I hate to break it to you, but that's how it's supposed to work. Infrequent users "subsidize" frequent users, just like the people who go to a buffet and only eat one plate "subsidize" the people who go back for three more plates. ISPs knew it would work that way when they chose that business model, and customers knew it when they signed up.
Except now those people want to take 50 more plates, give them out to complete strangers and are perfectly fine if the resturant increases the price a little bit for all customers to compensate. What they aren't fine with is having a higher price for *them*, they want to pay the same as everyone else.
"the ISP can halve the per-user cap to 2.5 Mbps, keeping overall usage the same without spending a dime or raising their rates... Of course, ISPs don't want to do this".
No, it's the 95% of 'other' users that don't want to do that. What you're asking is for the mass majority to subsidize the 5% very vocal folk who think that their $40 entitles them to a dedicated circuit.
To be honest I haven't a clue. I work for an ISP and we block all outbound SMTP from dynamic IP's other than to our mail servers or those specified via radius from our wholesale customers. It is incredibly easy to do and we have had only a handful calls about it in the past 5 or so years we've been doing it. It doesn't effect profit as those that have a legitimate reason we put on static IP and yet none of the big players (Verizon, AT&T, SBC, etc or any of the international ISPs) will do it. Every once in a while someone on the NANOG list brings up the idea again and there is a bunch of mumbling about impact and then the discussion goes away. If all ISPs blocked outbound port 25 and throttled mail to their own mail servers from dynamic addresses I think you'd find spam levels would drop by several orders of magnitude overnight. The problem is that the company implementing it isn't the one that benefits from it directly -- although our abuse desk is probably considerably quieter than those with spambots rampant on their network.
Amen. Personally I have never owned such a useful microwave as this one Turn knob to select time, hit start. A few extra buttons that I use often such as 'add 10 seconds' and everything else is out of the way. Then I look at my stove and cry, it has at least 30 buttons.
Those Commodore floppies were single density 120K but even the original 1.2MB high density disks were fine. It wasn't until the market flooded with cheap manufacturers and the prices of disks dropped by 90% that the quality went down the toilet. Still they were more reliable than the cassette tapes. Anyone else remember cleaning them with rubbing alcohol every week or so?:)
Floppies where for saving data that you really didn't care about at all
You must be young.:) Floppies were sliced bread when they came on the scene, they coincided with the first real commercial software distribution, the only affordable data storage solution for small business and then had its life prolonged for a brief while as backup and 'sneaker' networking. Floppies were a prerequisite for the PC market to have emerged.
"Alzheimer's.. from the i-forget-why dept"...really? Some editor suggestions for other ignorant summaries:
"Amputations.. from the getting-a-leg-up dept" "Brain Tumors.. from the something-on-your-mind dept" "Cancer.. from the its-a-growth-industry dept" "Necrophilia.. from the its-dead-good dept" "Necrotizing Fasciitis.. from the whats-eating-you dept"
> Put some money into their infrastructure to cope with the demand? Maybe stop overselling?
Of course YOU would be willing to pay the increased costs for this unlimited upgrade, right? I mean rather than paying an artificially low price for a "fair share".
Zap2it is part of Tribune Media Services who in turn sells these listings commercially. Their other licensees (like Tivo and SageTV) likely aren't too happy that they are buying the same listings and then Zap2it is giving them away free to competitors like MythTV.
The 'complete the arrow' ballet seems to be the easiest, cheapest and most foolproof method. Sample One scanner per precinct, no voting machines to store/maintain/secure, no ambiguity and manually verifiable.
There are many alternatives to Sympatico. Whether you are using dialup or DSL, independent ISP's are providing the same or better services in all the same areas, usually for cheaper. Check out www.canadianisp.com for lists of hundreds.
Exactly. Especially in the cable internet provider domain. Currently, all 1.2M channels that I receive but do not watch on my digital cable subscription are all being streamed constantly down my pipe. If the cable companies would get their shit together and make ALL cable TV on-demand, each subscriber would be getting a single channel (or let's say 3, with DVR dual and tripple tuners all taping something) instead of 350.
