Ditto, almost verbatim. I'm using an Asus EEE 901, I didn't have any issues setting up or using the mouse under KDE 4.2.2 (Kubunu 9.04). All four buttons set up correctly without my doing anything special other than pairing it.
NETCRAFT:
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead! CUSTOMER:
Here's one. NETCRAFT:
Ninepence. NETBSD:
I'm not dead! NETCRAFT:
What? CUSTOMER:
Nothing. Here's your ninepence. NETBSD:
I'm not dead! NETCRAFT:
'Ere. He says he's not dead! CUSTOMER:
Yes, he is. NETBSD: Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
I'm not! NETCRAFT:
He isn't? CUSTOMER:
Well, he will be soon. He's very ill. NETBSD:
I'm getting better! CUSTOMER:
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment. NETCRAFT:
Oh, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations. NETBSD:
I don't want to go on the cart! CUSTOMER:
Oh, don't be such a baby. NETCRAFT:
I can't take him. NETBSD:
I feel fine! CUSTOMER:
Well, do us a favour. NETCRAFT:
I can't. CUSTOMER:
Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long. NETCRAFT:
No, I've got to go to FreeBSD. They've lost nine today. CUSTOMER:
Well, when's your next round? NETCRAFT:
Thursday. NETBSD:
I think I'll go for a walk. CUSTOMER:
You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do? NETBSD: [singing]
I feel happy. I feel happy.
[whop] CUSTOMER:
Ah, thanks very much. NETCRAFT:
Not at all. See you on Thursday. CUSTOMER:
Right. All right.
[howl]
[clop clop clop]
Who's that, then? NETCRAFT:
I dunno. Must be Tux. CUSTOMER:
Why? NETCRAFT:
He hasn't got shit all over him.
What I don't understand is why no one is talking about slapping on solar cells on EV's or plug in hybrids. If it extends your range in sunny states like Arizona, why not? And million of Americans don't have offstreet parking or garages where they can plug their cars in, so might as well let them charge up if they have to park on the side of the road. I'm sure there are some technical hurdles, but that hasn't been a deterrent to EV development.
Simple math. Look at the total surface area available, realizing no one wants to drive a wedge of cheese shaped car. All those curves mean the sun is going to be at the wrong angle for optimum results. And considering you aren't going to be able to use sun tracking, they are always going to be off-angle. Then look at the load drawn by the bank of batteries and even the best solar cells wouldn't really make any serious difference. Have you ever charged a car battery using a plug-in charger? Solar cells would be the equivalent of the cheapest unit you could buy on the lowest setting...and then some. Finally, compare the cost involved and the point becomes moot. The car would jump from $40K to $60K+.
A better bet would be to put solar cells on the roof of your house/garage to supplement your power usage. For those that don't have off-street parking, I see a market for charging stations and battery swap stations. Sort of like they do with propane bottles now.
Has anyone in the/. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server?
I'm almost certain that running a server would be against the ToS, and yes it is fairly easy to detect. Hmmm...incoming Port 80/443 traffic...
I know a couple people who've switched to mobile broadband for their main link, but they are not heavy users. Checking e-mail, searching Google, general web browsing, yes. Frequent streaming media? Not unless it is postage stamp sized.
And Cricket's data plan isn't 3G so it would be a dog.
We're a Democratic Republic. Spare us from the pedants who think democracy == pure democracy.
And Democratic Republic is redundant. We elect representatives to run government as opposed to running it directly. I'm being pedantic because people like to use phrases like "we're a Democracy, let's vote on it!" and that isn't true. Referendums are rare in this country and aren't always binding. We're a Republic, which means we elect people to make decisions for us. If they don't do a good job, we're supposed to elect different ones. We don't directly run the government or vote on most laws.
Wait, so we're supposed to tax businesses now? Wouldn't you be hopping up and down over that in any other context?
It depends on the amount of tax. In most cases, no. I'm not saying get rid of all taxes. There are legitimate functions of government and they have always been supported by taxes and tariffs. I just prefer smaller and more local government.
