Hey dumbass...instead of suggesting that I read your post again, perhaps you could just focus on the part of my post that says "your parent there clearly has no "experiance" in spelling."
Perhaps in addition you might take some time to ask around and find out what a "parent" is with regard to slashdot.
Oh, yeah...and it's interesting that you claim to have no experience with theater yet clearly know that a)all the performers are gay, and b)all the women are overweight. Of course I'm guessing you haven't yet mobilized your neuron to figure out that some hot chick is almost always playing the lead, no matter where you go to see a play.
Yep, plays are full of good looking women, surprise surprise. Don't forget, people do cast these things (that means someone chooses the actor/actress for the role, you ignorant fuck), and it's not like all the plays around are about overweight gothic-looking people. Typically you'll find that the folks in high school or college plays are much better looking than a cross section of the school.
Man, you really are fucking stupid.
But then, you can't even put a decent flame together (wtf? i mean, not catching the reference to the parent post? and these insults..."fucking moron"? "rape your mother"? you gotta be kidding me! my granny can flame better than that, boy!) so I guess we really can't expect you to notice the obvious truth when it interferes with whatever mindless, unfounded, and inaccurate stereotype you are pushing.
For the record, I've been to untold numbers of both high school and college productions, but never been involved myself. I have seen some _really_ good looking women there, including some I knew well at my own hs that were into theater...even dated a couple...and somehow my heterosexuality never seemed hampered by the situation at all. I'm interested in what insecurities you might have, perhaps sexual, perhaps otherwise, which might cause you to be such a fuckhead...
Of course, not sure what i'm wasting keystrokes on here...just some provincial uncultured dumbshit fuck who would have been left as a cumstain on the backseat of his mom's nova, if only his dad hadn't gone off so quick he was surprised by it, and didn't pull out in time.
1)DSP...first off, I can think of a few acronyms that fit, but I'm assuming you mean "digital signal processor" and I have no idea just what exactly you mean to do with one. 2)RF modulators? Like, uh, the things you use to plug RCA (composite) video+audio input to RF (coax, RG6) output? WTF? 3)12ga wire. Ok...I can see how this would have application in a communications system. Except of course for the fact that 12ga is FUCKING HUGE and that I have NEVER IN MY FUCKING LIFE seen anyone use anything bigger than about 20ga for communications purposes. Especially digital communications purposes.
Basically, I think you are full of shit. Really, really, really full of shit. Like, if you were a Native American, they would call you "Walking Eagle" because you are far too full of shit to fly. I mean, like, right before that guy comes in the truck to pump the shit out of the handi-jon...yeah, you're the handi-jon. Full to the brim. Of shit.
Obviously, you thought it would make you sound cool if you threw a couple of things that sort of sound like they might apply in a two sentence "look how smart I am cause I already did this" post. Of course, you ignored the fact that this system clearly needs to be wireless. And you ignored the golden rule of slashdot...somebody's almost always around with the bullshit detector.
Oh, and that 12ga wire thing. Heehee. Jackass.
But I'm really, really interested in hearing you prove me wrong. Preferably by explaining just how in the hell this collection of shit is expected to fulfill the stated goal.
I am heterosexual, so no, I have no experience in theater.
With an attitude like that, you'll never bag those theater chicks.
...of course, your parent there clearly has no "experiance" in spelling. On the other hand, he also clearly a)knows what the fuck he's talking about, and b)isn't a dickhead. Which are two things I can't say about you.
tehanu is correct; "support period" != "release schedule"
In fact, there was a slashdot story about a month ago detailing Mandrakesoft's support policy, which is lots longer than the release schedule.
Re:Linux w/o the command line? wtf?
on
MandrakeSoft Roundup
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· Score: 2, Informative
Definitely...when I put Linux on some curious friend's spare machine for them, it's always Mandrake. It is easy to configure most things, but it is still a very standard GNU/Linux stack.
I'm hopefull, though, that with this new catalyst build process, Gentoo 2004 (stage3/grp style of course) might be able to overtake it. I run Gentoo/Mandrake/FreeBSD mostly, but Gentoo is by far the most fun. And it's certainly safe from the "windows knockoff" stigma you mention.
That's not to say anything against Mandrake, of course...it's just that Gentoo is so much closer to the source, to the part that separates us from them.
The assumption (I call it that rather than a conclusion due to the total lack of supporting evidence) that Microsoft creates jobs is based, I can only presume, on the fact that they employ lots of people.
