Graffiti is a good idea, and I think I could knock the rust off those skills in a short time, but aren't we at the point now where voice recognition is practical?
Different areas have different price structures, I guess. We currently have internet and phone over fiber for about $60/mo. Full cable/DVR when we had it was just over $120 a month... what a waste... Wife has hulu so she can binge-watch network TV shows. I canceled Netflix when daughter went a little over five months binge-watching in her room -- didn't even bathe -- she's in counseling now. Wife has her own TV, she'll leave it on an on-air channel while she's playing games or something. We have a huge DVD/BR collection (Friday is "movie and pizza" night) but I can't remember the last time I watched TV in real time. And I'm completely ignorant of what passes for commercials these days.
I think you're right, internet will eventually support cable TV instead of the other way around. And eventually cable TV as we know it today will go away. I'm really hoping the entire non-demand cable paradigm collapses as soon as possible. It really hasn't been necessary for some time, and it's holding up other types of content delivery.
Ok, so, strictly speaking, this is not the warp drive, it's the impulse drive. (Thrust to relativistic speed, not trans-light.) We're still waiting for the warp drive.
> The Vulcans will be here soon, swooping in like a returning Jesus Christ to save us from ourselves at long last, show us the true path of wisdom, and help us complete the application (an on-line PDF form, no doubt
...and the fields only accept input when used with certain elderly versions of Internet Explorer.
..there is actual competition between cable companies. When you have a monopoly in an area, you have no incentive to treat your customers well.
I've been thinking about this. It's true, but I wonder how things will change when all the cable companies are competing to provide you only with basic access to the internet. Then it becomes just another commodity, like phone or power, and there is very little room for differentiation.
The thing about basic internet is that it's very easy to quantify. You can get measurements of *true* performance from third parties for free. This makes it harder (but not impossible) for a company to claim 100/100 when measurements show it drops to 15/5 after a few minutes of sustained traffic, or drops to a lower tier based on whether traffic is streaming or torrenting.
We know that Comcast "shapes" traffic using criteria that makes paying for an ultra high speed connection pointless to the very customers who could best make use of that kind of connection. A competing service only has to say "we don't shape traffic". Ok, sign me up.
It's going to be an interesting world in the next few years.
to get one positive review from a Comcast customer. That will indicate that enough time and effort has been put into customer service re-training, and that resources can be reallocated to find new and inventive fees to add to your bill.
I think it's one articulate positive review, something they can use in marketing materials.
> for the first time, the country's largest cable provider has more internet subscribers than cable subscribers
Oh thank God. Does this mean that the Comcast salescreature who leans on our doorbell monthly will stop trying to push cable on us? I have to es'plain to him each time that we have this thing called an An-Ten-Na that receives digital TV Foooorrrrrrr Frreeee-eeee-eee....and incidentally, anything not available on the antenna is (eventually) available on our internet connection (fiber to the door, courtesy Frontier, formerly courtesy Verizon).
He then loudly proclaims that Frontier is "getting out of the cable business" and our cable tv will "go away in a month". (He's been saying that for almost a year now -- eventually he could even be right.) I patiently explain (yet again) that we don't have cable TV. At all. Not even the basic package. Haven't since we sent back those horribly expensive multiroom DVR set top boxes that never really worked correctly.
So... I have to wonder, what's in store for me now? Internet is, basically, internet. I haven't noticed any particular "traffic shaping" on my current fiber connection (25/5, lowest tier, more than adequate), something that Comcast in particular is famous for. What can they offer me that I don't already have? 100 Mb/sec? Frontier will be happy to sign me up for that, for a price. I just don't happen to believe it's necessary. Besides, a 100 Mb link from Comcast.... what does that really get me? Faster access to pr0n? Any content I want to access is going to compete with Comcast's core business (cable tv) and is likely to be "shaped", so the faster speed buys me what, besides bragging rights?
It's going to be interesting how the salesguy's spiel is going to change (if at all) when internet connectivity is his main pitch. Internet connectivity is like... electricity. Just another commodity. At least, it should be, and we seem (finally!) to be going that direction.
You're right. In a similar vein, I ride a Harley, and conversations always lead back to "it's not leaking oil, it's marking its territory!" Har. Har. Yes Harleys used to leak oil. They were famous for it at one time. But they don't now, anymore than any motor vehicle does.
