The protocol is fairly ancient, and therefore small. It'd be easy to shove an MSP430, properly programmed along with a 7803 and a glue chip to straighten out the IO voltage on a chunk of protoboard behind the dash.
Cost? Close to nothing.
Wrap it in 3M tape (600V insulation <i>per layer!</i>), connect it with Scotchloks for an easy/fast install and if you program the '430 right, the ODB port still works when you take the car in for normal service.
(Perhaps unfortunately, it's just code. The Internet is very good at replicating code.)
Speaking of code: Nobody really drives 150 miles/hour. If you want mayhem, try this:
Now you're running down little Johnny and Sally as the soccer mom plows around the schoolyard in semi-random circles when she's just picking up the tots from school.
Or destroying a normal shopping mall. Or maybe a neighborhood with a bit of construction and/or traffic.
Or making a complete mockery out of a traditional traffic jam.
Oh, and: I almost forgot. TFV was about a Prius. It, famously, has a start button instead of a normal ignition switch. Somewhere in the pseudo-pseudo code should be:
I can cash a check at any Wal-Mart for $3 ($6 if over $2,000). I can cash a check at any Kroger for the same sort of fee, except it's only $1 if less than $50.
The locally-owned grocery chain cashes checks for $5, but only up to $500, but then they do have the best meat counter in town, their sales on sliced cow are awesome, it's often on the way home, gas isn't free, and I do love a good porterhouse.............
Account? No. Present check, present ID, and in the case of the local chain, present thumbprint. A reasonable fee is assessed, cash is dispensed, and done.
I don't consider any of the above to be expensive. I consider it paying for the human time that is involved with dealing with the check I've presented, hopefully with a modest profit (somebody's gotta keep the lights on, and that is us).
None of these establishments are dangerous: FFS, these are the places where I buy my food on a daily basis.
I suppose I could go into one of the payday loan/cash for gold/cash for car title places and cash a check there, but meh: I ain't rich, but I'm not exactly stupid either.
I don't cash checks at my bank unless they're hand-written (stores like them to be printed, as if that adds a layer of authenticity because printers and typewriters are rare somehow). Simple claims to eliminate that nagging need to get to the bank during the day: I just take a picture of the check, hand-written or whatever, and it shows up.
(But not immediately. I get nothing at first, $200 the next day, and the rest the day after that. Allegedly it is like clockwork. I've not used it yet. I expect that it works just as they describe: Simple seem to take a great deal of pride in being as transparent as useful.)
(And I most certainly do not cash hand-written checks at the bank they're drawn on, unless I'm in a terrible hurry: Yes, it is paid in cash as I wait. But some charge check cashing fees for non-account holders that are about triple what I've described above, and slower than the above, and limited to banker's hours. It is disgusting: It's their own check! Again: Fuck banks.)
OK, then: Let me say that my own preferences are different, but that I agree with you.
(I want the larger, but not ridiculous, motor and heated leather seats. I want a real manual gearbox with a clutch pedal. I want upgraded HID lighting. And a sunroof. I would prefer a gaping hole in the dash where the stereo should be, and empty spaces where the speakers belong, no air conditioning, and completely manual single-zone heater controls. I want self-dimming mirrors. I want the bigger/wider wheel upgrade, but I want throwaway tires installed because I'm going to replace them straight-away anyhow. And I want the electronic speed limiter to be nonexistent instead of being calibrated to the original crap tires that I've recycled. I also want at least three 12V lighter sockets, a handful of USB power jacks, and an automatic fellating gizmo that unfolds from the bottom of the steering column. And I want ABS, but not traction control. And I want a limited slip differential. And all of the fancy suspension and chassis bits from the performance model. And a roll cage.)
But on a modern assembly line, it may not be much more possible to just add navigation to a car without vastly increased inefficiencies than to add a handful of my own brand of crazy.
