Pretty much what has been happening in Brazil for the last 10 years. Telcos get the rules written to support themselves, get tax cuts from the government, and find ways to work around the law without actually doing anything illegal.
I could expand this to pretty much all businesses here: very large profit margins and a government that turns a blind eye to them, since after all, they are paying taxes to keep our bloated government alive.
I notice that people claiming to be "Linux geeks" don't know (or willfully forget) that they can, instead of whining endlessly: 1. remove this ads lens 2. use any desktop environment or distro they damn well please.
But then, this is not as fun as complaining.
100Mbps/10Mbps fiber for R$ 500/month (about USD 250/month).
Currently I have 10Mbps/1Mbps ADSL, but then I need to pay for a phone line that I do not use. Totals about USD 60/month.
And then, I still consider myself lucky: some smaller cities have nothing better than WISPs which cost an arm and a leg and provide very bad service.
Whenever I see any website that rejects passwords longer than X characters, I turn away and go somewhere else.
My smallest password those days is 20 characters with numbers and special characters. I expect pretty much any decent website to accept those.
given its huge population, somewhat surprising is the presence of smaller Third World countries like Brazil and Philiippines that you don't expect to have the broadband speed necessary for a decent BT download.
I am Brazilian. Most people here - at least people living in larger cities - have 1 to 5 Mbps internet at home, which is than enough for occasional torrenting (i.e. not leeching/seeding 24/7).
People with slower connections use 4shared/Rapidshare/etc... to download a low-quality copy of the movie they want to watch, or a 128k MP3 rip of the CD they want to listen to.
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Pretty much what has been happening in Brazil for the last 10 years. Telcos get the rules written to support themselves, get tax cuts from the government, and find ways to work around the law without actually doing anything illegal. I could expand this to pretty much all businesses here: very large profit margins and a government that turns a blind eye to them, since after all, they are paying taxes to keep our bloated government alive.
I notice that people claiming to be "Linux geeks" don't know (or willfully forget) that they can, instead of whining endlessly: 1. remove this ads lens 2. use any desktop environment or distro they damn well please. But then, this is not as fun as complaining.
Then there's Brazil, which makes the USA look very good.
100Mbps/10Mbps fiber for R$ 500/month (about USD 250/month). Currently I have 10Mbps/1Mbps ADSL, but then I need to pay for a phone line that I do not use. Totals about USD 60/month. And then, I still consider myself lucky: some smaller cities have nothing better than WISPs which cost an arm and a leg and provide very bad service.
Whenever I see any website that rejects passwords longer than X characters, I turn away and go somewhere else. My smallest password those days is 20 characters with numbers and special characters. I expect pretty much any decent website to accept those.
given its huge population, somewhat surprising is the presence of smaller Third World countries like Brazil and Philiippines that you don't expect to have the broadband speed necessary for a decent BT download.
I am Brazilian. Most people here - at least people living in larger cities - have 1 to 5 Mbps internet at home, which is than enough for occasional torrenting (i.e. not leeching/seeding 24/7). People with slower connections use 4shared/Rapidshare/etc... to download a low-quality copy of the movie they want to watch, or a 128k MP3 rip of the CD they want to listen to.
as long as a legit response to a problem is "Oh just recompile your kernel," then it is forever destined not to be the everyman's OS.
Kernel recompiles are not needed by 99% of users those days. In fact, the average user will probably never need to compile anything.
No need for pendrive-booting, even: you could just chroot an Ubuntu and use it from within your favorite distro.
From their web site: "Celebrate SFD 2012 on Saturday, September 15th". Too late for lots of people.