There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Regardless of who's statistics you look at, the truth is irrefutable: Social Security DEPENDS on the concept of todays worker's paying for today's retirees. The problem is, in the next 10-30 years there will be many, many more retirees than there will be workers. The simple law of supply and demand says that if you have more consumers than providers, one of the following MUST happen:
1. Benefits will be decreased. 2. The eligibility age will be increased. 3. Taxes will be raised.
Social Security DOES NOT WORK under the circumstances it is soon to be in. The rate of return on your dollars invested is lower than the absolute LOWEST PERFORMING mutual fund you can possibly find.
Also, your blaming Bush for the current ills is somewhat specious. First off, there's such a thing as economic inertia. Bush cannot snap his fingers, sign a bill, and put the economy into a tailspin (or revive it, for that matter). These things take time. If you prefer some unarguable figures, go to www.omb.gov and note that the "largest peacetime economic expansion in history" did not begin under Clinton, or even Bush #1...it began under Reagan! In his second term, not his first! You cannot argue these figures, they are true! The corrollary is, Bush #2's decision to lower taxes and/or give refunds may have SHORT TERM negative implications but long term POSITIVE results. If you've ever done any investing you know that to get the biggest gains you generally have to deal with negative growth for the first few quarters or years. If you don't know this, you've obviously not spent as much time RESEARCHING economics as you have spent SMOLDERING about Bush.
And I spent time in those "crap jobs" myself when I was in college. After college I got a menial, crappy sysadmin job. I worked hard, and now after 18 years of effort I am an Information Technology Director in charge of all the assets of a $1 billion local airline. I make over $125,000 per year. I live in a nice home, I have a wife and two kids, and I drive a nice car. I have enough socked away for retirement that I can retire early, pay for my daughter's weddings (when she's old enough), and to pay for college.
No one helped me do this. Nobody from "the community" gave me one damn dollar. I worked my way through college, did not get a scholarship OR a student loan. My divorced parents had no money and paid for nothing. I bought my own first car with money I saved working two summers on a construction site.
My point? I don't believe it for one second that it's not possible to become a success in this world. It is hard, yes. It requires perserverance, hard work, and good decision making skills. It requires discipline and maturity, something not many folks have these days. And those that lack it always blame others for their misfortune. I'M NOT BUYING IT. It's full of crap, a "get out of jail free" card for the lazy and irresponsible.
I'm NOT special. I'm not some super genius whiz kid who graduated college at age 12. I didn't come from a silver spoon home. I'm not a trust fund baby. I didn't take advantage of any good 'ole boy networks to get where I am. I *am* where I am because *I* made it happen. I DIDN'T wait for luck to come calling, I went out and MADE it happen. If *I* can do it, anyone can do it. And I am damn well entitled to enjoy the fruits of my labors without being given a guilt trip by the damn "less fortunate" out there.
Why the love? Perhaps because AMD has brought something to the table that was long lacking in the hardware scene: competition for Intel.
Seems to me that Intel used to spend months, even YEARS between significant speed increases of their processors. How long to go from a 486/33Mhz to a DX2/50? How long from the 486 to the Pentium? The Pentium Pro? Before AMD was on the scene Intel would milk every processor for a long, long time. People would pay through the nose for Intel chips. Intel's profit margins were grossly higher than anyone else's in the industry.
Now comes AMD, bringing similar (sometimes GREATER) performance than Intel chips at a FRACTION of Intel's price. A quick check of Pricewatch shows an Athlon 2100+ going for $177, while Intel's 2.2Ghz P4 (the likeliest competitor) is going for $238. The situation was even more out of wack last week until Intel lowered pricing. Do you think for one minute Intel lowered prices out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course they didn't. They did it because Athlons had been grossly undercutting them in price and performing every bit as well as Intel's finest.
Your predictions on the pricing of the Opteron are not valid as there will BE no 800Mhz Opteron. The Opteron is most likely going to debut around 1.5Ghz, give or take a couple of hundred Mhz. It will most likely cost twice what a 1.6Ghz P4 is costing right now, but that'll be just fine as it will most likely OUTPERFORM that 1.6Ghz P4 by about two to one. Things will be much closer with the Northwood B chips, but no matter what, AMD will almost certainly undercut Intel in pricing while delivering the same (within 10%) performance.
Face it: Intel is used to high margins and is unwilling to cut their pricing far enough to put AMD in the coffin. They are running on brand name and little else right now. If the situations were reversed and AMD had the household name and Intel was the relative unknown, does anyone for one moment think that anyone in their right mind would pay the lofty prices Intel is commanding right now? Of course not.
>True. On of the fundamental differences in >European and American culture. Not a bad thing >in my opinion. I never understood this "don't >trust your government"-attitude some Americans >have.
This is hardly the place to get into it in detail, but it is a major difference. I know why I don't trust government, but I don't know why you would trust it. I view government as a necessary evil, which means that prudence to me dictates as little government as necessary. I do not view government as an instrument for moral good, but only as an instrument to prevent harm. I value my freedom from coercion, and I deeply resent the already large amount of interference that the US government has in my life (but I recognize the need for that government, of course).
I can tell you why there is a healthy need for a distrust of government: the use of force to achieve a goal.
Government, by its very nature, has the ability to use force on YOU to accomplish its goals. If the government decides to imprison you, they can do so at a whim, EVEN WITH A CONSTITUTION. The only thing keeping government powers in check is the willful outrage of the public -- the EXPECTATION that if the government DID start tromping all over citizen rights that the populace would revolt, or riot, or perhaps even "vote the bums out of office" (with the latter not being much of a threat to a truly aggresive government). Even Lincoln, a huge proponent of the Union, suspended habeus corpus. Go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Government is the only legal entity that can deprive you of life, liberty, or your pursuit of happiness. And they get to set the rules by which they operate. True, in an enlightened civilization this kind of abuse is rare, but it could happen anywhere, anytime, historical documents like The Constitution be damned. You could be killed tomorrow by the government, and years later the courts could decide that it was illegal. Someone might be punished, apologies could be made, money may even change hands betwixt your survivors and the government -- but you'd still be dead.
This may sound anti-government, but that's not my stance. "I love my country, I fear my government". We should always have a healthy distrust of any organization that wields power over our individual freedoms. This SHOULD be natural, but apathy and complacency generally work against these instincts.
Remember this: no person, no entity, no organization, NOTHING on this Earth, has your best interests in mind more than YOU. No one is better equipped to look out for you and what you want than you. YOU are BORN with freedom. Every law that exists beyond that is a restriction on said freedom. No one should take that lightly.
Europeans have (IMO) become quite used to a very authoritative governmental structure, so it's apparently easy for them to accept the idea that good 'old big government is quite correct to tell them what to do, when they can do it, and how they have to go about it. The U.S. was FOUNDED on the very principle that when it comes to your personal freedoms, NOBODY has the right to tell you what to do unless exercising your freedom somehow impinges on someone else's freedom. True, we have strayed far from that in the last half century, much to my/our chagrin, but it IS what the founding fathers had in mind.
NASA already has materials that would be used to protect astronauts on such a long voyage. While cosmic rays are pretty much impossible to stop, they are somewhat rare (on a solar scale). Solar flares would be a huge problem, but NASA has come up with a "safe area" inside any proposed Mars craft that the crew could go to during intense flares. The shielding was (IIRC) a type of lead foam composite that provided excellent protection for much lower weight than solid lead.
