When people paid hundreds of dollars a month for ISDN lines @ 64K.
Many people were still connecting via 14.4K & 28.8K. The backbone wasn't as big. Hard drives were far far smaller. So while one couldn't reach 2TBs on a 56K connection, the rest of the support system was much smaller as well.
So to say it's irrelevant seems pretty far fetched. Steamships are pretty irrelevant today, but they displaced sailing vessels during their day. A race between a steamship and a modern ship would be a quick lose for the steamship. But I wasn't trying to compare 56K to modern DSL. But each within it's own time. And in this case, Netcom provides an example of a reasonable flat rate that shattered the industry's then current model.
Yes, unlimited can easily become a real nightmare...I am sure Netcom had issues with power users who were on their machines downloading 24/7. And I am sure they had numerous users who used the internet so rarely they'd have saved money with Prodigy's $2.95/minute rate.
The company that came on and said 40 hours a week peek-time. Unlimited off-peak. Then several months later declared "Unlimited".
And we've never gone back. Dial-up pretty much was forced away from a per hour rate to a flat $20 fee for unlimited. And the whole industry was moved to a $15-$25 price point.
Wasn't until broadband came around that prices were able to be raised again.;-)
Opinion Research Business & Lancet are both reports that are questionable and have what are extremely inflated numbers.
While some of the more conservative estimates of 98,000-120,000 might be a bit low. They are probably much more realistic. The poll method used by ORB & Lancet has a number of significant issues. For example, ORB only surveyed 2,000 individuals. Second, the poll question of "have you lost any in your household". In a region where there is much more community and households are interwoven. And where marriage of cousins and other relatives is commonly practiced. The likelihood of such a question resulting in counting a single death repeatedly is quite high. If my brother John died. I would claim a death. So would my brother John's wife. And so would my mother. Our sister would also claim a loss. That single death becomes re-counted 4 times. The Lancet attributes numerous other types of deaths (such as increase in muggings, etc)...I guess we can blame the increase in crime in London on the Iraq war too.
To put all this in perspective....consider the fact that in the entire Civil War the estimates of casualties on both sides is around 620,000. But most of those were from disease. The actual deaths attributed to combat in the civil war are only around 200,000.
Remember, America spends buys bombs that cost a million a piece so that they do less and more precise damage to reduce casualties. We could spend a lot lot lot less on weapons - but there would be far more casualties.
Oh, lastly, in many of those estimates, only 30%-35% are attributed to U.S. forces. A fair amount is due to the islamofascists. Guess what, these are the same one's bombing neighboring Arab nations and other nations around the world. So I am not sure we can just blame the Iraq invasion for all their actions.
***
Then again, we all know fire never melts steel. Just ignore the bridge that collapsed when the truck with gasoline collided with it. And it melted the steel & concrete structure of the bridge causing it to collapse. Regardless of the fact that while a building is designed just to hold up itself and it's human occupants, bridges are built to hold up far more than themselves - including extremely heavy laden semi-trucks. So an unloaded bridge has far more inherent strength. It collapsed too.
I know it's nice to believe far out there statistics because they favor your personal opinion. But fact and realism are much better stances.
First off... a) I am American b) I vote and I discuss
Second, I have no issue when political discussion arises in the replies and responses. But I do get sick of the politicizing of what was mainly a non-political site.
Or maybe, what I am really sick of, is Slashdot's recent "campaigning" for politics. It'd be on thing if people of all political persuasion had free access in posting articles. But when one side is being fanned, and being fanned by multiple duplicate and redundant postings at every opportunity - others are going to get sick of it.
(ie: me, and a growing number of people I know. Yes, I know, I can always leave...and I think that might be the eventual result. *shrug* It's just I used to like this site...now it's only okay. I & many others think it's slipping.)
In the past year or two Slashdot has been IMHO on a downward spiral. Enough so, that if I had stock - I'd be selling it off.
I personally attribute this downward trend to the site's decision to become more political and less geeky. More and more I feel as if I am reading a political blog rather than a geek science & tech blog.
Good article submissions are passed up. Interesting news never posted. And numerous politically charged items find themselves reposted repeatedly - sometimes simply as a link to a different article on the same issue and other times the same article (just a year later).
More and more of my friends express that they no longer read Slashdot. Reason given...the interesting news appears later than many other online sources. And I must concur! Years back, most of the info I read on Slashdot was the first I heard of the matter. Now, over half the entries I read on Slashdot, I've already heard - many days and weeks before. In fact, I am finding that I am hearing things on CNN.com before they reach Slashdot. That's just a shame...
