This just in, companies are legally selling the same Internet filtering software used by companies, libraries, etc., to Burma, and the government is using the software for its own purposes.
Websense, one of the Internet filtering "censorware" companies mentioned in the article, had a partnership in place with Cisco starting over a decade ago to integrate URL filtering into Cisco PIX firewalls. That's how far from new this concept is. Burma could have bought all the parts they need used on eBay.
Texas has some of the loosest gun control laws in the country, according to the Brady Campaign. It also has the 10th highest violent crime rate, according to the DOJ.
Personally, I'm not a fan of gun control laws. As is says on the ABC News site, "The government wants to say regulations and laws like the Brady Gun Control Law are making a difference, but they aren't." Gun control opponents need to acknowledge that that statement works in both directions. Just because gun control laws don't help deter crime doesn't mean they encourage it. Statistics imply the laws have no effect in either direction.
All puns aside, Asteroids kept me glued to my Atari for my first-ever all night gaming session. I think that was just before Christmas in 1981. The game was simple and fascinating.
It took until 1995 for another game to keep me glued to a screen in quite the same way. That one was Descent. The innovative use of 3D space and the creepy alien ships jumping you from all angles was terrific. I loved it, but I was jumping at shadows for days after my marathon session.
I played Pong quite a lot when it first came out, too, but it didn't get a death grip on my attention like Asteroids and Descent.
Creating a corporation is a lot of work and wouldn't lesson the guy's problems. If you are the head of a corporation, and someone sues the corporation, who do you think has to hire a lawyer and go to court?
I never heard of the site or the operator before this story, but a quick read of his forum makes it pretty clear the guy was already worn out from the workload of maintaining the site. He would have walked away sooner or later. The cease and desist letter merely hastened the inevitable.
Fan sites and other labors of love nearly always evolve into large and larger doses of labor with decreasing amounts of joy and love. The sites days were numbered long ago.
We know why EDGE vs. 3G doesn't matter much to you -- you have an iPhone.
You can rationalize it however you want by trying to talk about latency, but then you bump up against the fact that you haven't actually tested latency on an EDGE network and, when you do, you'll find out that it's actually pretty bad.
I've got measurement data that shows latency is typically around 130 to 160 ms on 3G networks, including AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. 2G networks, by comparison, usually have 250+ ms latency, and are often in the 300 to 600 ms range.
Even if you're right, and latency matters more than bandwidth, EDGE doesn't win the competition.
Okay, so what about real-world application performance? You've pointed out that someone who can optimize their applications to make maximum use of network and phone resources will be able to deliver the best applications.
Well, on average, wap.google.com takes 11 seconds to load over 2G networks vs. 8 seconds for 3G. That might serve to strengthen your point, because performance isn't significantly worse on EDGE.
However, wap.mapquest.com takes 27 seconds to load over 2G vs. only 8 to 11 seconds for 3G. Perhaps you think that's Mapquest's fault. Or the phone carriers'. Either way, the difference between 2G and 3G networks clearly does matter to end users, particularly when being limited to 2G networks can make connecting to some sites take 2 to 3 times longer.
Since not all sites are lightweight enough to perform equally well on both platforms, the easily perceived performance differences between EDGE and 3G networks will continue to matter to end users.
WiMax hardware is ready to be used by CDMA based providers, but isn't ready yet for GSM. That means that it came down to just Sprint and Verizon for who would be first out of the gate in the US. Sprint did massive press releases. Perhaps Verizon decided to move slowly in hopes that Sprint would make big mistakes along the way.
You can't buy WiMax adapters yet because they don't exist. Motorola, Samsung, Sierra Wireless, etc. are all still working on chips and boards.
WiMax isn't the next generation of WiFi. It's the next generation of cellular broadband. In other words, the WiMax service that Sprint / Xohm has announced is an upgrade to their existing EVDO network. You'll be able to buy adapters for it when the service starts rolling out. Until them, buying adapters that don't work with any existing providers would be pointless.
Sprint and Clearwire are doing a joint venture called Xohm.
Xohm currently plans to deploy WiMax to Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington DC in 2007, but commercial service won't be available to customers until April 2008 at the earliest.
Service in other cities won't be commercially available until the end of 2008 at the earliest.
