This isn't even a "Coming soon to the US, but available elsewhere" story - it's already here and been here...
MTA (telco) started offering TV over DSL a year or so ago - I was one of the early ones to try it out (and see if it compared to my DishTV system). DSL was set to 8Mb d/l speed, there was a gateway on the phone line between the wall and DSL modem to filter out the TV signals, and each converter box had a dedicated 2.5Mb channel, so only 2 boxes allowed. Lots of fiber in the ground to support it, too.
For basic TV (similar to DishTV's $29.99 setup) I paid $120/mo. However, I started with $50/mo 512/128 DSL service, and the extra $$ upped the DSL speed to 4Mb/512 also , which I found nice as I spend more time in front of the PC than in front of the TV...
Quality? Very similar to good streaming video on your PC now. There's a rare skip or bit of artifacting (usually in large black fields on screen), but all in all not too bad. Unfortunately, it's competing with DishTV and cable up here... My DishTV account for $30/mo + DSL/phone for $50/mo = Digital TV at $120/mo. Not good. Cable TV is about the same - $20/mo phone + ($ 80/mo digital cable + 1Mb/256k cable modem) = $120 digital TV...
Shame the price/performance isn't up to snuff... If it was available here for the same $50/mo as DishTV+phone it's be a decent deal...
One other thing has to change before you can make things work - the cable companies need to be able to buy individual channels. Right now they're forced to buy bundles of channels under contractual obligations to offer them certain ways. You can make whatever rules you want, but if they can't unbundle them, then they won't.
DishTV trying to change this was nice, but unfortunately didn't work. As long as someone like Viacom can say "here's what we offer, and here's the price" without any pressure to change, then you aren't going to get unbundled cable.
I have a DishTV subscription, and I'd love to subtract about half of the crap I am forced to have. Perhaps they could allow 1/2 channel credit for a dropped channel, so I could drop two crappy family channels to get one interesting one. I'd go for that...
Obviously that's not the solution these were meant for (unless you can build a new datacenter just to guarantee you can feed power and cold air to them).
This strikes me as the ideal solution for someone needing three or four distinct servers who is currently running only one. You can pull your single server, move data to the first 1/4 and keep running, then build #2 into a DB box, #3 into the secure server and #4 into the main web server, then change #1 over into a "gateway" type box. One of these wouldn't have nearly the problems that a rack-full would...
Of course, the site having noting but a homepage and no specs at all doesn't help their cause much. Even if that's a good price for four servers, the site puts me right off of them.
Actually, I believe the Intel Oversight EO doesn't specifically say that the NSA *can't* collect info in the US, it says something like "the FBI is allowed to and other agencies are prohibited from doing so". The NSA's charter specifically states that unless a law or EO (or whatever) actually says "the NSA is not allowed to..." then that law doesn't apply to them, even if it *does* say that it applies to all other government agencies.
This is a nice out for the government - they can pass a law that says "all government agencies will be prohibited from monitoring cell phones" (for example) and since it says "all agencies" rather than "the NSA" the NSA can still do so legally...
(Used to do communications work for a small NSA branch office. The boss was quite willing to discuss little details like this...)
"makes Intel chips faster"? Not quite - RDRAM performs better on P3's with the L2 cache disabled. So, the memory gets a boost (5-10%) at the cost of a HUGE performance penalty for the CPU (something close to the same effect of putting a Celeron in place of the P3).
What a choice - make your high-price RDRAM perform the same as PC133 SDRAM, or pitiful memory speed but get full performance out of your high-price P3 CPU. Feels like a winner either way:-(
Maybe so, but that's not the problem. The issue is, Rambus is trying to take an equal-performance (and cheaper) alternative to it's product and raise the price through royalties so it's not as competitive on the market.
Rambus claimed that the poor performance on P2's was due to slow CPU speeds and that faster CPU's would show how RDRAM shines. Well, between Tom's Hardware and the last review posted on here (don't have the link-sorry), on identical high-end P3's it's just barely the equal of SDRAM (at over twice the price). It shines in data streaming - one high-latency memory query, then lots of data flows. What SDRAM is good at is little file queries - I want to open a Word doc that's 4k. By the time RDRAM finishes it's slow query my SDRAM has already delivered the page...
If the world was fair, what people would do is boycott buying RDRAM modules, systems, etc. and buy more SDRAM. Enough to offset the higher royalties with economy in volume. Who cares if they're paying royalties - the chip makers are selling lots of SDRAM, there's no demand for RDRAM so they don't produce it, Rambus stock hits the toilet, then the royalties stop when Rambus goes bankrupt.
The world being what it is, the Rambus royalties will price SDRAM almost as high as RDRAM, people will put off buying it "until the price comes back down", by which time RDRAM boards and RIMMS will be more common. Big royalties to Rambus, lots of happy Rambus stockholders, lots of locked-in consumers. Gotta love the 'free-market' economy...