Can we stop with the "politicizing" of Slashdot. And return to geekiness of nerdworthy news - thank you!
"hard disk" = 2...syllables that is, and if there is anything true about common linguistics; there is a tendency over time to reduce the pronunciation of words.
"never before in american politics has such a force like the internet allowed such disparate trollish lunatic fringe voices to band together and coordinate their efforts"
Is not an in-depth detailed plan of "How I would do it!". But did anyone really expect a 14 page answer or more than a couple of sentences?
Essentially, his statement was: free of capital by cessation of policing the world and subsidizing German, Japan, Korea, and hundreds of other nations. And reduce or eliminate the barriers (ie: government restrictions, FAA, etc) on private space flight.
Seems like a pretty good answer to me...clear, honest, concise. Maybe it's the concise part you have issue with. Yes, any response to these questions will be vague and mainly a 2 sentence sound bite. But this is NOT a forum on said issue. Just a question and answer. Expect it to be a very similar response to a 30 second debate answer.
a) Development focus. The telcoms in the U.S. are not just developing for NYC. They have to accommodate that vastness that is the U.S. moderately populated area. Often the case, there is a balance to be struck between high performance and range. The telcoms in the U.S. usually focus on extending the range, so they can reach more of that moderately covered area versus pushing for max bandwidth.
b) Older architecture versus newer. Why do many South American nations have no telephone poles and just celluar networks? Because, they missed the whole pole & cable era of infrastructure and are skipping direct to celluar.
Sure 802.11a was faster than 802.11b, but more people went with "b" because of the range. Yes, we eventually got 802.11g & n is on the eventual horizon. Likewise, higher bandwidths are on the horizon. More people will get broadband over time. But not everyone needs it either.
My grandfather sure doesn't, neither do many of my other older family members.
Guess what...that means 25% of Americans don't have internet access. Many of those likely have little or no interest in it. While a portion probably are hardship cases who can't afford it. But that's very few - as most people I've known on welfare have cable, HDTVs, and Xboxes.
When you guys simply measure how fast the bandwidth the average American has versus x, y, and z company. You look stupid.
Comparing Canada where 90% of the population resides on the border. Or the numerous small European nations. Comparing a nation like the U.S which has a large amount of populated territory compared to the density.
So I am tired of hearing how far we are falling behind. Because few of the countries we fall behind have a population as spread out as the U.S. nor as much of a area to cover.:P
Yes, while the extreme conservative and religious views of scienctists, engineers, and the like make them more prone to violence such as terrorists.
The minds of psychologists and artists are more prone toward being dictators, a desire to tell others how they should see the world and live. And while less prone to minor acts of violence and terrorism have a tendency toward genocide and thought police.
Yes, please...rank this troll. As I am no longer sure that's a bad thing. If I am a troll to an entry that is CLEARLY a troll. What does that make me? a troll's troll...
Having used Vista....I stand "proud" for being a troll.:-)
I am not sure that one can troll enough to give Vista it's due.... (and if you think I am an anti-Vista troll, you should meet my poor wife who has to use it on her new laptop - she's a downright Grendel when it comes to her views on Vista - to quote her "somehow...they dumbed everything down while managing to make it less friendly at the same time")
My experience with Flash medium has been extremely impressive (especially versus harddrives):
I've encountered a nearly a dozen hard drive and micro-drive failures in recent years. Meanwhile, I have experienced only one partial failure of a flash device - it had a bad sector. I could extract all the rest of the data except for the file written in that sector of a 512mb Compact Flash card. So it was merely a partial loss and very small percentage. While this was enough to lead me to cease using this card, it was a very very minimal loss of data.
Now, I haven't even addressed the accolades of flash based devices. I have one thumb drive, it's a few years old now and still running. That may not be all that surprising. But I think it is unlikely that a 3 yr old hard drive would still be running after having gone thru the washing machine and the dryer....twice!
***
So back to the point of my reply....
The recovery options seem very similar to me. Clean room, magnetic readers, etc. I expect the same basic processes as are used to recover data on hard drives and floppies. However, I expect there to be a lot lot less need to do so.
The problem is see is that the small number of recovery centers may become even fewer. And the issue might be finding a company to extract the data. Especially after disaster situations (ie: regional flood, etc) where a large number of individuals & companies desire data recovery. We could see a large backlog occur as there might not be enough business out there to keep a large number of companies operating in this very unique field.
Actually the fact is wrong: You see, it's just like the bricks. You can use the name in many different ways...
You can use LEGO to refer to a single piece, or as a reference to the entire system.
You can also use LEGOS. Which represents a contraction of "LEGO Bricks" simply shortened to LEGOS Some will object to this use. They just failed to understand the spirit of LEGO and are failing to play well.
