Firewire wins over USB 2 any day if you want stable bandwidth and CPU load (e.g. video), and the option of fast networking. I broke my Mac Mini's Ethernet adapter (while I was waiting for DSL in my new place after moving house I was using the modem in the Mac Mini to share out a 56k connection, but stupidly plugged the phone cable - the RJ11 jack is right next to the RJ45 jack on the Mini - into the wrong place one day). This fried the RJ45 port it seems (unsurprisingly), though thankfully the Mini is otherwise fine.
I've been using the Mac Mini to manage my media, particularly my MP3 and Video collection, and that's stored on a NAS (which shares out data via NFS/CIFS/AFP). It's nasty having to do move large amounts of data over 802.11G though.
I got my Apple TV this weekend and it was great just be able to plug a Firewire cable into my Mini and connect it to the Firewire port on my Linux NAS server (which sits under the same desk in my study). Getting Firewire over IP working on the Mac working with Ubuntu was a no brainier - both supported it out of the box and I was set up with NAT in a couple of minutes. *Really* handy in my case (and seems much more robust than I'd expected).
The only thing that's bumming me out is it seems you can't use bridge-utils to bridge a Firewire Ethernet interface to a regular network interface.
I think there might even be three. The 'typical' one most people will recognize, the new one (FW 800) that was on some G4 Au PowerBooks, and the mini one often found on DV cams (and that Sony in particular put on their laptops).
Apart from being not stable, it's also doesn't carry power I believe (like the small USB interfaces). New power interfaces (like those on the Nokia charger) are incredibly small. I'd like to see an small interface designs in future (for USB or IEE1394) be able to deliver power too.
Yes, as you've said and do I belive you. But on my Pinoneer, HD content looks the same on both, and a lot of other people say the same thing.
We know that some TV's have problems with some types of component signals (something convered in other posts on this story alone) and we know RGB component is just fine for carrying an HD signal - people have been using it on high end computer monitors for years.
It occured to me I wonder if you are thinking of a comparison with the (non-HD) S-Video type of component?
(Which does look crappy not only as it's not HD, it even looks bad compared to SCART - and is pretty much only a step up from composite).
I rushed to get a DVD player, because I only had a few of my favourite movies on VHS - I didn't bother collecting VHS tapes because I'd been waiting for a digital format for years (since the first time I saw a QuickTime movie on the Mac). But I already have access to a huge range of new movies via my HD satellite service (which comes with a PVR), and I'm in no rush to get a new collection.
Both my ability to get movies in HD via satellite and the knowedge that HD media formats are coming has actually hurt my DVD purchases a lot. It's been over a year since I bought a DVD. Microsoft have said (in a PR attack on Sony) that they think online will 'surely be distribution method for HD content' (as near as I can remember the quote). Though issues about users prefering to own/purchace physical copies aside, I wonder if the filesize of HD movies might impeed that quite a bit.
I expect we will see a much more fractured market with people with decent internet access buying HD content online and playing it primarily via devices like their 360/PS3/Apple TV, and others prefering to buy the discs on Blu Ray/HD DVD.
Ignoring the AC for a minute,
but HMDI does seem consistent. True, which definitely makes it a positive thing to have on the console (that, and some TV's just don't have component inputs).
At best, you MAY get as good a picture on Component depending on your setup, but if you want the guarenteed best picture your setup is capable of, HDMI is the way to go.. Personally I would phrase it as, both are actually the same quality (which is at least what I think the consensus is...), unless your component input is sub-par.
I definitely see a difference between SCART and say S-Video (and between S-Video and composite) with previous generation consoles, and I'm a total SCART fan all the way. There honestly doesn't seem to be a difference the HD content when it comes to HDMI and component though (all 720p in my case).
I believe the HDMI is still going on the Premium as well (in the next few weeks or so).
The larger HD might actually be useful to you (although YMMV - a lot of other people don't seem bothered about it). I filled up my 20 GB ages ago (some of the demo's are 1-2 GB - and I've got a bunch of free video content on it too now, Live has reasonable amount of cool stuff on it).
It's in need of a hardware improvement soon though I think - it really is noisy (much more than my Mac Mini is). I don't notice it when playing games, but when I leave it on downloading a bunch of new demos and am watching TV it can be (especially if I'm watching later at night, with the volume turned down). Not sure what the PS3 is like - anyone care to comment?
The Wii is very quiet, but then it doesn't have much right to be noisy. 8)
Microsoft told us there would be no new hardware inside the Elite except for that 120GB hard drive, alluding to the often-rumored cooler-running processors manufactured with the 65nm process
I wanted to get one, and was going to give my existing 360 to someone I know who has kids but can't afford a console, and having it run more quietly was a big part of the attraction for me bothering to get a new 360. My TV already handles component well, and that leaves the bigger HD as the only compelling feature (I filled up my 20 GB for the first time ages ago and that's just with Live! games, demo's and trailers - TV/Movie downloads won't be available here in the UK till later this year).
On it's own, a large HD (that I could get separately) is not a compelling enough reason for me to upgrade. The thing is, I like my 360 and I'm happy to pay a bit more for an improved version of the hardware.
Hmmm on my my 50" Pioneer good quality HD video input looks the same on component as via HDMI, and I've compared the two. The more expensive Pioneer systems have an external system for processing inputs though (meaning you don't just plug things into the back of the TV, and meaning you get a much larger number of inputs - like 2 HDMI ports, 1 component, 3 SCART, S-Video, VGA, etc.)
If component is noticeably worse on your set, maybe it's the input processing hardware on your set? I know a few sets are unable to support 1080p over component, while others manage just fine, so it seems like the quality of different component input implementations certainly varies.
If you really want to make it elite, make it quieter, cooler and less prone to dying. You mean perhaps by also putting in a new lower power (and cooler running) 65 nm CPU instead of the existing 90 nm one and a new, quieter DVD drive?
You are mentally deficient. It's not a fanboy rant, just because it's not pro Sony.
I didn't say say it's not a good Blu Ray player, I said I don't trust them to make a good player in the PS3, just like the DVD player in the PS2 was (and is) pretty crappy. And I don't. We won't know if it supports all the fancy stuff in the Blu Ray spec until we've actually seen a sizable amount of content available that makes use for the format.
Apparently you don't remember what the DVD format launch was like and all the problems people had getting DVD's to play properly on early DVD players for the first year or two (and the DVD format is much less elaborate than the Blu Ray format).
At a guess, that's probably because you are an 13 year old who's brain is fried on Ritalin.