Similarly, in all the years I've been using Windows 7, I've yet to have a hang or bluescreen, and I don't reboot my machine unless absolutely necessary. But people still make jokes about the Windows 49.7 day issue. Just goes to show, it takes a LONG time to live down a tremendous goof.
"(psshsquawk)This is the Captain speaking, we are cruising at 30,000 feet, have a bit of a tail wind and will be in San Francisco a little ahead of schedule....Ummm... Ah.... I'm putting the seatbelt sign on now. Please return to your seats as we reboot the airplane.(pssshsquawk)"
Right. But this is the era of "one weird trick" and "this revelation shocked scientists" and other wishful thinking. If you can't work "This is the most important video you will ever watch" into the article, nobody will pay attention.
from TFA, on "a back door just for the good guys": "Our founders understood that an Orwellian overreaching government is one of the most dangerous things this world could have"
Yes, agreed. But besides that, having the back-doors only available "for the good guys" is problematic for a number of other reasons, including:
a) "the good guys" in this administration may be replaced by "less than good guys" in the next administration
b) It only takes one "not so good guy" in the organization to take advantage of a back door for nefarious purposes (perhaps with the best of intentions)
c) The existence of a back door "just for the good guys" assumes that there is no exploit that anyone could figure out with today's technology up to the technology available up to the retirement of the last piece of equipment that contained that particular back door (which might be decades). When you design a system, do you take into account the technology that will become available to break into it 20 or 30 years in the future?
d) That the "keys" for such a universal back door would be so valuable that they would inevitably be sold by someone with access to the highest bidder, or because of political or religious motivations.
...and probably more reasons I haven't thought of at the moment. Put succinctly, a "back door" that's "only for the good guys" and remains such for any reasonable length of time is a virtual impossibility. That it exists at all means it will inevitably be exploited for personal or political gain at some point.
The FBI might be better served by just being better at cyber break-ins than anyone else. This would allow them to do the monitoring they desire, and have the added benefits of making them work for access, rather than just go fetch passwords out of a safe, and develop some in-house expertise that could be used against real cyber criminals.
Now that I think of that last part, if we really want the FBI to understand about cyber security, it's important from an evolutionary point to never give them easy access to anything.
Right... let's see how hard the republican senators fight the fight when the effect would be to bankrupt and big pharma, and indeed, make it completely impossible to ever again develop or sell a drug in the United States.
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet today, but I'm not sure I see the connection between basing decisions on real published peer reviewed science and bankrupting big pharma.
I am not going to argue whether or not "secret science" should be used by the EPA. I will point out the hypocrisy in there is no difference between the EPA using "secret science" and the FDA using "secret science" when approving drugs. If you are going to ban it in one regulatory agency then you should ban it in all regulatory agencies.
Shrug. That works for me. Although we may have to work on them one agency at a time. Tell you what. You help with the EPA and I'll certainly help with the FDA (that sounds like a good idea anyway).
Basing policy decisions on data that can be peer reviewed -- why would this even be an issue? Isn't this better than "you can't do that, and we won't tell you why" or the nebulous "studies say". What studies? Secret studies. Ok...
... if you have multiple computers on your lan, streaming different content from different sites.
I've found routinely that video streaming tv shows from a network's website, which ordinarily runs fine will still start to choke if somebody else in my house is watching a moderately long youtube video in HD, for example.
Are you really talking about the difference between 50 and 75 Mbits/second down? If you really are seeing issues with streaming netflix while someone else is watching an HD youtube video with a provisioning of 50 Mbits/second, there's something wrong, and it's almost certainly not your provisioning. I'd want to see how you laid out your network, check some stats from your router, look at what switches you're using, and check how your Netflix appliance is connected to the network.
I'd also want to do some speed tests. Back when I had Verizon FIOS (before they sold it to Frontier) I would find the network inexplicably slow some days, check the speed, and find that my provisioning had been downgraded to a lower tier. Call Verizon, they'd apologize and set it right. I could speculate why this kept happening, but they always fixed it when asked and it never happened again once Frontier took over the network.
> Verizon recently told a customer that upgrading his 50Mbps service to 75Mbps would result in smoother streaming of Netflix video.