Just, whatever you do, don't Eggo your LEGO...;-)
All other questions should be referred to Zack the Lego Maniac
I wonder if the same thing has been happening to Pat Robison. Many Christians I know have noted how drastic and extreme he's been getting over the past decade or so.
And it seems every year more so...
My wife, who is a nurse, made a comment about wondering if he might be suffering from mental illness.
I am not sure that I agree with the premise here that "lack of patience" equals "lack of processing skills". If we were to simplify this argument regarding quantity of processing and time - one would conclude that a 286 processor in fact had better processing skills a Pentium Core2Duo seeing as it takes more time to process the same amount of information.
Perhaps the issue is the "valuation skill". And that many younger individuals might not value the task at hand that has been given. Such does not necessarily reflect a lack of skill simply disinterest.
Which I can understand, one of the classes which was the hardest to remain interested in was an entry level intro to computers class required for all students. (Okay, here I was taking Novell Netware and C++ and I'm stuck a class that requires me to bold text, italicize it, underline, add a page break. Find a website. And you expect me not to fool around and use the computer for something other than said task. You have to be kidding me...I'd have died of boredom.
- The Saj
PS - makes me wonder if intellectuals had the same issue regarding the printing press. Exclaiming that it was better to actually write out the books then simply have them pressed and then read them. That you learned much more in the writing of the book. Probably....but in hindsight, I think the printing press was the right idea. Don't you?
Slashdot Mirror
You're forgetting that we're talking mid-90's
When people paid hundreds of dollars a month for ISDN lines @ 64K.
Many people were still connecting via 14.4K & 28.8K. The backbone wasn't as big. Hard drives were far far smaller. So while one couldn't reach 2TBs on a 56K connection, the rest of the support system was much smaller as well.
So to say it's irrelevant seems pretty far fetched. Steamships are pretty irrelevant today, but they displaced sailing vessels during their day. A race between a steamship and a modern ship would be a quick lose for the steamship. But I wasn't trying to compare 56K to modern DSL. But each within it's own time. And in this case, Netcom provides an example of a reasonable flat rate that shattered the industry's then current model.
Yes, unlimited can easily become a real nightmare...I am sure Netcom had issues with power users who were on their machines downloading 24/7. And I am sure they had numerous users who used the internet so rarely they'd have saved money with Prodigy's $2.95/minute rate.
The company that came on and said 40 hours a week peek-time. Unlimited off-peak. Then several months later declared "Unlimited".
;-)
And we've never gone back. Dial-up pretty much was forced away from a per hour rate to a flat $20 fee for unlimited. And the whole industry was moved to a $15-$25 price point.
Wasn't until broadband came around that prices were able to be raised again.
It's not always an impossible thing...
FYI, I do contribute...
Alas, the case has been, my articles get rejected.
For example submission for the 1 ton rodent, and my submission for the 1 million vaccine doses recalled were rejected.
So we could post duplicate political entries instead!
Opinion Research Business & Lancet are both reports that are questionable and have what are extremely inflated numbers.
While some of the more conservative estimates of 98,000-120,000 might be a bit low. They are probably much more realistic. The poll method used by ORB & Lancet has a number of significant issues. For example, ORB only surveyed 2,000 individuals. Second, the poll question of "have you lost any in your household". In a region where there is much more community and households are interwoven. And where marriage of cousins and other relatives is commonly practiced. The likelihood of such a question resulting in counting a single death repeatedly is quite high. If my brother John died. I would claim a death. So would my brother John's wife. And so would my mother. Our sister would also claim a loss. That single death becomes re-counted 4 times. The Lancet attributes numerous other types of deaths (such as increase in muggings, etc)...I guess we can blame the increase in crime in London on the Iraq war too.
To put all this in perspective....consider the fact that in the entire Civil War the estimates of casualties on both sides is around 620,000. But most of those were from disease. The actual deaths attributed to combat in the civil war are only around 200,000.
Remember, America spends buys bombs that cost a million a piece so that they do less and more precise damage to reduce casualties. We could spend a lot lot lot less on weapons - but there would be far more casualties.
Oh, lastly, in many of those estimates, only 30%-35% are attributed to U.S. forces. A fair amount is due to the islamofascists. Guess what, these are the same one's bombing neighboring Arab nations and other nations around the world. So I am not sure we can just blame the Iraq invasion for all their actions.