That's interesting. The one thing I've not experimented with is trying it at different times (though I've knocked myself out with the various client settings on different systems).
I can actually see what you say being the case, it's hard to imagine because it would mean whoever wrote the client didn't know the first thing about network client software development of any kind and doesn't have much common sense, but if that is true (and I'm not suggesting your a liar) it is entirely the fault of the client (in that, if it's slow because the server is busy, it's just been implimented by an idiot).
I don't mean that as a vitriolic statement, I say that, as it should be caching as much as possible (i.e everything), and doing client side hit detection with the server rejecting invalid / out of bounds updates from the client and the client system have it's status re-set when the server tells the client it's out of sync. That's how all other similar software works.
i.e in the same way every modern FPS game work to make the gameplay as smooth as possible with 64 to 300 players & vehicles on the same map. Games have the advantage of having pre-rendered world objects, but there is no reason for the same approach not to work with Second Life.
From BattleField to PlanetSide all the tiles rely to varying extents on client side 'prediction' of world objects - including the movement of other players and vehicles, with objects 'reseting' intelligently if a client and the server get too much out of sync (e.g. every client slowly speeds up or slows down the speed of moving objects in view to 'adjust' for any unexpected change of course or speed made by the other player since the last second or so since it heard from the server).
Moving, rendering and drawing the world should be the same, no matter how slow or fast the server, as those ought to be entirely client driven operations (in the same way that no matter how slow a web server is, your browser should always be responsive - though of course we've all seen browsers that hang user input while waiting to render an element on a page, which is equally crummy design). If it's not smooth regardless of server performance, that's definitely a problem with the client (if the client doesn't have all the new data when it comes time to update the frame, the idea is it should just go ahead and render the scene as it is anyway and draw the changes on the next pass).
I'm somewhat doubtful (because I totally mistrust the client and think it's poorly written all round - never having seen it performed well), but I can believe you though, because I have seen a few (older) games where the developers apparently didn't know how to write non blocking netcode (or just didn't have the time to finish the implementation properly before release) and that behaved oddly when the server was under pressure (as I'm sure the SL servers are - given the huge area and the number of objects they have to track).
I have a 50" HD Plasma, but I've definitely got zero interest in the PS3's Blu Ray. I get my HD TV via my satellite, and later this year those of us in the UK will be able to get additional HD TV via our 360's.
However, I don't have much interest in an HD-DVD drive for the 360 either. My perspective is, if I want an HD player (whichever one wins - Blu Ray or HD DVD) I'd rather get a good one, given how much I've invested already in my home media kit.
While I'm sure the PS3 is a competent console and plays games really well (even though the 'dashboard' and online software is a bit iffy sounding), I don't trust Sony's ability to write a really decent Blu Ray movie player, and I doubt the console is as quiet as a dedicated player (just like the 360 is noisy even when playing back DVD's). I'd be surprised if it didn't have compatibility problems evident in a year or two, just like we saw with most early DVD players.
I might well get a PS3 - despite owning a Mac, PC, DC, X-Box, GC, Wii and 360 I didn't get a PS2 though - it will need to have compelling unique titles to convince me (even if it's just two or three). If it had been the price of an X-Box I would have gone for it I think, but at 425 GBP for base package alone (compared to the 360's 260 GBP for Core - that's a fair step up, not that I'd get 'core'...) it was enough to make me not bother, given how similar it is to the 360.
I wonder how many other HD set owners (especially those of us in Europe who got sick of waiting for the PS3) have already got a 360 for the 'HD game fix', and are similarly not enticed by the PS3's inclusion of a Blu Ray drive. I'm still waiting for some PS3 'killer apps' (hopefully there will be some...).
1. You need a good machine with good graphics card. 2. You need a good internet connection. 3. You need to be on the grid at the right time of the day. 4. You need to know where the right places are.
Your correct, if your starting off for private tour to figure out what is going on, depending on when you enter the grid can make the place look like crap. I agree with the previous poster to your, in that I think SL - while obviously based on a popular premise that's been around for years - is over hyped and poorly implimented (and that something like Home - which is infinately more polished - is much more likely to enjoy mainstream success).
I've said this before here, but the Second Life client really is a joke, it's got terrible frame rate, pathetic client side collision detection, renders objects poorly and is laggy as hell. Objects appearing and disppearing in the world are not handled well. Object caching and distance rendering are pretty ropey too. Even moving around and navigating the menu system is a pretty nasty experience.
Having GigE network connection straight to major peering points and a couple of 7800 GTX's graphics cards in SLI (with an AMD FX CPU, and a couple of gigs of DDR) still doesn't make the client run smoothly, or make it look it good. I'm not sure why you suggest that's important, the problem clearly with the Second Life client - telling people it's "their graphics card" or "their network connection" is just bogus.
I'm very impressed with what some people have done (especially given the current state of the client), but it's got a long way to go before the software is anything like on a par with the other software I use day to day.
As it is, I think you have to REALLY, REALLY want to like it and have very low expectations when it comes to performance to find that it runs 'acceptably' .
The guy should be held accountable for frivolous lawsuits, but he has the right to say whatever he wants.
Not in the United States he doesn't (nor in Europe for that matter). There are already limits on free speech, limits that I'd say are generally quite reasonable.
The court can legally prevent you from spouting the sort of unfounded bile he does about a person, an organization or a company, or it's products. The latter reflects what is happening here.
If I were to go around at the volume he does telling people chemicals in "cola" cause you to behave violently when you drink it and is responsible for the death of children and a number of murderous rampages, then Pepsi and Coca-Cola would likely take similar action to get me to "put up or shut up". If I continued they could take me to court in attempt to recoup earnings lost at the expense of my unfounded claims.
The games themselves can choose to only output 720p and rely on the scaler, I suppose, but there isn't an inherent advantage to your PC (unless you run at trans-1080p resolutions with a 30" monitor or something).
I know about the update (released just before the PS3 launch) to allow the 360 to output at 1080p, however I don't know of a single title that is rendered at anything close to 1920x1080.
The games are rendered at 720p (or lower) and upscaled. That's the same as me running them at that resoultion on my PC and selecting "Nvida scaling" to make the image fit the display, basically it's totally pointless for games on the 360, certainly at the moment.
Any game on 360, like Battlefield for example, looks the same at 1080p as it does at 720p. However when I run BF on my PC at 1920x1200 on my PC it's *really* better than running the same at a 1280x720, because it's not just upscaling he world, it's actually rendering it at the higher resolution, so the edges are sharper and there is more detail visible on textures. I find few games playable at that resolution without SLI though, as it's so more of the hardware.
