Will the people who forked over the $300 (or whatever) for "lifetime service" be considered creditors too? Shouldn't they be?
They are considered creditors.
Correct so far.
Of the lowest class (which is pretty much where creditors are anyway in bankruptcy court).
Wrong. Creditors come ahead of the equity owners of the company. Unsecured creditors, which is what the customers essentially are, are in a poor position, but they do not have the last tit -- that is reserved for the lucky, lucky investors (i.e. the people whose money was just pissed away). You might know them as "shareholders" or "the rich" or "pension plans" or "your 401(k)" or "mutual funds".
Most creditors are lucky to see ten cents on the dollar after bankruptcy court,
Depends on the company and the type of creditor, but secured creditors can do quite well in bankruptcy. Sometimes, it is groups of creditors that force a company's hand and put a firm (or individual) through an involuntary bankruptcy. While you may feel thoroughly evil when you do such a thing (I did this once), it can really save a creditor's bacon to shut down a company rather than letting it flounder under a shitty business plan or under shitty management.
so it may be that you'd get a few more months or weeks of service and that'd be it.
Probably right. Two types of bankruptcy exist for businesses -- Chapter 11 (reorg) and Chapter 7 (liquidation). Chapter 7 is death city. Sell it all, pay creditors according to a plan that the bankruptcy trustee devises and that the bankrutcy judge approves. Chapter 11 lets the company convert debt into equity (usually) and it lets the company shitcan some contracts that it has, reaffirm others, and basically try to salvage the cashflow positive business segments while jettisoning the shit. This tends to help out customers, employees, and creditors. Some suppliers and customers and equity owners get killed, but the net disruptive effect to the economy is much reduced versus killing off the whole company in a liquidation.
Depends on how the judge rules...
And what the trustee's plan is. Ans what the creditor's committee comes up with.
with the obvious issue that pissing off your customers is not a good way to get out of bankruptcy.
Au contraire. If you can jettison certain contracts, including money-losing ones with customers (which means throwing some consumers overboard) you might actually save the rest of the business. This results in a more stable foundation for serving your other customers in profitable segments, and increasing their willingness to do business with you. Businesses don't want every customer, they only want profitable customers. My business fires clients all the time and I note significantly that we are nowhere near bankruptcy. Sonicblue can do that in bankruptcy and help themselves out tremendously. There may be some blowback, but it will fade. Plus, blowback beats the hell out of destroying the company to try to keep an unprofitable business segment afloat.
Based on that I'd be surprised if any judge would invalidate the lifetime service option.
It's really not up to the judge. It is up to the trustee. The "lifetime service option" is just a contract. Sonic Blue will be able to determine which contracts it wants to void and which it must honor. I bet they toss the replay tv business. Then, the "value" of those services becomes an unsecured debt that goes to the end of the creditor line. The judge will then rule on a plan for sonic blue that the trustee comes up with, subject to input from the creditors (and it is unlikely that the replay tv people will collectively or individually have much say). I doubt that the replay tv people will get much love under these circumstances.
Don't get your hopes up -- you are likely looking at an unpleasant screwing and you won't even get a reach around. I'm not being a troll here, it's just that you need to be realistic about what is going to happen. Bankruptcy is not a place for rose-colored glasses.
"...evil bit support under IPv4..." "...Volkswagen-sized packaging..." "...support for/lib/congress/..." [um...I'll leave that one up to the imagination] "...support for new hardware, including the Foreman iGrill..." "...networks with Windows versions, Macs, and all one version of BSD..." "...guaranteed to filter dupes at/...." "...guaranteed to filter dupes at/...."
King Kong, a lovable, hairy-footed primate, obtains obtains a magical ring as a result of a riddle game in a cave with Bill Gates, who strongly resembles a wafer-thin, slimy nerd with wisps of greasy hair. Kong puts the ring on his own cock and is transported to a world where apes run Earth.
Kong is much larger than said apes. Kong is possessed by the ring, and can only say one word. As a result, the native apes call Kong by the name "Gollumver". Eventually, one of the apes takes the ring off of "Gollumver's" cock and discovers that Kong is just really a nice guy and all that stuff about binding thngs in the darkness is just a product of the Ring's magic. The ape (Heston) who took the ring is overcome by its power, however, and he runs off to an underground cave where he comes to dominate a cult that worships a nuclear weapon.
