Just to compare (not meant to make you guys depressed), in Belgium : 1997 : cable 10Mbps/768kbps (upstream limited to 128kbps) - ADSL 8Mbps/630kbps (limited to 1Mbps/256kbps) 2009 : cable 25Mbps/1Mbps - VDSL2 17Mbps/512kbps
Cable should move to EuroDocsis 3.0 by 2010, allowing for 200Mbps/30Mbps, but in reality they'll cap it, so they can gradually give customers more.
In Belgium, VDSL2 connections are always hooked up to the closest street cabinet, which is usually less than 500m away. At that point, your connection moves on to fiber to the first node (usually 1 o 2 per small town). Bonding six lines is a bit tricky though, as most houses have only 2 pairs connected. Though I wouldn't mind getting those 2 bonded ofcourse;-)
FTTH is not just expensive, it's impractical, since it means opening up not just the streets, but entry points into each house (or worse, appartment buildings that don't have proper tubes). And HDTV looks just fine on VDSL2. 720p is no problem, even while recording 1 channel and watching another one, while surfing the net.
>>>can't legitimately take credit for a previous generations' efforts
Yes we can. We're still paying off the accumulated debt from World War 2 and the Cold War. Our parents and grandparents borrowed the money, and the children are left with the gigantic debt. Yay.
You should visit www.iousathemovie.comthen you'll understand you haven't got a clue where your debt really comes from...
You can remove the 'yet' from your last sentence. Europe will never become more centralized than it is today. Citizens of European nations (Europe as in the content) feel like they've given up enough of their own culture and independence.
Regardless who once invested the money to build Arpanet, the Internet is no longer owned by a single country.
Using the argument 'the US built it'... well, that means Americans shouldn't own the right to use the train, make a phone call, use a petrol engine, etc...
The only right solution is to give international control to all internationally used technologies.
So God wrote the bible ? Oh no, that was written by man... probably someone who was asked 'how did life start ?' and made up a story, which we now know as Genesis. Understandably, because they didn't have any scientific knowledge that could explain how life began. Now that we do, it's time to realize that the bible teaches morals, science teaches facts.
A collegue started making a lot of phone calls to France a while ago, going from a regular usage of 50eur/month to over 2000eur/month. He was called when his usage was around 500eur and asked to verify his identity (to make sure the phone wasn't stolen). This was the perfect way to ensure the usage was by the owner and was on purpose. They also offered him to switch to a different contract, which made calls to France about 75% cheaper.
$4 billion/year to keep the fleet up and running ? Let's see... $200 million/day spent on the war in Iraq... that's 20 days of war to keep the Space Shuttle in the air. How about pulling out of Iraq and adding a few Space Shuttles, a mission to the moon, one to Mars... and I'm sure there will be lots of research centres that will know what to do with the other $50 billion or so... maybe find a cure for cancer ? Or is it worth more to fight a hopeless war than to cure cancer ? Some people's dumbness never ceases to amaze me...
Most cable and DSL providers in Belgium offer 15-20GByte/month and then charge extra per additional GByte if you're willing to pay. If not, they put you on a 56k connection.
And all of that costs a whopping 35EUR/month.
So trust me, 250GByte/month is more than most people get !
No idea what Belgian providers are thinking : they increase the speed (20Mbit/sec on cable and 17Mbit/sec on VDSL2), but the limits don't go up at the same rate !
What's the point of spending millions to find out why exactly a building right next to the WTC came down on 9/11 ? Add this money to the billions the US spends each month on an unending war and you can see why the US economy is going down. Maybe it's time America started focusing on its own people a little more, instead of pretending to be 'the greatest country in the world', while at the same time having more and more people being poorer than most people in former Eastern Europe.
Odd thought : what would the discovery of alien life do for intelligent design ? Basically, it would destroy their entire way of thinking, right ? This would prove that life has evolved on other planets and, as such, God did not just create earth and created all animals here.
As for scientology, I have no idea, and don't even want to know;-)
Maybe the big announcement is that Mars is covered with gold dust particles... or worse : plutonium. Maybe we'll now discover the Martians used nuclear bombs on eachother and thus destroyed their civilization. Maybe we need to dig under the sand for ultra modern technology;-)
Nothing new as far as I'm concerned. The Belgian Kinepolis group has been offering digital cinema for quite some time now. The results are quite impressive... never seen such a great quality ! More info on the Kinepolis website
Although it's a Belgian invention, these traffic systems are operational since 1993-1994 in Belgium... I'm not sure what the big fuzz is. In the town where I live, we've had several of these lights, detecting when cars get close to the light and either switching it to green or keeping it green. It has a priority for each street and each hour of the day. Recently, they've also implemented anti-speeding sensors, which turn the light to red when you're driving faster than the speed limit. There's a sign at the traffic light saying "Red light ? You're probably drove too fast !". Can be annoying when the person behind you is speeding and you're not, but in general it does slow people down. Again, I'm not sure what the fuzz is all about...
no portscan : great
no probe : great
no webservers : we've seen it before...
no viruses : great
no anonymous e-mail : what would you need that for ? To send those viruses ?
no porno : oh well... ok, maybe not good
no vulgar or hateful stuff : freedom of speech ?
no encouraging of illegal stuff : sure... nice rule
right to enter home and monitor activities : BAD STUFF !
share information : BAD STUFF
no spam : PERFECT !
Slashdot Mirror
Just to compare (not meant to make you guys depressed), in Belgium :
1997 : cable 10Mbps/768kbps (upstream limited to 128kbps) - ADSL 8Mbps/630kbps (limited to 1Mbps/256kbps)
2009 : cable 25Mbps/1Mbps - VDSL2 17Mbps/512kbps
Cable should move to EuroDocsis 3.0 by 2010, allowing for 200Mbps/30Mbps, but in reality they'll cap it, so they can gradually give customers more.