And let's not forget that even though the ISS, Mir, and Skylab were all within the protection of Earth's magnetosphere, astronauts have been exposed to the Van Allen belts before and shielding protected them adequately. This isn't an insurmountable problem by a long shot.
We aren't doing it here because too many cheaper alternatives are readily available, by which I mean fossil fuels and such. Solar power may be technologically possible, even practical, but until it's cheaper than burning million-year-old fermented dinosaur guts, it's just not going to happen here.
On Mars, however, there (presumably) are no fossil fuels, no biomass, not even nuclear power plants (yet). Astronauts would have to take some sort of relatively light, transportable, and RENEWABLE power source with them. This boils down (no pun intended) to just two things: fuel cells with solar power regeneration, or fuel cells with nuclear power regeneration. The former would be lighter and cheaper, but may not generate enough power (Mars IS further from the sun than Earth, remember?). Nuclear would be the best way to go since it would work day or night and could conceivably run for years without refueling. It would, however, be heavy and expensive.
Ah, I see you too have fallen for the urban legend of the microwave oven jammer. I believe this was started sometime during the Serbian conflicts. It's a sham, a fabrication. Furthermore, it's ludicrous.
First, military radars and jamming devices operate on known frequencies. Even frequency agile systems operate within known boundaries. So do microwave ovens, albeit completely different ones. Nobody's going to mistake a leaky oven for an air search radar.
Second, microwave ovens do not have the radiative power to even attempt such a stunt. They are designed to work in a very small, enclosed space. Pointing an open oven at the sky will not produce enough of a signal to even warrant attention. You forget that microwave ovens do NOT heat food, they heat water molecules contained in the food. The atmosphere is thick with water vapor and would disperse any radiation long before it reached a plane at altitude.
Smart weapons are NOT as easily avoidable as dumb ones. Just ask Saddam -- while you still can!
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a "home-on-jam" mission. Our current HARM (High speed Anti-Radiation Missle) missle homes in on radar emissions, but can also be set to home in on jammers. The jammer then has two options: stop the jamming or run away very, very fast. Cruise missles can be similarly equipped, and with a cluster munitions dispenser even a widely disperse array of jammers could be easily, cheaply, and (most importantly) safely taken out.
Even turning off the jammer (or radar) would be somewhat pointless, as nearly all of our anti-radiation missles store the location of the last known emitter and home in on it anyway. A little less accurate, perhaps, but with a 500kg warhead you can miss by quite a bit and still take out your target.
Wish we'd had these when I was in the Marines.
Re:Did anyone else notice the errors?
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I did look it up. Why don't you do yourself a favor and head on over to www.m-w.com before spouting something you don't seem to know much about.
[quoted from m-w.com] One entry found for hyperbaric.
Main Entry: hyperbaric Pronunciation: "hI-p&r-'bar-ik Function: adjective Etymology: hyper- + bar- + 1-ic Date: 1962 : of, relating to, or utilizing greater than normal pressure (as of oxygen) - hyperbarically/-i-k(&-)lE/ adverb
While you may not be able to use the lobby for such activities, you certainly can do it off campus if you like. It's something called "free speech"...perhaps you've heard of it?
No, you read too much into what I was saying. I never said anything about anyone asking him not to call again. Obviously if someone does something repeatedly after you've told them to stop then they're in the wrong, but that wasn't the point. The point is, in the absence of anyone telling him to stop (i.e. the first "set" of phone calls), he could call anyone, anytime, and say pretty much anything (within libel and defamation boundaries) and it would be legal. Same thing goes for snail mail.
Let's suppose for a moment that Mr. Hamidi hadn't used email but instead used either snail mail or (gasp) the telephone. Let's sidestep the impracticality issue of making 29,000 phone calls six different times and examine the legality only.
It would be perfectly legal for Mr. Hamidi to have called each and every one of these employees and given them a piece of his mind. People can hang up, not be at their desk, or screen calls with caller ID if they wanted to avoid him. I don't think there are many (if any) legal precedents in this area that show this to be illegal.
Ditto for snail mail. If Mr. Hamidi had written 29,000 letters six different times and mailed them all, Intel's mail room would've dutifully processed them (at least the first time). Would Intel have been able to sue Mr. Hamidi for using their mail room illegally? Of course not.
So, how is email any different? Answer: it's not. It's a method of communication. Other methods have existed for centuries and no one has ever sued anyone else for doing so -- until now.
While I have nothing but sympathy for Hamidi and his actions (I've done similar things to past companies I've worked for), a part of me thinks that if Intel wins this one it could set a precedent that would allow us common folk to fight spammers legally in the courts.
If it is shown that you can prosecute someone for damages if they "use" your "assets" without your permission, then unsolicited spam certainly falls into that category. BOOM! With one fell swoop pretty much all spam could be eliminated. The remainder would have to formulate some sort of "opt-in" setup that requires you to give permission before they could send you anything.
I'm sure the spammers would (a) fight this with every breath in their diseased, noxious, puss-filled bodies and (b) try to come up with something that got around it anyway, but DAMN wouldn't it be fun to sue a spammer and WIN more frequently than is common right now?
Did anyone else notice the errors?
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Did anyone notice that spelling errors abound in this "auction"? For crying out loud, they spelled Yuri Gagarin's name wrong! "Yuri Garaging"? WTF is that? "And various Hypobaric Altitude chamber tests"...it's spelled "Hyperbaric", dumbass.
Since the auctioneer can't even spell correctly, do you (a) really believe this is genuine or (b) would you trust someone to shoot you into space if they can't spell correctly? Even if the writer was Russian, don't you think they would've at least run it through a spellchecker first?
I agree, I don't think it's reasonable to ask the programmers to do anything any differently if they're already doing it for free. You do, however, always get what you pay for. Some software is free because people love the software, some is free because you couldn't GET anyone to buy it;-)
I will, however, lay a good bit of blame on the "zealots" and the "community", primarily because they try to promulgate this neato-keano clubby atmosphere where only the geekiest may participate. Anyone who doesn't toe the zealot line is jeered at, called a MS collaborator, or worse. No crticism of Linux is allowed in the Holy Church of Open Source, it seems. While it isn't universal, it is vocal, and I don't see it slowing. If anything, it's spreading.
Criticism is a Good Thing(tm). Instead of lashing out at critics with "U klueless n00bie" and "l33t haX0r" crap, folks should be attempting to address these criticisms. If the criticism is baseless (as a lot of the propaganda is from MS about Linux) then it will fall on its own (lack of) merits. If there is substance to the criticism then it should be addressed, fixed, and distributed. I guess I'm just tired that folks are not willing to accept the idea that Linux is less than 100% perfect (and the converse, which is that MS makes nothing but shit).
Ah, no, I don't agree with this bit. You're saying the reason desktop Linux hasn't taken off yet is because people think Windows is good enough. I disagree - people in my opinion don't think Windows is good enough. In fact, I often here even fairly techno-phobic people bitching about it: they've heard a techie swear at Microsoft when Windows crashed and they think: ah, I just lost all my work, this is the fault of Windows. And often they are right.
Don't confuse "good enough" with "I'm happy with it." The two things are totally different. Windows has made major strides towards being friendlier and a helluva lot more stable with Win2k and XP. We almost never get calls anymore with PC's BSOD'ing or random crashes, and usually when we do it's faulty hardware or some nasty piece of software (usually a game) has mucked everything up. I don't hear the anti-Windows rants from users that much anymore. The bar has been raised.