It is probably much, much more important that they have also completely destroyed dozens of other domestic software companies. In fact, there are so few major non-game software companies now that you could probably count them on your fingers.
Microsoft has *not* created jobs...it has caused many more people to lose jobs than it ever hired.
Now, there is one thing I agree with you on....the Rethugs will *definately* be suckers for it. But then, they bought the Laffer curve too;-)
1....a Beowulf cluster of these! 2....shall call him mini-me! 3....it's not the size, it's how you use it! 4....in Soviet Russia, PC shrinks YOU! 5....WORRIED ABOUT SIZE?!?! NEW P*I*L*L*S SHRINK YOUR PC!!!!
Yeah...it's kind of funny. I'm right there with you, been using Linux as my desktop os now since '99. And I too am terribly annoyed when cornered by Windows.
On the other hand, I feel the other edge of the sword you're swinging. While I can see the stubborness of the Windows users who won't switch, I can also see my own; sometimes, I'm bothered by genuine limitations of Windows, but more often, it's just that it behaves, well, so windowsee that it just pisses me off. And then there are times when I realize that there's something going on in Windows that I don't understand, and I'll think about that thing's analog in Linux, and I'll realize that I don't know how to operate the system as well.
Now, of course, I can recognize the difference between knowing how to operate the computer and how to operate the system. But that isn't really a very important distinction. The point is, yes, people want to use the systems they are familiar with. All people, on any system.
Throughput limits in this fashion should be made illegal.
I'm particularly fond of the way that you obviously think that everything you find distasteful should be illegal. Why on earth should it be illegal for a company to put terms in its contract that protect it from losing money? I mean, it isn't infringing on anyone's rights...I still haven't found the right to unlimited bandwidth in the constitution.
It is not the responsibility of the customer to manager [sic] their throughput in such a way that it remains profitable for the ISP.
Right. It is the responsibility of the business to ensure that they remain profitable......which absolutely precludes offering unlimited throughput on oversold services like ADSL. Now, that said...once the business does this by putting limits in a contract that the customer signs, then abiding by that contract does become the customer's responsibility, just like anyone who signs any contract has a responsibility to follow it. Now, in our case, that does not necessarily mean they have to manage their bandwidth...they can just as easily ante up and pay for it. And why not? I mean, we pay for it...
The ISP can restructure their service to continue to allow 100% saturation without losing profit
First off, I'm really amused by the fact that so many people replying to this story have these fantastic ideas of what ISP's can do. Ok, if this is so obvious, why don't you go start an ISP? I mean, surely you won't have any problem offering people 100% of their rated bandwidth 100% of the time for $50/month.....while making a profit.
The truth is that's ridiculous. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: THIS IS AN OVERSOLD SERVICE!!!! That is the only reason it is so cheap.
Now...if we wanted to "restructure" our service so that every user had 100%-of-capacity throughput, we would have to get 768kbps worth of capacity for every line we've got, and more than that for some of them. Now, as I've mentioned, this is $750/month worth of bandwidth at cost! Now, just how in the hell are we supposed to sell that for $50/month?
Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about, and this idea that ISP's can simply give everybody as much bandwidth as they want for no money is ridiculous. Now, we'll happily sell you dedicated throughput on any circuit you want....but (I'm sure this comes as a great surprise) we expect you to pay slightly more than our costs for that dedicated rate. I find it totally bewildering that people find anything wrong with this.
Now, of course the major impact of this policy has not been huge bills for our customers. And it hasn't been a mass exodus from our service (I've mentioned several times, with no effect, that 99% of users don't even come close to one gig a month) either. It's been a rejection of our contract by a tiny minority of people. Folks who want to saturate the connection just don't sign up. Because we are very up-front about what the limits are, and why they are there. Sure, I hear a little bit of whining about it, but only about once a month or so. And we didn't want those customers anyway; they would cost us money.
So they go off and sign up with the cable company. Fine by us...let them take the loss. Of course, that's why their service sucks; regular users have terrible speeds, because the cable company doesn't have the bandwidth to feed all the leaches. Because they are only paying $50 a month, and they are using hundreds of dollars in bandwidth. So all those other poor bastards have to foot the bill and endure shitty service.
So, concratulations....you are pushing everyone's broadband costs up, and helping to ensure that the only ISPs around in a few years will be owned by huge companies in other businesses (like cable and telephone) that can afford to take massive losses. Oh, except for the ones that start capping.
So have fun for these next couple of years, hopping from
I understand your concern...bandwidth is indeed expensive.