In Belgium, VDSL2 connections are always hooked up to the closest street cabinet, which is usually less than 500m away. At that point, your connection moves on to fiber to the first node (usually 1 o 2 per small town). ;-)
Bonding six lines is a bit tricky though, as most houses have only 2 pairs connected. Though I wouldn't mind getting those 2 bonded ofcourse
FTTH is not just expensive, it's impractical, since it means opening up not just the streets, but entry points into each house (or worse, appartment buildings that don't have proper tubes).
And HDTV looks just fine on VDSL2. 720p is no problem, even while recording 1 channel and watching another one, while surfing the net.
>>>can't legitimately take credit for a previous generations' efforts
Yes we can. We're still paying off the accumulated debt from World War 2 and the Cold War. Our parents and grandparents borrowed the money, and the children are left with the gigantic debt. Yay.
You should visit www.iousathemovie.comthen you'll understand you haven't got a clue where your debt really comes from...
You can remove the 'yet' from your last sentence. Europe will never become more centralized than it is today. Citizens of European nations (Europe as in the content) feel like they've given up enough of their own culture and independence.
Give it to the UN, not just 1 country.
Regardless who once invested the money to build Arpanet, the Internet is no longer owned by a single country.
Using the argument 'the US built it'... well, that means Americans shouldn't own the right to use the train, make a phone call, use a petrol engine, etc...
The only right solution is to give international control to all internationally used technologies.
So God wrote the bible ?
Oh no, that was written by man... probably someone who was asked 'how did life start ?' and made up a story, which we now know as Genesis.
Understandably, because they didn't have any scientific knowledge that could explain how life began. Now that we do, it's time to realize that the bible teaches morals, science teaches facts.
A collegue started making a lot of phone calls to France a while ago, going from a regular usage of 50eur/month to over 2000eur/month. He was called when his usage was around 500eur and asked to verify his identity (to make sure the phone wasn't stolen).
This was the perfect way to ensure the usage was by the owner and was on purpose. They also offered him to switch to a different contract, which made calls to France about 75% cheaper.
So it CAN be done right...
$4 billion/year to keep the fleet up and running ? Let's see... $200 million/day spent on the war in Iraq... that's 20 days of war to keep the Space Shuttle in the air.
How about pulling out of Iraq and adding a few Space Shuttles, a mission to the moon, one to Mars... and I'm sure there will be lots of research centres that will know what to do with the other $50 billion or so... maybe find a cure for cancer ? Or is it worth more to fight a hopeless war than to cure cancer ?
Some people's dumbness never ceases to amaze me...
Most cable and DSL providers in Belgium offer 15-20GByte/month and then charge extra per additional GByte if you're willing to pay. If not, they put you on a 56k connection.
And all of that costs a whopping 35EUR/month.
So trust me, 250GByte/month is more than most people get !
No idea what Belgian providers are thinking : they increase the speed (20Mbit/sec on cable and 17Mbit/sec on VDSL2), but the limits don't go up at the same rate !
Belgium :
- Cable : 20Mbps down / 1Mbps up
- ADSL2+ : 24Mbps down / 3Mbps up
- VDSL2 : 17Mbps down / 400Kbps up
All limited ofcourse, because the networks could handle a lot more, but the 2 incumbant providers refuse to open the network further.
We also have WiMax, but it's slow and unstable according to a few users I know... and P2P is prohibited on WiMax...
What's the point of spending millions to find out why exactly a building right next to the WTC came down on 9/11 ?
Add this money to the billions the US spends each month on an unending war and you can see why the US economy is going down.
Maybe it's time America started focusing on its own people a little more, instead of pretending to be 'the greatest country in the world', while at the same time having more and more people being poorer than most people in former Eastern Europe.
Odd thought : what would the discovery of alien life do for intelligent design ? Basically, it would destroy their entire way of thinking, right ?
This would prove that life has evolved on other planets and, as such, God did not just create earth and created all animals here.
As for scientology, I have no idea, and don't even want to know ;-)
Maybe the big announcement is that Mars is covered with gold dust particles... or worse : plutonium. ;-)
Maybe we'll now discover the Martians used nuclear bombs on eachother and thus destroyed their civilization. Maybe we need to dig under the sand for ultra modern technology
.com, .net, .org are not US domains, they're international...
Nothing new as far as I'm concerned. The Belgian Kinepolis group has been offering digital cinema for quite some time now. The results are quite impressive... never seen such a great quality ! More info on the Kinepolis website
Although it's a Belgian invention, these traffic systems are operational since 1993-1994 in Belgium... I'm not sure what the big fuzz is. In the town where I live, we've had several of these lights, detecting when cars get close to the light and either switching it to green or keeping it green. It has a priority for each street and each hour of the day.
Recently, they've also implemented anti-speeding sensors, which turn the light to red when you're driving faster than the speed limit. There's a sign at the traffic light saying "Red light ? You're probably drove too fast !". Can be annoying when the person behind you is speeding and you're not, but in general it does slow people down.
Again, I'm not sure what the fuzz is all about...
no portscan : great no probe : great no webservers : we've seen it before... no viruses : great no anonymous e-mail : what would you need that for ? To send those viruses ? no porno : oh well... ok, maybe not good no vulgar or hateful stuff : freedom of speech ? no encouraging of illegal stuff : sure... nice rule right to enter home and monitor activities : BAD STUFF ! share information : BAD STUFF no spam : PERFECT !