A person's satisfaction with something that is "good enough" is an interesting phenomenon. Even if someone is only vaguely satisfied with product A, if product A is already entrenched and "familiar", then the average consumer will not be motivated enough to seek out Product B unless Product B offered much more than a casual advantage. It's like processor speeds: most users cannot tell a significant difference in PC speed (measured by application productivity and responsiveness) until machine B is at least twice as fast as machine A. You have to offer a quantum improvement to get them out of their rut. So far, no product has offered that in a package that lacked significant downsides.
Let's not forget that Linux's greatest strength to a geek (flexibility/configurability) is NOT necessarily an advantage to a technophobe. More options intimidates and confuses people. MS has made a lot of money by REMOVING choice from many of its products. People have flocked to them -- it doesn't take a genius to figure out why. Simple is good.
I'd say there are lots of good reasons why desktop Linux hasn't taken off yet. It's not because of any overarching problem with open source development, or any fundamental problem with Linux, it's just not there yet. People consistantly seem to underestimate how much work is required to make a truly easy to use computer, especially when the underlying OS was designed to be powerful first, simple second.
I don't underestimate it. MS has been trying since Windows 3.0 to put a friendlier face on their product (with varying degrees of success). You did, however, hit the nail on the head with your last sentence: Linux was made to be powerful first and easy second. This is going to be a very, very large hurdle to overcome AND leave Linux's strengths intact. What pisses me off so damned much is that the Linux "community" consistently bashes the hell out of anything that attempts to simplify the user experience in Linux. It's almost like geeks demand that everyone else be geeks in order to appreciate Linux. That, folks, is just not going to happen. If that's the price of admission, the majority of people WILL PASS, and Linux will remain a server-only solution for most of corporations. More's the pity, I say. If the zealots would just shut up, things would get a lot better a lot sooner.
Honestly, I didn't try this with my grandmother, I tried it with my father, who's quite the technophobe. I built him a PC, sans operating system, and gave him a bootable WinXP CDROM. Then I sat back and watched.
He booted the CD, answered the questions when it asked (in plain english) and never once had to consult me. After he completed the OS installation, I wiped the hard drive and gave him a RedHat 7.2 CD to try next.
He got that one started, but faltered when it started talking about disk slicing. Many of the options during the install were incomprehensible to him, especially when it came time to select what kind of install he wanted (Workstation? Server? What's the difference?). Setting up X was completely beyond him. He did get a bootable system when all was said and done, but after logging in he had no idea what to do from that point forward without asking for help. I then asked him to set up his dialup networking. He couldn't find anything remotely close to what was needed in order to do that.
Next, just for fun, I gave him a StarOffice CDROM and asked him to install it. He couldn't figure it out. That concluded the excerise, and we re-installed WinXP. I handed him an OfficeXP CDROM and told him to install it. He inserted the CDROM and the installer auto-started. He followed the prompts easily, asked no questions, and got a default OfficeXP install. When he tried to access options that he had not installed by default, it prompted him for the CD and it auto-installed it on the spot. WinXP also auto-detected his modem and walked him through setting up his dialup account. I didn't have to say a word.
Look, I'm no fan of Microsoft, but every day thousands of people have to perform tasks very similar to what I just described. Microsoft HAS made it much easier to do than just about anything else this side of a Mac. Linux is good, and getting better, but it's simply too complex for 75% of the folks out there. They don't know how to install drivers, they don't know what a bootloader is, they can't figure out why in the hell there's no "C:" drive. Many things are too complicated, too underdocumented, or just too well hidden for the average Joe to find. These folks are NOT curious. They don't WANT to go looking for things, they want things put right in front of them. Linux just misses too many opportunities here.
Add to this the fact that no matter what kind of hardware you may buy today, it will certainly come with a Windows driver of some sort. Will it come with a Linux driver? Doubtful, but some do. If they don't, where is a newbie going to go to get one? They don't know where. They have no idea about newsgroups, rpmfind.net, or anything else. They are LOST! And then the cursing starts. And even if they manage to find a driver, installing it is usually a major, major pain. And let's not EVEN get into glibc library dependencies, RPM dependency hell, and all the other wonderful things that WE as techheads have overcome and understand, but that the vast unwashed majority out there simply cannot grasp immediately.
If Linux could just find some way to separate itself from the techno-jargon that rules all the doc files, HOWTO's, and even the damned installers, then that would be a MAJOR step forward. Unfortunately, large swaths of the "Linux community" have fought against precisely that on the grounds that it would "pollute" their operating system. Fine. Then don't complain because Linux isn't taking over the desktop like gangbusters. Keep it in the server room where the geeks are. Pity, because I think Linux can be a significant challenge to Windows on the desktop. Linux just has to go through the same process Microsoft did -- build a friendlier system, little by little. My fear, as I stated earlier, is that this will result in a larger, buggier, more proprietary Linux -- exactly what MS already has.
People are trying to make Linux more "Windows-like" with increasing amounts of window dressing (pun intended) simply because they realize the reality of the world: 95% of the users on this little globe use Windows in some variation or another. They don't care that it's slow (I.T.'s problem), they don't care that it's big (ditto), or expensive (the company paid for it), or proprietary (gee, what's that mean?). They just know that it works well enough for them, and they're used to it. NEVER underestimate the power of familiarity.
Also don't underestimate Microsoft. Regardless of their many faults, they have as of late started spending lots of cash on usability enhancements and studies to see how people like things to be. When I say "people", I don't mean geekheads who tweak kernels and make their own Cat5 cables, I mean the AVERAGE user out there who never, ever wonders where the command line prompt is. Believe it or not, dumbass technophobes outnumber tech-heads by about 50-to-1 if the average company I.T. to user ratio is to be considered. These people can't even program their VCR, what makes you think they can appreciate Linux's CLI?
KDE, Gnome, and all the rest are chasing Microsoft because (deep breath here, folks)...Microsoft is where all the other folks WANT to be! They don't want to be buggy, huge, and expensive, but they do want to take advantage of the huge Windows penetration into the average Joe's computing experience. Linux folk consistently underestimate this factor, and then are puzzled why Linux is not gaining widespread acceptance on the desktop.
Cardinal rule: a product does NOT have to be the BEST at anything, it just has to be GOOD ENOUGH, and CONVENIENT ENOUGH, to get the job done MOST OF THE TIME. OS/2, Novell, Macintosh, UltraSPARC...I could name a thousand technologies that are (or were) the best in their respective classes but failed to achieve market dominance. Intel's processors are not the fastest, they do not have the most elegant design, and they sure as hell aren't the cheapest, but they rule the PC world completely while Alpha and PowerPC occupy niches. Macintosh arguably has one of the better GUI's out there, yet they languish with only about 4% of the market. OS/2 was 32-bits long before WindowsNT was even a glimmer in the eye, but does anybody really run Warp anymore?
Being the BEST at one thing frequently means you've neglected something else somewhere. Linux is a technological marvel in its configurability and flexibility, but has neglected usability with respect to contemporary products from Microsoft and Apple. Don't try to deny it, it's true. When your grandmother can successfully get a PC and load RedHat on it unassisted, and then actually troubleshoot it if something goes wrong (can she understand cronjobs? fsck?), THEN Linux will have risen to the top. Unfortunately, I have a funny feeling that in order to become that user friendly, Linux will have to become bigger, slower, more expensive, and more proprietary. Perhaps it isn't true, but I'd be willing to bet that it is.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - May 14, 2002 - DEA BUSTS SUSPECTED SHARPIE HOARDING OPERATION
DEA spokesman Captain L. I. Bee released information today of a successful "sting" operation where thousands of Fully Automatic Terrorist Media Stealing Assault Weapons (formerly known as Sharpie markers) were being rebranded and sold as hallucinogenic inhalants.