Wires are not added to cars one at a time, but in harnesses that are pre-built and alarmingly expensive. The harnesses that your base-model+Nav system vehicle would be equipped with might well include a rear-view camera (that you don't want) and a lighting upgrade (that you don't want). It might even change the way the turn signal sound works. It might come with rear-seat controls, or at least the wires for them. And an extra FM antenna for diversity. And an XM antenna. And...
My combination of desires is probably impossible. Your singular wish is a lot more realistic, but...
So either they wire every car for everything (expensive for everyone), wire at least some vehicles custom (expensive for some), or tie the wiring harnesses to trim packages (which is what is done today, and is fairly cost-efficient on an assembly line).
I'm one of those individuals who have a problem managing my budget. I once spent $3 on an app for my Droid, which cascaded into $180 in bank fees because the account was overdrawn by a few cents by the time they tabulated everything since the bank (conveniently for them) does charges in such an order that it maximizes the fees instead of minimizing my pain.
I've also been badly burned by ill-timed Netflix charges.
The answer I found was not free, but it is very convenient and much cheaper than bouncing a bank account: A Wal-Mart pre-paid Visa card.
The card accepts direct deposits, does the usual free online bill-pay stuff, and lets me buy stuff online like Netflix.
Direct deposits are free. It costs $3 to load cash or a (printed) check into it at Wal-Mart. And it costs $3 per month if I'm under a certain threshold dollar amount for direct deposits in that month.
All those $3 fees might seem expensive, but Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day and they're bloody everywhere: It's very convenient. My wife has a companion card that she can dump money into if things go south while I'm traveling, and the balance is shared (instantly) with my own card.
And when I'm out of money? It just doesn't work: Transaction Denied. And if it accidentally works and the account goes negative, all I owe them is the actual negative balance -- there are no overdraft fees.
My wife has a companion card with her name on it, and the same account number. If one of is is traveling, it's trivial to put money into it and it is accessible anywhere instantly, 24/7.
More recently, I just (earlier today) got a pre-paid card from Simple. Same basic concept as Wal-Mart, except without a physical presence, and with no meaningful fees to speak of. It takes direct deposits, and I can deposit checks/money orders by taking a picture of them and stuffing them into a drawer -- no travel required. (And free online bill pay and and and...)
It also lets me extract money from a few ATM machines near me without any fees at all, and they never charge fees of their own. (Cute.)
And, like the Wal-Mart card widget, there are no overdraft fees: The basic premise is that when you're out of money, it stops working -- and if it works anyway, then that's kind of their problem. Simple also has some good budgeting tools which I haven't yet explored because I haven't had a chance to put any money into it.
In any case, there are easy solutions for auto-billed services like Netflix and people who are lousy with money. These are two solutions, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, but there are many others like them.
(Simple appears to still be in the start-up phase of things. They're invite-only.
I requested an invitation on their web page got one fairly quickly, but now that I'm a card-carrying member I also have a handful of invites that I can distribute freely. AFAICT I do not get any sort of financial reward, or even a bloody cookie, for passing out invites. If anyone wants one, send me an email -- if nothing else, it's free to play with.)
(Also: Fuck banks. With interest rates being zero on most consumer checking accounts, the litany of unexpected fees that can result from a minor mistake, and their limited hours, there's little reason to continue using them for every-day transactions. I do still keep a bank account because they can issue a cashier's check, and will count my change and notarize my documents for free, but I keep only $10 in it.)
And does so in way that the DRM is simply not noticeable.
So I can just hit the record button on my VCR and record it? (Oh, right. It's digital, and HDCP protected. I suppose I could fire up the PS3 on its composite output, but meh: That's more downgrading than recording.)
So you mean I can do something like File -> Save As? (Woops -- like that's going to be a thing that actually happens.)
The only reason that Netflix DRM is simply not noticeable is that we are already used to the concept that we needn't bother recording media for ourselves; we've already fallen down that particular slippery slope.
(Disclaimer: I like Netflix, and have been a subscriber for quite a few years.)
In an emergency, I'll use the "parking brake" if all normal methods of slowing down have failed.
(And, yes, I've driven cars using the "parking brake" alone. It works well enough.