Slashtards said the same thing about the iPhone upon it's release, it's too expensive, waaaaaa - and it sold out anyway. So the Volt is projected to cost $40,000 or more - LOTS of cars are sold at that price. And when - not if - gas rises to $4 a gallon again, being able to save $150 per month in fuel costs will take a big bite out of those monthly car payments.
Surprise, surprise, we agree. Take some aspirin for your head and re-read what I wrote. It was the gov't that decided that the Volt would be DOA because of the price, not the market. Honestly, I'd be interested in an electric car at that price depending on several other variables. Hell, if I had the money, I'd be happy to pay the $100K+ for a Tesla!
We're getting there on electric cars, but the gov't is planning on forcing the issue now. Are they also going to subsidize the needed electric infrastructure upgrades? What about battery technology? Planning on invading Chile and Bolivia for lithium supplies?
The entire thing reminds me of dealing with a corporate executive who comes into my office after a long-distance flight. He read some article in an in-flight magazine about some pie-in-the-sky technology and WANTS IT NOW! Since he has no grasp of the details, the infrastructure or anything else, it ends up being one giant money pit. That is how I see the gov't bit with the auto industry, except with an almost unlimited pit in which to throw OUR money.
And "find another way to pay for it" was my point. They're not being honest in the cost of the vehicles when trying to make them "cheap". Soon they'll have to find another tax to make up for what was lost on gasoline. That was my 3 Card Monty analogy.
The "foreign imperialists" didn't exploit South America without hand-in-hand collusion of the South American governments. The "foreign imperialists" paid tons of money to South American (and African) governments for rights to natural resources. It was the corrupt officials that were more interested in their limos, yachts, palaces and personal wealth than building infrastructure and passing wealth to their peoples. Their own governments are just as guilty, if not more so, than foreign corporations.
Bravo to Bolivia's President Morales for wanting to slow down and study how this is going to affect things. He wants to learn something about the market so he doesn't get screwed by it.
But, they better not wait too long. As the video states, if the battery companies can't get the lithium they will find a different solution. It is really going to suck for Bolivia if the demand for lithium drops because the main use for it no longer needs it. Whale oil, kerosene oil for lamps and bone buttons all come to mind as examples.
Are you referring to the soon-to-be highly valuable skill of odometer (or other mileage sensor) tampering?
Personally, I'm expecting an increase in taxes on electricity. Possibly a second, metered-differently outlet for automobiles. Many cities have this sort of thing for water that is used for outside, like watering lawns and the like. They're metered differently because there is no sewerage charge.
However, knowing the government, I expect them to do both and possibly something else I didn't think of.
Then let's privatize the Fire Department and all other services exclusively run by government.
There are many places in the U.S. that have private fire departments. Many others are contracted out by the government to private businesses, just like ambulance service and many other "public" services. The traditional method has been for government to contract out this way and not set up shop themselves
Or even better, let's put the entire issue to a public vote. This would be the ultimate form of democracy. How about that?
We're not a Democracy, we're a Republic. It is in the Constitution.
Your model doesn't scale. Local governments are Federal tax-exempt. If you start incorporating more and more functions into the local government, the revenue generated from taxes on the private businesses who used to do te job will fall. It is a balancing act. Look to the Federal Highway Trust Fund for an example. When the price of gas jumped to $4 / gallon and all those people cut back on driving, the government didn't have enough money to pay to maintain the Interstates and other roads. Oregon is in a similar situation.
The lying left is using logic like yours to push everyone to electric cars. The current administration already admitted no one is going to buy them at the prices they actually cost. They pointed out the Chevy Volt is basically DOA because of sticker price. So they're going to subsidize it and get them electric cars for "cheap".
Except "cheap" it isn't. Guess what happens to road maintenance when everyone starts driving electric cars? Since the gasoline tax is what pays for all that, they're going to run out of money. And the government will raise other taxes to make up the difference. They're shifting this stuff around like a 3 Card Monty game in hopes people won't notice.
You want service? Pay for it up front by contracting out to a private business who has to pay all the existing taxes, fees (Universal Service Fee anyone?) and costs instead of playing 3 Card Monty with taxes.