"It was shocking", said Captain L. I. Bee. "Everywhere, on shelves, in boxes, were hundreds, perhaps thousands of these insidious devices. While our friends and colleagues in the media industries are joining hands to stamp out media terrorism, the DEA will not be standing by the wayside in this matter. We have classified Sharpies as a controlled substance and, with time, we expect a mandatory death sentence for anyone caught making, selling, or posessing any such device."
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - May 13, 2002 - RIAA TEAMS UP WITH MPAA TO URGE BAN OF "SHARPIE" STYLE MARKERS.
Local busineses were shocked today when all 2.5 million office supply stores were simultaneously served with a cease and desist order from the RIAA and MPAA banning the sale of any type of felt tip marker. Lobbyists for the media industry successfully bribed and/or threatened a number of local politician, who in turn passed legislation banning the manufacture, sale, or possession of any device on grounds that it violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
"This is a great day for freedom in this country", stated I. P. Freely, chairman of the House Committee On Media Graft and Campaign Finance. "No longer will reckless hoodlums and terrorist be able to hold our great media industries down! Already these 'media terrorists' have been implicated in causing a downturn in music sales, a deepening of the U.S. recession, balding, impotence, and dandruff. These terrorists are a threat to the very foundation of this nation. Have I said terrorist enough yet? Terrorist terrorist terrorist!"
A small group of bewildered secretaries and office workers were rounded up by jackbooted thugs and herded into "terrorist containment vehicles" (which resemble black vans) as they went into office supply stores in downtown L.A. to buy Sharpies. "Obviously these media terrorists were bent on destroying Sony Music with these devices", said one S.W.A.T. team captain as he twirled a Sharpie in front of cameras. "Don't worry folks", he said, "you're safe now."
When interviewed on the street, many people expressed delight at the actions of the MPAA and RIAA.
"I'm so glad that these hideous terr'rist folks have been rounded up", says Eva Beaver. "Who knows what they might've blown up with their terror weapons. Next it could be planes slamming into buildings!"
Opposition to this new law is expected to be light, say prominent Washington lawmakers. Naysayers will be rounded up and shot on sight, further adding to the desire to keep people from pirating music and movies with felt tip pens.
Spokesmen for Sanford, the company that manufactures the Fully Automatic Terrorist Media Stealing Assault Weapon (formerly known as a Sharpie Marker) could not be reached following a disastrous fire and explosion at every single one of their manufacturing plants.
Let's do a little experiement based upon MY experience with my DSL provider.
Back when I had ISDN my average transfer rates were about 13KB (bytes, not bits) per sec, which is just about right given the 128Kb (bits, not bytes) that ISDN is rated at. ISDN is about 2.2x the speed of a 56K modem.
My current transfer rates are around 160KB/sec, meaning I'm a little more than 10x as fast as my ISDN, meaning it's about 25x the speed of your average 56K modem. That's nothing to be ashamed of! It's equal to having a T1 line in my home (downstream only). Last I checked, a T1 line at home would cost me about $800 to install and about $400/month through Worldcom. I'm paying $49/month for the service. No matter how you look at it I'm making out like a bandit here.
And let's consider that many of my friends with cable modems get speeds well in excess of mine (but only if they live in sparsely populated areas). Some of them have reported transfer rates around 300KB/sec, which is about double mine. That would make it about 50x the speed of a 56K modem.
What's odd is that I have yet to hear the magical "100 times faster" ad for any local service providers. All of them use the "up to 50 times faster", and it that they're pretty much on the mark. What provider do you have?
Take a step back and realize that you're getting a tremendous amount of bandwidth over a 56K modem, even if it was only 5x faster. You're paying practically NOTHING for it when you compare it with typical (commercial) internet service with the same bandwidth. If you want to gripe about something, gripe about how often it goes down (T1's almost NEVER go down, part of what you pay extra for), or the crappy customer service, or whatever, but griping about being "only" 10x faster than a modem is petulant. There are lots of people out there who would KILL to have 10x speed as they anxiously await broadband. I know, I was one of them until about 6 months ago.
Some people, like you - maybe content with being stuck with crappy service - FUCK IT - Ill get the service I demand and most importantly, their advertising monkeys promised.
And precisely how do you propose to get the "service you demand"? Hack your modem and you'll be cut off. They have absolutely every legal right in the book to do so, and even though your signature may not be on a contract (because you likely started the service over the phone), the fact that you're using their network, you're being billed for it, and you're paying it, constitutes a legal contract. Go check your state law and you'll see I'm correct here.
And if you believe whatever you hear in advertising, you've got a long, rough road of life ahead of you.
Perhaps you neglected to note the first two words of your quote, which said "up to 100x faster than 56K". It is not false advertising, anymore than weight loss programs will advertise you can lose "up to" whatever amount of weight is popular this week.
Don't get me wrong here, I'd love to hack a modem myself, but you can't go spouting off about how they owe you this or they owe you that just because of the phrase you quoted. They don't owe you anything more than the service, and I doubt that there's any language in the contract that states ANY minimum or maximum transfer rate. That's why you should READ the small print, which I'm willing to bet you haven't.
I have DSL and cable available to me and I've picked DSL based upon the horrible feedback I've heard from customers of cable services. The day they hooked up my DSL (which was the same day they turned up the DSLAM down the street) I did a speed test and was getting 3Mbit downstream and 1Mbit upstream. That was fine for about four days until suddenly my connection went to 1.5Mbit down, 256K up. They capped me. Am I angry? Bitter? Nope. I have more bandwidth than many small companies do and I'm only paying $49/month for it. The network DOES NOT BELONG TO ME, thus the DSL company has every legal right to do whatever they want with it, including capping their customers.
If you wish to fight the company you have two choices: (a) hack your modem, get cut off, and then cry because you're stuck or (b) find another provider or method, such as satellite or DSL if it's available. If you have no alternatives then you are stuck and best just get used to it until someone else comes along. Laws of supply and demand to not alter themselves to your whim just because they didn't give you the "FUCKLOAD" of bandwidth that you wanted.
Again, I'm going to point out that instead of engaging my statistics and figures from public, reputable sources, you're trying to attack me. While I'm sure that's more fun for you (and more rewarding since you've made no progress whatsoever in nullifying my argument), it proves that your incapable of meeting a reasoned, logical debate with anything other than the mental attitude of a 5 year old who's had his feelings hurt. Grow up or get out.
You're a total, total asshole, you know that? A real smeghead.
Those who lack the intelligence to reason or debate inevitably choose to attack. I note that you didn't bother to challenge my figures. One is taken to wondering why until you realize that you have no way to challenge these figures -- they are real, come from verifiable sources, and follow sound logical reasoning. If you think they're incorrect then simply point out where. Oh, wait, you can't do that, you're too busy thinking up keen new names to call me.
When you grow up and feel you can carry on an intelligent discussion without devolving into idiocy then perhaps we can go at this again. In the meantime, use this experience to understand how to lose an argument to your betters. You obviously haven't learned anything else.