I like that Microsoft did it, but it's feature that's strictly there for bragging rights. I think that neither the PS3 or the 360 will use it for anything beyond maybe a couple of gimmicky apps and video playback as I suspect neither will be able to render existing action packed games at that sort of resolution (and, argubably, neither really need to of course - 720p with some FSAA is just fine when it's sitting a meter or two away from you, even on a really big TV).
Sounds maybe not unsimiler to my old mum's situation. She's in a modest three bedroom house, a bit over a hundred years old, (w/ dining room - couldn't be more accuate size wise), small garden, double garage (my dad used to like fixing cars). Location wise, it's 30 miles north or south to nearby cities (Aberdeen and Dundee (the origional ones!:-) - so both pretty reasonable sized cities for the UK, Some commute the 30 miles (hard to say if it's better or worse commute than in would be in the US, it's dual carriage way all the way, not too much traffic but it's not quite just a straight run like on a major freeway in the US).
It's a moderately sized village, but they are opening a commuter rail station this year, and so developers started building on the outskirts a few months ago selling similar sized three bedroom houses (a lot smaller than US houses sadly) for 275,000 GBP (about 500,000 USD I guess). But, that's in Scotland which makes things tricky, as it's cheaper than the rest of the UK.
The crazyness is basically in England, specifically in the South East. To give you an extreme:
My first (one bedroomed) flat, in Dundee, which I bought in 1998, cost me 30,000 GBP (and it's a nice flat, really). I sold it last year for a bit under 60,000 GBP (which was not a bad investment - both the disparity and the ). However, all the money (sans which I blew on a big HD Plasma) went to pay for my deposit on the my flat in London
My one and a half bedroom (I use the second one as a study - which it's great for) in London cost me 180,000 GBP. The bathroom and kitchen are uniquely small too - the saving grace is a decent living room, for London at any rate, and being near a main Underground station.
Both flats are about a hundred years old (the first is an old traditional tenemant, the one I'm in now is a converted four/five bedroom house (with one flat upstairs and one downstairs - with the building interior redesigned to make them totally seperate). Most interestingly, not a single room in my London flat is bigger than the equivalent room in my old flat in Dundee. They are otherwise in similar quality areas. So basically it's expensive, and really it's not big, and by 'in London' (which is so sprawling) I mean it's in zone 3 (zone 1 central - zone 6 being the outskirts), a 30 min tube commute into the center of London (between 5-10 miles away I guess).
My plan (to elaborate) is:
In the next 10 years or so, even if the market slumps, I'm all but certain to make some money on the London flat. If pressure stays high (and things like other countries joining the Euro will help keep them up - as London has such an influx of people) and because I'm close to the new Olympic site for 2012 (which is round about where I'm considering selling). I expect it will sell for around 220,000 or so by around then, but we'll have to see. If I leave it 10 years I'd be surprised if it didn't more double my deposit - and I'm very conservative about the whole thing.
Basically, my plan would be to just sell up and move out of London when I've had enough, and move back to Scotland (the population of the whole of Scotland being less than the population of London, there is not so much pressure on house prices, as you can see in the cost difference between the two flats:-). I'll be able to afford a decent modest house in Scotland (something in a village & near a pub would suit me just fine) and still have a sizable chunk of money left to live on.
If it puts it into perspective, the national salary in the UK is about 22k. I'm in London, earning 45k, which is a pretty typical developer salary here. I borrowed 170,000 out of the 180,000 or so, but they were willing to lend me 220,000 (and that was just the main stream banks) on my salary alone. I think that's pretty crazy on my salary, and I didn't want to risk getting into trouble when interest rates rise (which they are bound to do at some point), so I played it safe and went for a more modest place.
You don't need a corp to take your freshly created character out in a cheap frig to cause a bit of mayhem in low sec. "Oh look, my frigate/cruiser has been blow up in [1-2] shots by a random guy gate camping low sec space in a Megathron. Again."
Even with insurance that's very expensive, as of course there is no option for 'full contents' and insurance is overpriced anyway (they are just fixed amounts for everyone). It's half assed because they couldn't be bother to write a system that evaluated risk like in RL, so players nearer the bottom are punished the most because the system is incomplete. When I was starting out, the system became bugged and refused to let me insure my large Industrial ship, which I couldn't afford to replace. I raised a support ticket and was told "well it's only a few million, so it can't be a big deal" by an enormously unhelpful twat.
Mining is definitely crazy if you are not in a group. It's very competitive, and hauling pays better dividends with little investment, missions used to be great, but I got fed up of that when they decided to nerf my Thorax from carrying 6 medium drones to 2, which totally buggered it (similar to when the SWG 'rebalancing' took down my carbine skill down from > 800 to 80 and prevented me from wearing any item in my very extensive armour collection) AND nerfed the drones themselves (and, IIRC, some of the weapons I could mount) - all in all meaning I could now only do missions half the difficulty of the missions I used to be able to do.
I can understand needing to nerf an overpowered item, but when you do things as drastic as that it's just a sign of stupidity on the part of the team responsible. EVE is so flexible they could have handle that so much better, so easily, instead they chose the option that would punish players who'd worked out a really good setup ("We don't like that sort of thinking round here!").
That they didn't get round to implementing corporations fully (I'm thinking with regard to the trading of shares, which was left half done the last time I looked at it) or implementing payment support into the EVE browser (another initial goal I could see huge potential in - particularly in building up a community) was also disappointing.
I suspect the developers are by now too removed from the experience to be able to see it from a perspective of anything but an existing hardcore player (and I'm sure any new developers are 'brought up to speed' quickly if they arn't already, rather than being listened to for their unique perspective.
I think there is a lot they could do to make it more appealing to the masses. The improved mission system was good, but didn't go far enough - I think they really need something (and I think PvE leading into maybe some faction PvP is the way) to bridge the gap between 'new character' and 'hardcore' to increase the take up. I've seen so many people (who love hardcore PvP) look at it and just turn away in disgust.
They'd have to actually go after the gold farmers before I'd even consider coming back. Everyone I know who is *still* playing it buys their ISK online from IGE for insanely low prices - just 5 UKP for 50 Million ISK. With retarded no-penalty ganking so prevalent (see beginning of this post) it's a pre-requisite if you want to be able to do high level PvP. That just isn't a mechanic I want to embrace.
The fact that he saved up his money specifically for a PS2 for such a long time made me quite proud.
Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
The most I manage to save for is typically about two months, fortunately I have a bunch of disposable income and that's enough for most gadgets, it's pretty pathetic for a grown up though.