I have even been towed with a stap in a car which only had a functional "parking brake," which was able to repeatedly stop two vehicles, in light city traffic, completely drama-free. *yawn*)
Programming it is really hard, and stuff: ATS0=1&W
Power is even harder: Ignition-switched power is supplied by the ODB port.
Using it is perhaps the most difficult part: Call the modem, it answers and connects, and...done.
Yeah, sure: I can do all kinds of obvious and nefarious things to a car if I have physical access to it.
But this way, I can have the car work perfectly normally for a week or a month or whatever.
And then, long after they forget about having their window smashed and the change holder looted in the middle of the night, I can have it misbehave at exactly the moment that it is perhaps most dangerous.
Salt is an ingredient whose apparent strength depends strongly on how acclimated you are to it. So if you don't use much salt, it doesn't take much for food to taste like nothing but salt, but if you use a fair bit then you need a fair bit or food tastes bland.
I suppose that makes sense.
Perhaps salt is like capsaicin or alcohol in this way: People around me cringe when I load up a baked potato with some sour cream, shredded cheese, and an entire finely-chopped fresh ghost pepper. To me, it's quite warm, but nowhere near painful. To them, it's probably unimaginable pain -- a splash of Tabasco on the same potato would probably be too much.
People around me also cringe when I drink tequila neat, one sip at a time, savoring the flavors, whereas the uninitiated either refuse to touch the foul liquid or demand it served mixed or in shots -- never to be tasted (or at least tasted as little as possible).
But salt? Never had a fondness for it. Perhaps it makes sense that it is an acquired taste as well, but at this time I don't see its merit as a seasoning.:)
The old saying about sodium being bad for you is a myth. Recent research reports this. FDA has been lying about this for decades as part of the effort to say "Carbs are good, fat is bad" mantra they've been preaching. Same with cholesterol and (naturally) saturated fats.
You preach to the choir, AC. Perhaps you should have read what I wrote: I'm not avoiding sodium or iodine, I'm avoiding salt. There's lots of edible salts out there...
And I don't care if salt [is/is not] bad for me. I just don't particularly like the taste of it. It is a useful ingredient in my kitchen because of how it chemically reacts with some foods during the process of preparing them, not because I enjoy the flavor.
I really do not care what the FDA has to say about the matter: I simply eat what tastes good to me, and I'm always on the hunt for new things. This gives me a highly varied diet of which I suppose the only real constants are beer, coffee, and water.
I live in Ohio (right in the middle of the goiter belt) and I don't buy iodized salt. I just buy the bulk-packed sea salt that my local coffee house sells for cheap -- not because it doesn't have iodine added to it, but because it tastes better to me.
But that doesn't even matter, because I only add salt to things where it is useful.
I toss some in when cooking pasta, or cooking down onions or other vegetables, or making pickles, and that's really about it. There is no salt shaker on the dining room table.
I don't ever add it to my food on purpose as a seasoning. Indeed, I don't even really like salt: When I'm at the store buying a bag of tortilla chips, I study the labels to try to ascertain which brand uses the least amount of salt because too much absolutely detracts from the other flavors that I actually want.
So how much iodine am I missing out on by buying weird salt instead of standard-issue iodized table salt? Not much.
Regulating my intake of iodine? Sheesh. If I wanted a perfectly balanced diet, I'd just gobble up some Soylent Green and call it a day (same as yesterday, or tomorrow...).
(All that said: I do eat a fair bit of seafood, thanks to advances in preservation, transportation, and the marvels of refrigeration. I'd hazard a guess that my iodine intake is just fine, especially compared to folks in this area back when goiters were reasonably common. And I eat seafood because it is yummy, not because it may contain iodine.)
Just because the timing is interesting does not mean that it is fishy. It's not like the VZW sales goon went and poisoned your DSL just because he's vindictive. He's got better things to do, like browse 4chan, take a nap in the back room, and think about what he's going to have for lunch.