Kong is released by the apes, whom he discovers are really just mutant clone descendants of Richard Stallman, and he searches for Heston's lair. He comes across a partially buried, tipped-over Statue of Liberty on the beach, and he realizes where he is at last.
Determined to save what is left of the world, Kong continues on his voyage to the secret lair of Heston. He finds an elf sorceress (Fay) who tells him to look into a magic pool to see if that yields any clues to the whereabouts of Heston. In the pool, he sees the Crack of Doom. Kong knows that he must find the resting place of Anna Nicole Smith in order to rescue the world from the evil of Heston.
Heston, meanwhile, has tried to set off his nuclear weapon, but since it uses an unpatched (and unpatchable) version of NT 4.0, he is having problems. He contacts Steve, super-villiain, for help in converting his Super Villain (tm) infrastructure to *nix-based systems via a fork-lift upgrade.
Kong discovers the Crack of Doom, but it is being watched by Howard the Lawyer, who refuses entry to Kong. Kong is led to a secret backdoor to Heston's lair by the long-forgotten Gates, who has information on the backdoors to Heston's NT 4.0 system (which is not yet fully replaced). Gates tells Kong that the password is "Joshua" and is then killed by a large spider named Toby.
Kong sneaks past the Toby and confronts Heston and Steve the Super Villain. Kong is intimidated by the power of the ring, but one of Steve's Beowulf-clustered atomic supermen picks up Heston and throws him into Anna Nicole's cooter, destroying Heston and the ring.
I've read a bunch of posts here which raise a number of valid points:
1. Geographical data might be useful 2. Geographical data is unimportant -- it is the quality of communications which matters 3. Technical barriers to creating this sort of information are really fairly trivial
My concerns are that expansion of meta data (essentially what this is) may then lead to greater expansion of meta data. To wit: if geographical data is useful, why not attach the personal identifier as well? The slippery slope argument does not always necessarily follow when technology goes down a road like this, but I am always cautious when it comes to labeling content and specifically identifying its source.
I can see a day when a state might mandate that data contain personal identifiers if it is to be available to residents of that state. If geographic Meta data is commonly used and provides a proof of concept, the technical barriers to doing that could disappear quickly.
As things stand today, Pennsylvania already prevents ISPs (under threat of felony charges) from allowing their customers in PA to have access to certain types of content (currently limited to child pornography, but for no reason other than politics). This has been a hobby horse of mine, not because I don't hate child porn, but because there will be extensions and expansions of this law and more and more content will be prohibited based solely on the whim of the legislature and some limited constiutional checks (which are expensive and unpopular to raise).
Once a system for geographical identification comes into play, other regulatory possibilities arise. Those possibilities will (gien my cynical outlook) certainly be abused in the legislature by the well-meaning but ultimately ignorant sacks of shit that are elected by less well-meaning and even more ignorant sacks of shit. (I do favor a republic, but at least I recognize its limitations)
This is a road that should be travelled, if at all, only with extreme caution. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
I do know apartment operators, and unfortunately you are correct. It doesn't help that property management is often the business of the ne'er do well son in law, the slacker grandchild, or other idiot who either couldn't or wouldn't do anything else. No MIT grads, in other words...
No offense, but the apartment operators I'm referencing are the ones who own 50 thousand or more units -- such as United Dominion Realty Trust (UDR), Archstone (ASN), Equity Residential (EQR), Town and Country (TCT), Aimco (AIV), etc. These are, realistically, the only ones who will bring FTTH to a mass market in the rental world. Other players would be needed for single-family stuff, such as Lennar.
Little one-off deals might work for smaller multifamily and single family developers, as I mentioned, but the big boys need to make FTTH happen for it to become commonplace. And they are extremely conservative in terms of offering new services and changing their ways of doing business. By conservative, I mean that they won't do it just because people on/. think it's neat. It has to make money for them. Notably, apartment operators were not going bankrupt during the last five years. They learned a lot in the mid/late Eighties.
FWIW, I know a number of smaller operators (200 units or less). I would classify none of them as ne'er do wells or slackers. Gross generalizations (except when I make them, such as right now) generally are wrong.;P
Seriously, Japan has a seriously higher population density than the US. The US has a popululation density of 89 per square mile. Japan has a density of 869 per square mile. Japan has about 126,000,000 people in a country the size of CA. The US has about 270,000,000 people. http://www.mrdowling.com/800density.html Even if you throw out everything between the Sierras and the Mississippi, and keep the population from the excluded area, the US has a significantly lower population density. Imagine stuffing everyone in the US in an area the size of OR, WA, and CA and you'd get the idea of what Japan is like.