And that's if they can even live up to their press releases. Cellular providers are much better at announcing new services than delivering them.
You think that taking away the authority to ban municipal broadband would somehow promote local autonomy? It seems like just the opposite to me.
I agree with GP. This bill looks and smells unconstitutional. Is Congress trying to give the Federal courts more work to do? I'm sure the lawsuits would start immediately.
Non-geeks don't know jack diddly squat about the differences between Windows, Linux, OSX, etc.
The people I know don't use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari. They use "the Internet." They don't know or care what program they run to access the Internet. They just know where they need to click.
The people I know don't use Word, Works, Writer, Pages 2, or any other particular word processor. They just write letters or, if they're advanced enough, "edit documents."
For balancing checkbooks, people use spreadsheets. Most don't particularly know what software package they're using, though.
Oddly enough, the people I know don't create "presentations." They create "powerpoints" regardless of whether they're actually using PowerPoint or not.
One of the biggest differentiators, at least in the minds of the mere mortals (a.k.a. normal end users) that I interact with, is that they want to be able to go to the store near them and buy software that will do the things they want their computer to do. If they live near an Apple store, and don't mind paying high prices, that's where they shop, and they're happy. Most other people head down to Target, Staples, Circuit City, or Best Buy. And they can find software that promises to do what they want. Or they just buy whatever they come aross online. It really doesn't matter, other than to say they can easily and conveniently find software to do what they want to do. That's still not always easy with Macintoshes, and it sure as hell isn't easy with Linux.
Why do most computer users run Windows, and why do most have no desire to switch? Because they can make it do what they need it to do with a minimal amount of time and effort on their part.
If the Linux world wants people to want to switch, the most important missing piece is a way to acquire software that's as easy as going to Target. Sift through Google search results looking for open source applications? Slog through SourceForge and Freshmeat? Those aren't things we can expect non-geeks to do.
Linux distros don't necessarily need to put time and effort into marketing, but application publishers, however, do. They need to get copies of their software into boxes and onto shelves. Oh, wait. That would be commercial activity, and it takes money. Charging money for software is somehow bad.
Wake up, nerd boys, and join the real world. It takes money to get market share, not just a pile of software and an elitist attitude.
In Silicon Valley, MCI owns a lot of local copper and fiber, thanks to having acquired Metropolitan Fiber Systems and Brooks Fiber. As a result, I've worked in a number of buildings with local loops and thus full-service Internet access available directly from both AT&T/SBC/Pacific Bell and MCI/UUnet/Worldcomm.
I've also worked in buildings with local loops available from both SBC and Verizon in the Dallas metro area.
In each case, the incumbent baby Bell has quoted higher prices than their competitor.
Ah. I guess my summary of the technical details doesn't seem quite so specious to you now.
Over the last thirteen years, I've ordered dozens of point-to-point, frame relay, local voice, long distance, PRI, supertrunk, and Internet access circuits in the form of T1 lines from LEC, CLEC, and ILEC telcos around the country. I've gotten buildings lit with SONET and seen dramatic price drops as a result. I've also dealt with about a dozen T3 lines and about a hundred Internet connections over Ethernet.
I can tell you that Internet connections over 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet, where available, can be much cheaper than T1 or T3 lines. Why? Because they aren't encumbered by the same infrastructure costs, tariff schedules, or the access-speed-plus-mileage pricing model that you get with T1 and T3 lines. The router interfaces on the customer premises equipment are a lot cheaper for Ethernet than for WAN technologies, too. For Internet access or MAN links, Ethernet has major advantages over T1 and T3 lines, but it's usually only available in colo facilities or office buildings with SONET gear.
All that being said, I still think it's pretty sad how few telecomm guys there are around here. I guess I must just be getting too old for Slashdot.
First, a technical detail. T1 lines send their digital signals over lines with high-current, constant DC power. Without a correspondingly high load resistance, the net effect can send hundreds of DC volts through whatever gets plugged in. Don't believe me? Feel free to stop by my data center, lick your finger, and run it across some T1 cross-connects. That's how a lot of old phone company techs look for vacant pairs on trunk lines. It's a lot faster than busting out a multi-tester.