You might be 2 blocks from the CO, but your pair goes through the same maze of a cable plant as many thousands of other pairs, and some of that maze might well be approximately ancient. Stuff happens. Have them get someone with a TDR to locate the fault and fix it, and as someone previously said learning how to glean and understand some stats from your DSL hardware is also a good move.
Meanwhile.....
On a whim one day, I went to check out AT&T's page to see what their current pricing is. AT&T has an offer for 18Mbps service that they say they can give me for six months at the same price as my existing 12Mbps service, with no contract or other tomfoolery. So I see this, and I'm like "Well, duh. Of course I want moar Interwebs for the same price!"
So I try to order it online, and the ordering system failed strangely once I logged in to my existing account to try to get upgraded: 18Mbps disappeared as an available option. Being of able mind, I suspected that it was a problem with my current VDSL speed profile and called tech support to have that adjusted, and it turns out that I just can't get a faster profile here.
Which, you know, is kind of a bummer...but it is not particularly fishy.
Seeing as it's sold as a computer monitor and not a television, I don't see a problem with using displayport.
The only equipment between my computer and my monitor is a cable. It doesn't really matter to me if that cable is Displayport, HDMI, or DVI.
(That said, will this monitor be ideal in my home theater? No, doublefuck no. But I don't really care about it for that -- it's the wrong application.)
Slashdot Mirror
posted that way simply to avoid the ire of the lameness filter. please forgive.
That works.
The protocol is fairly ancient, and therefore small. It'd be easy to shove an MSP430, properly programmed along with a 7803 and a glue chip to straighten out the IO voltage on a chunk of protoboard behind the dash.
Cost? Close to nothing.
Wrap it in 3M tape (600V insulation <i>per layer!</i>), connect it with Scotchloks for an easy/fast install and if you program the '430 right, the ODB port still works when you take the car in for normal service.
(Perhaps unfortunately, it's just code. The Internet is very good at replicating code.)
Speaking of code: Nobody really drives 150 miles/hour. If you want mayhem, try this:
If Engine_Started > 1000 and Brakes > 50%-over-15 seconds
Disable Brakes()
Increase Speed()
Wheel 15~30% Right()
Sleep 5~10s
Wheel 15~30% Left()
INCREASE SPEED()
Wheel 15-30% Right()
Until Speed < 5, Brake 100%
Reverse()
[goto...]
Now you're running down little Johnny and Sally as the soccer mom plows around the schoolyard in semi-random circles when she's just picking up the tots from school.
Or destroying a normal shopping mall. Or maybe a neighborhood with a bit of construction and/or traffic.
Or making a complete mockery out of a traditional traffic jam.
Oh, and: I almost forgot. TFV was about a Prius. It, famously, has a start button instead of a normal ignition switch. Somewhere in the pseudo-pseudo code should be:
Disable Shutdown()
Check cashing places are expensive and dangerous?
I can cash a check at any Wal-Mart for $3 ($6 if over $2,000). I can cash a check at any Kroger for the same sort of fee, except it's only $1 if less than $50.
The locally-owned grocery chain cashes checks for $5, but only up to $500, but then they do have the best meat counter in town, their sales on sliced cow are awesome, it's often on the way home, gas isn't free, and I do love a good porterhouse.............
Account? No. Present check, present ID, and in the case of the local chain, present thumbprint. A reasonable fee is assessed, cash is dispensed, and done.
I don't consider any of the above to be expensive. I consider it paying for the human time that is involved with dealing with the check I've presented, hopefully with a modest profit (somebody's gotta keep the lights on, and that is us).
None of these establishments are dangerous: FFS, these are the places where I buy my food on a daily basis.
I suppose I could go into one of the payday loan/cash for gold/cash for car title places and cash a check there, but meh: I ain't rich, but I'm not exactly stupid either.
I don't cash checks at my bank unless they're hand-written (stores like them to be printed, as if that adds a layer of authenticity because printers and typewriters are rare somehow). Simple claims to eliminate that nagging need to get to the bank during the day: I just take a picture of the check, hand-written or whatever, and it shows up.