No, legally, they are not. The IRS considers them a "government entity", and while they are tax-exempt as such they are NOT a non-profit that qualifies under 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code.
TWC might have difficulty with this because the tax issues they're bitching about aren't exclusive to governments. There is a specific clause in the Internal Revenue Code for non-profit telephone companies -- 501(c)(12) -- that would relate to any private, non-profit entity that wanted to go into business. However, we're talking about more than telephone business here as the city in question is also offering television. That is a different legal entity and can't be a non-profit.
Despite what the Slashdot-socialist crowd thinks, there is a difference between "non-profit" and "tax-exempt". Just because you're chartered as a non-profit doesn't mean you automatically get tax-exempt status.
Or until they decide to abandon polys and go to true solid-object geometry. Computing the intersection of a ray and a flat poly is trivial. Computing the shading/reflection/refraction/etc. on a ray and an arbitrary curve takes significantly more horsepower.
I remember using a program on the Amiga way back when -- Real3D from RealSoft -- that did this. Excellent rendering, but dog slow compared to Lightwave and some others.
Yeah, essentially Google bribed a bunch of spineless quislings and rewrote US Copyright law.
How is that different from anytime it happened in the past? At least with Google I can see the angle of "To promote the progress of science and useful arts..." but I'm having a hard time figuring out how a dead person needs "exclusive rights", much less how they can be inspired to continue to create or discover.
We've already had this discussion. A company improving their service or product offerings by impetus of competition is a fiction. If the government doesn't force them, subsidize it or directly provide it, it won't happen. Period, the end.
You may now commence sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA" until Congress or some other branch of government takes credit for this.
Except that idea is totally false. You have to take into account that bandwidth is -- for the sake of argument -- $0.03 per Gb, but all the sunk costs to recover. The fiber it travels on wasn't free. Nor were the switches, support contract with Cisco (or whomever), electricity to run the switch, salaries for techs, salaries for people who laid all the fiber, government fees, etc.
If Internet costs were $0.03 / Gb, you and I would have one run straight to the house. Except neither of us can (probably) afford the fiber uplink; laying the fiber itself; etc. There is a huge up-front cost to consider. AND there is the idea of saving some of the profits to be used for maintenance and expansion later.
That is like me saying that because I live near Lake Michigan, all my water is super-cheap. All I need to do is run a hose to the lake...and buy a pump; and negotiate right-of-way to my house; and pay for electricity on the pump; and screen the intake; and filter/treat the water; pay taxes; etc.
It doesn't work that way for you and I. You pay for electricity by kWh...volume. You pay for water and sewer by gallon...volume. You pay for natural gas by the cubic foot...volume. The common people aren't big enough to play by the big boy's rules.
No. I'm suggesting they simply tell the truth about the bandwidth. That doesn't cost $1,000 per month.
After working several years for a telecom equipment and services company (Lucent, then Alcatel-Lucent), as well as a couple for a smaller ISP, I'm intimately familiar with over-subscription and how everything works. I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with the inherent dishonesty of their business practices.
We were down there to expand Cricket's network. They were installing switches and towers as fast as they could get the stuff shipped in. Considering the network kept dropping calls from being overloaded during this "heavy growth" period, the 8-hour calls took care of themselves.
Their model was the basic dot-com model. Grab a lot of customers, regardless of profitability, and somehow you'll make money on that. True to the model, the filed for bankruptcy shortly after that (April 2003) and erased a bunch of debts. They re-emerged in 2004 with an actual PROFITABLE business model, which brings us up to today.
When I worked for Lucent as a network engineer, I ended up doing some work for Cricket Wireless down in Fort Lauderdale.
You see, Cricket was started by some wireless guys that looked at the numbers and said "Hey, the average length of a local telephone call is under 3 minutes. The median length is under 1 minute. At those network usage levels, we could start a company giving people UNLIMITED local calls for $20 a month and make a killing!" Right?
Wrong.