Meanwhile, the equipment that phone companies use for T1 lines is, as someone said, expensive. It's also on a 30-year depreciation cycle. Until that cycle is up, don't expect prices to come down much. Some companies, like MCI, have already gone through a bankruptcy and written off a big chunk of that depreciation, so they might be able to do better, but only if they own the gear they're using. Any telco buying capacity from a baby Bell is going to have to pay (and charge you) the going rate.
Which brings me to the biggest reason for high T1 costs. The price is regulated. T1 lines get billed based on tariff schedules maintained by each state's public utilities commission. That way, small telcos (competitive local exchange carriers, to use the technical term) can theoretically compete with the big guys by selling you comparable service at a comparable price, often by reselling services actually being provided by the baby Bell, with them simply acting as a middle-man.
For the most part, the price isn't the result of supply and demand, or bandwidth guarantees, or idiots who pay more than they should. It's the result of lobbying by the telco industry. And, being regulated by the government, the price is unlikely to ever go down much. The only real competitive pressure on price is coming from MCI and other telcos that are able to give you a heftier discount because of owning their own infrastructure and having a lower cost burden. The tariff schedules are the same for every T1 within any given geography, regardless of who sells it to you, but some telcos can offer bigger discounts off of the tariffed rate if they have lower overhead costs. The effect of that lower cost structure is most noticeable in "lit" buildings, where telcos have large, SONET multiplexer units inside office buildings aggregating all of the data and voice traffic onto fiber and ensuring it stays on their own network rather than a competitor's. In those locations, the equipment is new, with much more capacity at a much lower cost than the gear used for buildouts in the 1990's. There also aren't any third parties involved insisting on a cut of the action.
The linked article says that people kept Windows 3.0 around because they liked playing Solitaire. Yeah, right. It's undoubtedly true that lots of businesses ended up paying their clerical workers for many hours of time spent playing Solitaire and Minesweeper, but that's a symptom, not the cause. The real Windows 3.x killer app/feature was multitasking. The fact that you _could_ play games without closing the spreadsheet or memo you were working on was huge. Multi-tasking is what sold Windows 3.x. For the first time, you didn't need to stop one thing to start another.
Meanwhile, the killer feature for Windows 95/98/etc. was the native tcp stack, which enabled everyone and their brother to get email accounts. Suddenly, businesses were paying their clerical workers to gossip, spread urban legends, and exchange South Park videos with one another.
Want to get Linux adopted by more end users? Figure out what the next, hot form of wasting time at work will be, and make the experience better on Linux than other platforms.
Computer manufacturers have tried making non-compatible machines. Commodore 64, VIC 20, Coleco Adam, Atari ST. They all had their place in time and their niche in the market before fading out.
Something they all had in common, though, is that they sold better than IBM's mostly-compatible PCjr. I attribute that difference to software and compatibility problems. Because of BIOS differences, a number of programs written for the PC couldn't run on the PCjr. That led to a fragmentation of shelf space at software retailers and confusion among retail customers, and led to customers avoiding the platform in favor of easier-to-understand options.
I would expect something similar to happen if Intel, AMD, or anyone else started making mostly-compatible x86 processors. It wouldn't sell unless all of the software people are used to running still worked. Sure, someone could take Transmeta's approach and emulate little-used functionality in firmware rather than continuing to implement everything in silicon, but it all pretty much needs to keep working, so why bother?
Seriously, why would anyone undertake the effort and expense needed to slim-down x86 processors when the potential gains are small and the market risk is pretty huge? No chip manufacturer wants to replace the math-challenged Pentium as the most recent mass-market processor to demonstrably not work right.
Pundits and nerds can talk all they want about why the x86 architecture should be put out to pasture, but it won't happen until a successor is available that can run Windows, OSX, and virtually all current software titles at acceptable speeds. At that seems pretty unlikely to happen on anything other than yet another generation of x86 chips.
Fraud or cheating? Hardly. I'm sure AboveNet's terms and conditions at the time said something about them having discretion to terminate any or all connectivity.
I don't see a big wave of complaints from AboveNet customers about this, or a class action suit. I see an ISP blocking access to a site that promotes the use of anonymizing web proxies. I wouldn't be surprised if they also blocked access to a number of open proxies. In my mind, that's not a bad thing at all. Far to the contrary, I would expect it to cut down on the number of botnet infestations among their customer base, as well as reducing their likelihood of getting dragged into the middle of an FBI hunt for purveyors of KP.