Just the opposite. Those 350 channels are being sent to every home at the same time, ie the same 350 channels of bandwidth going to thousands of homes. If those homes are watching on-demand TV instead then it's thousands of channels of bandwidth required.
The amount of the delay is not really the factor rather inconsistency of the delay and/or packet loss is what causes the "He..o" effect. Irradic latency is called jitter in VOIP terms and jitter can only be overcome with larger buffers which calm out the peaks and valleys before it hits your ear, which then causes an audible delay (ie "....Hello"). VOIP can't survive extreme swings in packet latency however nor packet loss. Ie, a couple percent of packet loss will effectively make the call as unbearable as a connection whos latency changes from 80ms to 800ms every few packets. On the other hand if you have a consistent 500ms latency it'll work just fine which is why VOIP works on dialup lines that typically see 200+ ms pings.
Consider this -- why do people like to put antennas on top of tall hills, buildings and mountains
There is a big difference between a 125 mile link and a 300 mile link. Specifically, at 125 miles you have 1953ft of earth curvature to deal with (so towers need to be higher than that at both ends), whereas with 300 miles the earth curvature is 11250ft. Given the tallest mountain, being Everest, is only 8848ft you're out of luck using mountains for 300 miles.
Now, you may argue that that's a bad idea, you should always know what's being installed on your machine and what it might break, etc, and I'd agree.
I used to agree, but computers have become an appliance for most people. My mother needs to understand OS updates about as much as learning how the circuit boards in her freezer work.
What we need is for people to start using underpriviledged accounts on their OS's for their day-to-day activities. Maybe root and administrator accounts should prompt a series of skill-testing questions before allowing access.:-)
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I hate to break it to you, but that's how it's supposed to work. Infrequent users "subsidize" frequent users, just like the people who go to a buffet and only eat one plate "subsidize" the people who go back for three more plates. ISPs knew it would work that way when they chose that business model, and customers knew it when they signed up.
Except now those people want to take 50 more plates, give them out to complete strangers and are perfectly fine if the resturant increases the price a little bit for all customers to compensate. What they aren't fine with is having a higher price for *them*, they want to pay the same as everyone else.
Captcha: disdain
"the ISP can halve the per-user cap to 2.5 Mbps, keeping overall usage the same without spending a dime or raising their rates ... Of course, ISPs don't want to do this".
No, it's the 95% of 'other' users that don't want to do that. What you're asking is for the mass majority to subsidize the 5% very vocal folk who think that their $40 entitles them to a dedicated circuit.
To be honest I haven't a clue. I work for an ISP and we block all outbound SMTP from dynamic IP's other than to our mail servers or those specified via radius from our wholesale customers. It is incredibly easy to do and we have had only a handful calls about it in the past 5 or so years we've been doing it. It doesn't effect profit as those that have a legitimate reason we put on static IP and yet none of the big players (Verizon, AT&T, SBC, etc or any of the international ISPs) will do it. Every once in a while someone on the NANOG list brings up the idea again and there is a bunch of mumbling about impact and then the discussion goes away. If all ISPs blocked outbound port 25 and throttled mail to their own mail servers from dynamic addresses I think you'd find spam levels would drop by several orders of magnitude overnight. The problem is that the company implementing it isn't the one that benefits from it directly -- although our abuse desk is probably considerably quieter than those with spambots rampant on their network.
You mean _other_ than preventing him from ripping off thousands of others for millions of dollars next month?
Captcha: undergo
Do you take a piss for every commercial?
It was probably the Pi symbol in the corner of the screen that gave it away.
ever put into the keys of keyboards?!
Like this? http://lcd-keys.com/english/history.htm
Amen. Personally I have never owned such a useful microwave as this one Turn knob to select time, hit start. A few extra buttons that I use often such as 'add 10 seconds' and everything else is out of the way. Then I look at my stove and cry, it has at least 30 buttons.
Only on Slashdot is "at the logs of ISPs I have root" _slightly_ more believable than "all the girls I have dated".
I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything as I read that.