I am willing to speculate that this population density makes a big difference in determining what technologies are feasible. I assumed that Japan's population density was something like common knowledge. My bad.
The builder charged me $30 a drop, but that was only for the cabling. I had to bring my own switch and jacks, and wire the jacks myself.
A basic switch, pre-wired to each jack in a room, minimum of two jacks to a room in a three bedroom house, including face plates, drywall cutting, and setting aside square footage or wall-space for a mounted switch and having the contractor do it (rather than the part DIY you did), and I think $500 is sort of a lowball estimate. YMMV.
Eh? Who was talking about subdivisions? Your earlier post was about apartment buildings, as was mine. Now who's comparing apples to oranges?
Even in apartments, the densities are dramatically lower in the US. Unless you in hardcore center-city areas, you do not see US apartments that even remotely resemble Japanese apartments. An average apartment offered by residential REIT, you generally see nothing less than 1000 sq. ft. for a one bedroom plus grounds. Nothing even remotely comparable exists in Japan, and certainly not in any areas where FTTH may exist.
The fact is that population densities in Japan are much, much, much greater than all but a handful of areas in the US.
FTTH will not work in the US just because it works in Japan. Demographically and culturally, the two countries are tremendously different. The value proposition has to be there on both sides -- consumer demand and investors' return. Without both of those componenents being in place, it is not going to happen. I don't see both of those pieces being in place yet.
In Japan, almost all large apartment blocks being built these days have either FTTH or CATV Internet connectivity as standard. You'd be surprised what can happen when enough people ask for it. Your attitude is self-defeating.
One: Japan is not the United States. What works there may or may not work here. First, the Japanese have density of population that is incomprehensible to the average American. This makes costs much lower per home passed, and it makes FTTH feasible. There are not too many "average" Japanese who live in sprawling subdivisions. Politics of development aside, the simple fact is that their living arrangements are comepletly different, and it is an apples to oranges comparison.
Two: The views in my prior post are the general consensus in the real estate and CLEC world. I'm not sure what you mean by the "Your attitude is self-defeating" comment. If there's money to be made, I'm more than happy to be the onne to make it.
On the other hand, I do not exactly see spending thousands of dollars to pass homes with fiber in the hopes of making maybe $25-30 gross per month as being a path to riches. YMMV. Nobody is stopping you from trying to do it with your money, pal.
oh, so you live in the portion of Pennsylvania commonly referred to as 'Alabama' then. I almost moved out there to take a job with Adelphia (I liked the concept of a $400,000 house that includes a runway), but then I realized... what the hell kind of fool would want to live in Central Pennsylvania?
Ahhh...one of those. Central PA is referred to by the ignorant as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Alabama in between. If that is what you truly think, then I am glad for you that you decided to live elsewhere. I'm also glad for me. FWIW, Coudersport is completely unlike south central PA (word up to the Amish hood), which is where I am. The northern tier is a little odd.
I always wondered why urban comunities didn't have all the wiring and fiber available to the residents
1. Retrofitting the buildings is expensive - it is not just a matter of running fiber to buildings -- ethernet jacks need to be put into rooms in apartments and cabling needs to be arranged. Who will manage the wire closet, etc.
2. Not everyone wants/uses the service, so landlords are not necessarily going to spring for the cost
3. Residential services are not where the money is
Large apartment buildings next to eachother would probably find it cheaper to have one large connection into the complexes and hire a network technican
You don't know many apartment operators, obviously. Even the large companies (mostly REITs) are extraordinarily conservative operators who do not change their ways of doing business easily. Especially post-bubble, most are likely to look at other amenities first, such as security, fitness centers, etc. Putting in technology infrastructure, which will likely involve additional costs, is not going to be an easy sell.
I think some bigger aparment REITs may have been doing deals with some of the CLECs in the 90's, but I just don't see a tremendous desire by internet companies to chase the consumer in this manner. They just don't pay enough, and fiber infrastructure isn't exactly cheap.