As an ISP, AboveNet's liability would have rather small. At the most, they might have needed to let disgruntled customers out of their contracts early and possibly refund initial connection fees and/or a few months of service fees.
I've worked for companies that have been dragged into lawsuits as innocent third parties. If I were running an ISP, I would consider myself highly incented to find ways to limit the risk of that happening. Blocking access to open proxies and sites that promote their use are right in line with actions I would consider entirely appropriate. Any customer not wanting to live within those terms of service would be completely welcome to take their business elsewhere.
Let's double check that. Current version, Office 2007, became available to small businesses in 2007. The prior version came out in 2003. Before that was Office XP, somewhere around 1999. Before that was Office 95. So, Microsoft Office users have had reasons to consider buying upgrades, on average, once every four years, in 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007.
A quick glance shows that Office 2007 Professional retails for $437.99 The upgrade is $289.99. If memory serves, I bought my retail copy of Office 2003 Professional on sale for $380. I'm now thinking about upgrading because of the new formatting options in Excel 2007 that make dealing with lots of data much more intuitive. Combined, Office 2003 Professional Retail and the Office 2007 Professional Upgrade will end up costing me about $740, including tax and shipping.
I certainly haven't been "forced to swap M$ office every two years at a cost of thousands of dollars a time per desktop." It's far more realistic to say I'm spending $300 to $400 every four years for the current version of the only software, other than OS and browser, that I use every day.
Doesn't this long rant about evil, nefarious ISPs silently blocking web sites come down to a question of whether or not a business has the right to refuse service? This isn't a neutrality question, because the ISPs didn't give their customers the choice of paying an extra $5 per month to access content that would otherwise be blocked.
Let's take an egregious example. What would happen if a blacklist operator decided to flag all of UUnet's IP address space based on a high volume of spam complaints? And what if other ISPs then used the blacklist to blackhole all traffic from UUnet?
Anyone doing this could easily defend it as a cost-limiting move, aimed at decreasing the bandwidth costs of delivering spam. Meanwhile, UUnet and their customers wouldn't have a whole lot of legal grounds for complaint. It would be largely up to the downstream customers of the other ISPs to push their providers to lift the block or, if unsatisfied with the service they are provided, to move to another ISP.
This isn't entirely hypothetical. There are blacklists out there with UUnet's entire IP space. The mail servers I maintain are using UUnet-provided IP addresses, and we have had multiple cases over the years where companies using those blacklists couldn't communicate with us over email. It wouldn't take a big leap for the blacklists to be applied to web traffic, too, perhaps under the guise of providing additional anti-phishing protection.
I've done something similar myself, in regards to Korean IP address ranges. At the time, we had no customers in Korea. Eventually, though, someone in Korea did want to consider subscribing to our services, and my downstream customers, a.k.a. internal users, asked me to lift the block.
I don't see where AboveNet was doing anything unreasonable.
...why not? He really doesn't have anything to lose.
I enjoyed Geneforge 1 and 2, written by Jeff and published by Spiderweb Software.
Still, as Jeff said in the article, even his games make you grind. Why? Because the games wouldn't sell as well if they didn't.
I gather his games don't sell as well as he wishes they did. If writing articles and submitting them to sites like Slashdot helps him make more games of the sort I like, so be it. I wish him well.
I spent lots of time playing DnD in the 80's. Most of the time, we continued on with existing mid- or high-level characters. On the rare occurrence we wanted to start off new, we still started in the level 7 to 11 range. No one wanted to play a total noob and get killed when a weak enemy made one good roll.
Besides, whoever was being Dungeon Master knew they couldn't get away with killing off a bunch of player characters quickly, no matter what the dice said, or they would quickly find themselves very much alone.
DnD isn't responsible for gaming systems that require people to start from scratch and grind through low levels. Unimaginative people who never had friends to play with are the ones to blame for such things.
Good point. Most companies add features in beta releases, and go live once things are stable. I guess Google didn't care to solicit feedback on the new features before the official launch.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, why would this surprise anyone?