I was down there with a couple other engineers to assess how best to upgrade Crickets collapsing network. You see, people figured out that they could buy two of the phones and use them for things like BABY MONITORS! Just dial and drop one in the crib. Don't hang it up and wander around with the other, all over town if you want. It was cheaper, had better sound quality and less interference than normal baby monitors. They were seeing the average call length jump to over an hour, with some peaking at 8-10 hour calls!
Needless to say, this was NOT in their business model. They didn't take into account that the average usage was so low because people had to pay for it.
Just about every other utility -- electricity, gas, water, sewage, garbage -- you pay by volume used. The Internet isn't any different.
Why is it so difficult for people to comprehend that if you use more, you're going to have to pay more?
And why is it so hard for TWC and others to advertise what they actually offer instead of what they know they can't deliver? The word "unlimited" means "no caps" or "without limit". You don't get to redefine it by slapping on some fine print.
Actually, I can walk into a Jeep dealer and get parts for my 1983 Jeep Scrambler. Sometimes they're in stock and sometimes they have to order them. No that I do very often, mind you. Dealers charge 3 to 10 times more than an independent parts store. Only when I wanted the actual OEM gasoline filler hose, pre-bent in some god-forsaken unique shape, did I actually go to a dealer. But in stock it was.
And until 9/11 hijackers always dealt with their hostages humanely -- with a few, isolated exception. They released planes and hostages after getting money, or flown somewhere or the like. And then someone changed the rules.
Depending on the honor of a violent criminal is just asking to be fucked over on a whim.
That'd be great. And I'm not arguing that TWC is not the scum of the Earth. They are.
The blogs and summary were misleading in not mentioning that the city went to the private sector in general, and not just to TWC/Embarq. They found no takers at all, so by all means plow ahead if your citizens want it.
All I want to see is a level playing field. The city has several built-in advantages in the way of tax-exemptions, less bureaucracy in dealing with right-of-way, and the fall back of "if it doesn't pay off, we can always raise taxes". That IS mentioned in the article.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? The first thing that popped into my mind was the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs
Make your joke and take the moderations like a man.
Wouldn't the joke be on you if the the GP was the one female posting to Slashdot?
Ditto, almost verbatim. I'm using an Asus EEE 901, I didn't have any issues setting up or using the mouse under KDE 4.2.2 (Kubunu 9.04). All four buttons set up correctly without my doing anything special other than pairing it.
Just search and replace in a text editor.
And no, there is no check character in HTML.
NETCRAFT:
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER:
Here's one.
NETCRAFT:
Ninepence.
NETBSD:
I'm not dead!
NETCRAFT:
What?
CUSTOMER:
Nothing. Here's your ninepence.
NETBSD:
I'm not dead!
NETCRAFT:
'Ere. He says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER:
Yes, he is.
NETBSD: Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
I'm not!
NETCRAFT:
He isn't?
CUSTOMER:
Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.
NETBSD:
I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER:
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.
NETCRAFT:
Oh, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
NETBSD:
I don't want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER:
Oh, don't be such a baby.
NETCRAFT:
I can't take him.
NETBSD:
I feel fine!
CUSTOMER:
Well, do us a favour.
NETCRAFT:
I can't.
CUSTOMER:
Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
NETCRAFT:
No, I've got to go to FreeBSD. They've lost nine today.
CUSTOMER:
Well, when's your next round?
NETCRAFT:
Thursday.
NETBSD:
I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER:
You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do?
NETBSD: [singing]
I feel happy. I feel happy.
[whop]
CUSTOMER:
Ah, thanks very much.
NETCRAFT:
Not at all. See you on Thursday.
CUSTOMER:
Right. All right.
[howl]
[clop clop clop]
Who's that, then?
NETCRAFT:
I dunno. Must be Tux.
CUSTOMER:
Why?
NETCRAFT:
He hasn't got shit all over him.
What I don't understand is why no one is talking about slapping on solar cells on EV's or plug in hybrids. If it extends your range in sunny states like Arizona, why not? And million of Americans don't have offstreet parking or garages where they can plug their cars in, so might as well let them charge up if they have to park on the side of the road. I'm sure there are some technical hurdles, but that hasn't been a deterrent to EV development.