I can see this model working in some local environments, but as a business model, I can say pretty comfortably that there just is not much money there to be chased when you are talking about mega bandwidth to residences. Some people would pay big bucks, but most folks would say fuck it and go with the ILEC's $45 DSL or the cable company's $30 plan. Nobody will make money (today) selling fiber connections for $30 or selling $300 fiber connections to residences.
The idea of building fiber to the home in new developments is not a bad idea in some locations. In others, it makes no sense at all. The issue for builders is going to be whether the item is a value-add for their buyers. Right now, there is just no compelling reason to have fiber to newly developed houses in most places. WiFi or cable or DSl are quite simply enough. In certain areas that are R&D hotbeds or technology havens, perhaps. In most of the rest of the US it just makes no sense.
A new 2000-2500 square foot house on a half acre costs about 150-200k here. Tack on a grand or even $500 for just 10 base T wiring, which is a feature that most people will not use, really eats into your margins as a builder. Why do it?
As I mentioned above, you have to look at your area and your demographics if you are a contractor/developer. There may be niches for this, but I just do not see it being standard for all new development.
FWIW, any house I build or do any significant renovations to will have more network ports than phone jacks. If I were building houses for others, there's no way I'd sink the money into it.
Clearly, this has nothing to do with internet governance. I don't need to RTFA to know that it is a bizarro Barbarian at the Gates moment where Carl Icahn kicks his heroin habit with help from Keith Richards and Lestat and then goes on to do a leveraged buyout of AOL.
In effect, they would extend the already-extant laws relating to theft of cable TV services to any telecom service. For example, if your ISP charges per computer connected, using a router/NAT device would be illegal if these became law.
If your ISP charges per machine and you circumvent it, it is already theft of services and it is already illegal. Congress is, as usual, piling on when existing laws are sufficient.
The reason that you don't see many prosecutions is probably that police are doing things like, you know, arresting rapists and murderers. Snaking $5 from your ISP is hardly grand theft, and I don't think that federalizing the crime is really going to help out society much.
It is too bad that legislators too frequently look to the quantity of work as a benchmark of how "well" they are doing rather than looking to the quantity. Before too long, our society is going to need a law angioplasty to clear out all the crap that is clogging the arteries of discourse, commerce, and general life.
Coming from a lawyer, GF.
Re:Meteor strikes not that uncommon
on
Meteor Over Midwest
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Yes, we should spend money on a metor defense system since they do kill almost 0 people per year.
Assume that:
1. A meteor (of catastrophic size) will strike the Earth every 60 million years or so; and 2. Said meteor would wipe out most of the population if not diverted or destroyed; 3. Assuming a human perceives his life as being worth $5,000,000 in constant dollars (about what Kip Viscusi came up with in a study a number of years ago); and 4. Assuming a population of 10,000,000,000 earthlings, then:
1. The value of human life is approximately 50,000,000,000,000,000, or 50 quadrillion dollars.
2. The chance of being hit by a catastrophic meteor in a given year is 1/60,000,000
3. The average annual cost of a meteorite premium for "Earth insurance" should be about 50,000,000,000,000,000/60,000,000, or $833,333,333.33 in today's dollars.
Conclusion:
A small price to pay on a yearly basis.
Action plan:
Contact FEMA and ask if humanity can purchase a meteor rider for its flood insurance policy, which was issued by God (tm) to some Jews a few thousand years back.
Slashdot Mirror
Will the people who forked over the $300 (or whatever) for "lifetime service" be considered creditors too? Shouldn't they be?
They are considered creditors.
Correct so far.
Of the lowest class (which is pretty much where creditors are anyway in bankruptcy court).
Wrong. Creditors come ahead of the equity owners of the company. Unsecured creditors, which is what the customers essentially are, are in a poor position, but they do not have the last tit -- that is reserved for the lucky, lucky investors (i.e. the people whose money was just pissed away). You might know them as "shareholders" or "the rich" or "pension plans" or "your 401(k)" or "mutual funds".
Most creditors are lucky to see ten cents on the dollar after bankruptcy court,
Depends on the company and the type of creditor, but secured creditors can do quite well in bankruptcy. Sometimes, it is groups of creditors that force a company's hand and put a firm (or individual) through an involuntary bankruptcy. While you may feel thoroughly evil when you do such a thing (I did this once), it can really save a creditor's bacon to shut down a company rather than letting it flounder under a shitty business plan or under shitty management.
so it may be that you'd get a few more months or weeks of service and that'd be it.