***
Then again, we all know fire never melts steel. Just ignore the bridge that collapsed when the truck with gasoline collided with it. And it melted the steel & concrete structure of the bridge causing it to collapse. Regardless of the fact that while a building is designed just to hold up itself and it's human occupants, bridges are built to hold up far more than themselves - including extremely heavy laden semi-trucks. So an unloaded bridge has far more inherent strength. It collapsed too.
I know it's nice to believe far out there statistics because they favor your personal opinion. But fact and realism are much better stances.
- The Saj
First off...
a) I am American
b) I vote and I discuss
Second, I have no issue when political discussion arises in the replies and responses. But I do get sick of the politicizing of what was mainly a non-political site.
Or maybe, what I am really sick of, is Slashdot's recent "campaigning" for politics. It'd be on thing if people of all political persuasion had free access in posting articles. But when one side is being fanned, and being fanned by multiple duplicate and redundant postings at every opportunity - others are going to get sick of it.
(ie: me, and a growing number of people I know. Yes, I know, I can always leave...and I think that might be the eventual result. *shrug* It's just I used to like this site...now it's only okay. I & many others think it's slipping.)
In the past year or two Slashdot has been IMHO on a downward spiral. Enough so, that if I had stock - I'd be selling it off.
I personally attribute this downward trend to the site's decision to become more political and less geeky. More and more I feel as if I am reading a political blog rather than a geek science & tech blog.
Good article submissions are passed up. Interesting news never posted. And numerous politically charged items find themselves reposted repeatedly - sometimes simply as a link to a different article on the same issue and other times the same article (just a year later).
More and more of my friends express that they no longer read Slashdot. Reason given...the interesting news appears later than many other online sources. And I must concur! Years back, most of the info I read on Slashdot was the first I heard of the matter. Now, over half the entries I read on Slashdot, I've already heard - many days and weeks before. In fact, I am finding that I am hearing things on CNN.com before they reach Slashdot. That's just a shame...
Can we stop with the "politicizing" of Slashdot. And return to geekiness of nerdworthy news - thank you!
- The Saj
Where in the world are you getting over 1 million civilian deaths?
*ponders*
Can we use real science, or at a minimum some standard statistical methods...thank you!
And Israel's beef with Asia is?
And India, who is on pretty decent terms with Israel...I mean Israel wants the data lines cut why?
I'd give more respect to aliens planning an Independence Day attack credence than some of the bologne on Slashdot comments at the moment.
Yes, there are several downsides...
...syllables that is, and if there is anything true about common linguistics; there is a tendency over time to reduce the pronunciation of words.
"removable storage" = 6
"portable drive" = 4
"hard disk" = 2
"never before in american politics has such a force like the internet allowed such disparate trollish lunatic fringe voices to band together and coordinate their efforts"
What about the Democrat & Republican parties?
Actually, I think the illegal downloading of music has surpassed the smoking of pot by an order of magnitude or two.
Forget the war on drugs...everyone knows the new millenial war is the "War on Downloads"
Well, I think many of us take for granted that Slashdot's question selection process leaves a LOT to be desired.
Is not an in-depth detailed plan of "How I would do it!". But did anyone really expect a 14 page answer or more than a couple of sentences?
Essentially, his statement was: free of capital by cessation of policing the world and subsidizing German, Japan, Korea, and hundreds of other nations. And reduce or eliminate the barriers (ie: government restrictions, FAA, etc) on private space flight.
Seems like a pretty good answer to me...clear, honest, concise. Maybe it's the concise part you have issue with. Yes, any response to these questions will be vague and mainly a 2 sentence sound bite. But this is NOT a forum on said issue. Just a question and answer. Expect it to be a very similar response to a 30 second debate answer.
First off...
a) Development focus. The telcoms in the U.S. are not just developing for NYC. They have to accommodate that vastness that is the U.S. moderately populated area. Often the case, there is a balance to be struck between high performance and range. The telcoms in the U.S. usually focus on extending the range, so they can reach more of that moderately covered area versus pushing for max bandwidth.
b) Older architecture versus newer. Why do many South American nations have no telephone poles and just celluar networks? Because, they missed the whole pole & cable era of infrastructure and are skipping direct to celluar.
Sure 802.11a was faster than 802.11b, but more people went with "b" because of the range. Yes, we eventually got 802.11g & n is on the eventual horizon. Likewise, higher bandwidths are on the horizon. More people will get broadband over time. But not everyone needs it either.
My grandfather sure doesn't, neither do many of my other older family members.
***
In 2004, 45.2% had broadband. 75% had internet access.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0403/
Guess what...that means 25% of Americans don't have internet access. Many of those likely have little or no interest in it. While a portion probably are hardship cases who can't afford it. But that's very few - as most people I've known on welfare have cable, HDTVs, and Xboxes.