Now, the numbers where you are may be different, but when using my numbers, there's only one problem with your suggestion. We go out of business.
50GB/month is 154kbps all month long. We pay $500/mbps of capacity, or $.49/kbps. Since you are going to use your capacity solid through the month, it is directly relational to our pricing...so it will cost us $75.46 to provide that much bandwidth. Add in $37.50 for the LEC's line fees, and ($1700/[our total customers]) for the DS3 loop between us and the LEC, and maybe something to cover tech support costs, router/equipment upkeep, etc. I assume you want the ADSL to cost less than $120/month.
Sorry, but the intended application of these lines is not file sharing, or anything else that saturates a line to 100%. It is an oversold service and that is the only reason it is so cheap. If you want a circuit to use flat out all the time, you need to pay for a real circuit with dedicated bandwidth, and it's going to be really pricey.
It might be possible; but it would certainly be quite difficult.
I mean, if you wanted to go look through everybody's traffic graphs and try to limit them accordingly with dummynet or whatever, you could, but that's doing it manually...you might be able to code something up that will automatically detect changing patterns and move folks around, but really, you're likely going to cause as many problems as you solve. Those guys that use that much are a lot more likely to notice that they aren't getting good throughput than the folks that are just checking their email. One reason that service providers charge by the gig is because the customer wants a lot more *speed* than they want *monthly transfer*...since we aggregate so many people, we "play the numbers" so to speak and the usage evens out, hopefully peaking just under our capacity.
Folks wouldn't like the prices they would have to pay to get a set throughput...128k/s would cost at least $100 from us. Not counting whatever line fees and such there might be for the delivery technology.
But I like the basic idea; it would be good to try to be fairer divying it up.
Notice, however, that most residential packages are a lot cheaper than business ones? In many cases, this kind of thinking figures in there; most places have their bandwidth crunch toward the end of the business day (well, lately some cable ones that have many more residential lines than business peak later, but bear with me here), and then have excess capacity all evening. Since the businesses use bandwidth during the day they end up paying more, while the residential users get relatively cheap service, because they mostly use at night.
That's clearly not true for every ISP; that's another part of the problem. Cell phone usage is pretty standard from company to company, but I expect depending on the ISP's customer mix the times that would be peak or off-peak might vary substantially. But our usage usually peaks for the day at about 4pm.
Anyway, the other neat thing is that I've drafted contracts for colocation customers that specified times for certain amounts of throughput. His stuff wasn't very time-sensitive, and we figured bandwidth was pretty much free at 4am. So he got a small limit of daytime monthly usage (maintenance or whatever) and a tremendous limit for 2-5am transfers. And it's really cheap.
So, yeah; that peak/off distinction is certainly important, and we're thinking about it. I don't think we could go to a different price on it right now....look how unpopular an idea it is that you ought to pay more if you use more...but maybe someday.
What I would really like to do with our ADSL billing is just pass on the LEC's line fees, a small ($4-5) service charge for the things that cost on a per-line basis, and then have a $/k charge for everything. Just like electricity.
But, that's even a bit farther off. Maybe when we get there we can attach a sliding value to a k as a function of time of day. Like it's $.02/k before 7, and $.01/k after.
Too bad customers hate these ideas....they are a lot fairer to most (non freeloading) customers.
Anyway, I'm done. Your points in this thread don't make much sense, and you really just went to calling me a liar rather than standing on any real argument.
The fact is, I'm not a liar, this situation does exist down to the last detail. I will absolutely not allow you to bait me into getting my employer's name dragged out on Slashdot, and if you have any decency you'll quit as well.
So if you want to believe that I'm just lying, that's fine. And no hard feelings on the discussion; it's been fun. But I think I've said all I will, and that's that.
Any reasonable interpretation of "unlimited" means that they impose no limits on your usage, in terms of time, bandwidth, or volume: you get what the wire offers. That means it should be acceptable for you to download at the maximum speed 24/7. Complaining that you download too much is a violation of their promise of "unlimited" service.
Uh, only if "Unlimited" is the only word that comes out of their mouth.
You guys are arguing over the definition of one word that some companies might at some time say, without even giving thought to how it's used. That just doesn't make much sense; they are going to say a lot of things, and ultimately define the service on paper. This definition is likely to leave them some outs.
Now if you have a specific advertizing scheme you want to talk about that you think isn't close enough to their actual terms, we can talk about that. But whether the word unlimited means various things can only be decided in the context of the ad in question.
I have yet to hear a broadband ad that I thought had really strong "unlimited" language in it. And certainly not recently.
