Non-autistic children with autistic siblings had a different chemical fingerprint than those without any autistic siblings, and autistic children had a different chemical fingerprint than the other two groups. end-quote.
So even sibs can be distinguished with this test. Presumably they would eat the same foods in the home.
First: I make no analogy to the 640k "Enough" argument. Neither does AT&T.
I don't justify these particular tiers, (and I suspect when enough pressure is brought to bear AT&T won't defend them to their death either). In fact I think the lower tier is way too small, judging by monthly usage of family and friends.
I do seek to make the case that Tiering is perfectly reasonable approach to data hogs who raise the price for the average user.
That AT&T could drop the price at least five bucks (16%) for 98% of their 26.8 million users with zero impact on their data usage shows how huge the impact of those 2% of Data-hogs was.
I expect, and I presume AT&T expects per user data consumption to inch inexorably upward. Tiered pricing does nothing to restrict that. When the average user starts exceeding 2gig and paying the over-charges market pressure will force a re-adjustment of those tiers or their prices. These tiers and these prices are not cast in stone.
Second: 2GB is not the maximum "CAP", its just the highest tier. You can always buy additional gigs for some outrageous price by simply blowing thru 2Gig.
You can not leave a download "sitting in the queue" delivering a few bytes now and then over the course of 8 hours. That traffic pattern will kill wireless device batteries by keeping the radios on all night long. These devices are designed around burst traffic for short periods.
The solution is as you stated in your past paragraph. Upgrade the total system bandwidth.
Nobody is going to replace all the smartphones out there, with versions that allow the level of buffering and prioritization control you are talking about, and your mom would not have a clue how to use such a system. All she wants is to watch the grand kids on YouTube right now, not tomorrow morning.
You are essentially arguing for the Tragedy of the Commons all over again, allowing the sheep to come after the cattle to make sure every blade of grass is eaten, and every packet imagined is sent. Eventually.
And for what? So that people paying an average price can continue to consume 5 to 20 times the average resource?
Its not going to happen. Its not fair. Price has ALWAYS been the most successful method of allocation of shared resources. Nobody does it any other way.
Let's suppose firms and consumers respond to incentives. Also suppose firms wish to maximize their own profits, while consumers wish to maximize their own utility. If AT&T effectively increases their price for data plans, then what do you think competitors will do?
AT&T's plans will effectively CUT costs for 98% of their user base.
Only 2% who slurp down porn flick after porn flick on their mobile phone will ever exceed 2gig. You know who you are...
Verizon will announce similar tiers soon, they have been hinting since march.
Sprint probably won't initially, but they don't have the network capacity to pick up the top 2% of AT&T's bandwidth hogs. They will be forced into some defensive tiering.
So all carriers will end with tiered pricing, just like the rest of the world.
With enough noise, and bad press, AT&T may raise the top rung to 3 Gig, maybe even 4, and they might raise the bottom rung up to 400meg. These caps seem to be laid out to allow some movement to a level that would engender less grousing.
But tiers are here to stay. There is not a glut of infrastructure out there anymore.
Sadly, bluetooth is becoming commonplace. Hands free driving laws pretty much mandate the technology. Maybe not in rural Iowa, but common enough everywhere else.
Nobody is going to want to hold a slab the size of this phone to their head for very long.
Because bandwidth can not be stored one needs excess bandwidth, because once you put all that low priority porn in the pipe you can't take it out to service priority traffic. You are pretty well committed once you send it.
Nobody ever plans for 100% utilization of tcp/ip bandwidth because congestion makes things real messy when you get close to 100%. Bandwidth not used is not always bandwidth wasted. Surge capacity is a good thing.
Besides, nobody feels that their traffic should be de-prioritized, and the porn download is just as important to someone and the email.
Nope. You will never convince the industry or anyone who knows anything about networking that slowing down traffic from heavy users after some magical number has been reached is the way to go.
Price is a GREAT arbiter of priority. Pay for what you get. Its the only fair way.
Since the internet was built, the object has been to build the next version. This will always be the case. There is no escaping it. You fund tomorrows network with today's profit. You can't do that giving away unlimited bandwidth to people who pay a tiny portion of the cost they impose on the system.
But you do want the content, right? So how do you expect the content providers to pay for the bandwidth they use to provide you with it?
Find a business model that works.
We are all ears!!!