Simple math. Look at the total surface area available, realizing no one wants to drive a wedge of cheese shaped car. All those curves mean the sun is going to be at the wrong angle for optimum results. And considering you aren't going to be able to use sun tracking, they are always going to be off-angle. Then look at the load drawn by the bank of batteries and even the best solar cells wouldn't really make any serious difference. Have you ever charged a car battery using a plug-in charger? Solar cells would be the equivalent of the cheapest unit you could buy on the lowest setting...and then some. Finally, compare the cost involved and the point becomes moot. The car would jump from $40K to $60K+.
A better bet would be to put solar cells on the roof of your house/garage to supplement your power usage. For those that don't have off-street parking, I see a market for charging stations and battery swap stations. Sort of like they do with propane bottles now.
Has anyone in the /. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server?
I'm almost certain that running a server would be against the ToS, and yes it is fairly easy to detect. Hmmm...incoming Port 80/443 traffic...
I know a couple people who've switched to mobile broadband for their main link, but they are not heavy users. Checking e-mail, searching Google, general web browsing, yes. Frequent streaming media? Not unless it is postage stamp sized.
And Cricket's data plan isn't 3G so it would be a dog.
We're a Democratic Republic. Spare us from the pedants who think democracy == pure democracy.
And Democratic Republic is redundant. We elect representatives to run government as opposed to running it directly. I'm being pedantic because people like to use phrases like "we're a Democracy, let's vote on it!" and that isn't true. Referendums are rare in this country and aren't always binding. We're a Republic, which means we elect people to make decisions for us. If they don't do a good job, we're supposed to elect different ones. We don't directly run the government or vote on most laws.
Wait, so we're supposed to tax businesses now? Wouldn't you be hopping up and down over that in any other context?
It depends on the amount of tax. In most cases, no. I'm not saying get rid of all taxes. There are legitimate functions of government and they have always been supported by taxes and tariffs. I just prefer smaller and more local government.
Slashtards said the same thing about the iPhone upon it's release, it's too expensive, waaaaaa - and it sold out anyway. So the Volt is projected to cost $40,000 or more - LOTS of cars are sold at that price. And when - not if - gas rises to $4 a gallon again, being able to save $150 per month in fuel costs will take a big bite out of those monthly car payments.
Surprise, surprise, we agree. Take some aspirin for your head and re-read what I wrote. It was the gov't that decided that the Volt would be DOA because of the price, not the market. Honestly, I'd be interested in an electric car at that price depending on several other variables. Hell, if I had the money, I'd be happy to pay the $100K+ for a Tesla!
We're getting there on electric cars, but the gov't is planning on forcing the issue now. Are they also going to subsidize the needed electric infrastructure upgrades? What about battery technology? Planning on invading Chile and Bolivia for lithium supplies?
The entire thing reminds me of dealing with a corporate executive who comes into my office after a long-distance flight. He read some article in an in-flight magazine about some pie-in-the-sky technology and WANTS IT NOW! Since he has no grasp of the details, the infrastructure or anything else, it ends up being one giant money pit. That is how I see the gov't bit with the auto industry, except with an almost unlimited pit in which to throw OUR money.
And "find another way to pay for it" was my point. They're not being honest in the cost of the vehicles when trying to make them "cheap". Soon they'll have to find another tax to make up for what was lost on gasoline. That was my 3 Card Monty analogy.
The "foreign imperialists" didn't exploit South America without hand-in-hand collusion of the South American governments. The "foreign imperialists" paid tons of money to South American (and African) governments for rights to natural resources. It was the corrupt officials that were more interested in their limos, yachts, palaces and personal wealth than building infrastructure and passing wealth to their peoples. Their own governments are just as guilty, if not more so, than foreign corporations.
Bravo to Bolivia's President Morales for wanting to slow down and study how this is going to affect things. He wants to learn something about the market so he doesn't get screwed by it.