I'm an only child, and my dad has passed away already (in his 50's), my ultimate retirement plan is basically "inherit the house" (though I have my own place in London), which is not actually totally crazy as houses are more valuable in the UK than I suspect they are in the US (due to the population/size of the country here). I had to check to make sure my mum wasn't going to leave the house to the cats though.
Field trip to the museuem? Pay or don't go. Secret option (c) move to a civilized country where you don't have to pay to visit museums?;)
More seriously, while this seems like a good way of teaching him how to manage money, the actual value of what you are giving them is really low given they have to use it to for things like day trips and paper for craft work - and that can be counter productive (I'm speaking from my own experience, where my parents judged pocket money very poorly so despite my parents being well off I got very pocket money so it was meaningless and anytime I wanted pretty much *anything* I had to ask for it, because you can only stretch next-to-nothing so far).
I think a lot of parents make the mistake of not accounting for inflation (and underestimating the change in prices of goods when they do), and so paying kids what they think would have been quite reasonable in their day. Case in point, take a can of Coke, which was 10p when I was a kid. In 20 years the price of a can of Coke has it's gone up to 60p, so 5 GBP (9-10 USD) a week pocket money today - while it might sound good - would in real terms be less useful than the 1 GBP a week a used to get as a kid.
Today, for example, 5 GBP won't get a kid popcorn, Coke and a movie as it would of done when I was a kid. Now for a kid of 6 who doesn't need any of that stuff I would say 6 USD is fine! However, if they are expected to buy basic supplies from that money (supplies that ultimately you are obligated to pay for as a parent), then really you are actually being very tight (assuming you could easily afford to give them more).
I think if you were to up that amount significantly and maybe offer more lucrative saving incentives (which I think is a good idea BTW, but I think that's probably so important a habit to get kids into it's worth the extra hit to the wallet - maybe you could put it in a fund or something they can't take out till they are older) then I think the experience might be more rewarding, as they'd then have enough to get a good 'feel' for the value of money.
I only sound this as a note of caution. My lack of a decent amount pocket money as kid has lead me to be the the sort of person who always rushes out to spend money on a 360/Wii/Plasma TV/1080p TFT like it's burning a hole in my pocket (because I might get hit by a bus tomorrow & you can't take it with you!). On the plus side, I'm motivated to go out and earn money to pay for all the shiny toys I want, on the down side I have zero savings and just take out a loan when I want to buy a New Shiny Toy that's a few thousand or so.
While, at over a year old, my AMD FX based PC doesn't quite have the raw CPU power to match a 360 it's got far more RAM, all the games can use the HD for caching (not something 360 games to, because it was an option at launch and so they can't depend on it being there) and two graphics cards each with as much memory as the 360 has in total (as a result the quality it can render graphics at is far improved - every title runs with FSAA and AF at 1920x1200).
The X-Box has an advantage in that developers are able to build specifically for the hardware, and the games only have to look good at the comparatively modest resolution of 720p (much less than I make my PC do), but current gaming PC systems outshine the 360 already. Case in point: the current AMD FX CPU's are already quad core and the motherboards are dual CPU. I guess you've not been keeping up!
The 360 is great value for money, but it's not more powerful than a new decent PC by a long shot (ditto for the PS3).
I find the lack of FSAA in many 360 titles is already all too noticeable on a large display (as is the upscaling on a few titles) - same deal on the PS3. Games (like GRAW2) are getting better at hiding this (doing at least some FSAA) but not up to the 8x and 16x quality you see on an Nvidia 7XXX/8XXX SLI system .
Please get a basic understanding about computer forensics. your MAC addres IS USED as a fingerprint.
I dont care what your textbooks tell you, I am telling you what the cops, feds and investigators are using. and they are using your MAC address. Actually, it's all about the IP address and the physical line.
When your line is tapped, for example, all your traffic from your customer premises equipment to the provider is going to be filtered though a single system. This is done by either silently re-routing all traffic from what ever IP address is assigned to your connection at the time - e.g. by injecting a route for the/32 that makes it's next hop the intercept box - or by physically intercepting the traffic on your line by passing it through another system before it hits the switch, depending on the topology (the former is generally a more typical approach).
In the case of tracking down users after the fact, that's done by IP as well. The police have an IP and a time, and they ask the provider to look through the logs to see what physical connection that IP was ultimately assigned to at the given time.
At most, a cable provider might use a MAC address in the way a DSL provider might typically use a username, to look through something like RADIUS logs to determine what IP is or was assigned to a customer at a given time, but that's it.
I would add in the case of things like Video On Demand the expensive bit is upgrading their own (national/regional) network capacity to be able to handle the added strain, most are only focusing on delivering VoD (and certainly HD quality VoD) exclusively on and from their own systems, at least for now (I can't speak for all other providers, but I think that's fair to say everyone is in a similar boat).
I say that as at the moment, even most large providers don't really have the peering to be able to cope with a significant proportion of their users doing even SD broadcast quality VoD, let alone HD VoD from a remote location (and I'm sure users doing this would quickly render DSL and cable connection provision at current consumer prices uneconomical due to transit costs incurred by the service providers, and that applies in most parts of the world).
Also delivering decent QoS for broadcast quality SD video on anything but on your own closed network is significantly more troublesome.
As TFA said, "fair" usage is increasing as the popularity of bandwidth-intensive activities like viewing live video and music increases.
As the price of connectivity (that ISP's have to pay for themselves) falls - which is what allows it to be cheaper.
Cable or DSL is sold in unlimited fashion within reason. What happens is ~ 5% of customers use ~90% of the bandwidth (it may sound like a sound bite but that's really about the ratio we've seen here, on a sample of tens of thousands of customers) - invariably because they are downloading illegally copied software and media form P2P networks / Usenet. These customers literally are do the maximum possible data transfer 24/7 , these customers typically have another connection (e.g. a second DSL line) they use for browsing/email/games/etc.
What we do here is put them in a single 'bad boy' pipe, where all the users using the service exclusively for Usenet leeching and file trading have to contend with each other (rather than with customers trying to use the line for something more legitimate). I think in this day and age it's pretty lame for a provider to resort to kicking people off rather than doing rate limiting so that they have a worse QoS - it means they don't have their act together technically.
I would add that given that these same users are using the system to break the law in the first place (they are all to a man using it to copy movies/music/software illegally), they are out on a limb here IMNSHO.
If they want to providers to act more 'fairly' the 'fair' thing to do would surely be to give them truly unlimited bandwidth as the consumer expected, but then to immediately report them to the authorities for suspicious activity, who will then barge in and confiscate all their equipment (thus rendering them unable to use their line at all) and they will likely end up with a big fine and stuck paying for the connection (which they can't use) until the contract is up. That way, everyone is a winner. Oh, except the guy that was leeching movies/music/software.