Not only that, but a lot of these contracts have "we can change the service at any time without bothering to mention it clauses." That doesn't really interfere with the advertising claim per se; so long as they are not *currently* running adds that contain *open-ended* "unlimited" claims, they can go and start billing. Yeah, this is really sleazy if last month they had an ad that said "download as many movies as you want no matter what" but they can still do it, and that's why you don't get involved in outrageous contracts that say things like that.
Of course, this would be a lot worse if they were sending people bills. I'm not worried about it as long as they are going to mail warnings and stuff first...that was always the bitch about cell phone minutes.......
If you are signing up for service and not reading/finding out about the policies of the people you are buying service from, well....it's hard to get sympathy. Especially when the usage levels we're talking about clearly a)cost the provider way more than you are paying, and b)thereby impact all the other customers, who must ultimately overpay for the amount they use to subsidize you.
The point isn't so much how far apart the major cities are...America is full of a bunch of small towns dotted everywhere, spread over its whole area. Canada has the vast majority of its people on a few dots, and almost everybody clustered in the south.
Now, most Americans are still in big cities, so it's an apples-apples comparison, and yes, we (US) are still paying more. But it gets lots, lots worse when you go out into the medium (200k) and smaller cities in the US; I live in one such place, ~75k, and the cheapest you can get any broadband is about $50 (for like 768/128).
I also work for the smallest ISP in town. We have residential ADSL, starting at 768/128 for $55/m. We still don't make hardly any money on that service, though we do somewhat better on bigger lines, like 1.5/384 ($90, cheapest price in town...hehe), or 768/768 ($135, again cheaper from us than anyone else).
Sound ridiculous? You bet. A bit of gouging from the LEC might be involved, but their costs are certainly higher here than in bigger markets, and I expect this is mostly the blame. And then of course there's the fact that our aggregate bandwidth is really, really expensive. Like $500/mbps.
But anyway, point is, once you get off the coasts and away from the major cities, things get really ugly, really fast.
You assume we have a monopoly? Huh? You aren't making any sense. We are one of half a dozen ADSL vendors in town, plus two cable companies.
It's interesting how few people care at all about a 10GB limit; I'm really not kidding when I say 99% of people never use that much. We "still have a business" because normal users think we're great...because we are always fast and reliable, because there aren't a bunch of people running their circuits flat out, because we charge them. Sure, a few people say "no way" when we give them the contract, and they go on over to the cable companies, where the service sucks but the bandwidth is free. They are taking big losses right now, but they can afford to; they cover it with TV business. But they can't buy enough bandwidth to not top out every afternoon. We do. Because we bill people.
And by the way, no, I'm not going to piss my employer off by dragging his name into a/. flamewar. But it is a very small ISP that is not owned or affiliated with any LEC, CLEC, ILEC, or cable company, and is in fact wholly owned by one person.
Sooner or later, there won't be an ISP around that doesn't differentiate pricing by bandwidth.
Apologist's like myself? I'm not apologizing for a damn thing! I hand a written contract, just over a page in *12* point type, that says right there that they will be billed for usage over 10GB/month. They sign it.
So I don't see *anything* wrong with *our* method of business. So I'm not apologizing. And I'm not going to apologize or speak for any other company...some of them are probably being sleazy.
On the other hand, if they give you a bunch of small print, you should read it, or you're an idiot. And in any event, I still haven't heard who this mythical company is that's advertizing unlimited bandwidth!
There you go. Exactly what *should* be happening. Hopefully those of us who have had that position from the start will stop getting flamed soon...hehe.
That's not a terrible idea, but I don't think it's the best one either.
We've talked about changing the prices upward, but it's pretty distasteful to everyone involved. We would much rather just charge the folks that use it heavily, rather than make the <1GB/month users pay extra so some guy can get as many movies as he wants for free.
I really don't see why that's so hard to understand...I mean, you pay more for electricity if you use more, right?
Wow...that was interesting. My post was modded 5-informative.....and now all of a sudden it's 2-flamebait.
Wonder who's being such a jerk...or how this qualifies as flamebait? After all, its parent post *was* illogical and unfounded, and this *is* good information about the business.
I guess it's just really unpopular to suggest that people shouldn't have a "right" to unlimited bandwidth for no extra money. How about that...
Slashdot Mirror
Wait. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.
No, I meant "who should have been left..."
Hey dumbass...instead of suggesting that I read your post again, perhaps you could just focus on the part of my post that says "your parent there clearly has no "experiance" in spelling."