Probably right. Two types of bankruptcy exist for businesses -- Chapter 11 (reorg) and Chapter 7 (liquidation). Chapter 7 is death city. Sell it all, pay creditors according to a plan that the bankruptcy trustee devises and that the bankrutcy judge approves. Chapter 11 lets the company convert debt into equity (usually) and it lets the company shitcan some contracts that it has, reaffirm others, and basically try to salvage the cashflow positive business segments while jettisoning the shit. This tends to help out customers, employees, and creditors. Some suppliers and customers and equity owners get killed, but the net disruptive effect to the economy is much reduced versus killing off the whole company in a liquidation.
Depends on how the judge rules...
And what the trustee's plan is. Ans what the creditor's committee comes up with.
with the obvious issue that pissing off your customers is not a good way to get out of bankruptcy.
Au contraire. If you can jettison certain contracts, including money-losing ones with customers (which means throwing some consumers overboard) you might actually save the rest of the business. This results in a more stable foundation for serving your other customers in profitable segments, and increasing their willingness to do business with you. Businesses don't want every customer, they only want profitable customers. My business fires clients all the time and I note significantly that we are nowhere near bankruptcy. Sonicblue can do that in bankruptcy and help themselves out tremendously. There may be some blowback, but it will fade. Plus, blowback beats the hell out of destroying the company to try to keep an unprofitable business segment afloat.
Based on that I'd be surprised if any judge would invalidate the lifetime service option.
It's really not up to the judge. It is up to the trustee. The "lifetime service option" is just a contract. Sonic Blue will be able to determine which contracts it wants to void and which it must honor. I bet they toss the replay tv business. Then, the "value" of those services becomes an unsecured debt that goes to the end of the creditor line. The judge will then rule on a plan for sonic blue that the trustee comes up with, subject to input from the creditors (and it is unlikely that the replay tv people will collectively or individually have much say). I doubt that the replay tv people will get much love under these circumstances.
Don't get your hopes up -- you are likely looking at an unpleasant screwing and you won't even get a reach around. I'm not being a troll here, it's just that you need to be realistic about what is going to happen. Bankruptcy is not a place for rose-colored glasses.
GF.
Alrighty. Lasers as weapons. Sure...I believe that one. I bet they've also got an evil bit to tell you whether the beam should be red or blue/green.
GF.
hahaha, i love these april fools arti....oh, wait. this is actually a review
The best April Fools joke is here. Taco? Married? To a woman? As if...
GF.
From the RedHat site:
/lib/congress/..." [um...I'll leave that one up to the imagination] /...." /...."
"...evil bit support under IPv4..."
"...Volkswagen-sized packaging..."
"...support for
"...support for new hardware, including the Foreman iGrill..."
"...networks with Windows versions, Macs, and all one version of BSD..."
"...guaranteed to filter dupes at
"...guaranteed to filter dupes at
GF.
Fade In:
King Kong, a lovable, hairy-footed primate, obtains obtains a magical ring as a result of a riddle game in a cave with Bill Gates, who strongly resembles a wafer-thin, slimy nerd with wisps of greasy hair. Kong puts the ring on his own cock and is transported to a world where apes run Earth.
Kong is much larger than said apes. Kong is possessed by the ring, and can only say one word. As a result, the native apes call Kong by the name "Gollumver". Eventually, one of the apes takes the ring off of "Gollumver's" cock and discovers that Kong is just really a nice guy and all that stuff about binding thngs in the darkness is just a product of the Ring's magic. The ape (Heston) who took the ring is overcome by its power, however, and he runs off to an underground cave where he comes to dominate a cult that worships a nuclear weapon.
Kong is released by the apes, whom he discovers are really just mutant clone descendants of Richard Stallman, and he searches for Heston's lair. He comes across a partially buried, tipped-over Statue of Liberty on the beach, and he realizes where he is at last.
Determined to save what is left of the world, Kong continues on his voyage to the secret lair of Heston. He finds an elf sorceress (Fay) who tells him to look into a magic pool to see if that yields any clues to the whereabouts of Heston. In the pool, he sees the Crack of Doom. Kong knows that he must find the resting place of Anna Nicole Smith in order to rescue the world from the evil of Heston.