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There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Regardless of who's statistics you look at, the truth is irrefutable: Social Security DEPENDS on the concept of todays worker's paying for today's retirees. The problem is, in the next 10-30 years there will be many, many more retirees than there will be workers. The simple law of supply and demand says that if you have more consumers than providers, one of the following MUST happen:
1. Benefits will be decreased.
2. The eligibility age will be increased.
3. Taxes will be raised.
Social Security DOES NOT WORK under the circumstances it is soon to be in. The rate of return on your dollars invested is lower than the absolute LOWEST PERFORMING mutual fund you can possibly find.
Also, your blaming Bush for the current ills is somewhat specious. First off, there's such a thing as economic inertia. Bush cannot snap his fingers, sign a bill, and put the economy into a tailspin (or revive it, for that matter). These things take time. If you prefer some unarguable figures, go to www.omb.gov and note that the "largest peacetime economic expansion in history" did not begin under Clinton, or even Bush #1...it began under Reagan! In his second term, not his first! You cannot argue these figures, they are true! The corrollary is, Bush #2's decision to lower taxes and/or give refunds may have SHORT TERM negative implications but long term POSITIVE results. If you've ever done any investing you know that to get the biggest gains you generally have to deal with negative growth for the first few quarters or years. If you don't know this, you've obviously not spent as much time RESEARCHING economics as you have spent SMOLDERING about Bush.
And I spent time in those "crap jobs" myself when I was in college. After college I got a menial, crappy sysadmin job. I worked hard, and now after 18 years of effort I am an Information Technology Director in charge of all the assets of a $1 billion local airline. I make over $125,000 per year. I live in a nice home, I have a wife and two kids, and I drive a nice car. I have enough socked away for retirement that I can retire early, pay for my daughter's weddings (when she's old enough), and to pay for college.
No one helped me do this. Nobody from "the community" gave me one damn dollar. I worked my way through college, did not get a scholarship OR a student loan. My divorced parents had no money and paid for nothing. I bought my own first car with money I saved working two summers on a construction site.
My point? I don't believe it for one second that it's not possible to become a success in this world. It is hard, yes. It requires perserverance, hard work, and good decision making skills. It requires discipline and maturity, something not many folks have these days. And those that lack it always blame others for their misfortune. I'M NOT BUYING IT. It's full of crap, a "get out of jail free" card for the lazy and irresponsible.
I'm NOT special. I'm not some super genius whiz kid who graduated college at age 12. I didn't come from a silver spoon home. I'm not a trust fund baby. I didn't take advantage of any good 'ole boy networks to get where I am. I *am* where I am because *I* made it happen. I DIDN'T wait for luck to come calling, I went out and MADE it happen. If *I* can do it, anyone can do it. And I am damn well entitled to enjoy the fruits of my labors without being given a guilt trip by the damn "less fortunate" out there.
Why the love? Perhaps because AMD has brought something to the table that was long lacking in the hardware scene: competition for Intel.
Seems to me that Intel used to spend months, even YEARS between significant speed increases of their processors. How long to go from a 486/33Mhz to a DX2/50? How long from the 486 to the Pentium? The Pentium Pro? Before AMD was on the scene Intel would milk every processor for a long, long time. People would pay through the nose for Intel chips. Intel's profit margins were grossly higher than anyone else's in the industry.
Now comes AMD, bringing similar (sometimes GREATER) performance than Intel chips at a FRACTION of Intel's price. A quick check of Pricewatch shows an Athlon 2100+ going for $177, while Intel's 2.2Ghz P4 (the likeliest competitor) is going for $238. The situation was even more out of wack last week until Intel lowered pricing. Do you think for one minute Intel lowered prices out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course they didn't. They did it because Athlons had been grossly undercutting them in price and performing every bit as well as Intel's finest.
Your predictions on the pricing of the Opteron are not valid as there will BE no 800Mhz Opteron. The Opteron is most likely going to debut around 1.5Ghz, give or take a couple of hundred Mhz. It will most likely cost twice what a 1.6Ghz P4 is costing right now, but that'll be just fine as it will most likely OUTPERFORM that 1.6Ghz P4 by about two to one. Things will be much closer with the Northwood B chips, but no matter what, AMD will almost certainly undercut Intel in pricing while delivering the same (within 10%) performance.
Face it: Intel is used to high margins and is unwilling to cut their pricing far enough to put AMD in the coffin. They are running on brand name and little else right now. If the situations were reversed and AMD had the household name and Intel was the relative unknown, does anyone for one moment think that anyone in their right mind would pay the lofty prices Intel is commanding right now? Of course not.
>True. On of the fundamental differences in >European and American culture. Not a bad thing >in my opinion. I never understood this "don't >trust your government"-attitude some Americans >have.
This is hardly the place to get into it in detail, but it is a major difference. I know why I don't trust government, but I don't know why you would trust it. I view government as a necessary evil, which means that prudence to me dictates as little government as necessary. I do not view government as an instrument for moral good, but only as an instrument to prevent harm. I value my freedom from coercion, and I deeply resent the already large amount of interference that the US government has in my life (but I recognize the need for that government, of course).
I can tell you why there is a healthy need for a distrust of government: the use of force to achieve a goal.
Government, by its very nature, has the ability to use force on YOU to accomplish its goals. If the government decides to imprison you, they can do so at a whim, EVEN WITH A CONSTITUTION. The only thing keeping government powers in check is the willful outrage of the public -- the EXPECTATION that if the government DID start tromping all over citizen rights that the populace would revolt, or riot, or perhaps even "vote the bums out of office" (with the latter not being much of a threat to a truly aggresive government). Even Lincoln, a huge proponent of the Union, suspended habeus corpus. Go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Government is the only legal entity that can deprive you of life, liberty, or your pursuit of happiness. And they get to set the rules by which they operate. True, in an enlightened civilization this kind of abuse is rare, but it could happen anywhere, anytime, historical documents like The Constitution be damned. You could be killed tomorrow by the government, and years later the courts could decide that it was illegal. Someone might be punished, apologies could be made, money may even change hands betwixt your survivors and the government -- but you'd still be dead.
This may sound anti-government, but that's not my stance. "I love my country, I fear my government". We should always have a healthy distrust of any organization that wields power over our individual freedoms. This SHOULD be natural, but apathy and complacency generally work against these instincts.
Remember this: no person, no entity, no organization, NOTHING on this Earth, has your best interests in mind more than YOU. No one is better equipped to look out for you and what you want than you. YOU are BORN with freedom. Every law that exists beyond that is a restriction on said freedom. No one should take that lightly.
Europeans have (IMO) become quite used to a very authoritative governmental structure, so it's apparently easy for them to accept the idea that good 'old big government is quite correct to tell them what to do, when they can do it, and how they have to go about it. The U.S. was FOUNDED on the very principle that when it comes to your personal freedoms, NOBODY has the right to tell you what to do unless exercising your freedom somehow impinges on someone else's freedom. True, we have strayed far from that in the last half century, much to my/our chagrin, but it IS what the founding fathers had in mind.
NASA already has materials that would be used to protect astronauts on such a long voyage. While cosmic rays are pretty much impossible to stop, they are somewhat rare (on a solar scale). Solar flares would be a huge problem, but NASA has come up with a "safe area" inside any proposed Mars craft that the crew could go to during intense flares. The shielding was (IIRC) a type of lead foam composite that provided excellent protection for much lower weight than solid lead.