Personally, I like this idea a lot, though I imagine it would give the PR department a headache (so it's win-win! *boom* *boom*).
If people who don't want want *truly* unlimited bandwidth and same-QoS-for-every-user (the 'say no to two tier internet' folks who don't really understand how things work already - and who presumably think we charge business customers much more because business are stupid) get their way I wouldn't be entirely unhappy. That way, everyone would have to pay about the same rates as commercial customers for bandwidth, and the signal to noise ratio might increase on the intertubes.
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I've been using the Mac Mini to manage my media, particularly my MP3 and Video collection, and that's stored on a NAS (which shares out data via NFS/CIFS/AFP). It's nasty having to do move large amounts of data over 802.11G though.
I got my Apple TV this weekend and it was great just be able to plug a Firewire cable into my Mini and connect it to the Firewire port on my Linux NAS server (which sits under the same desk in my study). Getting Firewire over IP working on the Mac working with Ubuntu was a no brainier - both supported it out of the box and I was set up with NAT in a couple of minutes. *Really* handy in my case (and seems much more robust than I'd expected).
The only thing that's bumming me out is it seems you can't use bridge-utils to bridge a Firewire Ethernet interface to a regular network interface.
I think there might even be three. The 'typical' one most people will recognize, the new one (FW 800) that was on some G4 Au PowerBooks, and the mini one often found on DV cams (and that Sony in particular put on their laptops).
Apart from being not stable, it's also doesn't carry power I believe (like the small USB interfaces). New power interfaces (like those on the Nokia charger) are incredibly small. I'd like to see an small interface designs in future (for USB or IEE1394) be able to deliver power too.
Yes, as you've said and do I belive you. But on my Pinoneer, HD content looks the same on both, and a lot of other people say the same thing.
We know that some TV's have problems with some types of component signals (something convered in other posts on this story alone) and we know RGB component is just fine for carrying an HD signal - people have been using it on high end computer monitors for years.
It occured to me I wonder if you are thinking of a comparison with the (non-HD) S-Video type of component?
(Which does look crappy not only as it's not HD, it even looks bad compared to SCART - and is pretty much only a step up from composite).
I think that's a good point.
I rushed to get a DVD player, because I only had a few of my favourite movies on VHS - I didn't bother collecting VHS tapes because I'd been waiting for a digital format for years (since the first time I saw a QuickTime movie on the Mac). But I already have access to a huge range of new movies via my HD satellite service (which comes with a PVR), and I'm in no rush to get a new collection.
Both my ability to get movies in HD via satellite and the knowedge that HD media formats are coming has actually hurt my DVD purchases a lot. It's been over a year since I bought a DVD. Microsoft have said (in a PR attack on Sony) that they think online will 'surely be distribution method for HD content' (as near as I can remember the quote). Though issues about users prefering to own/purchace physical copies aside, I wonder if the filesize of HD movies might impeed that quite a bit.
I expect we will see a much more fractured market with people with decent internet access buying HD content online and playing it primarily via devices like their 360/PS3/Apple TV, and others prefering to buy the discs on Blu Ray/HD DVD.
I definitely see a difference between SCART and say S-Video (and between S-Video and composite) with previous generation consoles, and I'm a total SCART fan all the way. There honestly doesn't seem to be a difference the HD content when it comes to HDMI and component though (all 720p in my case).
I believe the HDMI is still going on the Premium as well (in the next few weeks or so).
The larger HD might actually be useful to you (although YMMV - a lot of other people don't seem bothered about it). I filled up my 20 GB ages ago (some of the demo's are 1-2 GB - and I've got a bunch of free video content on it too now, Live has reasonable amount of cool stuff on it).
It's in need of a hardware improvement soon though I think - it really is noisy (much more than my Mac Mini is). I don't notice it when playing games, but when I leave it on downloading a bunch of new demos and am watching TV it can be (especially if I'm watching later at night, with the volume turned down). Not sure what the PS3 is like - anyone care to comment?
The Wii is very quiet, but then it doesn't have much right to be noisy. 8)
Except err, some sites are now reporting that ISN'T the case despite that being touted as part of the rumour on gaming sites everywhere)...
From Gizmondo:
Microsoft told us there would be no new hardware inside the Elite except for that 120GB hard drive, alluding to the often-rumored cooler-running processors manufactured with the 65nm process
I wanted to get one, and was going to give my existing 360 to someone I know who has kids but can't afford a console, and having it run more quietly was a big part of the attraction for me bothering to get a new 360. My TV already handles component well, and that leaves the bigger HD as the only compelling feature (I filled up my 20 GB for the first time ages ago and that's just with Live! games, demo's and trailers - TV/Movie downloads won't be available here in the UK till later this year).
On it's own, a large HD (that I could get separately) is not a compelling enough reason for me to upgrade. The thing is, I like my 360 and I'm happy to pay a bit more for an improved version of the hardware.
Hmmm on my my 50" Pioneer good quality HD video input looks the same on component as via HDMI, and I've compared the two. The more expensive Pioneer systems have an external system for processing inputs though (meaning you don't just plug things into the back of the TV, and meaning you get a much larger number of inputs - like 2 HDMI ports, 1 component, 3 SCART, S-Video, VGA, etc.)
If component is noticeably worse on your set, maybe it's the input processing hardware on your set? I know a few sets are unable to support 1080p over component, while others manage just fine, so it seems like the quality of different component input implementations certainly varies.
You are mentally deficient. It's not a fanboy rant, just because it's not pro Sony.
I didn't say say it's not a good Blu Ray player, I said I don't trust them to make a good player in the PS3, just like the DVD player in the PS2 was (and is) pretty crappy. And I don't. We won't know if it supports all the fancy stuff in the Blu Ray spec until we've actually seen a sizable amount of content available that makes use for the format.
Apparently you don't remember what the DVD format launch was like and all the problems people had getting DVD's to play properly on early DVD players for the first year or two (and the DVD format is much less elaborate than the Blu Ray format).
At a guess, that's probably because you are an 13 year old who's brain is fried on Ritalin.
That's interesting. The one thing I've not experimented with is trying it at different times (though I've knocked myself out with the various client settings on different systems).
I can actually see what you say being the case, it's hard to imagine because it would mean whoever wrote the client didn't know the first thing about network client software development of any kind and doesn't have much common sense, but if that is true (and I'm not suggesting your a liar) it is entirely the fault of the client (in that, if it's slow because the server is busy, it's just been implimented by an idiot).