Perhaps in addition you might take some time to ask around and find out what a "parent" is with regard to slashdot.
Oh, yeah...and it's interesting that you claim to have no experience with theater yet clearly know that a)all the performers are gay, and b)all the women are overweight. Of course I'm guessing you haven't yet mobilized your neuron to figure out that some hot chick is almost always playing the lead, no matter where you go to see a play.
Yep, plays are full of good looking women, surprise surprise. Don't forget, people do cast these things (that means someone chooses the actor/actress for the role, you ignorant fuck), and it's not like all the plays around are about overweight gothic-looking people. Typically you'll find that the folks in high school or college plays are much better looking than a cross section of the school.
Man, you really are fucking stupid.
But then, you can't even put a decent flame together (wtf? i mean, not catching the reference to the parent post? and these insults..."fucking moron"? "rape your mother"? you gotta be kidding me! my granny can flame better than that, boy!) so I guess we really can't expect you to notice the obvious truth when it interferes with whatever mindless, unfounded, and inaccurate stereotype you are pushing.
For the record, I've been to untold numbers of both high school and college productions, but never been involved myself. I have seen some _really_ good looking women there, including some I knew well at my own hs that were into theater...even dated a couple...and somehow my heterosexuality never seemed hampered by the situation at all. I'm interested in what insecurities you might have, perhaps sexual, perhaps otherwise, which might cause you to be such a fuckhead...
Of course, not sure what i'm wasting keystrokes on here...just some provincial uncultured dumbshit fuck who would have been left as a cumstain on the backseat of his mom's nova, if only his dad hadn't gone off so quick he was surprised by it, and didn't pull out in time.
hehe...sorry. it was just really inviting. i had fun ;-)
1)DSP...first off, I can think of a few acronyms that fit, but I'm assuming you mean "digital signal processor" and I have no idea just what exactly you mean to do with one.
2)RF modulators? Like, uh, the things you use to plug RCA (composite) video+audio input to RF (coax, RG6) output? WTF?
3)12ga wire. Ok...I can see how this would have application in a communications system. Except of course for the fact that 12ga is FUCKING HUGE and that I have NEVER IN MY FUCKING LIFE seen anyone use anything bigger than about 20ga for communications purposes. Especially digital communications purposes.
Basically, I think you are full of shit. Really, really, really full of shit. Like, if you were a Native American, they would call you "Walking Eagle" because you are far too full of shit to fly. I mean, like, right before that guy comes in the truck to pump the shit out of the handi-jon...yeah, you're the handi-jon. Full to the brim. Of shit.
Obviously, you thought it would make you sound cool if you threw a couple of things that sort of sound like they might apply in a two sentence "look how smart I am cause I already did this" post. Of course, you ignored the fact that this system clearly needs to be wireless. And you ignored the golden rule of slashdot...somebody's almost always around with the bullshit detector.
Oh, and that 12ga wire thing. Heehee. Jackass.
But I'm really, really interested in hearing you prove me wrong. Preferably by explaining just how in the hell this collection of shit is expected to fulfill the stated goal.
I am heterosexual, so no, I have no experience in theater.
With an attitude like that, you'll never bag those theater chicks.
...of course, your parent there clearly has no "experiance" in spelling. On the other hand, he also clearly a)knows what the fuck he's talking about, and b)isn't a dickhead. Which are two things I can't say about you.
tehanu is correct; "support period" != "release schedule"
In fact, there was a slashdot story about a month ago detailing Mandrakesoft's support policy, which is lots longer than the release schedule.
Definitely...when I put Linux on some curious friend's spare machine for them, it's always Mandrake. It is easy to configure most things, but it is still a very standard GNU/Linux stack.
I'm hopefull, though, that with this new catalyst build process, Gentoo 2004 (stage3/grp style of course) might be able to overtake it. I run Gentoo/Mandrake/FreeBSD mostly, but Gentoo is by far the most fun. And it's certainly safe from the "windows knockoff" stigma you mention.
That's not to say anything against Mandrake, of course...it's just that Gentoo is so much closer to the source, to the part that separates us from them.
Not to put it in such polar terms...
The assumption (I call it that rather than a conclusion due to the total lack of supporting evidence) that Microsoft creates jobs is based, I can only presume, on the fact that they employ lots of people.
;-)
It is probably much, much more important that they have also completely destroyed dozens of other domestic software companies. In fact, there are so few major non-game software companies now that you could probably count them on your fingers.
Microsoft has *not* created jobs...it has caused many more people to lose jobs than it ever hired.