Up here in Alaska there's two types of "salary" - either salaried or exempt. Salaried means you get $X per year for 40-hour weeks (or 50 or whatever your 'normal' hours are); if you work more you get paid more, if you work less you get paid less. Exempt means you get $x per year for X hours per week; if you work more or less it's irrelevant - you still get the same. Difference between hourly and salary is in benefits. Hourly requires NO benefits (although usually there's some sort of benefits involved), while salary has 401(k), medical, etc.
My position is all either hourly or exempt; I'd kill for salaried! I'm very, very tired of hearing "you're exempt - that makes you a highly paid professional" when asked to work extra hours. (FTR I make about $8k under average for my work. Last year they redefined my work to exclude any paperwork, then used the remaining duties to classify my "average peer's salary" in a lower category...The state also had that "highly paid professional" clause under exempt for quite a few years, which is where it originated.)
My girlfriend does similar work for another company and is salaried. Salary is ~$2/hr less than I make, gets same benefits, net pay is about 10%-20% higher due to her employer paying for overtime worked...
Makes sense to have it in there from Corel's point of view, since if you're under 18 it makes you responsible for it, and also if you DO, say, make something proprietary out of GCC (mentioned earlier) and try to sell it the company you try to sell it to SHOULD think "hey, this is a minor, we CAN'T legally buy something from him".
I also saw the GPL as being much closer to "buying" software, rather than "leasing" it like most licenses say. Case could be made that when I downloaded Corel Linux (or Debian or whatever) that I just "bought" it (it was cheap!:-)) and that would make the GPL enforceable on minors...
Interesting note - my Win95 licenses have no such age restrictions in them that I can find, either in the general area, the US area or the Australia/NZ area. Does that mean if you're under 18 and buy Windows you're exempt from the license restrictions?
Makes sense to have it in there from Corel's point of view, since if you're under 18 it makes you responsible for it, and also if you DO, say, make something proprietary out of GCC (mentioned earlier) and try to sell it the company you try to sell it to SHOULD think "hey, this is a minor, we >can't) and that would make the GPL enforceable on minors...
Interesting note - my Win95 licenses have no such age restrictions in them that I can find, either in the general area, the US area or the Australia/NZ area. Does that mean if you're under 18 and buy Windows you're exempt from the license restrictions?
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't even a "Coming soon to the US, but available elsewhere" story - it's already here and been here...
MTA (telco) started offering TV over DSL a year or so ago - I was one of the early ones to try it out (and see if it compared to my DishTV system). DSL was set to 8Mb d/l speed, there was a gateway on the phone line between the wall and DSL modem to filter out the TV signals, and each converter box had a dedicated 2.5Mb channel, so only 2 boxes allowed. Lots of fiber in the ground to support it, too.
For basic TV (similar to DishTV's $29.99 setup) I paid $120/mo. However, I started with $50/mo 512/128 DSL service, and the extra $$ upped the DSL speed to 4Mb/512 also , which I found nice as I spend more time in front of the PC than in front of the TV...
Quality? Very similar to good streaming video on your PC now. There's a rare skip or bit of artifacting (usually in large black fields on screen), but all in all not too bad. Unfortunately, it's competing with DishTV and cable up here... My DishTV account for $30/mo + DSL/phone for $50/mo = Digital TV at $120/mo. Not good. Cable TV is about the same - $20/mo phone + ($ 80/mo digital cable + 1Mb/256k cable modem) = $120 digital TV...
Shame the price/performance isn't up to snuff... If it was available here for the same $50/mo as DishTV+phone it's be a decent deal...
One other thing has to change before you can make things work - the cable companies need to be able to buy individual channels. Right now they're forced to buy bundles of channels under contractual obligations to offer them certain ways. You can make whatever rules you want, but if they can't unbundle them, then they won't.
DishTV trying to change this was nice, but unfortunately didn't work. As long as someone like Viacom can say "here's what we offer, and here's the price" without any pressure to change, then you aren't going to get unbundled cable.
I have a DishTV subscription, and I'd love to subtract about half of the crap I am forced to have. Perhaps they could allow 1/2 channel credit for a dropped channel, so I could drop two crappy family channels to get one interesting one. I'd go for that...
Obviously that's not the solution these were meant for (unless you can build a new datacenter just to guarantee you can feed power and cold air to them).
This strikes me as the ideal solution for someone needing three or four distinct servers who is currently running only one. You can pull your single server, move data to the first 1/4 and keep running, then build #2 into a DB box, #3 into the secure server and #4 into the main web server, then change #1 over into a "gateway" type box. One of these wouldn't have nearly the problems that a rack-full would...
Of course, the site having noting but a homepage and no specs at all doesn't help their cause much. Even if that's a good price for four servers, the site puts me right off of them.