Ok, not really. A salescreature working for Verizon said that. Now you could argue rightly that salescreatures are the "face" of the company to customers. If they lie to the customer (and this is without a doubt a really big lie) it reflects badly on the company, just as horrible service reflects badly on Comcast. (In their case they deserve it, but I digress.)
The problem I think is that 10 or 15 megabits per second is "good enough" for the great majority of consumers, and companies become hard pressed to justify faster and faster speeds, just as the CPU mips wars became nonsense after a certain point. There will always be power users, but for most people, the difference between downloading their pr0n in 1/4 or 1/8 of a second makes no difference.
I can imagine that it's especially bad for salescreatures. If the lowest tier provision is 20/5, (20 down five up) or even 15/5, it's hard to upsell, because ma and pa kettle doesn't really need anything more than that. So with quotas to meet, you can understand where salescreatures resort to embellishing the truth. After all, it's what they do.
I have friends and family members that are still stuck on "uverse" or some other crap 1 Mbit/sec DSL, and I recommend (where possible) that they upgrade to the cheapest (lowest tier) fibre (if available) or cable available in their area. The boost from 1 Mb DSL to 10 or 15 or 20 Mbits/sec (whatever is available) will change your life. The boost from 10-20 to 50 or 100 will not, unless you're a power user with truly ridiculous requirements.
That said, I have 25/5, and what I'd really like is 25/25, because I manage websites and upload content, but the local ISP does not have a plan for that. I'd have to pay $75/month for 100 down in order to get 10 up. Not worth it. I'm having trouble coming up with any use case where a single family dwelling could make use of 100 down, other than as bragging rights, and doubling the up speed isn't worth tripling the price.
I've heard-tell of some areas offering 100 down *and* 100 up. I have a hard time envisioning that. I'd like to try it, just for a weekend, to see how that much up speed changes my workflow.
And then I shake my head, and go back to work, because my connection really is good enough.
Really. You've lived long enough to learn to write somewhat articulately, and still don't understand about dialects and different spelling of words in different countries? Do you call all cultures not your own "ignorant"? Let's hope you don't have to deal with a global economy.
Slashdot Mirror
That's... actually kinda cool.
> Home users will receive updates as they come out, rather than queueing them all up on "patch Tuesday."
So random breakage, then, rather than breakage on a particular weekday. Sucks to be a home user.
> so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out.
"if"? It's inevitable.
Graffiti is a good idea, and I think I could knock the rust off those skills in a short time, but aren't we at the point now where voice recognition is practical?
Different areas have different price structures, I guess. We currently have internet and phone over fiber for about $60/mo. Full cable/DVR when we had it was just over $120 a month... what a waste... Wife has hulu so she can binge-watch network TV shows. I canceled Netflix when daughter went a little over five months binge-watching in her room -- didn't even bathe -- she's in counseling now. Wife has her own TV, she'll leave it on an on-air channel while she's playing games or something. We have a huge DVD/BR collection (Friday is "movie and pizza" night) but I can't remember the last time I watched TV in real time. And I'm completely ignorant of what passes for commercials these days.
I think you're right, internet will eventually support cable TV instead of the other way around. And eventually cable TV as we know it today will go away. I'm really hoping the entire non-demand cable paradigm collapses as soon as possible. It really hasn't been necessary for some time, and it's holding up other types of content delivery.
Ok, so, strictly speaking, this is not the warp drive, it's the impulse drive. (Thrust to relativistic speed, not trans-light.) We're still waiting for the warp drive.
> The Vulcans will be here soon, swooping in like a returning Jesus Christ to save us from ourselves at long last, show us the true path of wisdom, and help us complete the application (an on-line PDF form, no doubt
..there is actual competition between cable companies. When you have a monopoly in an area, you have no incentive to treat your customers well.
I've been thinking about this. It's true, but I wonder how things will change when all the cable companies are competing to provide you only with basic access to the internet. Then it becomes just another commodity, like phone or power, and there is very little room for differentiation.
The thing about basic internet is that it's very easy to quantify. You can get measurements of *true* performance from third parties for free. This makes it harder (but not impossible) for a company to claim 100/100 when measurements show it drops to 15/5 after a few minutes of sustained traffic, or drops to a lower tier based on whether traffic is streaming or torrenting.
We know that Comcast "shapes" traffic using criteria that makes paying for an ultra high speed connection pointless to the very customers who could best make use of that kind of connection. A competing service only has to say "we don't shape traffic". Ok, sign me up.