Now, there is one thing I agree with you on....the Rethugs will *definately* be suckers for it. But then, they bought the Laffer curve too
Try'n think of a single invention that doesn't make a task easier or quicker.
Neckties.
1. ...a Beowulf cluster of these! ...shall call him mini-me! ...it's not the size, it's how you use it! ...in Soviet Russia, PC shrinks YOU! ...WORRIED ABOUT SIZE?!?! NEW P*I*L*L*S SHRINK YOUR PC!!!!
2.
3.
4.
5.
Yeah...it's kind of funny. I'm right there with you, been using Linux as my desktop os now since '99. And I too am terribly annoyed when cornered by Windows.
On the other hand, I feel the other edge of the sword you're swinging. While I can see the stubborness of the Windows users who won't switch, I can also see my own; sometimes, I'm bothered by genuine limitations of Windows, but more often, it's just that it behaves, well, so windowsee that it just pisses me off. And then there are times when I realize that there's something going on in Windows that I don't understand, and I'll think about that thing's analog in Linux, and I'll realize that I don't know how to operate the system as well.
Now, of course, I can recognize the difference between knowing how to operate the computer and how to operate the system. But that isn't really a very important distinction. The point is, yes, people want to use the systems they are familiar with. All people, on any system.
Yeah....at least the phone booths don't divulge their locations....
...oh...wait......
Throughput limits in this fashion should be made illegal.
I'm particularly fond of the way that you obviously think that everything you find distasteful should be illegal. Why on earth should it be illegal for a company to put terms in its contract that protect it from losing money? I mean, it isn't infringing on anyone's rights...I still haven't found the right to unlimited bandwidth in the constitution.
It is not the responsibility of the customer to manager [sic] their throughput in such a way that it remains profitable for the ISP.
Right. It is the responsibility of the business to ensure that they remain profitable......which absolutely precludes offering unlimited throughput on oversold services like ADSL. Now, that said...once the business does this by putting limits in a contract that the customer signs, then abiding by that contract does become the customer's responsibility, just like anyone who signs any contract has a responsibility to follow it. Now, in our case, that does not necessarily mean they have to manage their bandwidth...they can just as easily ante up and pay for it. And why not? I mean, we pay for it...
The ISP can restructure their service to continue to allow 100% saturation without losing profit
First off, I'm really amused by the fact that so many people replying to this story have these fantastic ideas of what ISP's can do. Ok, if this is so obvious, why don't you go start an ISP? I mean, surely you won't have any problem offering people 100% of their rated bandwidth 100% of the time for $50/month.....while making a profit.
The truth is that's ridiculous. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: THIS IS AN OVERSOLD SERVICE!!!! That is the only reason it is so cheap.
Now...if we wanted to "restructure" our service so that every user had 100%-of-capacity throughput, we would have to get 768kbps worth of capacity for every line we've got, and more than that for some of them. Now, as I've mentioned, this is $750/month worth of bandwidth at cost! Now, just how in the hell are we supposed to sell that for $50/month?
Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about, and this idea that ISP's can simply give everybody as much bandwidth as they want for no money is ridiculous. Now, we'll happily sell you dedicated throughput on any circuit you want....but (I'm sure this comes as a great surprise) we expect you to pay slightly more than our costs for that dedicated rate. I find it totally bewildering that people find anything wrong with this.
Now, of course the major impact of this policy has not been huge bills for our customers. And it hasn't been a mass exodus from our service (I've mentioned several times, with no effect, that 99% of users don't even come close to one gig a month) either. It's been a rejection of our contract by a tiny minority of people. Folks who want to saturate the connection just don't sign up. Because we are very up-front about what the limits are, and why they are there. Sure, I hear a little bit of whining about it, but only about once a month or so. And we didn't want those customers anyway; they would cost us money.
So they go off and sign up with the cable company. Fine by us...let them take the loss. Of course, that's why their service sucks; regular users have terrible speeds, because the cable company doesn't have the bandwidth to feed all the leaches. Because they are only paying $50 a month, and they are using hundreds of dollars in bandwidth. So all those other poor bastards have to foot the bill and endure shitty service.
So, concratulations....you are pushing everyone's broadband costs up, and helping to ensure that the only ISPs around in a few years will be owned by huge companies in other businesses (like cable and telephone) that can afford to take massive losses. Oh, except for the ones that start capping.
So have fun for these next couple of years, hopping from
"...with a majority of small IQ peoples."
Er....you know that an IQ test is designed in such a fashion that the range of all people fall on a standard distribution curve, right?