(But not immediately. I get nothing at first, $200 the next day, and the rest the day after that. Allegedly it is like clockwork. I've not used it yet. I expect that it works just as they describe: Simple seem to take a great deal of pride in being as transparent as useful.)
(And I most certainly do not cash hand-written checks at the bank they're drawn on, unless I'm in a terrible hurry: Yes, it is paid in cash as I wait. But some charge check cashing fees for non-account holders that are about triple what I've described above, and slower than the above, and limited to banker's hours. It is disgusting: It's their own check! Again: Fuck banks.)
OK, then: Let me say that my own preferences are different, but that I agree with you.
(I want the larger, but not ridiculous, motor and heated leather seats. I want a real manual gearbox with a clutch pedal. I want upgraded HID lighting. And a sunroof. I would prefer a gaping hole in the dash where the stereo should be, and empty spaces where the speakers belong, no air conditioning, and completely manual single-zone heater controls. I want self-dimming mirrors. I want the bigger/wider wheel upgrade, but I want throwaway tires installed because I'm going to replace them straight-away anyhow. And I want the electronic speed limiter to be nonexistent instead of being calibrated to the original crap tires that I've recycled. I also want at least three 12V lighter sockets, a handful of USB power jacks, and an automatic fellating gizmo that unfolds from the bottom of the steering column. And I want ABS, but not traction control. And I want a limited slip differential. And all of the fancy suspension and chassis bits from the performance model. And a roll cage.)
But on a modern assembly line, it may not be much more possible to just add navigation to a car without vastly increased inefficiencies than to add a handful of my own brand of crazy.
Wires are not added to cars one at a time, but in harnesses that are pre-built and alarmingly expensive. The harnesses that your base-model+Nav system vehicle would be equipped with might well include a rear-view camera (that you don't want) and a lighting upgrade (that you don't want). It might even change the way the turn signal sound works. It might come with rear-seat controls, or at least the wires for them. And an extra FM antenna for diversity. And an XM antenna. And...
My combination of desires is probably impossible. Your singular wish is a lot more realistic, but...
So either they wire every car for everything (expensive for everyone), wire at least some vehicles custom (expensive for some), or tie the wiring harnesses to trim packages (which is what is done today, and is fairly cost-efficient on an assembly line).
Which do you prefer?
I'm one of those individuals who have a problem managing my budget. I once spent $3 on an app for my Droid, which cascaded into $180 in bank fees because the account was overdrawn by a few cents by the time they tabulated everything since the bank (conveniently for them) does charges in such an order that it maximizes the fees instead of minimizing my pain.
I've also been badly burned by ill-timed Netflix charges.
The answer I found was not free, but it is very convenient and much cheaper than bouncing a bank account: A Wal-Mart pre-paid Visa card.
The card accepts direct deposits, does the usual free online bill-pay stuff, and lets me buy stuff online like Netflix.
Direct deposits are free. It costs $3 to load cash or a (printed) check into it at Wal-Mart. And it costs $3 per month if I'm under a certain threshold dollar amount for direct deposits in that month.
All those $3 fees might seem expensive, but Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day and they're bloody everywhere: It's very convenient. My wife has a companion card that she can dump money into if things go south while I'm traveling, and the balance is shared (instantly) with my own card.
And when I'm out of money? It just doesn't work: Transaction Denied. And if it accidentally works and the account goes negative, all I owe them is the actual negative balance -- there are no overdraft fees.
My wife has a companion card with her name on it, and the same account number. If one of is is traveling, it's trivial to put money into it and it is accessible anywhere instantly, 24/7.
More recently, I just (earlier today) got a pre-paid card from Simple. Same basic concept as Wal-Mart, except without a physical presence, and with no meaningful fees to speak of. It takes direct deposits, and I can deposit checks/money orders by taking a picture of them and stuffing them into a drawer -- no travel required. (And free online bill pay and and and...)
It also lets me extract money from a few ATM machines near me without any fees at all, and they never charge fees of their own. (Cute.)
