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User: EmagGeek

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  1. Re:Seagate on Who Makes the Best Hard Disk Drives? · · Score: 1

    I bought 10 Seagate 3TB drives less than one year ago for my media server and have already had to replace two of them for hard failures (replaced with WD Red drives).

  2. Re:Mitnick is a whitehat? on Hacker Says He Could Access 70,000 Healthcare.Gov Records In 4 Minutes · · Score: 1

    Do you believe that he is not telling the truth in this case?

  3. Re:White space internet on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 1

    Where's the link?

    There is a local translator that brings in a lot of TV stations, so I'm not sure how much whitespace is there. It's something worth looking into though, if only for the education.

  4. Re:Too quick to dismiss DSL? on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 2

    My home is 18,000 feet from the DSLAM. Using ReADSL I can get 1.5/384 at best, but it usually negotiates around 1.3mbit down and ~300kbit up.

    I've been through these hoops with AT&T and they are simply not interested unless the feds are paying for it. They refuse to tell me where they do offer ADSLv2 and ADSL+ Uverse service, so I don't know how close I am to a VRAD where Uverse and bonded DSL are offered.

    Almost everyone in the neighborhood has AT&T already. Four of the 22 owners went satellite for everything and are just sucking up and paying for it, but they hate that _almost_ as much as being AT&T customers. You're right that we're small potatoes. We're 22 homes in a part of the county where there isn't a whole lot of income outside of our development to go around paying for premium information services.

  5. Re:Call your friendly Electric Coop on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 1

    We do have an electric co-op that serves our neighborhood, so that's something I hadn't thought of. I don't believe they offer BPL services - at least nothing is listed on their website - but it can't hurt to make a phone call.

  6. Re:Micropolitan? on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 1
  7. Re:Find a WISP on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 1

    Thanks for that suggestion. I looked and nothing came up for our area. We're pretty rural.

    I know of a WISP that operates in the nearest town to me, but even with my 65 foot crank-up tower I can't see their SSID, and they only offer 500kbits anyway.

  8. Re:Your labor is cheap. on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 1

    We'd probably have to go a little deeper than that, but it's not that simple. There are issues of ownership, maintenance, junction boxes, insurance, easements (if we "gift" the rollout to the ISP and they become responsible for maintenance), and so on. Say everyone owns the portion of the cable that goes through their property. Say Neighbor X has a problem in their section, but refuses to fix it, thereby causing an outage for everyone downstream? They, of course, get mad at the ISP for the outage, which is powerless to fix it. It becomes clear that the ISP must be given ownership of the cable, and with it the necessary easements for access.

    We're talking about 7500 feet of cable required to make it around the subdivision if we lay it out to avoid having to trench through concrete driveways and the side street. Good, long-lasting direct-bury RG6Q is probably $1/ft or even more, so figure $10K just in the cable, the cost of junction boxes, and so on. I can see where it starts to look very expensive, which is the crux of the problem.

    If it were up to me I'd just go rent a ditch witch and lay it myself, but the legal fees involved with adding the easements are considerable, along with the legalities of giving the ISP a bunch of infrastructure they didn't build but that nevertheless they become responsible for maintaining.

  9. Re:Offer to help pay for it... on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 2

    Long story short (because I've posted it elsewhere in this thread) - there's a state law in SC that may make that criminal. It's illegal to connect a consumer to a network that was subsidized unless all competing network providers were offered the same subsidy. Since we can't afford to offer all competing ISPs (including AT&T) the subsidy, we may not be able to do it.

  10. Paying for it ourselves may actually not be an option here. There is a State law in South Carolina that prohibits connecting any consumer to any subsidized infrastructure unless all competing carriers are offered the same subsidy. It might be construed by that law that our offer to pay for at least part of the installation costs constitutes a "subsidy" that we would have to offer to all other ISPs, which obviously could never afford.

    This Law came about because my county got a Federal contract to string Fiber to every residence in the county and offer 100Mbit duplex to every home. AT&T lobbied the state legislature to criminalize hooking consumers to subsidized infrastructure. So, now only county government entities are allowed to connect to it, and the county taxpayer may be on the hook to reimburse the federal government for the money that was granted to build the network.

  11. Re:HOA - aka subdivision covenants on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 1

    Just to clarify, we're not an HOA. In fact the covenants prohibit the formation of an HOA. We have a "neighborhood association" that organizes the annual yard sale and put luck BBQ party, and does other non-binding social things like brainstorm ways the community can act together to make it a nice place to live. There are absolutely no enforcement powers authorized by the covenants, and in fact they specifically state that action must be brought by an individual owner in the county court system.

    In any case, this is one of those activities where a few of the owners who care get together to try to get something accomplished - like getting modern services installed. We're willing to foot some of the installation costs up front, but dealing with them is painful at best. They just seem like they're not interested if they have to shoulder ANY of the rollout or maintenance costs.

  12. Our situation is similar. We have large lots and just a preliminary walk of the proposed cable route is nearly 1.5 miles - average lot size here is about 3 acres.