It's going to be an interesting world in the next few years.
to get one positive review from a Comcast customer. That will indicate that enough time and effort has been put into customer service re-training, and that resources can be reallocated to find new and inventive fees to add to your bill.
I think it's one articulate positive review, something they can use in marketing materials.
> for the first time, the country's largest cable provider has more internet subscribers than cable subscribers
Oh thank God. Does this mean that the Comcast salescreature who leans on our doorbell monthly will stop trying to push cable on us? I have to es'plain to him each time that we have this thing called an An-Ten-Na that receives digital TV Foooorrrrrrr Frreeee-eeee-eee. ...and incidentally, anything not available on the antenna is (eventually) available on our internet connection (fiber to the door, courtesy Frontier, formerly courtesy Verizon).
He then loudly proclaims that Frontier is "getting out of the cable business" and our cable tv will "go away in a month". (He's been saying that for almost a year now -- eventually he could even be right.) I patiently explain (yet again) that we don't have cable TV. At all. Not even the basic package. Haven't since we sent back those horribly expensive multiroom DVR set top boxes that never really worked correctly.
So... I have to wonder, what's in store for me now? Internet is, basically, internet. I haven't noticed any particular "traffic shaping" on my current fiber connection (25/5, lowest tier, more than adequate), something that Comcast in particular is famous for. What can they offer me that I don't already have? 100 Mb/sec? Frontier will be happy to sign me up for that, for a price. I just don't happen to believe it's necessary. Besides, a 100 Mb link from Comcast.... what does that really get me? Faster access to pr0n? Any content I want to access is going to compete with Comcast's core business (cable tv) and is likely to be "shaped", so the faster speed buys me what, besides bragging rights?
It's going to be interesting how the salesguy's spiel is going to change (if at all) when internet connectivity is his main pitch. Internet connectivity is like... electricity. Just another commodity. At least, it should be, and we seem (finally!) to be going that direction.
You're right. In a similar vein, I ride a Harley, and conversations always lead back to "it's not leaking oil, it's marking its territory!" Har. Har. Yes Harleys used to leak oil. They were famous for it at one time. But they don't now, anymore than any motor vehicle does.
Similarly, in all the years I've been using Windows 7, I've yet to have a hang or bluescreen, and I don't reboot my machine unless absolutely necessary. But people still make jokes about the Windows 49.7 day issue. Just goes to show, it takes a LONG time to live down a tremendous goof.
Only theoretical, though. Windows 9x would crash long before reaching this uptime.
Well, in fairness, only if you tried to do something with it.
"(psshsquawk)This is the Captain speaking, we are cruising at 30,000 feet, have a bit of a tail wind and will be in San Francisco a little ahead of schedule. ...Ummm... Ah.... I'm putting the seatbelt sign on now. Please return to your seats as we reboot the airplane.(pssshsquawk)"
Right. But this is the era of "one weird trick" and "this revelation shocked scientists" and other wishful thinking. If you can't work "This is the most important video you will ever watch" into the article, nobody will pay attention.
from TFA, on "a back door just for the good guys": "Our founders understood that an Orwellian overreaching government is one of the most dangerous things this world could have"
Yes, agreed. But besides that, having the back-doors only available "for the good guys" is problematic for a number of other reasons, including:
a) "the good guys" in this administration may be replaced by "less than good guys" in the next administration
b) It only takes one "not so good guy" in the organization to take advantage of a back door for nefarious purposes (perhaps with the best of intentions)
c) The existence of a back door "just for the good guys" assumes that there is no exploit that anyone could figure out with today's technology up to the technology available up to the retirement of the last piece of equipment that contained that particular back door (which might be decades). When you design a system, do you take into account the technology that will become available to break into it 20 or 30 years in the future?
d) That the "keys" for such a universal back door would be so valuable that they would inevitably be sold by someone with access to the highest bidder, or because of political or religious motivations.
The FBI might be better served by just being better at cyber break-ins than anyone else. This would allow them to do the monitoring they desire, and have the added benefits of making them work for access, rather than just go fetch passwords out of a safe, and develop some in-house expertise that could be used against real cyber criminals.
Now that I think of that last part, if we really want the FBI to understand about cyber security, it's important from an evolutionary point to never give them easy access to anything.