Those Commodore floppies were single density 120K but even the original 1.2MB high density disks were fine. It wasn't until the market flooded with cheap manufacturers and the prices of disks dropped by 90% that the quality went down the toilet. Still they were more reliable than the cassette tapes. Anyone else remember cleaning them with rubbing alcohol every week or so? :)
Floppies where for saving data that you really didn't care about at all
:) Floppies were sliced bread when they came on the scene, they coincided with the first real commercial software distribution, the only affordable data storage solution for small business and then had its life prolonged for a brief while as backup and 'sneaker' networking. Floppies were a prerequisite for the PC market to have emerged.
You must be young.
"Alzheimer's .. from the i-forget-why dept" ...really? Some editor suggestions for other ignorant summaries:
.. from the getting-a-leg-up dept" .. from the something-on-your-mind dept" .. from the its-a-growth-industry dept" .. from the its-dead-good dept" .. from the whats-eating-you dept"
"Amputations
"Brain Tumors
"Cancer
"Necrophilia
"Necrotizing Fasciitis
> Put some money into their infrastructure to cope with the demand? Maybe stop overselling?
Of course YOU would be willing to pay the increased costs for this unlimited upgrade, right? I mean rather than paying an artificially low price for a "fair share".
Zap2it is part of Tribune Media Services who in turn sells these listings commercially. Their other licensees (like Tivo and SageTV) likely aren't too happy that they are buying the same listings and then Zap2it is giving them away free to competitors like MythTV.
5 85753
References at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=239123&cid=19
This was an invaluable service - makes me wonder who's putting the pressure on them :(
Probably the companies that pay for the commercial listings like TiVo and SageTV.
Add the year when you say it, ie you won't say "My birthdate is 1970, December 30th.", you'll say "My birthdate is December 30th, 1970".
The 'complete the arrow' ballet seems to be the easiest, cheapest and most foolproof method. Sample One scanner per precinct, no voting machines to store/maintain/secure, no ambiguity and manually verifiable.
There are many alternatives to Sympatico. Whether you are using dialup or DSL, independent ISP's are providing the same or better services in all the same areas, usually for cheaper. Check out www.canadianisp.com for lists of hundreds.
Like DNS and ping?
Exactly. Especially in the cable internet provider domain. Currently, all 1.2M channels that I receive but do not watch on my digital cable subscription are all being streamed constantly down my pipe. If the cable companies would get their shit together and make ALL cable TV on-demand, each subscriber would be getting a single channel (or let's say 3, with DVR dual and tripple tuners all taping something) instead of 350.
Just the opposite. Those 350 channels are being sent to every home at the same time, ie the same 350 channels of bandwidth going to thousands of homes. If those homes are watching on-demand TV instead then it's thousands of channels of bandwidth required.
The amount of the delay is not really the factor rather inconsistency of the delay and/or packet loss is what causes the "He..o" effect. Irradic latency is called jitter in VOIP terms and jitter can only be overcome with larger buffers which calm out the peaks and valleys before it hits your ear, which then causes an audible delay (ie "....Hello"). VOIP can't survive extreme swings in packet latency however nor packet loss. Ie, a couple percent of packet loss will effectively make the call as unbearable as a connection whos latency changes from 80ms to 800ms every few packets. On the other hand if you have a consistent 500ms latency it'll work just fine which is why VOIP works on dialup lines that typically see 200+ ms pings.
Consider this -- why do people like to put antennas on top of tall hills, buildings and mountains
There is a big difference between a 125 mile link and a 300 mile link. Specifically, at 125 miles you have 1953ft of earth curvature to deal with (so towers need to be higher than that at both ends), whereas with 300 miles the earth curvature is 11250ft. Given the tallest mountain, being Everest, is only 8848ft you're out of luck using mountains for 300 miles.
Now, you may argue that that's a bad idea, you should always know what's being installed on your machine and what it might break, etc, and I'd agree.
:-)
I used to agree, but computers have become an appliance for most people. My mother needs to understand OS updates about as much as learning how the circuit boards in her freezer work.
What we need is for people to start using underpriviledged accounts on their OS's for their day-to-day activities. Maybe root and administrator accounts should prompt a series of skill-testing questions before allowing access.
They really should have schooched a few more entries in the list.