And let's not forget that even though the ISS, Mir, and Skylab were all within the protection of Earth's magnetosphere, astronauts have been exposed to the Van Allen belts before and shielding protected them adequately. This isn't an insurmountable problem by a long shot.
We aren't doing it here because too many cheaper alternatives are readily available, by which I mean fossil fuels and such. Solar power may be technologically possible, even practical, but until it's cheaper than burning million-year-old fermented dinosaur guts, it's just not going to happen here.
On Mars, however, there (presumably) are no fossil fuels, no biomass, not even nuclear power plants (yet). Astronauts would have to take some sort of relatively light, transportable, and RENEWABLE power source with them. This boils down (no pun intended) to just two things: fuel cells with solar power regeneration, or fuel cells with nuclear power regeneration. The former would be lighter and cheaper, but may not generate enough power (Mars IS further from the sun than Earth, remember?). Nuclear would be the best way to go since it would work day or night and could conceivably run for years without refueling. It would, however, be heavy and expensive.
Ah, I see you too have fallen for the urban legend of the microwave oven jammer. I believe this was started sometime during the Serbian conflicts. It's a sham, a fabrication. Furthermore, it's ludicrous.
First, military radars and jamming devices operate on known frequencies. Even frequency agile systems operate within known boundaries. So do microwave ovens, albeit completely different ones. Nobody's going to mistake a leaky oven for an air search radar.
Second, microwave ovens do not have the radiative power to even attempt such a stunt. They are designed to work in a very small, enclosed space. Pointing an open oven at the sky will not produce enough of a signal to even warrant attention. You forget that microwave ovens do NOT heat food, they heat water molecules contained in the food. The atmosphere is thick with water vapor and would disperse any radiation long before it reached a plane at altitude.
Smart weapons are NOT as easily avoidable as dumb ones. Just ask Saddam -- while you still can!
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a "home-on-jam" mission. Our current HARM (High speed Anti-Radiation Missle) missle homes in on radar emissions, but can also be set to home in on jammers. The jammer then has two options: stop the jamming or run away very, very fast. Cruise missles can be similarly equipped, and with a cluster munitions dispenser even a widely disperse array of jammers could be easily, cheaply, and (most importantly) safely taken out.
Even turning off the jammer (or radar) would be somewhat pointless, as nearly all of our anti-radiation missles store the location of the last known emitter and home in on it anyway. A little less accurate, perhaps, but with a 500kg warhead you can miss by quite a bit and still take out your target.
Wish we'd had these when I was in the Marines.
I did look it up. Why don't you do yourself a favor and head on over to www.m-w.com before spouting something you don't seem to know much about.
/-i-k(&-)lE/ adverb
[quoted from m-w.com]
One entry found for hyperbaric.
Main Entry: hyperbaric
Pronunciation: "hI-p&r-'bar-ik
Function: adjective
Etymology: hyper- + bar- + 1-ic
Date: 1962
: of, relating to, or utilizing greater than normal pressure (as of oxygen)
- hyperbarically
While you may not be able to use the lobby for such activities, you certainly can do it off campus if you like. It's something called "free speech"...perhaps you've heard of it?
No, you read too much into what I was saying. I never said anything about anyone asking him not to call again. Obviously if someone does something repeatedly after you've told them to stop then they're in the wrong, but that wasn't the point. The point is, in the absence of anyone telling him to stop (i.e. the first "set" of phone calls), he could call anyone, anytime, and say pretty much anything (within libel and defamation boundaries) and it would be legal. Same thing goes for snail mail.
Let's suppose for a moment that Mr. Hamidi hadn't used email but instead used either snail mail or (gasp) the telephone. Let's sidestep the impracticality issue of making 29,000 phone calls six different times and examine the legality only.
It would be perfectly legal for Mr. Hamidi to have called each and every one of these employees and given them a piece of his mind. People can hang up, not be at their desk, or screen calls with caller ID if they wanted to avoid him. I don't think there are many (if any) legal precedents in this area that show this to be illegal.
Ditto for snail mail. If Mr. Hamidi had written 29,000 letters six different times and mailed them all, Intel's mail room would've dutifully processed them (at least the first time). Would Intel have been able to sue Mr. Hamidi for using their mail room illegally? Of course not.
So, how is email any different? Answer: it's not. It's a method of communication. Other methods have existed for centuries and no one has ever sued anyone else for doing so -- until now.
While I have nothing but sympathy for Hamidi and his actions (I've done similar things to past companies I've worked for), a part of me thinks that if Intel wins this one it could set a precedent that would allow us common folk to fight spammers legally in the courts.
If it is shown that you can prosecute someone for damages if they "use" your "assets" without your permission, then unsolicited spam certainly falls into that category. BOOM! With one fell swoop pretty much all spam could be eliminated. The remainder would have to formulate some sort of "opt-in" setup that requires you to give permission before they could send you anything.
I'm sure the spammers would (a) fight this with every breath in their diseased, noxious, puss-filled bodies and (b) try to come up with something that got around it anyway, but DAMN wouldn't it be fun to sue a spammer and WIN more frequently than is common right now?
Did anyone notice that spelling errors abound in this "auction"? For crying out loud, they spelled Yuri Gagarin's name wrong! "Yuri Garaging"? WTF is that? "And various Hypobaric Altitude chamber tests"...it's spelled "Hyperbaric", dumbass.
Since the auctioneer can't even spell correctly, do you (a) really believe this is genuine or (b) would you trust someone to shoot you into space if they can't spell correctly? Even if the writer was Russian, don't you think they would've at least run it through a spellchecker first?
I agree, I don't think it's reasonable to ask the programmers to do anything any differently if they're already doing it for free. You do, however, always get what you pay for. Some software is free because people love the software, some is free because you couldn't GET anyone to buy it ;-)
I will, however, lay a good bit of blame on the "zealots" and the "community", primarily because they try to promulgate this neato-keano clubby atmosphere where only the geekiest may participate. Anyone who doesn't toe the zealot line is jeered at, called a MS collaborator, or worse. No crticism of Linux is allowed in the Holy Church of Open Source, it seems. While it isn't universal, it is vocal, and I don't see it slowing. If anything, it's spreading.
Criticism is a Good Thing(tm). Instead of lashing out at critics with "U klueless n00bie" and "l33t haX0r" crap, folks should be attempting to address these criticisms. If the criticism is baseless (as a lot of the propaganda is from MS about Linux) then it will fall on its own (lack of) merits. If there is substance to the criticism then it should be addressed, fixed, and distributed. I guess I'm just tired that folks are not willing to accept the idea that Linux is less than 100% perfect (and the converse, which is that MS makes nothing but shit).
Ah, no, I don't agree with this bit. You're saying the reason desktop Linux hasn't taken off yet is because people think Windows is good enough. I disagree - people in my opinion don't think Windows is good enough. In fact, I often here even fairly techno-phobic people bitching about it: they've heard a techie swear at Microsoft when Windows crashed and they think: ah, I just lost all my work, this is the fault of Windows. And often they are right.
Don't confuse "good enough" with "I'm happy with it." The two things are totally different. Windows has made major strides towards being friendlier and a helluva lot more stable with Win2k and XP. We almost never get calls anymore with PC's BSOD'ing or random crashes, and usually when we do it's faulty hardware or some nasty piece of software (usually a game) has mucked everything up. I don't hear the anti-Windows rants from users that much anymore. The bar has been raised.