Heston, meanwhile, has tried to set off his nuclear weapon, but since it uses an unpatched (and unpatchable) version of NT 4.0, he is having problems. He contacts Steve, super-villiain, for help in converting his Super Villain (tm) infrastructure to *nix-based systems via a fork-lift upgrade.
Kong discovers the Crack of Doom, but it is being watched by Howard the Lawyer, who refuses entry to Kong. Kong is led to a secret backdoor to Heston's lair by the long-forgotten Gates, who has information on the backdoors to Heston's NT 4.0 system (which is not yet fully replaced). Gates tells Kong that the password is "Joshua" and is then killed by a large spider named Toby.
Kong sneaks past the Toby and confronts Heston and Steve the Super Villain. Kong is intimidated by the power of the ring, but one of Steve's Beowulf-clustered atomic supermen picks up Heston and throws him into Anna Nicole's cooter, destroying Heston and the ring.
The End.
Fade Out.
GF.
I've read a bunch of posts here which raise a number of valid points:
1. Geographical data might be useful
2. Geographical data is unimportant -- it is the quality of communications which matters
3. Technical barriers to creating this sort of information are really fairly trivial
My concerns are that expansion of meta data (essentially what this is) may then lead to greater expansion of meta data. To wit: if geographical data is useful, why not attach the personal identifier as well? The slippery slope argument does not always necessarily follow when technology goes down a road like this, but I am always cautious when it comes to labeling content and specifically identifying its source.
I can see a day when a state might mandate that data contain personal identifiers if it is to be available to residents of that state. If geographic Meta data is commonly used and provides a proof of concept, the technical barriers to doing that could disappear quickly.
As things stand today, Pennsylvania already prevents ISPs (under threat of felony charges) from allowing their customers in PA to have access to certain types of content (currently limited to child pornography, but for no reason other than politics). This has been a hobby horse of mine, not because I don't hate child porn, but because there will be extensions and expansions of this law and more and more content will be prohibited based solely on the whim of the legislature and some limited constiutional checks (which are expensive and unpopular to raise).
Once a system for geographical identification comes into play, other regulatory possibilities arise. Those possibilities will (gien my cynical outlook) certainly be abused in the legislature by the well-meaning but ultimately ignorant sacks of shit that are elected by less well-meaning and even more ignorant sacks of shit. (I do favor a republic, but at least I recognize its limitations)
This is a road that should be travelled, if at all, only with extreme caution. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
GF.
If they want to take it off, good for them. That isnt censorship.
Not all of us, only about a million or so of us. With rifles. Shooting at things that move. It's more fun that you may think.
GF.
I do know apartment operators, and unfortunately you are correct. It doesn't help that property management is often the business of the ne'er do well son in law, the slacker grandchild, or other idiot who either couldn't or wouldn't do anything else. No MIT grads, in other words...
/. think it's neat. It has to make money for them. Notably, apartment operators were not going bankrupt during the last five years. They learned a lot in the mid/late Eighties.
;P
No offense, but the apartment operators I'm referencing are the ones who own 50 thousand or more units -- such as United Dominion Realty Trust (UDR), Archstone (ASN), Equity Residential (EQR), Town and Country (TCT), Aimco (AIV), etc. These are, realistically, the only ones who will bring FTTH to a mass market in the rental world. Other players would be needed for single-family stuff, such as Lennar.
Little one-off deals might work for smaller multifamily and single family developers, as I mentioned, but the big boys need to make FTTH happen for it to become commonplace. And they are extremely conservative in terms of offering new services and changing their ways of doing business. By conservative, I mean that they won't do it just because people on
FWIW, I know a number of smaller operators (200 units or less). I would classify none of them as ne'er do wells or slackers. Gross generalizations (except when I make them, such as right now) generally are wrong.
GF.
1. Scientific Wild Ass Guess
Seriously, Japan has a seriously higher population density than the US. The US has a popululation density of 89 per square mile. Japan has a density of 869 per square mile. Japan has about 126,000,000 people in a country the size of CA. The US has about 270,000,000 people.
http://www.mrdowling.com/800density.html
Even if you throw out everything between the Sierras and the Mississippi, and keep the population from the excluded area, the US has a significantly lower population density. Imagine stuffing everyone in the US in an area the size of OR, WA, and CA and you'd get the idea of what Japan is like.