I don't mean that as a vitriolic statement, I say that, as it should be caching as much as possible (i.e everything), and doing client side hit detection with the server rejecting invalid / out of bounds updates from the client and the client system have it's status re-set when the server tells the client it's out of sync. That's how all other similar software works.
i.e in the same way every modern FPS game work to make the gameplay as smooth as possible with 64 to 300 players & vehicles on the same map. Games have the advantage of having pre-rendered world objects, but there is no reason for the same approach not to work with Second Life.
From BattleField to PlanetSide all the tiles rely to varying extents on client side 'prediction' of world objects - including the movement of other players and vehicles, with objects 'reseting' intelligently if a client and the server get too much out of sync (e.g. every client slowly speeds up or slows down the speed of moving objects in view to 'adjust' for any unexpected change of course or speed made by the other player since the last second or so since it heard from the server).
Moving, rendering and drawing the world should be the same, no matter how slow or fast the server, as those ought to be entirely client driven operations (in the same way that no matter how slow a web server is, your browser should always be responsive - though of course we've all seen browsers that hang user input while waiting to render an element on a page, which is equally crummy design). If it's not smooth regardless of server performance, that's definitely a problem with the client (if the client doesn't have all the new data when it comes time to update the frame, the idea is it should just go ahead and render the scene as it is anyway and draw the changes on the next pass).
I'm somewhat doubtful (because I totally mistrust the client and think it's poorly written all round - never having seen it performed well), but I can believe you though, because I have seen a few (older) games where the developers apparently didn't know how to write non blocking netcode (or just didn't have the time to finish the implementation properly before release) and that behaved oddly when the server was under pressure (as I'm sure the SL servers are - given the huge area and the number of objects they have to track).
I have a 50" HD Plasma, but I've definitely got zero interest in the PS3's Blu Ray. I get my HD TV via my satellite, and later this year those of us in the UK will be able to get additional HD TV via our 360's.
However, I don't have much interest in an HD-DVD drive for the 360 either. My perspective is, if I want an HD player (whichever one wins - Blu Ray or HD DVD) I'd rather get a good one, given how much I've invested already in my home media kit.
While I'm sure the PS3 is a competent console and plays games really well (even though the 'dashboard' and online software is a bit iffy sounding), I don't trust Sony's ability to write a really decent Blu Ray movie player, and I doubt the console is as quiet as a dedicated player (just like the 360 is noisy even when playing back DVD's). I'd be surprised if it didn't have compatibility problems evident in a year or two, just like we saw with most early DVD players.
I might well get a PS3 - despite owning a Mac, PC, DC, X-Box, GC, Wii and 360 I didn't get a PS2 though - it will need to have compelling unique titles to convince me (even if it's just two or three). If it had been the price of an X-Box I would have gone for it I think, but at 425 GBP for base package alone (compared to the 360's 260 GBP for Core - that's a fair step up, not that I'd get 'core'...) it was enough to make me not bother, given how similar it is to the 360.
I wonder how many other HD set owners (especially those of us in Europe who got sick of waiting for the PS3) have already got a 360 for the 'HD game fix', and are similarly not enticed by the PS3's inclusion of a Blu Ray drive. I'm still waiting for some PS3 'killer apps' (hopefully there will be some...).
2. You need a good internet connection.
3. You need to be on the grid at the right time of the day.
4. You need to know where the right places are.
Your correct, if your starting off for private tour to figure out what is going on, depending on when you enter the grid can make the place look like crap. I agree with the previous poster to your, in that I think SL - while obviously based on a popular premise that's been around for years - is over hyped and poorly implimented (and that something like Home - which is infinately more polished - is much more likely to enjoy mainstream success).
I've said this before here, but the Second Life client really is a joke, it's got terrible frame rate, pathetic client side collision detection, renders objects poorly and is laggy as hell. Objects appearing and disppearing in the world are not handled well. Object caching and distance rendering are pretty ropey too. Even moving around and navigating the menu system is a pretty nasty experience.
Having GigE network connection straight to major peering points and a couple of 7800 GTX's graphics cards in SLI (with an AMD FX CPU, and a couple of gigs of DDR) still doesn't make the client run smoothly, or make it look it good. I'm not sure why you suggest that's important, the problem clearly with the Second Life client - telling people it's "their graphics card" or "their network connection" is just bogus.
I'm very impressed with what some people have done (especially given the current state of the client), but it's got a long way to go before the software is anything like on a par with the other software I use day to day.
As it is, I think you have to REALLY, REALLY want to like it and have very low expectations when it comes to performance to find that it runs 'acceptably' .
The guy should be held accountable for frivolous lawsuits, but he has the right to say whatever he wants.
Not in the United States he doesn't (nor in Europe for that matter). There are already limits on free speech, limits that I'd say are generally quite reasonable.
The court can legally prevent you from spouting the sort of unfounded bile he does about a person, an organization or a company, or it's products. The latter reflects what is happening here.
If I were to go around at the volume he does telling people chemicals in "cola" cause you to behave violently when you drink it and is responsible for the death of children and a number of murderous rampages, then Pepsi and Coca-Cola would likely take similar action to get me to "put up or shut up". If I continued they could take me to court in attempt to recoup earnings lost at the expense of my unfounded claims.
The games themselves can choose to only output 720p and rely on the scaler, I suppose, but there isn't an inherent advantage to your PC (unless you run at trans-1080p resolutions with a 30" monitor or something).
I know about the update (released just before the PS3 launch) to allow the 360 to output at 1080p, however I don't know of a single title that is rendered at anything close to 1920x1080.
The games are rendered at 720p (or lower) and upscaled. That's the same as me running them at that resoultion on my PC and selecting "Nvida scaling" to make the image fit the display, basically it's totally pointless for games on the 360, certainly at the moment.
Any game on 360, like Battlefield for example, looks the same at 1080p as it does at 720p. However when I run BF on my PC at 1920x1200 on my PC it's *really* better than running the same at a 1280x720, because it's not just upscaling he world, it's actually rendering it at the higher resolution, so the edges are sharper and there is more detail visible on textures. I find few games playable at that resolution without SLI though, as it's so more of the hardware.
I like that Microsoft did it, but it's feature that's strictly there for bragging rights. I think that neither the PS3 or the 360 will use it for anything beyond maybe a couple of gimmicky apps and video playback as I suspect neither will be able to render existing action packed games at that sort of resolution (and, argubably, neither really need to of course - 720p with some FSAA is just fine when it's sitting a meter or two away from you, even on a really big TV).