A person's satisfaction with something that is "good enough" is an interesting phenomenon. Even if someone is only vaguely satisfied with product A, if product A is already entrenched and "familiar", then the average consumer will not be motivated enough to seek out Product B unless Product B offered much more than a casual advantage. It's like processor speeds: most users cannot tell a significant difference in PC speed (measured by application productivity and responsiveness) until machine B is at least twice as fast as machine A. You have to offer a quantum improvement to get them out of their rut. So far, no product has offered that in a package that lacked significant downsides.
Let's not forget that Linux's greatest strength to a geek (flexibility/configurability) is NOT necessarily an advantage to a technophobe. More options intimidates and confuses people. MS has made a lot of money by REMOVING choice from many of its products. People have flocked to them -- it doesn't take a genius to figure out why. Simple is good.
I'd say there are lots of good reasons why desktop Linux hasn't taken off yet. It's not because of any overarching problem with open source development, or any fundamental problem with Linux, it's just not there yet. People consistantly seem to underestimate how much work is required to make a truly easy to use computer, especially when the underlying OS was designed to be powerful first, simple second.
I don't underestimate it. MS has been trying since Windows 3.0 to put a friendlier face on their product (with varying degrees of success). You did, however, hit the nail on the head with your last sentence: Linux was made to be powerful first and easy second. This is going to be a very, very large hurdle to overcome AND leave Linux's strengths intact. What pisses me off so damned much is that the Linux "community" consistently bashes the hell out of anything that attempts to simplify the user experience in Linux. It's almost like geeks demand that everyone else be geeks in order to appreciate Linux. That, folks, is just not going to happen. If that's the price of admission, the majority of people WILL PASS, and Linux will remain a server-only solution for most of corporations. More's the pity, I say. If the zealots would just shut up, things would get a lot better a lot sooner.
Honestly, I didn't try this with my grandmother, I tried it with my father, who's quite the technophobe. I built him a PC, sans operating system, and gave him a bootable WinXP CDROM. Then I sat back and watched.
He booted the CD, answered the questions when it asked (in plain english) and never once had to consult me. After he completed the OS installation, I wiped the hard drive and gave him a RedHat 7.2 CD to try next.
He got that one started, but faltered when it started talking about disk slicing. Many of the options during the install were incomprehensible to him, especially when it came time to select what kind of install he wanted (Workstation? Server? What's the difference?). Setting up X was completely beyond him. He did get a bootable system when all was said and done, but after logging in he had no idea what to do from that point forward without asking for help. I then asked him to set up his dialup networking. He couldn't find anything remotely close to what was needed in order to do that.
Next, just for fun, I gave him a StarOffice CDROM and asked him to install it. He couldn't figure it out. That concluded the excerise, and we re-installed WinXP. I handed him an OfficeXP CDROM and told him to install it. He inserted the CDROM and the installer auto-started. He followed the prompts easily, asked no questions, and got a default OfficeXP install. When he tried to access options that he had not installed by default, it prompted him for the CD and it auto-installed it on the spot. WinXP also auto-detected his modem and walked him through setting up his dialup account. I didn't have to say a word.
Look, I'm no fan of Microsoft, but every day thousands of people have to perform tasks very similar to what I just described. Microsoft HAS made it much easier to do than just about anything else this side of a Mac. Linux is good, and getting better, but it's simply too complex for 75% of the folks out there. They don't know how to install drivers, they don't know what a bootloader is, they can't figure out why in the hell there's no "C:" drive. Many things are too complicated, too underdocumented, or just too well hidden for the average Joe to find. These folks are NOT curious. They don't WANT to go looking for things, they want things put right in front of them. Linux just misses too many opportunities here.
Add to this the fact that no matter what kind of hardware you may buy today, it will certainly come with a Windows driver of some sort. Will it come with a Linux driver? Doubtful, but some do. If they don't, where is a newbie going to go to get one? They don't know where. They have no idea about newsgroups, rpmfind.net, or anything else. They are LOST! And then the cursing starts. And even if they manage to find a driver, installing it is usually a major, major pain. And let's not EVEN get into glibc library dependencies, RPM dependency hell, and all the other wonderful things that WE as techheads have overcome and understand, but that the vast unwashed majority out there simply cannot grasp immediately.
If Linux could just find some way to separate itself from the techno-jargon that rules all the doc files, HOWTO's, and even the damned installers, then that would be a MAJOR step forward. Unfortunately, large swaths of the "Linux community" have fought against precisely that on the grounds that it would "pollute" their operating system. Fine. Then don't complain because Linux isn't taking over the desktop like gangbusters. Keep it in the server room where the geeks are. Pity, because I think Linux can be a significant challenge to Windows on the desktop. Linux just has to go through the same process Microsoft did -- build a friendlier system, little by little. My fear, as I stated earlier, is that this will result in a larger, buggier, more proprietary Linux -- exactly what MS already has.
People are trying to make Linux more "Windows-like" with increasing amounts of window dressing (pun intended) simply because they realize the reality of the world: 95% of the users on this little globe use Windows in some variation or another. They don't care that it's slow (I.T.'s problem), they don't care that it's big (ditto), or expensive (the company paid for it), or proprietary (gee, what's that mean?). They just know that it works well enough for them, and they're used to it. NEVER underestimate the power of familiarity.
Also don't underestimate Microsoft. Regardless of their many faults, they have as of late started spending lots of cash on usability enhancements and studies to see how people like things to be. When I say "people", I don't mean geekheads who tweak kernels and make their own Cat5 cables, I mean the AVERAGE user out there who never, ever wonders where the command line prompt is. Believe it or not, dumbass technophobes outnumber tech-heads by about 50-to-1 if the average company I.T. to user ratio is to be considered. These people can't even program their VCR, what makes you think they can appreciate Linux's CLI?
KDE, Gnome, and all the rest are chasing Microsoft because (deep breath here, folks)...Microsoft is where all the other folks WANT to be! They don't want to be buggy, huge, and expensive, but they do want to take advantage of the huge Windows penetration into the average Joe's computing experience. Linux folk consistently underestimate this factor, and then are puzzled why Linux is not gaining widespread acceptance on the desktop.
Cardinal rule: a product does NOT have to be the BEST at anything, it just has to be GOOD ENOUGH, and CONVENIENT ENOUGH, to get the job done MOST OF THE TIME. OS/2, Novell, Macintosh, UltraSPARC...I could name a thousand technologies that are (or were) the best in their respective classes but failed to achieve market dominance. Intel's processors are not the fastest, they do not have the most elegant design, and they sure as hell aren't the cheapest, but they rule the PC world completely while Alpha and PowerPC occupy niches. Macintosh arguably has one of the better GUI's out there, yet they languish with only about 4% of the market. OS/2 was 32-bits long before WindowsNT was even a glimmer in the eye, but does anybody really run Warp anymore?
Being the BEST at one thing frequently means you've neglected something else somewhere. Linux is a technological marvel in its configurability and flexibility, but has neglected usability with respect to contemporary products from Microsoft and Apple. Don't try to deny it, it's true. When your grandmother can successfully get a PC and load RedHat on it unassisted, and then actually troubleshoot it if something goes wrong (can she understand cronjobs? fsck?), THEN Linux will have risen to the top. Unfortunately, I have a funny feeling that in order to become that user friendly, Linux will have to become bigger, slower, more expensive, and more proprietary. Perhaps it isn't true, but I'd be willing to bet that it is.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - May 14, 2002 - DEA BUSTS SUSPECTED SHARPIE HOARDING OPERATION
DEA spokesman Captain L. I. Bee released information today of a successful "sting" operation where thousands of Fully Automatic Terrorist Media Stealing Assault Weapons (formerly known as Sharpie markers) were being rebranded and sold as hallucinogenic inhalants.