I am willing to speculate that this population density makes a big difference in determining what technologies are feasible. I assumed that Japan's population density was something like common knowledge. My bad.
GF.
And how, perchance, would you know? To put it bluntly...
1. SWAG
2. I'm making it up
GF.
Actually was a company a couple of years ago that did this called Darwin Networks. They ran a pretty good service until they went bankrupt.
Natural selection at work, I guess.
GF.
The builder charged me $30 a drop, but that was only for the cabling. I had to bring my own switch and jacks, and wire the jacks myself.
A basic switch, pre-wired to each jack in a room, minimum of two jacks to a room in a three bedroom house, including face plates, drywall cutting, and setting aside square footage or wall-space for a mounted switch and having the contractor do it (rather than the part DIY you did), and I think $500 is sort of a lowball estimate. YMMV.
GF.
Eh? Who was talking about subdivisions? Your earlier post was about apartment buildings, as was mine. Now who's comparing apples to oranges?
Even in apartments, the densities are dramatically lower in the US. Unless you in hardcore center-city areas, you do not see US apartments that even remotely resemble Japanese apartments. An average apartment offered by residential REIT, you generally see nothing less than 1000 sq. ft. for a one bedroom plus grounds. Nothing even remotely comparable exists in Japan, and certainly not in any areas where FTTH may exist.
The fact is that population densities in Japan are much, much, much greater than all but a handful of areas in the US.
FTTH will not work in the US just because it works in Japan. Demographically and culturally, the two countries are tremendously different. The value proposition has to be there on both sides -- consumer demand and investors' return. Without both of those componenents being in place, it is not going to happen. I don't see both of those pieces being in place yet.
GF.
In Japan, almost all large apartment blocks being built these days have either FTTH or CATV Internet connectivity as standard. You'd be surprised what can happen when enough people ask for it. Your attitude is self-defeating.
One: Japan is not the United States. What works there may or may not work here. First, the Japanese have density of population that is incomprehensible to the average American. This makes costs much lower per home passed, and it makes FTTH feasible. There are not too many "average" Japanese who live in sprawling subdivisions. Politics of development aside, the simple fact is that their living arrangements are comepletly different, and it is an apples to oranges comparison.
Two: The views in my prior post are the general consensus in the real estate and CLEC world. I'm not sure what you mean by the "Your attitude is self-defeating" comment. If there's money to be made, I'm more than happy to be the onne to make it.
On the other hand, I do not exactly see spending thousands of dollars to pass homes with fiber in the hopes of making maybe $25-30 gross per month as being a path to riches. YMMV. Nobody is stopping you from trying to do it with your money, pal.
GF.
oh, so you live in the portion of Pennsylvania commonly referred to as 'Alabama' then. I almost moved out there to take a job with Adelphia (I liked the concept of a $400,000 house that includes a runway), but then I realized... what the hell kind of fool would want to live in Central Pennsylvania?
Ahhh...one of those. Central PA is referred to by the ignorant as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Alabama in between. If that is what you truly think, then I am glad for you that you decided to live elsewhere. I'm also glad for me. FWIW, Coudersport is completely unlike south central PA (word up to the Amish hood), which is where I am. The northern tier is a little odd.
GF.
Central PA. Our unemployment rate is below the national average, and you can afford to live like a human being on $50,000 per year.
Please do not move anywhere near me, however. My house (admittedly old and decrepit) is 1800 sq. ft. and it cost me 72,000 on a 1/8 acre lot.
Flyover country has its benefits. You might try leaving the major metro areas behind.
GF.
I always wondered why urban comunities didn't have all the wiring and fiber available to the residents
1. Retrofitting the buildings is expensive - it is not just a matter of running fiber to buildings -- ethernet jacks need to be put into rooms in apartments and cabling needs to be arranged. Who will manage the wire closet, etc.
2. Not everyone wants/uses the service, so landlords are not necessarily going to spring for the cost
3. Residential services are not where the money is
Large apartment buildings next to eachother would probably find it cheaper to have one large connection into the complexes and hire a network technican
You don't know many apartment operators, obviously. Even the large companies (mostly REITs) are extraordinarily conservative operators who do not change their ways of doing business easily. Especially post-bubble, most are likely to look at other amenities first, such as security, fitness centers, etc. Putting in technology infrastructure, which will likely involve additional costs, is not going to be an easy sell.