    What I did a year ago was put together a survey/petition form for everyone to say who they were using and how much they were paying for the services the cable company provides. I imagine they're looking at about $2-3k/month in revenue if everyone jumps on board with Phone, Internet, and TV, and it seems like everyone will if they can.

    I have no idea how much of that is profit for them so I can't begin to guess what the payback would be assuming ~$100k in installation costs.

    I've been at them for nearly a year now, but we'll keep pushing. Thanks for the reply.

  13. Re:Cutting the cord on An Iowa ISP's Metered Pricing: What Will the Market Bear? · · Score: 1

    We tried the LTE thing, but our usage needs, even trying to conserve, pushed 6 GB/week or so and would have had us in a $120/month or so plan.

    I've had my firewall counting packets and we seem to use about 40GB/month doing whatever we want, so at minimum I would want a 50GB/month plan, and that's a car payment. Forget that. I'd rather give up computing as a hobby than be stuck with that kind of access cost.

  14. Summary reads like NK State propaganda on 200 Dolphins Await Slaughter In Japan's Taiji Cove · · Score: 1

    Hugh Dot Pickens needs a timeout.

  15. Cutting the cord on An Iowa ISP's Metered Pricing: What Will the Market Bear? · · Score: 4, Funny

    My wife and I are pretty close to just turning off Internet at home. We can only get AT&T, and we can only get legacy DSL at 1.5mbit. Usually when I'm sitting on the PC at home I'm thinking that I'd rather be doing something else anyway, like right now, in fact.

  16. Re:Lock code.. on SCOTUS To Weigh Smartphone Searches By Police · · Score: 1

    Depends on which Federal district you are in. In whatever district Colorado lives in, you must decrypt your phone/laptop and or open your safe at home during a search. If you refuse, you can be thrown in jail until you comply.

  17. Re:Papers and EFFECTS on SCOTUS To Weigh Smartphone Searches By Police · · Score: 1

    "unreasonable"

    It's not that complicated. The whole question will revolve around whether it is reasonable to search a detainee's cell phone. The 5-4 decision with John Roberts writing for the majority will read something like "it is well within the limits of searches for officer safety to ensure there is not any communication emanating from the phone that may be used to summon help for the detainee from acquaintances, which would pose a clear and imminent threat to officer safety."

    I know you don't want to bet against me...

  18. Re:Stick to the purpose of the search on SCOTUS To Weigh Smartphone Searches By Police · · Score: 1

    "But there may be an app running on the smart phone to summon the detainee's friends to come help by attacking the police officer.

    Therefore it is well within the limits of a search incident to arrest to examine every bit of data on a cell phone to ensure that is not happening."

    This will basically be what the opinion says. I'd put money on it.

  19. Fuck it. Just use Everclear. on Controversial Execution In Ohio Uses New Lethal Drug Combination · · Score: 1

    Injected into the veins, everclear will be every bit as lethal as these drug cocktails. And, the deceased gets one last buzz on their way out.

  20. Yet another possibility on Heat Waves In Australia Are Getting More Frequent, and Hotter · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    An organization that derives its funding from the sense of crisis in their reports finds that the situation is quite alarming.

  21. Re:I got the notice... on Target Credit Card Data Was Sent To a Server In Russia · · Score: 1

    It's funny, because at first I thought their email was a phishing attempt, because it did not come from target.com directly, and linked me to a website that had target logos and such but was also not a target.com domain. I had to make a phone call to find that it was legitimate.

  22. I got the notice... on Target Credit Card Data Was Sent To a Server In Russia · · Score: 2

    I got the email notice from Target at TWO of my email accounts that my information had been stolen.

    I pored over my financial data and found that I have not used any credit card at a Target store since 2008. So, obviously the breadth and depth of this attack are a lot more extensive than what they are telling us.

    Either that or Target is simply blasting everyone in their email database whether or not they believe the customer's information was stolen, which says that Target still really has no idea whose information was taken and whose wasn't.

    It really is a reflection of the vast incompetency of Target management. They don't know ANYTHING, and have just been firing the shotgun since this whole story broke.

  23. Re:TextSecure on NSA Collects 200 Million Text Messages Per Day · · Score: 2

    Only end-to-end with other TS users, unfortunately.

    CM11 incorporates TS and makes it transparent to the user, which is nice, so everyone using CM11 gets end-to-end with every other CM11 user.

  24. Re:Cry me a fucking river... on Man Jailed For Refusing To Reveal USB Password · · Score: 3

    Yeah. It's too bad that US Citizens don't enjoy that prohibition anymore:

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57364330-281/judge-americans-can-be-forced-to-decrypt-their-laptops/

  25. Re:Really that hard? on Why Birds Fly In a V Formation · · Score: 1

    Some ant species have been found to engineer underground agriculture systems where they create rooms and tunnels that foster the flow of moist air through them, so they can grow fungi to eat.

    Wiki Ant-Fungus Mutualism. It's pretty fascinating.