to, and I don't feel like subsidising bandwidth hogs.
Mr. W and Mr. L each have a spouse and 3 kids.
Mr. W has been moderately sick this past year, and had to make 3 trips to the doctor. He really had to go - his boss was going to fire him if he didn't do something about the grapefruit-size abscess festering on the back of his head and the odour from the gangrene in his left foot was getting unbearable. We suspect he has an undiagnosed brain tumour, but since nobody can smell that he hasn't had it checked out. His kids have had to make 3 trips to the doctor as well: 1 required an MRI, one has cystic fibrosis, and one of the poor dears needs a liver transplant. His wife Explora has been very ill and had to make emergency trips to the hospital 7 times.
Mr. L and his family each made two trips to the doctor. The whole family got the flu, plus they each had their yearly checkup.
STATISTICS SAY:
Q: Mr. W, how many trips to the doctor have you had this year?
A: 3 trips.
Q: Mr. L, how many trips to the doctor have you had this year?
A: 10 trips, but that includes my family.
CONCLUSION:
(drumroll please)
Mr. W is healthier than Mr. L.
Let's give him health insurance.