This just in, companies are legally selling the same Internet filtering software used by companies, libraries, etc., to Burma, and the government is using the software for its own purposes.
Websense, one of the Internet filtering "censorware" companies mentioned in the article, had a partnership in place with Cisco starting over a decade ago to integrate URL filtering into Cisco PIX firewalls. That's how far from new this concept is. Burma could have bought all the parts they need used on eBay.
Texas has some of the loosest gun control laws in the country, according to the Brady Campaign. It also has the 10th highest violent crime rate, according to the DOJ.
Personally, I'm not a fan of gun control laws. As is says on the ABC News site, "The government wants to say regulations and laws like the Brady Gun Control Law are making a difference, but they aren't." Gun control opponents need to acknowledge that that statement works in both directions. Just because gun control laws don't help deter crime doesn't mean they encourage it. Statistics imply the laws have no effect in either direction.
Please, stick to the facts.
All puns aside, Asteroids kept me glued to my Atari for my first-ever all night gaming session. I think that was just before Christmas in 1981. The game was simple and fascinating.
It took until 1995 for another game to keep me glued to a screen in quite the same way. That one was Descent. The innovative use of 3D space and the creepy alien ships jumping you from all angles was terrific. I loved it, but I was jumping at shadows for days after my marathon session.
I played Pong quite a lot when it first came out, too, but it didn't get a death grip on my attention like Asteroids and Descent.
Creating a corporation is a lot of work and wouldn't lesson the guy's problems. If you are the head of a corporation, and someone sues the corporation, who do you think has to hire a lawyer and go to court?
Seriously.
I never heard of the site or the operator before this story, but a quick read of his forum makes it pretty clear the guy was already worn out from the workload of maintaining the site. He would have walked away sooner or later. The cease and desist letter merely hastened the inevitable.
Fan sites and other labors of love nearly always evolve into large and larger doses of labor with decreasing amounts of joy and love. The sites days were numbered long ago.
-DaveU
Carl,
We know why EDGE vs. 3G doesn't matter much to you -- you have an iPhone.
You can rationalize it however you want by trying to talk about latency, but then you bump up against the fact that you haven't actually tested latency on an EDGE network and, when you do, you'll find out that it's actually pretty bad.
I've got measurement data that shows latency is typically around 130 to 160 ms on 3G networks, including AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. 2G networks, by comparison, usually have 250+ ms latency, and are often in the 300 to 600 ms range.
Even if you're right, and latency matters more than bandwidth, EDGE doesn't win the competition.
Okay, so what about real-world application performance? You've pointed out that someone who can optimize their applications to make maximum use of network and phone resources will be able to deliver the best applications.
Well, on average, wap.google.com takes 11 seconds to load over 2G networks vs. 8 seconds for 3G. That might serve to strengthen your point, because performance isn't significantly worse on EDGE.
However, wap.mapquest.com takes 27 seconds to load over 2G vs. only 8 to 11 seconds for 3G. Perhaps you think that's Mapquest's fault. Or the phone carriers'. Either way, the difference between 2G and 3G networks clearly does matter to end users, particularly when being limited to 2G networks can make connecting to some sites take 2 to 3 times longer.
Since not all sites are lightweight enough to perform equally well on both platforms, the easily perceived performance differences between EDGE and 3G networks will continue to matter to end users.
-DaveU
WiMax hardware is ready to be used by CDMA based providers, but isn't ready yet for GSM. That means that it came down to just Sprint and Verizon for who would be first out of the gate in the US. Sprint did massive press releases. Perhaps Verizon decided to move slowly in hopes that Sprint would make big mistakes along the way.
-DaveU
Sprint's WiMax buildout is an upgrade to the EVDO network.
-DaveU
You can't buy WiMax adapters yet because they don't exist. Motorola, Samsung, Sierra Wireless, etc. are all still working on chips and boards.
WiMax isn't the next generation of WiFi. It's the next generation of cellular broadband. In other words, the WiMax service that Sprint / Xohm has announced is an upgrade to their existing EVDO network. You'll be able to buy adapters for it when the service starts rolling out. Until them, buying adapters that don't work with any existing providers would be pointless.
-DaveU
Sprint and Clearwire are doing a joint venture called Xohm.