And, like the Wal-Mart card widget, there are no overdraft fees: The basic premise is that when you're out of money, it stops working -- and if it works anyway, then that's kind of their problem. Simple also has some good budgeting tools which I haven't yet explored because I haven't had a chance to put any money into it.
In any case, there are easy solutions for auto-billed services like Netflix and people who are lousy with money. These are two solutions, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, but there are many others like them.
(Simple appears to still be in the start-up phase of things. They're invite-only.
I requested an invitation on their web page got one fairly quickly, but now that I'm a card-carrying member I also have a handful of invites that I can distribute freely. AFAICT I do not get any sort of financial reward, or even a bloody cookie, for passing out invites. If anyone wants one, send me an email -- if nothing else, it's free to play with.)
(Also: Fuck banks. With interest rates being zero on most consumer checking accounts, the litany of unexpected fees that can result from a minor mistake, and their limited hours, there's little reason to continue using them for every-day transactions. I do still keep a bank account because they can issue a cashier's check, and will count my change and notarize my documents for free, but I keep only $10 in it.)
So I can just hit the record button on my VCR and record it?
(Oh, right. It's digital, and HDCP protected. I suppose I could fire up the PS3 on its composite output, but meh: That's more downgrading than recording.)
So you mean I can do something like File -> Save As?
(Woops -- like that's going to be a thing that actually happens.)
The only reason that Netflix DRM is simply not noticeable is that we are already used to the concept that we needn't bother recording media for ourselves; we've already fallen down that particular slippery slope.
(Disclaimer: I like Netflix, and have been a subscriber for quite a few years.)
This, exactly.
Oh. This discussion again?
In an emergency, I'll use the "parking brake" if all normal methods of slowing down have failed.
(And, yes, I've driven cars using the "parking brake" alone. It works well enough.
I have even been towed with a stap in a car which only had a functional "parking brake," which was able to repeatedly stop two vehicles, in light city traffic, completely drama-free. *yawn*)
It's already a risk. And it's cheap.
Plug a GSM modem into an RS-232 ODB2 interface.
Programming it is really hard, and stuff: ATS0=1&W
Power is even harder: Ignition-switched power is supplied by the ODB port.
Using it is perhaps the most difficult part: Call the modem, it answers and connects, and...done.
Yeah, sure: I can do all kinds of obvious and nefarious things to a car if I have physical access to it.
But this way, I can have the car work perfectly normally for a week or a month or whatever.
And then, long after they forget about having their window smashed and the change holder looted in the middle of the night, I can have it misbehave at exactly the moment that it is perhaps most dangerous.
Just sayin'.
So do you want a deal on new-old stock, or do you a new custom vehicle created just for you and delivered to your house?
These are somewhat contradictory goals.
Yeah, but he's dead now so it doesn't matter what he thinks.
I have had an aversion to unnecessary salt for as long as I can remember, so it's not a new thing to me. I don't have anything to compare to.
But generally, yeah: I find food at restaurants to be pretty salty compared to the stuff I make at home.
I have around $25k in home theater gear that is actively used, but I do not subscribe to traditional television services.
Why do you ask?
I suppose that makes sense.
Perhaps salt is like capsaicin or alcohol in this way: People around me cringe when I load up a baked potato with some sour cream, shredded cheese, and an entire finely-chopped fresh ghost pepper. To me, it's quite warm, but nowhere near painful. To them, it's probably unimaginable pain -- a splash of Tabasco on the same potato would probably be too much.
People around me also cringe when I drink tequila neat, one sip at a time, savoring the flavors, whereas the uninitiated either refuse to touch the foul liquid or demand it served mixed or in shots -- never to be tasted (or at least tasted as little as possible).
But salt? Never had a fondness for it. Perhaps it makes sense that it is an acquired taste as well, but at this time I don't see its merit as a seasoning. :)
What part of "free" means "pay for it every month for twenty-four consecutive months or face a large termination fee"?