Sounds maybe not unsimiler to my old mum's situation. She's in a modest three bedroom house, a bit over a hundred years old, (w/ dining room - couldn't be more accuate size wise), small garden, double garage (my dad used to like fixing cars). Location wise, it's 30 miles north or south to nearby cities (Aberdeen and Dundee (the origional ones! :-) - so both pretty reasonable sized cities for the UK, Some commute the 30 miles (hard to say if it's better or worse commute than in would be in the US, it's dual carriage way all the way, not too much traffic but it's not quite just a straight run like on a major freeway in the US).
:-). I'll be able to afford a decent modest house in Scotland (something in a village & near a pub would suit me just fine) and still have a sizable chunk of money left to live on.
It's a moderately sized village, but they are opening a commuter rail station this year, and so developers started building on the outskirts a few months ago selling similar sized three bedroom houses (a lot smaller than US houses sadly) for 275,000 GBP (about 500,000 USD I guess). But, that's in Scotland which makes things tricky, as it's cheaper than the rest of the UK.
The crazyness is basically in England, specifically in the South East. To give you an extreme:
My first (one bedroomed) flat, in Dundee, which I bought in 1998, cost me 30,000 GBP (and it's a nice flat, really). I sold it last year for a bit under 60,000 GBP (which was not a bad investment - both the disparity and the ). However, all the money (sans which I blew on a big HD Plasma) went to pay for my deposit on the my flat in London
My one and a half bedroom (I use the second one as a study - which it's great for) in London cost me 180,000 GBP. The bathroom and kitchen are uniquely small too - the saving grace is a decent living room, for London at any rate, and being near a main Underground station.
Both flats are about a hundred years old (the first is an old traditional tenemant, the one I'm in now is a converted four/five bedroom house (with one flat upstairs and one downstairs - with the building interior redesigned to make them totally seperate). Most interestingly, not a single room in my London flat is bigger than the equivalent room in my old flat in Dundee. They are otherwise in similar quality areas. So basically it's expensive, and really it's not big, and by 'in London' (which is so sprawling) I mean it's in zone 3 (zone 1 central - zone 6 being the outskirts), a 30 min tube commute into the center of London (between 5-10 miles away I guess).
My plan (to elaborate) is:
In the next 10 years or so, even if the market slumps, I'm all but certain to make some money on the London flat. If pressure stays high (and things like other countries joining the Euro will help keep them up - as London has such an influx of people) and because I'm close to the new Olympic site for 2012 (which is round about where I'm considering selling). I expect it will sell for around 220,000 or so by around then, but we'll have to see. If I leave it 10 years I'd be surprised if it didn't more double my deposit - and I'm very conservative about the whole thing.
Basically, my plan would be to just sell up and move out of London when I've had enough, and move back to Scotland (the population of the whole of Scotland being less than the population of London, there is not so much pressure on house prices, as you can see in the cost difference between the two flats
If it puts it into perspective, the national salary in the UK is about 22k. I'm in London, earning 45k, which is a pretty typical developer salary here. I borrowed 170,000 out of the 180,000 or so, but they were willing to lend me 220,000 (and that was just the main stream banks) on my salary alone. I think that's pretty crazy on my salary, and I didn't want to risk getting into trouble when interest rates rise (which they are bound to do at some point), so I played it safe and went for a more modest place.
This is true, but that's only good if I want to see The Sound Of Music or the story of some Irish folk tale told in Romanian. :-)
:-)
(Joking! Mostly
Even with insurance that's very expensive, as of course there is no option for 'full contents' and insurance is overpriced anyway (they are just fixed amounts for everyone). It's half assed because they couldn't be bother to write a system that evaluated risk like in RL, so players nearer the bottom are punished the most because the system is incomplete. When I was starting out, the system became bugged and refused to let me insure my large Industrial ship, which I couldn't afford to replace. I raised a support ticket and was told "well it's only a few million, so it can't be a big deal" by an enormously unhelpful twat.
Mining is definitely crazy if you are not in a group. It's very competitive, and hauling pays better dividends with little investment, missions used to be great, but I got fed up of that when they decided to nerf my Thorax from carrying 6 medium drones to 2, which totally buggered it (similar to when the SWG 'rebalancing' took down my carbine skill down from > 800 to 80 and prevented me from wearing any item in my very extensive armour collection) AND nerfed the drones themselves (and, IIRC, some of the weapons I could mount) - all in all meaning I could now only do missions half the difficulty of the missions I used to be able to do.
I can understand needing to nerf an overpowered item, but when you do things as drastic as that it's just a sign of stupidity on the part of the team responsible. EVE is so flexible they could have handle that so much better, so easily, instead they chose the option that would punish players who'd worked out a really good setup ("We don't like that sort of thinking round here!").
That they didn't get round to implementing corporations fully (I'm thinking with regard to the trading of shares, which was left half done the last time I looked at it) or implementing payment support into the EVE browser (another initial goal I could see huge potential in - particularly in building up a community) was also disappointing.
I suspect the developers are by now too removed from the experience to be able to see it from a perspective of anything but an existing hardcore player (and I'm sure any new developers are 'brought up to speed' quickly if they arn't already, rather than being listened to for their unique perspective.
I think there is a lot they could do to make it more appealing to the masses. The improved mission system was good, but didn't go far enough - I think they really need something (and I think PvE leading into maybe some faction PvP is the way) to bridge the gap between 'new character' and 'hardcore' to increase the take up. I've seen so many people (who love hardcore PvP) look at it and just turn away in disgust.
They'd have to actually go after the gold farmers before I'd even consider coming back. Everyone I know who is *still* playing it buys their ISK online from IGE for insanely low prices - just 5 UKP for 50 Million ISK. With retarded no-penalty ganking so prevalent (see beginning of this post) it's a pre-requisite if you want to be able to do high level PvP. That just isn't a mechanic I want to embrace.
The fact that he saved up his money specifically for a PS2 for such a long time made me quite proud.
Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
The most I manage to save for is typically about two months, fortunately I have a bunch of disposable income and that's enough for most gadgets, it's pretty pathetic for a grown up though.
I'm an only child, and my dad has passed away already (in his 50's), my ultimate retirement plan is basically "inherit the house" (though I have my own place in London), which is not actually totally crazy as houses are more valuable in the UK than I suspect they are in the US (due to the population/size of the country here). I had to check to make sure my mum wasn't going to leave the house to the cats though.
More seriously, while this seems like a good way of teaching him how to manage money, the actual value of what you are giving them is really low given they have to use it to for things like day trips and paper for craft work - and that can be counter productive (I'm speaking from my own experience, where my parents judged pocket money very poorly so despite my parents being well off I got very pocket money so it was meaningless and anytime I wanted pretty much *anything* I had to ask for it, because you can only stretch next-to-nothing so far).
I think a lot of parents make the mistake of not accounting for inflation (and underestimating the change in prices of goods when they do), and so paying kids what they think would have been quite reasonable in their day. Case in point, take a can of Coke, which was 10p when I was a kid. In 20 years the price of a can of Coke has it's gone up to 60p, so 5 GBP (9-10 USD) a week pocket money today - while it might sound good - would in real terms be less useful than the 1 GBP a week a used to get as a kid.
Today, for example, 5 GBP won't get a kid popcorn, Coke and a movie as it would of done when I was a kid. Now for a kid of 6 who doesn't need any of that stuff I would say 6 USD is fine! However, if they are expected to buy basic supplies from that money (supplies that ultimately you are obligated to pay for as a parent), then really you are actually being very tight (assuming you could easily afford to give them more).
I think if you were to up that amount significantly and maybe offer more lucrative saving incentives (which I think is a good idea BTW, but I think that's probably so important a habit to get kids into it's worth the extra hit to the wallet - maybe you could put it in a fund or something they can't take out till they are older) then I think the experience might be more rewarding, as they'd then have enough to get a good 'feel' for the value of money.
I only sound this as a note of caution. My lack of a decent amount pocket money as kid has lead me to be the the sort of person who always rushes out to spend money on a 360/Wii/Plasma TV/1080p TFT like it's burning a hole in my pocket (because I might get hit by a bus tomorrow & you can't take it with you!). On the plus side, I'm motivated to go out and earn money to pay for all the shiny toys I want, on the down side I have zero savings and just take out a loan when I want to buy a New Shiny Toy that's a few thousand or so.
While, at over a year old, my AMD FX based PC doesn't quite have the raw CPU power to match a 360 it's got far more RAM, all the games can use the HD for caching (not something 360 games to, because it was an option at launch and so they can't depend on it being there) and two graphics cards each with as much memory as the 360 has in total (as a result the quality it can render graphics at is far improved - every title runs with FSAA and AF at 1920x1200).
The X-Box has an advantage in that developers are able to build specifically for the hardware, and the games only have to look good at the comparatively modest resolution of 720p (much less than I make my PC do), but current gaming PC systems outshine the 360 already. Case in point: the current AMD FX CPU's are already quad core and the motherboards are dual CPU. I guess you've not been keeping up!
The 360 is great value for money, but it's not more powerful than a new decent PC by a long shot (ditto for the PS3).
I find the lack of FSAA in many 360 titles is already all too noticeable on a large display (as is the upscaling on a few titles) - same deal on the PS3. Games (like GRAW2) are getting better at hiding this (doing at least some FSAA) but not up to the 8x and 16x quality you see on an Nvidia 7XXX/8XXX SLI system .
That's exactly what I was saying.
I dont care what your textbooks tell you, I am telling you what the cops, feds and investigators are using. and they are using your MAC address. Actually, it's all about the IP address and the physical line.
When your line is tapped, for example, all your traffic from your customer premises equipment to the provider is going to be filtered though a single system. This is done by either silently re-routing all traffic from what ever IP address is assigned to your connection at the time - e.g. by injecting a route for the
In the case of tracking down users after the fact, that's done by IP as well. The police have an IP and a time, and they ask the provider to look through the logs to see what physical connection that IP was ultimately assigned to at the given time.
At most, a cable provider might use a MAC address in the way a DSL provider might typically use a username, to look through something like RADIUS logs to determine what IP is or was assigned to a customer at a given time, but that's it.
I would add in the case of things like Video On Demand the expensive bit is upgrading their own (national/regional) network capacity to be able to handle the added strain, most are only focusing on delivering VoD (and certainly HD quality VoD) exclusively on and from their own systems, at least for now (I can't speak for all other providers, but I think that's fair to say everyone is in a similar boat).
I say that as at the moment, even most large providers don't really have the peering to be able to cope with a significant proportion of their users doing even SD broadcast quality VoD, let alone HD VoD from a remote location (and I'm sure users doing this would quickly render DSL and cable connection provision at current consumer prices uneconomical due to transit costs incurred by the service providers, and that applies in most parts of the world).
Also delivering decent QoS for broadcast quality SD video on anything but on your own closed network is significantly more troublesome.
As TFA said, "fair" usage is increasing as the popularity of bandwidth-intensive activities like viewing live video and music increases.
As the price of connectivity (that ISP's have to pay for themselves) falls - which is what allows it to be cheaper.
Cable or DSL is sold in unlimited fashion within reason. What happens is ~ 5% of customers use ~90% of the bandwidth (it may sound like a sound bite but that's really about the ratio we've seen here, on a sample of tens of thousands of customers) - invariably because they are downloading illegally copied software and media form P2P networks / Usenet. These customers literally are do the maximum possible data transfer 24/7 , these customers typically have another connection (e.g. a second DSL line) they use for browsing/email/games/etc.
What we do here is put them in a single 'bad boy' pipe, where all the users using the service exclusively for Usenet leeching and file trading have to contend with each other (rather than with customers trying to use the line for something more legitimate). I think in this day and age it's pretty lame for a provider to resort to kicking people off rather than doing rate limiting so that they have a worse QoS - it means they don't have their act together technically.
I would add that given that these same users are using the system to break the law in the first place (they are all to a man using it to copy movies/music/software illegally), they are out on a limb here IMNSHO.
If they want to providers to act more 'fairly' the 'fair' thing to do would surely be to give them truly unlimited bandwidth as the consumer expected, but then to immediately report them to the authorities for suspicious activity, who will then barge in and confiscate all their equipment (thus rendering them unable to use their line at all) and they will likely end up with a big fine and stuck paying for the connection (which they can't use) until the contract is up. That way, everyone is a winner. Oh, except the guy that was leeching movies/music/software.
Personally, I like this idea a lot, though I imagine it would give the PR department a headache (so it's win-win! *boom* *boom*).
If people who don't want want *truly* unlimited bandwidth and same-QoS-for-every-user (the 'say no to two tier internet' folks who don't really understand how things work already - and who presumably think we charge business customers much more because business are stupid) get their way I wouldn't be entirely unhappy. That way, everyone would have to pay about the same rates as commercial customers for bandwidth, and the signal to noise ratio might increase on the intertubes.
Yes, yes - I'm evil.