Xohm currently plans to deploy WiMax to Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington DC in 2007, but commercial service won't be available to customers until April 2008 at the earliest.
Service in other cities won't be commercially available until the end of 2008 at the earliest.
And that's if they can even live up to their press releases. Cellular providers are much better at announcing new services than delivering them.
-DaveU
You think that taking away the authority to ban municipal broadband would somehow promote local autonomy? It seems like just the opposite to me.
I agree with GP. This bill looks and smells unconstitutional. Is Congress trying to give the Federal courts more work to do? I'm sure the lawsuits would start immediately.
Non-geeks don't know jack diddly squat about the differences between Windows, Linux, OSX, etc.
The people I know don't use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari. They use "the Internet." They don't know or care what program they run to access the Internet. They just know where they need to click.
The people I know don't use Word, Works, Writer, Pages 2, or any other particular word processor. They just write letters or, if they're advanced enough, "edit documents."
For balancing checkbooks, people use spreadsheets. Most don't particularly know what software package they're using, though.
Oddly enough, the people I know don't create "presentations." They create "powerpoints" regardless of whether they're actually using PowerPoint or not.
One of the biggest differentiators, at least in the minds of the mere mortals (a.k.a. normal end users) that I interact with, is that they want to be able to go to the store near them and buy software that will do the things they want their computer to do. If they live near an Apple store, and don't mind paying high prices, that's where they shop, and they're happy. Most other people head down to Target, Staples, Circuit City, or Best Buy. And they can find software that promises to do what they want. Or they just buy whatever they come aross online. It really doesn't matter, other than to say they can easily and conveniently find software to do what they want to do. That's still not always easy with Macintoshes, and it sure as hell isn't easy with Linux.
Why do most computer users run Windows, and why do most have no desire to switch? Because they can make it do what they need it to do with a minimal amount of time and effort on their part.
If the Linux world wants people to want to switch, the most important missing piece is a way to acquire software that's as easy as going to Target. Sift through Google search results looking for open source applications? Slog through SourceForge and Freshmeat? Those aren't things we can expect non-geeks to do.
Linux distros don't necessarily need to put time and effort into marketing, but application publishers, however, do. They need to get copies of their software into boxes and onto shelves. Oh, wait. That would be commercial activity, and it takes money. Charging money for software is somehow bad.
Wake up, nerd boys, and join the real world. It takes money to get market share, not just a pile of software and an elitist attitude.
In Silicon Valley, MCI owns a lot of local copper and fiber, thanks to having acquired Metropolitan Fiber Systems and Brooks Fiber. As a result, I've worked in a number of buildings with local loops and thus full-service Internet access available directly from both AT&T/SBC/Pacific Bell and MCI/UUnet/Worldcomm.
I've also worked in buildings with local loops available from both SBC and Verizon in the Dallas metro area.
In each case, the incumbent baby Bell has quoted higher prices than their competitor.
Ah. I guess my summary of the technical details doesn't seem quite so specious to you now.
Over the last thirteen years, I've ordered dozens of point-to-point, frame relay, local voice, long distance, PRI, supertrunk, and Internet access circuits in the form of T1 lines from LEC, CLEC, and ILEC telcos around the country. I've gotten buildings lit with SONET and seen dramatic price drops as a result. I've also dealt with about a dozen T3 lines and about a hundred Internet connections over Ethernet.
I can tell you that Internet connections over 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet, where available, can be much cheaper than T1 or T3 lines. Why? Because they aren't encumbered by the same infrastructure costs, tariff schedules, or the access-speed-plus-mileage pricing model that you get with T1 and T3 lines. The router interfaces on the customer premises equipment are a lot cheaper for Ethernet than for WAN technologies, too. For Internet access or MAN links, Ethernet has major advantages over T1 and T3 lines, but it's usually only available in colo facilities or office buildings with SONET gear.
All that being said, I still think it's pretty sad how few telecomm guys there are around here. I guess I must just be getting too old for Slashdot.
First, a technical detail. T1 lines send their digital signals over lines with high-current, constant DC power. Without a correspondingly high load resistance, the net effect can send hundreds of DC volts through whatever gets plugged in. Don't believe me? Feel free to stop by my data center, lick your finger, and run it across some T1 cross-connects. That's how a lot of old phone company techs look for vacant pairs on trunk lines. It's a lot faster than busting out a multi-tester.