"It was shocking", said Captain L. I. Bee. "Everywhere, on shelves, in boxes, were hundreds, perhaps thousands of these insidious devices. While our friends and colleagues in the media industries are joining hands to stamp out media terrorism, the DEA will not be standing by the wayside in this matter. We have classified Sharpies as a controlled substance and, with time, we expect a mandatory death sentence for anyone caught making, selling, or posessing any such device."
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - May 13, 2002 - RIAA TEAMS UP WITH MPAA TO URGE BAN OF "SHARPIE" STYLE MARKERS.
Local busineses were shocked today when all 2.5 million office supply stores were simultaneously served with a cease and desist order from the RIAA and MPAA banning the sale of any type of felt tip marker. Lobbyists for the media industry successfully bribed and/or threatened a number of local politician, who in turn passed legislation banning the manufacture, sale, or possession of any device on grounds that it violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
"This is a great day for freedom in this country", stated I. P. Freely, chairman of the House Committee On Media Graft and Campaign Finance. "No longer will reckless hoodlums and terrorist be able to hold our great media industries down! Already these 'media terrorists' have been implicated in causing a downturn in music sales, a deepening of the U.S. recession, balding, impotence, and dandruff. These terrorists are a threat to the very foundation of this nation. Have I said terrorist enough yet? Terrorist terrorist terrorist!"
A small group of bewildered secretaries and office workers were rounded up by jackbooted thugs and herded into "terrorist containment vehicles" (which resemble black vans) as they went into office supply stores in downtown L.A. to buy Sharpies. "Obviously these media terrorists were bent on destroying Sony Music with these devices", said one S.W.A.T. team captain as he twirled a Sharpie in front of cameras. "Don't worry folks", he said, "you're safe now."
When interviewed on the street, many people expressed delight at the actions of the MPAA and RIAA.
"I'm so glad that these hideous terr'rist folks have been rounded up", says Eva Beaver. "Who knows what they might've blown up with their terror weapons. Next it could be planes slamming into buildings!"
Opposition to this new law is expected to be light, say prominent Washington lawmakers. Naysayers will be rounded up and shot on sight, further adding to the desire to keep people from pirating music and movies with felt tip pens.
Spokesmen for Sanford, the company that manufactures the Fully Automatic Terrorist Media Stealing Assault Weapon (formerly known as a Sharpie Marker) could not be reached following a disastrous fire and explosion at every single one of their manufacturing plants.
Let's do a little experiement based upon MY experience with my DSL provider.
Back when I had ISDN my average transfer rates were about 13KB (bytes, not bits) per sec, which is just about right given the 128Kb (bits, not bytes) that ISDN is rated at. ISDN is about 2.2x the speed of a 56K modem.
My current transfer rates are around 160KB/sec, meaning I'm a little more than 10x as fast as my ISDN, meaning it's about 25x the speed of your average 56K modem. That's nothing to be ashamed of! It's equal to having a T1 line in my home (downstream only). Last I checked, a T1 line at home would cost me about $800 to install and about $400/month through Worldcom. I'm paying $49/month for the service. No matter how you look at it I'm making out like a bandit here.
And let's consider that many of my friends with cable modems get speeds well in excess of mine (but only if they live in sparsely populated areas). Some of them have reported transfer rates around 300KB/sec, which is about double mine. That would make it about 50x the speed of a 56K modem.
What's odd is that I have yet to hear the magical "100 times faster" ad for any local service providers. All of them use the "up to 50 times faster", and it that they're pretty much on the mark. What provider do you have?
Take a step back and realize that you're getting a tremendous amount of bandwidth over a 56K modem, even if it was only 5x faster. You're paying practically NOTHING for it when you compare it with typical (commercial) internet service with the same bandwidth. If you want to gripe about something, gripe about how often it goes down (T1's almost NEVER go down, part of what you pay extra for), or the crappy customer service, or whatever, but griping about being "only" 10x faster than a modem is petulant. There are lots of people out there who would KILL to have 10x speed as they anxiously await broadband. I know, I was one of them until about 6 months ago.
Some people, like you - maybe content with being stuck with crappy service - FUCK IT - Ill get the service I demand and most importantly, their advertising monkeys promised.
And precisely how do you propose to get the "service you demand"? Hack your modem and you'll be cut off. They have absolutely every legal right in the book to do so, and even though your signature may not be on a contract (because you likely started the service over the phone), the fact that you're using their network, you're being billed for it, and you're paying it, constitutes a legal contract. Go check your state law and you'll see I'm correct here.
And if you believe whatever you hear in advertising, you've got a long, rough road of life ahead of you.
Perhaps you neglected to note the first two words of your quote, which said "up to 100x faster than 56K". It is not false advertising, anymore than weight loss programs will advertise you can lose "up to" whatever amount of weight is popular this week.
Don't get me wrong here, I'd love to hack a modem myself, but you can't go spouting off about how they owe you this or they owe you that just because of the phrase you quoted. They don't owe you anything more than the service, and I doubt that there's any language in the contract that states ANY minimum or maximum transfer rate. That's why you should READ the small print, which I'm willing to bet you haven't.
I have DSL and cable available to me and I've picked DSL based upon the horrible feedback I've heard from customers of cable services. The day they hooked up my DSL (which was the same day they turned up the DSLAM down the street) I did a speed test and was getting 3Mbit downstream and 1Mbit upstream. That was fine for about four days until suddenly my connection went to 1.5Mbit down, 256K up. They capped me. Am I angry? Bitter? Nope. I have more bandwidth than many small companies do and I'm only paying $49/month for it. The network DOES NOT BELONG TO ME, thus the DSL company has every legal right to do whatever they want with it, including capping their customers.
If you wish to fight the company you have two choices: (a) hack your modem, get cut off, and then cry because you're stuck or (b) find another provider or method, such as satellite or DSL if it's available. If you have no alternatives then you are stuck and best just get used to it until someone else comes along. Laws of supply and demand to not alter themselves to your whim just because they didn't give you the "FUCKLOAD" of bandwidth that you wanted.
Again, I'm going to point out that instead of engaging my statistics and figures from public, reputable sources, you're trying to attack me. While I'm sure that's more fun for you (and more rewarding since you've made no progress whatsoever in nullifying my argument), it proves that your incapable of meeting a reasoned, logical debate with anything other than the mental attitude of a 5 year old who's had his feelings hurt. Grow up or get out.
You're a total, total asshole, you know that? A real smeghead.
Those who lack the intelligence to reason or debate inevitably choose to attack. I note that you didn't bother to challenge my figures. One is taken to wondering why until you realize that you have no way to challenge these figures -- they are real, come from verifiable sources, and follow sound logical reasoning. If you think they're incorrect then simply point out where. Oh, wait, you can't do that, you're too busy thinking up keen new names to call me.
When you grow up and feel you can carry on an intelligent discussion without devolving into idiocy then perhaps we can go at this again. In the meantime, use this experience to understand how to lose an argument to your betters. You obviously haven't learned anything else.