But, they better not wait too long. As the video states, if the battery companies can't get the lithium they will find a different solution. It is really going to suck for Bolivia if the demand for lithium drops because the main use for it no longer needs it. Whale oil, kerosene oil for lamps and bone buttons all come to mind as examples.
Are you referring to the soon-to-be highly valuable skill of odometer (or other mileage sensor) tampering?
Personally, I'm expecting an increase in taxes on electricity. Possibly a second, metered-differently outlet for automobiles. Many cities have this sort of thing for water that is used for outside, like watering lawns and the like. They're metered differently because there is no sewerage charge.
However, knowing the government, I expect them to do both and possibly something else I didn't think of.
Then let's privatize the Fire Department and all other services exclusively run by government.
There are many places in the U.S. that have private fire departments. Many others are contracted out by the government to private businesses, just like ambulance service and many other "public" services. The traditional method has been for government to contract out this way and not set up shop themselves
Or even better, let's put the entire issue to a public vote. This would be the ultimate form of democracy. How about that?
We're not a Democracy, we're a Republic. It is in the Constitution.
Your model doesn't scale. Local governments are Federal tax-exempt. If you start incorporating more and more functions into the local government, the revenue generated from taxes on the private businesses who used to do te job will fall. It is a balancing act. Look to the Federal Highway Trust Fund for an example. When the price of gas jumped to $4 / gallon and all those people cut back on driving, the government didn't have enough money to pay to maintain the Interstates and other roads. Oregon is in a similar situation.
The lying left is using logic like yours to push everyone to electric cars. The current administration already admitted no one is going to buy them at the prices they actually cost. They pointed out the Chevy Volt is basically DOA because of sticker price. So they're going to subsidize it and get them electric cars for "cheap".
Except "cheap" it isn't. Guess what happens to road maintenance when everyone starts driving electric cars? Since the gasoline tax is what pays for all that, they're going to run out of money. And the government will raise other taxes to make up the difference. They're shifting this stuff around like a 3 Card Monty game in hopes people won't notice.
You want service? Pay for it up front by contracting out to a private business who has to pay all the existing taxes, fees (Universal Service Fee anyone?) and costs instead of playing 3 Card Monty with taxes.
No, legally, they are not. The IRS considers them a "government entity", and while they are tax-exempt as such they are NOT a non-profit that qualifies under 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code.
TWC might have difficulty with this because the tax issues they're bitching about aren't exclusive to governments. There is a specific clause in the Internal Revenue Code for non-profit telephone companies -- 501(c)(12) -- that would relate to any private, non-profit entity that wanted to go into business. However, we're talking about more than telephone business here as the city in question is also offering television. That is a different legal entity and can't be a non-profit.
Despite what the Slashdot-socialist crowd thinks, there is a difference between "non-profit" and "tax-exempt". Just because you're chartered as a non-profit doesn't mean you automatically get tax-exempt status.
Or until they decide to abandon polys and go to true solid-object geometry. Computing the intersection of a ray and a flat poly is trivial. Computing the shading/reflection/refraction/etc. on a ray and an arbitrary curve takes significantly more horsepower.
I remember using a program on the Amiga way back when -- Real3D from RealSoft -- that did this. Excellent rendering, but dog slow compared to Lightwave and some others.
Yeah, essentially Google bribed a bunch of spineless quislings and rewrote US Copyright law.
How is that different from anytime it happened in the past? At least with Google I can see the angle of "To promote the progress of science and useful arts..." but I'm having a hard time figuring out how a dead person needs "exclusive rights", much less how they can be inspired to continue to create or discover.
We've already had this discussion. A company improving their service or product offerings by impetus of competition is a fiction. If the government doesn't force them, subsidize it or directly provide it, it won't happen. Period, the end.
You may now commence sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA" until Congress or some other branch of government takes credit for this.
Except that idea is totally false. You have to take into account that bandwidth is -- for the sake of argument -- $0.03 per Gb, but all the sunk costs to recover. The fiber it travels on wasn't free. Nor were the switches, support contract with Cisco (or whomever), electricity to run the switch, salaries for techs, salaries for people who laid all the fiber, government fees, etc.