Right... let's see how hard the republican senators fight the fight when the effect would be to bankrupt and big pharma, and indeed, make it completely impossible to ever again develop or sell a drug in the United States.
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet today, but I'm not sure I see the connection between basing decisions on real published peer reviewed science and bankrupting big pharma.
I am not going to argue whether or not "secret science" should be used by the EPA. I will point out the hypocrisy in there is no difference between the EPA using "secret science" and the FDA using "secret science" when approving drugs. If you are going to ban it in one regulatory agency then you should ban it in all regulatory agencies.
Shrug. That works for me. Although we may have to work on them one agency at a time. Tell you what. You help with the EPA and I'll certainly help with the FDA (that sounds like a good idea anyway).
Basing policy decisions on data that can be peer reviewed -- why would this even be an issue? Isn't this better than "you can't do that, and we won't tell you why" or the nebulous "studies say". What studies? Secret studies. Ok...
Seems like a remote tower system might also be useful at a real airport in an emergency when the local tower is out of commission.
I've found routinely that video streaming tv shows from a network's website, which ordinarily runs fine will still start to choke if somebody else in my house is watching a moderately long youtube video in HD, for example.
Are you really talking about the difference between 50 and 75 Mbits/second down? If you really are seeing issues with streaming netflix while someone else is watching an HD youtube video with a provisioning of 50 Mbits/second, there's something wrong, and it's almost certainly not your provisioning. I'd want to see how you laid out your network, check some stats from your router, look at what switches you're using, and check how your Netflix appliance is connected to the network.
I'd also want to do some speed tests. Back when I had Verizon FIOS (before they sold it to Frontier) I would find the network inexplicably slow some days, check the speed, and find that my provisioning had been downgraded to a lower tier. Call Verizon, they'd apologize and set it right. I could speculate why this kept happening, but they always fixed it when asked and it never happened again once Frontier took over the network.
> Verizon recently told a customer that upgrading his 50Mbps service to 75Mbps would result in smoother streaming of Netflix video.
Ok, not really. A salescreature working for Verizon said that. Now you could argue rightly that salescreatures are the "face" of the company to customers. If they lie to the customer (and this is without a doubt a really big lie) it reflects badly on the company, just as horrible service reflects badly on Comcast. (In their case they deserve it, but I digress.)
The problem I think is that 10 or 15 megabits per second is "good enough" for the great majority of consumers, and companies become hard pressed to justify faster and faster speeds, just as the CPU mips wars became nonsense after a certain point. There will always be power users, but for most people, the difference between downloading their pr0n in 1/4 or 1/8 of a second makes no difference.
I can imagine that it's especially bad for salescreatures. If the lowest tier provision is 20/5, (20 down five up) or even 15/5, it's hard to upsell, because ma and pa kettle doesn't really need anything more than that. So with quotas to meet, you can understand where salescreatures resort to embellishing the truth. After all, it's what they do.
I have friends and family members that are still stuck on "uverse" or some other crap 1 Mbit/sec DSL, and I recommend (where possible) that they upgrade to the cheapest (lowest tier) fibre (if available) or cable available in their area. The boost from 1 Mb DSL to 10 or 15 or 20 Mbits/sec (whatever is available) will change your life. The boost from 10-20 to 50 or 100 will not, unless you're a power user with truly ridiculous requirements.
That said, I have 25/5, and what I'd really like is 25/25, because I manage websites and upload content, but the local ISP does not have a plan for that. I'd have to pay $75/month for 100 down in order to get 10 up. Not worth it. I'm having trouble coming up with any use case where a single family dwelling could make use of 100 down, other than as bragging rights, and doubling the up speed isn't worth tripling the price.
I've heard-tell of some areas offering 100 down *and* 100 up. I have a hard time envisioning that. I'd like to try it, just for a weekend, to see how that much up speed changes my workflow.
And then I shake my head, and go back to work, because my connection really is good enough.
Really. You've lived long enough to learn to write somewhat articulately, and still don't understand about dialects and different spelling of words in different countries? Do you call all cultures not your own "ignorant"? Let's hope you don't have to deal with a global economy.
I suspect it's yet another tragic autocorrect.
And sonny, when you're in MY yard, it's "meter".
Somebody should tell him...
Hey, I made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs...