>First thing I thought of when I heard of this was the problem of distribution.
Electrolyse water to hydrogen & oxygen and then just ship the hydrogen.
And before anyone says "there's no water in the desert" - run a canal from the Med for the ships you will be carrying the hydrogen in, or a pipeline (water one way, hydrogen the other).
Chect TFA - they are not opposing this because they think the *concept* is wrong. It's because the law would only apply to ISPs with more than 400,000 subscribers. They are worried that people will shift to other smaller ISP who don't do the monitoring. They're just worried about their bottom line.
They were operated by the Royal Observer Corps and originally existed in WW2 to report the flight paths of enemy plans back to HQ. During the Cold War the focus changed and more posts were added and the bunker network was created - approximately 1600 were built across the UK.
A lot of the original sites (approximately 1700) were sold to cellphone companies, mostly because they were situated on hilltops in the middle of nowhere. Generally the cellphone companies didn't use the bunker, they were just bought for the surrounding land.
>So the only place for the profits to go is to bonuses or shareholder profits
Not strictly true - if you're a mutual organisation (e.g. building society in the UK) then you could always reinvest the profits towards lower interest rates for your borrowers. Unfortunately most of these mutuals are converting into banks here in the UK.
For casual gamers, I would say here in the UK that it's the game prices that are too high, and not the console. It'd be nice to pick up games for under a tenner, but even 2nd hand games are still quite pricey. Maybe the US demographic is different.
Which is exactly why I left Plus Net and went to Zen. The moving goalposts on download limits, binary news groups and peak times just got to be a pain. The final straw was when a spammer got hold of their address lists.
Zen tell you what you get (for me, 25Gb a month) and how much you pay if you go over that amount. On the plus side when I moved to Zen my download went from ~1Mbps to ~3Mbps. No idea why Plus Net were capping that.
I was lucky enough to play the "original" Essex MUD back in 1984-86. At that time I was employed working nights as a Network Operator in one of the main NOCs on the UK university network, JANET. With my blistering 9.6k connection to Essex Univ I used to spent FAR too much time as "Quadgop" rather than doing what I should have been doing (i.e. looking after the X.25 switches).
I'm off to Zen, I requested my MAC (code needed for an ADSL transfer) last night. They're stalling at the moment, trying to get me to move to a new product, but after seeing their service gradually go down the toilet without a corresponding drop in my rental, I decided enough was enough.
It's a shame, because a few years back when I joined them they were an excellent "techie" ISP...but then the binary newsgroups were dropped, next the traffic shaping started (so they could reserve bandwidth for their VoIP service), then the 700Mb loss of email last year, and finally this latest hack.
I was going to post myself on Plusnet, but MrAngryForNoReason did it for me. Plusnet do a very shoddy job of making their AUP understandable or even accessible to their customers. I hesitate to say "users" as it's become clear that their preferred userbase is the occasional surfer who reads a couple of emails occasionally.
I joined them about 3 yrs ago because at that time I considered them one of the most technically aware ISPs - but with the gradual throttling of any protocol that's not HTTP or POP3, and sharp business practices, I'm looking elsewhere, and will probably go with Zen.
My current ISP blocks NNTP too. Not only did they limit it to 4K from their own servers, they checked your traffic and if you were downloading using NNTP over HTTP (for example, from Easynews) then they limited that too.
Plusnet's customers main gripe is the moving goalposts. They started off advertising "unlimeted broadband". Then they started to limit the amount of traffic you could download in a month. The next step was to limit the amount of P2P traffic you downloaded during "peak time" (which were never really defined properly to the users).
Finally they included Usenet AND FTP usage in the P2P allowance. So, if you happened to download 15Gb a month duing peak times (4pm-12pm) you got limited to 4K/s for those protocols - meaning that you couldn't do things like, say, *upload* to your own website.
Needless to say, I'm looking around for a new provider. Plusnet used to be the best "techie" provider but they've now become as vanilla as you can get, with nothing to differentiate them from any other ISP in the UK. I'm embarassed that I recommended them to friends.
The converse is as dangerous - my company spends too much money on the desktops (the "ooh, shiny" syndrome where posession of the latest toy is everything). As a result the infrastructure suffers (especially the network). The shiny toys don't work so well then...
My employer bans it, and one of the reasons is that *any* type of VoIP system is banned in some of the countries we do business in (UAE being one of them). If the ISP in the region (effectively a state monopoly) found evidence of VoIP on their links, then they'd cut the links, simple as that. Interestingly, we examined the ToS of the link in UAE & we believe it's actually a criminal offence to use VoIP services on the connection we have.
"Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either, even when the balky Flexowriter required a delay between output characters to work right. He just located instructions on the drum so each successive one was just past the read head when it was needed; the drum had to execute another complete revolution to find the next instruction."
I had no idea how much the difference was between "standard" class & First Class, until I looked at flights from London to LA. With British Airways, two return tickets are about £1000 - but for First Class that rises to a staggering £15000!
Slashdot Mirror
>First thing I thought of when I heard of this was the problem of distribution.
Electrolyse water to hydrogen & oxygen and then just ship the hydrogen.
And before anyone says "there's no water in the desert" - run a canal from the Med for the ships you will be carrying the hydrogen in, or a pipeline (water one way, hydrogen the other).
Could have been worse, he could have been a spelling pedent.
Chect TFA - they are not opposing this because they think the *concept* is wrong. It's because the law would only apply to ISPs with more than 400,000 subscribers. They are worried that people will shift to other smaller ISP who don't do the monitoring. They're just worried about their bottom line.
They were operated by the Royal Observer Corps and originally existed in WW2 to report the flight paths of enemy plans back to HQ. During the Cold War the focus changed and more posts were added and the bunker network was created - approximately 1600 were built across the UK.
A superb website exists here: http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/roc/index2.shtml
Matt
A lot of the original sites (approximately 1700) were sold to cellphone companies, mostly because they were situated on hilltops in the middle of nowhere. Generally the cellphone companies didn't use the bunker, they were just bought for the surrounding land.
>So the only place for the profits to go is to bonuses or shareholder profits
Not strictly true - if you're a mutual organisation (e.g. building society in the UK) then you could always reinvest the profits towards lower interest rates for your borrowers. Unfortunately most of these mutuals are converting into banks here in the UK.
For casual gamers, I would say here in the UK that it's the game prices that are too high, and not the console. It'd be nice to pick up games for under a tenner, but even 2nd hand games are still quite pricey. Maybe the US demographic is different.
Which is exactly why I left Plus Net and went to Zen. The moving goalposts on download limits, binary news groups and peak times just got to be a pain. The final straw was when a spammer got hold of their address lists.
Zen tell you what you get (for me, 25Gb a month) and how much you pay if you go over that amount. On the plus side when I moved to Zen my download went from ~1Mbps to ~3Mbps. No idea why Plus Net were capping that.
I was lucky enough to play the "original" Essex MUD back in 1984-86. At that time I was employed working nights as a Network Operator in one of the main NOCs on the UK university network, JANET. With my blistering 9.6k connection to Essex Univ I used to spent FAR too much time as "Quadgop" rather than doing what I should have been doing (i.e. looking after the X.25 switches).
Matt
I'm off to Zen, I requested my MAC (code needed for an ADSL transfer) last night. They're stalling at the moment, trying to get me to move to a new product, but after seeing their service gradually go down the toilet without a corresponding drop in my rental, I decided enough was enough.
It's a shame, because a few years back when I joined them they were an excellent "techie" ISP...but then the binary newsgroups were dropped, next the traffic shaping started (so they could reserve bandwidth for their VoIP service), then the 700Mb loss of email last year, and finally this latest hack.
Call me picky, but....
>Me neither. That's why I write all my email by hand.
You are Chuck Norris and I claim my £5.
I would imagine there will be a special dispensation for US citizens visiting the UK. After all, extradition between the UK and US seems to be a purely one-way process so why should this surveilance be any different?
I was going to post myself on Plusnet, but MrAngryForNoReason did it for me. Plusnet do a very shoddy job of making their AUP understandable or even accessible to their customers. I hesitate to say "users" as it's become clear that their preferred userbase is the occasional surfer who reads a couple of emails occasionally.
I joined them about 3 yrs ago because at that time I considered them one of the most technically aware ISPs - but with the gradual throttling of any protocol that's not HTTP or POP3, and sharp business practices, I'm looking elsewhere, and will probably go with Zen.
Matt
My old company used Marval. Whilst it wasn't the easiest package to configure, it was a lot better than the system we used to use, HEAT.
>If you keep one call-center agent busy on the phone for 15 minutes,
>that's about $3-$4 in salary plus overhead
Nice idea, but my ISP charges a premium rate for their call centre calls.
(approx $1 a minute). So they'd probably make money off you.
I live in Swindon too and decided not to get a card when it transpired that they were planning to charge for the use. Not a great amount, sure, but...
Hmm. Let me think? Charge me to spend my own money? I should coco.
My current ISP blocks NNTP too. Not only did they limit it to 4K from their own servers, they checked your traffic and if you were downloading using NNTP over HTTP (for example, from Easynews) then they limited that too.
Plusnet's customers main gripe is the moving goalposts. They started off advertising "unlimeted broadband". Then they started to limit the amount of traffic you could download in a month. The next step was to limit the amount of P2P traffic you downloaded during "peak time" (which were never really defined properly to the users).
Finally they included Usenet AND FTP usage in the P2P allowance. So, if you happened to download 15Gb a month duing peak times (4pm-12pm) you got limited to 4K/s for those protocols - meaning that you couldn't do things like, say, *upload* to your own website.
Needless to say, I'm looking around for a new provider. Plusnet used to be the best "techie" provider but they've now become as vanilla as you can get, with nothing to differentiate them from any other ISP in the UK. I'm embarassed that I recommended them to friends.
Matt
The converse is as dangerous - my company spends too much money on the desktops (the "ooh, shiny" syndrome where posession of the latest toy is everything). As a result the infrastructure suffers (especially the network). The shiny toys don't work so well then...
I'd like details of these other ISPs, if you could mail me or mention them here I'd be very grateful.
Thanks,
Matt
My employer bans it, and one of the reasons is that *any* type of VoIP system is banned in some of the countries we do business in (UAE being one of them). If the ISP in the region (effectively a state monopoly) found evidence of VoIP on their links, then they'd cut the links, simple as that. Interestingly, we examined the ToS of the link in UAE & we believe it's actually a criminal offence to use VoIP services on the connection we have.
With a platter spinning at such speeds in a lightweight handheld device, would there be any gyroscopic effects when holding the phone?
>Maybe old or poorly shielded microwaves cause a
>problem, but mine which is fairly new has never
>caused a problem.
My brand new 2005 microwave knocked out my Linysys access point on channel 11, but it's fine now I moved it to channel 6. (Harmonics perhaps?)
My 1975-vintage microwave never affected the Linksys. Go figure.
I had no idea how much the difference was between "standard" class & First Class, until I looked at flights from London to LA. With British Airways, two return tickets are about £1000 - but for First Class that rises to a staggering £15000!