Meanwhile, the equipment that phone companies use for T1 lines is, as someone said, expensive. It's also on a 30-year depreciation cycle. Until that cycle is up, don't expect prices to come down much. Some companies, like MCI, have already gone through a bankruptcy and written off a big chunk of that depreciation, so they might be able to do better, but only if they own the gear they're using. Any telco buying capacity from a baby Bell is going to have to pay (and charge you) the going rate.
Which brings me to the biggest reason for high T1 costs. The price is regulated. T1 lines get billed based on tariff schedules maintained by each state's public utilities commission. That way, small telcos (competitive local exchange carriers, to use the technical term) can theoretically compete with the big guys by selling you comparable service at a comparable price, often by reselling services actually being provided by the baby Bell, with them simply acting as a middle-man.
For the most part, the price isn't the result of supply and demand, or bandwidth guarantees, or idiots who pay more than they should. It's the result of lobbying by the telco industry. And, being regulated by the government, the price is unlikely to ever go down much. The only real competitive pressure on price is coming from MCI and other telcos that are able to give you a heftier discount because of owning their own infrastructure and having a lower cost burden. The tariff schedules are the same for every T1 within any given geography, regardless of who sells it to you, but some telcos can offer bigger discounts off of the tariffed rate if they have lower overhead costs. The effect of that lower cost structure is most noticeable in "lit" buildings, where telcos have large, SONET multiplexer units inside office buildings aggregating all of the data and voice traffic onto fiber and ensuring it stays on their own network rather than a competitor's. In those locations, the equipment is new, with much more capacity at a much lower cost than the gear used for buildouts in the 1990's. There also aren't any third parties involved insisting on a cut of the action.
The linked article says that people kept Windows 3.0 around because they liked playing Solitaire. Yeah, right. It's undoubtedly true that lots of businesses ended up paying their clerical workers for many hours of time spent playing Solitaire and Minesweeper, but that's a symptom, not the cause. The real Windows 3.x killer app/feature was multitasking. The fact that you _could_ play games without closing the spreadsheet or memo you were working on was huge. Multi-tasking is what sold Windows 3.x. For the first time, you didn't need to stop one thing to start another.
Meanwhile, the killer feature for Windows 95/98/etc. was the native tcp stack, which enabled everyone and their brother to get email accounts. Suddenly, businesses were paying their clerical workers to gossip, spread urban legends, and exchange South Park videos with one another.
Want to get Linux adopted by more end users? Figure out what the next, hot form of wasting time at work will be, and make the experience better on Linux than other platforms.
Computer manufacturers have tried making non-compatible machines. Commodore 64, VIC 20, Coleco Adam, Atari ST. They all had their place in time and their niche in the market before fading out.
Something they all had in common, though, is that they sold better than IBM's mostly-compatible PCjr. I attribute that difference to software and compatibility problems. Because of BIOS differences, a number of programs written for the PC couldn't run on the PCjr. That led to a fragmentation of shelf space at software retailers and confusion among retail customers, and led to customers avoiding the platform in favor of easier-to-understand options.
I would expect something similar to happen if Intel, AMD, or anyone else started making mostly-compatible x86 processors. It wouldn't sell unless all of the software people are used to running still worked. Sure, someone could take Transmeta's approach and emulate little-used functionality in firmware rather than continuing to implement everything in silicon, but it all pretty much needs to keep working, so why bother?
Seriously, why would anyone undertake the effort and expense needed to slim-down x86 processors when the potential gains are small and the market risk is pretty huge? No chip manufacturer wants to replace the math-challenged Pentium as the most recent mass-market processor to demonstrably not work right.
Pundits and nerds can talk all they want about why the x86 architecture should be put out to pasture, but it won't happen until a successor is available that can run Windows, OSX, and virtually all current software titles at acceptable speeds. At that seems pretty unlikely to happen on anything other than yet another generation of x86 chips.
Fraud or cheating? Hardly. I'm sure AboveNet's terms and conditions at the time said something about them having discretion to terminate any or all connectivity.