If Internet costs were $0.03 / Gb, you and I would have one run straight to the house. Except neither of us can (probably) afford the fiber uplink; laying the fiber itself; etc. There is a huge up-front cost to consider. AND there is the idea of saving some of the profits to be used for maintenance and expansion later.
That is like me saying that because I live near Lake Michigan, all my water is super-cheap. All I need to do is run a hose to the lake...and buy a pump; and negotiate right-of-way to my house; and pay for electricity on the pump; and screen the intake; and filter/treat the water; pay taxes; etc.
Infrastructure costs are a bitch.
It doesn't work that way for you and I. You pay for electricity by kWh...volume. You pay for water and sewer by gallon...volume. You pay for natural gas by the cubic foot...volume. The common people aren't big enough to play by the big boy's rules.
If you did as what you suggested...
No. I'm suggesting they simply tell the truth about the bandwidth. That doesn't cost $1,000 per month.
After working several years for a telecom equipment and services company (Lucent, then Alcatel-Lucent), as well as a couple for a smaller ISP, I'm intimately familiar with over-subscription and how everything works. I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with the inherent dishonesty of their business practices.
We were down there to expand Cricket's network. They were installing switches and towers as fast as they could get the stuff shipped in. Considering the network kept dropping calls from being overloaded during this "heavy growth" period, the 8-hour calls took care of themselves.
Their model was the basic dot-com model. Grab a lot of customers, regardless of profitability, and somehow you'll make money on that. True to the model, the filed for bankruptcy shortly after that (April 2003) and erased a bunch of debts. They re-emerged in 2004 with an actual PROFITABLE business model, which brings us up to today.
When I worked for Lucent as a network engineer, I ended up doing some work for Cricket Wireless down in Fort Lauderdale.
You see, Cricket was started by some wireless guys that looked at the numbers and said "Hey, the average length of a local telephone call is under 3 minutes. The median length is under 1 minute. At those network usage levels, we could start a company giving people UNLIMITED local calls for $20 a month and make a killing!" Right?
Wrong.
I was down there with a couple other engineers to assess how best to upgrade Crickets collapsing network. You see, people figured out that they could buy two of the phones and use them for things like BABY MONITORS! Just dial and drop one in the crib. Don't hang it up and wander around with the other, all over town if you want. It was cheaper, had better sound quality and less interference than normal baby monitors. They were seeing the average call length jump to over an hour, with some peaking at 8-10 hour calls!
Needless to say, this was NOT in their business model. They didn't take into account that the average usage was so low because people had to pay for it.
Just about every other utility -- electricity, gas, water, sewage, garbage -- you pay by volume used. The Internet isn't any different.
Why is it so difficult for people to comprehend that if you use more, you're going to have to pay more?
And why is it so hard for TWC and others to advertise what they actually offer instead of what they know they can't deliver? The word "unlimited" means "no caps" or "without limit". You don't get to redefine it by slapping on some fine print.
Actually, I can walk into a Jeep dealer and get parts for my 1983 Jeep Scrambler. Sometimes they're in stock and sometimes they have to order them. No that I do very often, mind you. Dealers charge 3 to 10 times more than an independent parts store. Only when I wanted the actual OEM gasoline filler hose, pre-bent in some god-forsaken unique shape, did I actually go to a dealer. But in stock it was.
Damn! I read that as prison skank was was looking for my credit card! :-)
And until 9/11 hijackers always dealt with their hostages humanely -- with a few, isolated exception. They released planes and hostages after getting money, or flown somewhere or the like. And then someone changed the rules.
Depending on the honor of a violent criminal is just asking to be fucked over on a whim.
That'd be great. And I'm not arguing that TWC is not the scum of the Earth. They are.
The blogs and summary were misleading in not mentioning that the city went to the private sector in general, and not just to TWC/Embarq. They found no takers at all, so by all means plow ahead if your citizens want it.
All I want to see is a level playing field. The city has several built-in advantages in the way of tax-exemptions, less bureaucracy in dealing with right-of-way, and the fall back of "if it doesn't pay off, we can always raise taxes". That IS mentioned in the article.