You preach to the choir, AC. Perhaps you should have read what I wrote: I'm not avoiding sodium or iodine, I'm avoiding salt. There's lots of edible salts out there...
And I don't care if salt [is/is not] bad for me. I just don't particularly like the taste of it. It is a useful ingredient in my kitchen because of how it chemically reacts with some foods during the process of preparing them, not because I enjoy the flavor.
I really do not care what the FDA has to say about the matter: I simply eat what tastes good to me, and I'm always on the hunt for new things. This gives me a highly varied diet of which I suppose the only real constants are beer, coffee, and water.
I live in Ohio (right in the middle of the goiter belt) and I don't buy iodized salt. I just buy the bulk-packed sea salt that my local coffee house sells for cheap -- not because it doesn't have iodine added to it, but because it tastes better to me.
But that doesn't even matter, because I only add salt to things where it is useful.
I toss some in when cooking pasta, or cooking down onions or other vegetables, or making pickles, and that's really about it. There is no salt shaker on the dining room table.
I don't ever add it to my food on purpose as a seasoning. Indeed, I don't even really like salt: When I'm at the store buying a bag of tortilla chips, I study the labels to try to ascertain which brand uses the least amount of salt because too much absolutely detracts from the other flavors that I actually want.
So how much iodine am I missing out on by buying weird salt instead of standard-issue iodized table salt? Not much.
Regulating my intake of iodine? Sheesh. If I wanted a perfectly balanced diet, I'd just gobble up some Soylent Green and call it a day (same as yesterday, or tomorrow...).
(All that said: I do eat a fair bit of seafood, thanks to advances in preservation, transportation, and the marvels of refrigeration. I'd hazard a guess that my iodine intake is just fine, especially compared to folks in this area back when goiters were reasonably common. And I eat seafood because it is yummy, not because it may contain iodine.)
Just because the timing is interesting does not mean that it is fishy. It's not like the VZW sales goon went and poisoned your DSL just because he's vindictive. He's got better things to do, like browse 4chan, take a nap in the back room, and think about what he's going to have for lunch.
You might be 2 blocks from the CO, but your pair goes through the same maze of a cable plant as many thousands of other pairs, and some of that maze might well be approximately ancient. Stuff happens. Have them get someone with a TDR to locate the fault and fix it, and as someone previously said learning how to glean and understand some stats from your DSL hardware is also a good move.
Meanwhile.....
On a whim one day, I went to check out AT&T's page to see what their current pricing is. AT&T has an offer for 18Mbps service that they say they can give me for six months at the same price as my existing 12Mbps service, with no contract or other tomfoolery. So I see this, and I'm like "Well, duh. Of course I want moar Interwebs for the same price!"
So I try to order it online, and the ordering system failed strangely once I logged in to my existing account to try to get upgraded: 18Mbps disappeared as an available option. Being of able mind, I suspected that it was a problem with my current VDSL speed profile and called tech support to have that adjusted, and it turns out that I just can't get a faster profile here.
Which, you know, is kind of a bummer...but it is not particularly fishy.
*shrug*
Where can I pick up a free Android phone?
Just X.
Double-plus Ew.
Seeing as it's sold as a computer monitor and not a television, I don't see a problem with using displayport.
The only equipment between my computer and my monitor is a cable. It doesn't really matter to me if that cable is Displayport, HDMI, or DVI.
(That said, will this monitor be ideal in my home theater? No, doublefuck no. But I don't really care about it for that -- it's the wrong application.)
So if we run it all through the bullshit detector: Cute and fast tech, doesn't break normal any distance limits.
Thanks for digging that up.
If I take the "single strand" mentioned in TFS very literally, then it is indeed a single strand without amplification.
(Unless you can amplify light on a single strand, without ever breaking it into two or more strands.)
Latency is how much time your data takes to get from A to B, not "how fast it takes you to ping the servers".
Still confused? Hint: Some packets are bigger than your standard ICMP ping.
More bandwidth == less-latent transfer, all else being the same, simply because it takes less time to transfer an entire packet of data.