I think some bigger aparment REITs may have been doing deals with some of the CLECs in the 90's, but I just don't see a tremendous desire by internet companies to chase the consumer in this manner. They just don't pay enough, and fiber infrastructure isn't exactly cheap.
I can see this model working in some local environments, but as a business model, I can say pretty comfortably that there just is not much money there to be chased when you are talking about mega bandwidth to residences. Some people would pay big bucks, but most folks would say fuck it and go with the ILEC's $45 DSL or the cable company's $30 plan. Nobody will make money (today) selling fiber connections for $30 or selling $300 fiber connections to residences.
Remember -- it's all about the "Profit!!"
GF.
The idea of building fiber to the home in new developments is not a bad idea in some locations. In others, it makes no sense at all. The issue for builders is going to be whether the item is a value-add for their buyers. Right now, there is just no compelling reason to have fiber to newly developed houses in most places. WiFi or cable or DSl are quite simply enough. In certain areas that are R&D hotbeds or technology havens, perhaps. In most of the rest of the US it just makes no sense.
A new 2000-2500 square foot house on a half acre costs about 150-200k here. Tack on a grand or even $500 for just 10 base T wiring, which is a feature that most people will not use, really eats into your margins as a builder. Why do it?
As I mentioned above, you have to look at your area and your demographics if you are a contractor/developer. There may be niches for this, but I just do not see it being standard for all new development.
FWIW, any house I build or do any significant renovations to will have more network ports than phone jacks. If I were building houses for others, there's no way I'd sink the money into it.
GF.
Why ICANN Needs Fresh Blood: A Deeper View
Clearly, this has nothing to do with internet governance. I don't need to RTFA to know that it is a bizarro Barbarian at the Gates moment where Carl Icahn kicks his heroin habit with help from Keith Richards and Lestat and then goes on to do a leveraged buyout of AOL.
GF.
But your succulent pasty white young bum is like a juicy peeled plum. MY! How delicious the flesh is, but dare I imagine whats in the middle?
*giggle*
Shut up, Taco.
GF.
A program that managed the crumbs in their dirty beards would be more useful.
I think Mozilla does this. FWIW, they aren't crumbs, they are called "cookies". Duh.
GF.
Until there is a personal finance program that allows me to calculate my savings in large stone wheels, I just don't have a use for it.
GF.
frequently look to the quantity of work as a benchmark of how "well" they are doing rather than looking to the quantity.
Speaking of quality...ugh. Strike that second "quantity" and make it "quality". Damn preview button.
GF.
In effect, they would extend the already-extant laws relating to theft of cable TV services to any telecom service. For example, if your ISP charges per computer connected, using a router/NAT device would be illegal if these became law.
If your ISP charges per machine and you circumvent it, it is already theft of services and it is already illegal. Congress is, as usual, piling on when existing laws are sufficient.
The reason that you don't see many prosecutions is probably that police are doing things like, you know, arresting rapists and murderers. Snaking $5 from your ISP is hardly grand theft, and I don't think that federalizing the crime is really going to help out society much.
It is too bad that legislators too frequently look to the quantity of work as a benchmark of how "well" they are doing rather than looking to the quantity. Before too long, our society is going to need a law angioplasty to clear out all the crap that is clogging the arteries of discourse, commerce, and general life.
Coming from a lawyer,
GF.
Yes, we should spend money on a metor defense system since they do kill almost 0 people per year.
Assume that:
1. A meteor (of catastrophic size) will strike the Earth every 60 million years or so; and
2. Said meteor would wipe out most of the population if not diverted or destroyed;
3. Assuming a human perceives his life as being worth $5,000,000 in constant dollars (about what Kip Viscusi came up with in a study a number of years ago); and
4. Assuming a population of 10,000,000,000 earthlings, then:
1. The value of human life is approximately 50,000,000,000,000,000, or 50 quadrillion dollars.
2. The chance of being hit by a catastrophic meteor in a given year is 1/60,000,000
3. The average annual cost of a meteorite premium for "Earth insurance" should be about 50,000,000,000,000,000/60,000,000, or $833,333,333.33 in today's dollars.
Conclusion:
A small price to pay on a yearly basis.
Action plan:
Contact FEMA and ask if humanity can purchase a meteor rider for its flood insurance policy, which was issued by God (tm) to some Jews a few thousand years back.
GF.