Just checking...
I understand your concern...bandwidth is indeed expensive.
Now, the numbers where you are may be different, but when using my numbers, there's only one problem with your suggestion. We go out of business.
50GB/month is 154kbps all month long. We pay $500/mbps of capacity, or $.49/kbps. Since you are going to use your capacity solid through the month, it is directly relational to our pricing...so it will cost us $75.46 to provide that much bandwidth. Add in $37.50 for the LEC's line fees, and ($1700/[our total customers]) for the DS3 loop between us and the LEC, and maybe something to cover tech support costs, router/equipment upkeep, etc. I assume you want the ADSL to cost less than $120/month.
Sorry, but the intended application of these lines is not file sharing, or anything else that saturates a line to 100%. It is an oversold service and that is the only reason it is so cheap. If you want a circuit to use flat out all the time, you need to pay for a real circuit with dedicated bandwidth, and it's going to be really pricey.
It might be possible; but it would certainly be quite difficult.
I mean, if you wanted to go look through everybody's traffic graphs and try to limit them accordingly with dummynet or whatever, you could, but that's doing it manually...you might be able to code something up that will automatically detect changing patterns and move folks around, but really, you're likely going to cause as many problems as you solve. Those guys that use that much are a lot more likely to notice that they aren't getting good throughput than the folks that are just checking their email. One reason that service providers charge by the gig is because the customer wants a lot more *speed* than they want *monthly transfer*...since we aggregate so many people, we "play the numbers" so to speak and the usage evens out, hopefully peaking just under our capacity.
Folks wouldn't like the prices they would have to pay to get a set throughput...128k/s would cost at least $100 from us. Not counting whatever line fees and such there might be for the delivery technology.
But I like the basic idea; it would be good to try to be fairer divying it up.
That's an excellent point.
Notice, however, that most residential packages are a lot cheaper than business ones? In many cases, this kind of thinking figures in there; most places have their bandwidth crunch toward the end of the business day (well, lately some cable ones that have many more residential lines than business peak later, but bear with me here), and then have excess capacity all evening. Since the businesses use bandwidth during the day they end up paying more, while the residential users get relatively cheap service, because they mostly use at night.
That's clearly not true for every ISP; that's another part of the problem. Cell phone usage is pretty standard from company to company, but I expect depending on the ISP's customer mix the times that would be peak or off-peak might vary substantially. But our usage usually peaks for the day at about 4pm.
Anyway, the other neat thing is that I've drafted contracts for colocation customers that specified times for certain amounts of throughput. His stuff wasn't very time-sensitive, and we figured bandwidth was pretty much free at 4am. So he got a small limit of daytime monthly usage (maintenance or whatever) and a tremendous limit for 2-5am transfers. And it's really cheap.
So, yeah; that peak/off distinction is certainly important, and we're thinking about it. I don't think we could go to a different price on it right now....look how unpopular an idea it is that you ought to pay more if you use more...but maybe someday.
What I would really like to do with our ADSL billing is just pass on the LEC's line fees, a small ($4-5) service charge for the things that cost on a per-line basis, and then have a $/k charge for everything. Just like electricity.
But, that's even a bit farther off. Maybe when we get there we can attach a sliding value to a k as a function of time of day. Like it's $.02/k before 7, and $.01/k after.
Too bad customers hate these ideas....they are a lot fairer to most (non freeloading) customers.
Dude, who's trolling whom? ;-)
Anyway, I'm done. Your points in this thread don't make much sense, and you really just went to calling me a liar rather than standing on any real argument.
The fact is, I'm not a liar, this situation does exist down to the last detail. I will absolutely not allow you to bait me into getting my employer's name dragged out on Slashdot, and if you have any decency you'll quit as well.
So if you want to believe that I'm just lying, that's fine. And no hard feelings on the discussion; it's been fun. But I think I've said all I will, and that's that.
Sorry...
Any reasonable interpretation of "unlimited" means that they impose no limits on your usage, in terms of time, bandwidth, or volume: you get what the wire offers. That means it should be acceptable for you to download at the maximum speed 24/7. Complaining that you download too much is a violation of their promise of "unlimited" service.
Uh, only if "Unlimited" is the only word that comes out of their mouth.
You guys are arguing over the definition of one word that some companies might at some time say, without even giving thought to how it's used. That just doesn't make much sense; they are going to say a lot of things, and ultimately define the service on paper. This definition is likely to leave them some outs.