Many innovations are instant...okay...so many are mistakes.
> Corn Flakes
> Penicillin
And while many innovations have been gradual - a great many innovations have occurred in leaps and bangs!
When you guys simply measure how fast the bandwidth the average American has versus x, y, and z company. You look stupid.
:P
Comparing Canada where 90% of the population resides on the border. Or the numerous small European nations. Comparing a nation like the U.S which has a large amount of populated territory compared to the density.
So I am tired of hearing how far we are falling behind. Because few of the countries we fall behind have a population as spread out as the U.S. nor as much of a area to cover.
It didn't end well for the last race who attempted it. If mankind does this it will surely be our DOOM!
Followed by our DOOM II, III, & DOOM IV!!!!
Great response BTW
Yes, while the extreme conservative and religious views of scienctists, engineers, and the like make them more prone to violence such as terrorists.
The minds of psychologists and artists are more prone toward being dictators, a desire to tell others how they should see the world and live. And while less prone to minor acts of violence and terrorism have a tendency toward genocide and thought police.
Yes, please...rank this troll. As I am no longer sure that's a bad thing. If I am a troll to an entry that is CLEARLY a troll. What does that make me? a troll's troll...
Maybe merely an ogre...*shrug*
Having used Vista....I stand "proud" for being a troll. :-)
I am not sure that one can troll enough to give Vista it's due.... (and if you think I am an anti-Vista troll, you should meet my poor wife who has to use it on her new laptop - she's a downright Grendel when it comes to her views on Vista - to quote her "somehow...they dumbed everything down while managing to make it less friendly at the same time")
My experience with Flash medium has been extremely impressive (especially versus harddrives):
I've encountered a nearly a dozen hard drive and micro-drive failures in recent years. Meanwhile, I have experienced only one partial failure of a flash device - it had a bad sector. I could extract all the rest of the data except for the file written in that sector of a 512mb Compact Flash card. So it was merely a partial loss and very small percentage. While this was enough to lead me to cease using this card, it was a very very minimal loss of data.
Now, I haven't even addressed the accolades of flash based devices. I have one thumb drive, it's a few years old now and still running. That may not be all that surprising. But I think it is unlikely that a 3 yr old hard drive would still be running after having gone thru the washing machine and the dryer....twice!
***
So back to the point of my reply....
The recovery options seem very similar to me. Clean room, magnetic readers, etc. I expect the same basic processes as are used to recover data on hard drives and floppies. However, I expect there to be a lot lot less need to do so.
The problem is see is that the small number of recovery centers may become even fewer. And the issue might be finding a company to extract the data. Especially after disaster situations (ie: regional flood, etc) where a large number of individuals & companies desire data recovery. We could see a large backlog occur as there might not be enough business out there to keep a large number of companies operating in this very unique field.
- The Saj
Actually the fact is wrong: You see, it's just like the bricks. You can use the name in many different ways...
;-)
You can use LEGO to refer to a single piece, or as a reference to the entire system.
You can also use LEGOS. Which represents a contraction of "LEGO Bricks" simply shortened to LEGOS Some will object to this use. They just failed to understand the spirit of LEGO and are failing to play well.
Just, whatever you do, don't Eggo your LEGO...
All other questions should be referred to Zack the Lego Maniac
For all those Vista users... ;)
I wonder if the same thing has been happening to Pat Robison. Many Christians I know have noted how drastic and extreme he's been getting over the past decade or so.
And it seems every year more so...
My wife, who is a nurse, made a comment about wondering if he might be suffering from mental illness.
I am not sure that I agree with the premise here that "lack of patience" equals "lack of processing skills". If we were to simplify this argument regarding quantity of processing and time - one would conclude that a 286 processor in fact had better processing skills a Pentium Core2Duo seeing as it takes more time to process the same amount of information.
Perhaps the issue is the "valuation skill". And that many younger individuals might not value the task at hand that has been given. Such does not necessarily reflect a lack of skill simply disinterest.
Which I can understand, one of the classes which was the hardest to remain interested in was an entry level intro to computers class required for all students. (Okay, here I was taking Novell Netware and C++ and I'm stuck a class that requires me to bold text, italicize it, underline, add a page break. Find a website. And you expect me not to fool around and use the computer for something other than said task. You have to be kidding me...I'd have died of boredom.
- The Saj
PS - makes me wonder if intellectuals had the same issue regarding the printing press. Exclaiming that it was better to actually write out the books then simply have them pressed and then read them. That you learned much more in the writing of the book. Probably....but in hindsight, I think the printing press was the right idea. Don't you?