I don't see a big wave of complaints from AboveNet customers about this, or a class action suit. I see an ISP blocking access to a site that promotes the use of anonymizing web proxies. I wouldn't be surprised if they also blocked access to a number of open proxies. In my mind, that's not a bad thing at all. Far to the contrary, I would expect it to cut down on the number of botnet infestations among their customer base, as well as reducing their likelihood of getting dragged into the middle of an FBI hunt for purveyors of KP.
As an ISP, AboveNet's liability would have rather small. At the most, they might have needed to let disgruntled customers out of their contracts early and possibly refund initial connection fees and/or a few months of service fees.
I've worked for companies that have been dragged into lawsuits as innocent third parties. If I were running an ISP, I would consider myself highly incented to find ways to limit the risk of that happening. Blocking access to open proxies and sites that promote their use are right in line with actions I would consider entirely appropriate. Any customer not wanting to live within those terms of service would be completely welcome to take their business elsewhere.
A quick glance shows that Office 2007 Professional retails for $437.99 The upgrade is $289.99. If memory serves, I bought my retail copy of Office 2003 Professional on sale for $380. I'm now thinking about upgrading because of the new formatting options in Excel 2007 that make dealing with lots of data much more intuitive. Combined, Office 2003 Professional Retail and the Office 2007 Professional Upgrade will end up costing me about $740, including tax and shipping.
I certainly haven't been "forced to swap M$ office every two years at a cost of thousands of dollars a time per desktop." It's far more realistic to say I'm spending $300 to $400 every four years for the current version of the only software, other than OS and browser, that I use every day.
Lovely speed, but I wonder what all that heat output will do the ambient temperature.
Doesn't this long rant about evil, nefarious ISPs silently blocking web sites come down to a question of whether or not a business has the right to refuse service? This isn't a neutrality question, because the ISPs didn't give their customers the choice of paying an extra $5 per month to access content that would otherwise be blocked.
Let's take an egregious example. What would happen if a blacklist operator decided to flag all of UUnet's IP address space based on a high volume of spam complaints? And what if other ISPs then used the blacklist to blackhole all traffic from UUnet?
Anyone doing this could easily defend it as a cost-limiting move, aimed at decreasing the bandwidth costs of delivering spam. Meanwhile, UUnet and their customers wouldn't have a whole lot of legal grounds for complaint. It would be largely up to the downstream customers of the other ISPs to push their providers to lift the block or, if unsatisfied with the service they are provided, to move to another ISP.
This isn't entirely hypothetical. There are blacklists out there with UUnet's entire IP space. The mail servers I maintain are using UUnet-provided IP addresses, and we have had multiple cases over the years where companies using those blacklists couldn't communicate with us over email. It wouldn't take a big leap for the blacklists to be applied to web traffic, too, perhaps under the guise of providing additional anti-phishing protection.
I've done something similar myself, in regards to Korean IP address ranges. At the time, we had no customers in Korea. Eventually, though, someone in Korea did want to consider subscribing to our services, and my downstream customers, a.k.a. internal users, asked me to lift the block.
I don't see where AboveNet was doing anything unreasonable.
Damn. Talk about an evil DM...
...why not? He really doesn't have anything to lose.
I enjoyed Geneforge 1 and 2, written by Jeff and published by Spiderweb Software.
Still, as Jeff said in the article, even his games make you grind. Why? Because the games wouldn't sell as well if they didn't.
I gather his games don't sell as well as he wishes they did. If writing articles and submitting them to sites like Slashdot helps him make more games of the sort I like, so be it. I wish him well.
Seriously.
I spent lots of time playing DnD in the 80's. Most of the time, we continued on with existing mid- or high-level characters. On the rare occurrence we wanted to start off new, we still started in the level 7 to 11 range. No one wanted to play a total noob and get killed when a weak enemy made one good roll.
Besides, whoever was being Dungeon Master knew they couldn't get away with killing off a bunch of player characters quickly, no matter what the dice said, or they would quickly find themselves very much alone.
DnD isn't responsible for gaming systems that require people to start from scratch and grind through low levels. Unimaginative people who never had friends to play with are the ones to blame for such things.
Good point. Most companies add features in beta releases, and go live once things are stable. I guess Google didn't care to solicit feedback on the new features before the official launch.