Now if you have a specific advertizing scheme you want to talk about that you think isn't close enough to their actual terms, we can talk about that. But whether the word unlimited means various things can only be decided in the context of the ad in question.
I have yet to hear a broadband ad that I thought had really strong "unlimited" language in it. And certainly not recently.
Not only that, but a lot of these contracts have "we can change the service at any time without bothering to mention it clauses." That doesn't really interfere with the advertising claim per se; so long as they are not *currently* running adds that contain *open-ended* "unlimited" claims, they can go and start billing. Yeah, this is really sleazy if last month they had an ad that said "download as many movies as you want no matter what" but they can still do it, and that's why you don't get involved in outrageous contracts that say things like that.
Of course, this would be a lot worse if they were sending people bills. I'm not worried about it as long as they are going to mail warnings and stuff first...that was always the bitch about cell phone minutes.......
If you are signing up for service and not reading/finding out about the policies of the people you are buying service from, well....it's hard to get sympathy. Especially when the usage levels we're talking about clearly a)cost the provider way more than you are paying, and b)thereby impact all the other customers, who must ultimately overpay for the amount they use to subsidize you.
The point isn't so much how far apart the major cities are...America is full of a bunch of small towns dotted everywhere, spread over its whole area. Canada has the vast majority of its people on a few dots, and almost everybody clustered in the south.
Now, most Americans are still in big cities, so it's an apples-apples comparison, and yes, we (US) are still paying more. But it gets lots, lots worse when you go out into the medium (200k) and smaller cities in the US; I live in one such place, ~75k, and the cheapest you can get any broadband is about $50 (for like 768/128).
I also work for the smallest ISP in town. We have residential ADSL, starting at 768/128 for $55/m. We still don't make hardly any money on that service, though we do somewhat better on bigger lines, like 1.5/384 ($90, cheapest price in town...hehe), or 768/768 ($135, again cheaper from us than anyone else).
Sound ridiculous? You bet. A bit of gouging from the LEC might be involved, but their costs are certainly higher here than in bigger markets, and I expect this is mostly the blame. And then of course there's the fact that our aggregate bandwidth is really, really expensive. Like $500/mbps.
But anyway, point is, once you get off the coasts and away from the major cities, things get really ugly, really fast.
You assume we have a monopoly? Huh? You aren't making any sense. We are one of half a dozen ADSL vendors in town, plus two cable companies.
/. flamewar. But it is a very small ISP that is not owned or affiliated with any LEC, CLEC, ILEC, or cable company, and is in fact wholly owned by one person.
It's interesting how few people care at all about a 10GB limit; I'm really not kidding when I say 99% of people never use that much. We "still have a business" because normal users think we're great...because we are always fast and reliable, because there aren't a bunch of people running their circuits flat out, because we charge them. Sure, a few people say "no way" when we give them the contract, and they go on over to the cable companies, where the service sucks but the bandwidth is free. They are taking big losses right now, but they can afford to; they cover it with TV business. But they can't buy enough bandwidth to not top out every afternoon. We do. Because we bill people.
And by the way, no, I'm not going to piss my employer off by dragging his name into a
Sooner or later, there won't be an ISP around that doesn't differentiate pricing by bandwidth.
Apologist's like myself? I'm not apologizing for a damn thing! I hand a written contract, just over a page in *12* point type, that says right there that they will be billed for usage over 10GB/month. They sign it.
So I don't see *anything* wrong with *our* method of business. So I'm not apologizing. And I'm not going to apologize or speak for any other company...some of them are probably being sleazy.
On the other hand, if they give you a bunch of small print, you should read it, or you're an idiot. And in any event, I still haven't heard who this mythical company is that's advertizing unlimited bandwidth!
There you go. Exactly what *should* be happening. Hopefully those of us who have had that position from the start will stop getting flamed soon...hehe.
That's not a terrible idea, but I don't think it's the best one either.
We've talked about changing the prices upward, but it's pretty distasteful to everyone involved. We would much rather just charge the folks that use it heavily, rather than make the <1GB/month users pay extra so some guy can get as many movies as he wants for free.
I really don't see why that's so hard to understand...I mean, you pay more for electricity if you use more, right?
Wow...that was interesting. My post was modded 5-informative.....and now all of a sudden it's 2-flamebait.
Wonder who's being such a jerk...or how this qualifies as flamebait? After all, its parent post *was* illogical and unfounded, and this *is* good information about the business.
I guess it's just really unpopular to suggest that people shouldn't have a "right" to unlimited bandwidth for no extra money. How about that...