Actually, I believe the Intel Oversight EO doesn't specifically say that the NSA *can't* collect info in the US, it says something like "the FBI is allowed to and other agencies are prohibited from doing so". The NSA's charter specifically states that unless a law or EO (or whatever) actually says "the NSA is not allowed to..." then that law doesn't apply to them, even if it *does* say that it applies to all other government agencies.
This is a nice out for the government - they can pass a law that says "all government agencies will be prohibited from monitoring cell phones" (for example) and since it says "all agencies" rather than "the NSA" the NSA can still do so legally...
(Used to do communications work for a small NSA branch office. The boss was quite willing to discuss little details like this...)
...Apple's TV ad: "Trade in your P2 or P3 RDRAM system and we'll send you a rebate check for 25% off the price of your new G4."
Apple, are you listening? Where do I sign up...
"makes Intel chips faster"? Not quite - RDRAM performs better on P3's with the L2 cache disabled. So, the memory gets a boost (5-10%) at the cost of a HUGE performance penalty for the CPU (something close to the same effect of putting a Celeron in place of the P3).
:-(
What a choice - make your high-price RDRAM perform the same as PC133 SDRAM, or pitiful memory speed but get full performance out of your high-price P3 CPU. Feels like a winner either way
Maybe so, but that's not the problem. The issue is, Rambus is trying to take an equal-performance (and cheaper) alternative to it's product and raise the price through royalties so it's not as competitive on the market.
Rambus claimed that the poor performance on P2's was due to slow CPU speeds and that faster CPU's would show how RDRAM shines. Well, between Tom's Hardware and the last review posted on here (don't have the link-sorry), on identical high-end P3's it's just barely the equal of SDRAM (at over twice the price). It shines in data streaming - one high-latency memory query, then lots of data flows. What SDRAM is good at is little file queries - I want to open a Word doc that's 4k. By the time RDRAM finishes it's slow query my SDRAM has already delivered the page...
If the world was fair, what people would do is boycott buying RDRAM modules, systems, etc. and buy more SDRAM. Enough to offset the higher royalties with economy in volume. Who cares if they're paying royalties - the chip makers are selling lots of SDRAM, there's no demand for RDRAM so they don't produce it, Rambus stock hits the toilet, then the royalties stop when Rambus goes bankrupt.
The world being what it is, the Rambus royalties will price SDRAM almost as high as RDRAM, people will put off buying it "until the price comes back down", by which time RDRAM boards and RIMMS will be more common. Big royalties to Rambus, lots of happy Rambus stockholders, lots of locked-in consumers. Gotta love the 'free-market' economy...
Up here in Alaska there's two types of "salary" - either salaried or exempt. Salaried means you get $X per year for 40-hour weeks (or 50 or whatever your 'normal' hours are); if you work more you get paid more, if you work less you get paid less. Exempt means you get $x per year for X hours per week; if you work more or less it's irrelevant - you still get the same. Difference between hourly and salary is in benefits. Hourly requires NO benefits (although usually there's some sort of benefits involved), while salary has 401(k), medical, etc.
My position is all either hourly or exempt; I'd kill for salaried! I'm very, very tired of hearing "you're exempt - that makes you a highly paid professional" when asked to work extra hours. (FTR I make about $8k under average for my work. Last year they redefined my work to exclude any paperwork, then used the remaining duties to classify my "average peer's salary" in a lower category...The state also had that "highly paid professional" clause under exempt for quite a few years, which is where it originated.)
My girlfriend does similar work for another company and is salaried. Salary is ~$2/hr less than I make, gets same benefits, net pay is about 10%-20% higher due to her employer paying for overtime worked...
Makes sense to have it in there from Corel's point of view, since if you're under 18 it makes you responsible for it, and also if you DO, say, make something proprietary out of GCC (mentioned earlier) and try to sell it the company you try to sell it to SHOULD think "hey, this is a minor, we CAN'T legally buy something from him".
:-)) and that would make the GPL enforceable on minors...
I also saw the GPL as being much closer to "buying" software, rather than "leasing" it like most licenses say. Case could be made that when I downloaded Corel Linux (or Debian or whatever) that I just "bought" it (it was cheap!
Interesting note - my Win95 licenses have no such age restrictions in them that I can find, either in the general area, the US area or the Australia/NZ area. Does that mean if you're under 18 and buy Windows you're exempt from the license restrictions?
Makes sense to have it in there from Corel's point of view, since if you're under 18 it makes you responsible for it, and also if you DO, say, make something proprietary out of GCC (mentioned earlier) and try to sell it the company you try to sell it to SHOULD think "hey, this is a minor, we >can't) and that would make the GPL enforceable on minors...
Interesting note - my Win95 licenses have no such age restrictions in them that I can find, either in the general area, the US area or the Australia/NZ area. Does that mean if you're under 18 and buy Windows you're exempt from the license restrictions?
Actually, when I got it I could tell right off it was bogus - the address they sent it to isn't the same one on file here in my preferences ...
And the ip address of ras1.icp.rssi.ru seemed to be off a little...