The current model works. Simply suggesting it doesn't is not good enough. The evidence is all around you.
WE (yee olde web surfers, game players, and facebook fanboys) built the infrastructure in this country. We built it $30 per month, year after year. We added more dial-up lines. We added cable modems. We paid. We demanded faster connections so we could game. We paid. We tossed out old modems, bought new modems. We paid.
There is very little government money in our current infrastructure. Instead, you paid. I paid.
We accepted the ads, because those allowed us to read a blog, or visit a site for free, without having to open an account there. Could you imagine having to have an account at every site you visited? Could you imagine having a charge from Slashdot appear on each credit card statement, or watching your cable bill balloon each time you visit facebook?
Part of the problem is the new ubiquity of advertising in apps. Why should we subsidize ads directed at us? It wasn't a big deal with an unlimited plan but now every byte is precious.
And maybe you will start avoiding those sites with huge loads of ads. Or maybe you will send off a bitchy note to the web master.
That webmaster is not ATT's customer, and ATT can't discipline them or charge them more. You are the customer, the only one ATT has by the short hairs, so your behavior is the only behavior ATT can influence.
Charging people by bit is the wrong model. The infrastructure is there and costs nearly the same if tons of data is going over it or no data is going over it.
EVEN if you postulated a glut of infrastructure, your argument still wouldn't make sense.
But given AT&T can't keep up with the build-out of the 3G system with a DO-OVER to LTE staring them in the face, it makes absolutely no sense at all.
There is no glut. There is no idle infrastructure. There is a very real shortage of infrastructure, and the fairest rationing method always comes down to price.
If your boss (or your mom) asks you to do twice the amount of work, for the same wage (allowance), but you can prioritize so that you can put some tasks off till the weekend in order to do the rush jobs now, would you think that was fair? More work, less downtime, same pay?
People who use too much bandwidth (or tasks on your to-do list) should PAY for that bandwidth, that way ATT can build more towers, lease more frequencies, string better back-haul fiber.
Simply slowing down some traffic doesn't remove congestion. The pipe is full. Queuing up some data for later does not improve anything, it just prolongs the congestion.
If the traffic is important to you, why should it be LAST? Why can't you pay to have it first, of at least arrive in sequence?
If its not important to you, why not help you make that decision, by making it affect your pocket book?
And I really don't mind the concept of making high-usage customers pay higher costs.
But this nonsense of a fee for tethering? Why?
Continuing with the Popular Mechanics analogy of buying electricity, why should I pay more just to light a bulb in my garage instead of my house? As long as I pay for the kilowatts what does it matter?
Speculation about carrier based on the frequencies is at best guesswork, because new radios can be swapped into the design very easily. Most radio chipset manufacturers can give you a radio with the same pin-outs and die size for any flavor of cell system you want to talk to, and the programming interfaces are all standardized as well.
Why would the tipster contact an elected official rather than the CPSC directly? After all, they have a web page just for this process: http://www.cpsc.gov/talk.html
Was there some political motivation in going thru an elected official? Is this an insider?, a Competitor? Does it matter?
Never the less, we are already perilously close to "making facts 'proprietary' and allowing news organizations to copyright them."
The first news organization to publish a story often has a monopoly on that story until another journalist (no bloggers need apply) gets there and files a report (usually after the fact).
For that interval, the story is for all intents and purposes proprietary. Doesn't matter what Joe Citizen saw (unreliable eyewitness), or what Polly Pajama Blogger posts (unprofessional). The story is essentially OWNED by the first agency.
It is not that hard to imagine our current copyright law being tweaked to extend this ownership for some period of time (weeks, then months) in the interest "protecting intellectual property" (aks propping up the current news infrastructure).
We see the Universe the way it is, because if it was different, we wouldn't be here to see it.
On the contrary, we would be perfectly suited to survive in any universe that spawned us.
A few years ago, it was reported that without a moon life on earth would be impossible.
Now we are told any little difference in Jupiter's orbit would also render life impossible.
There seems to be a great tendency to suggest we live in a giant "Just So" story and could not exist in any other scenario, while at the same time we are finding life in the most inhospitable places imaginable.
"WE" might be a different "WE" if we evolved in slightly altered environments but never the less the belief that conditions must be just like earth for something nearly human in capabilities, chemistry, and societal structure is pretty close to the geocentric view of the universe so handily debunked by Copernicus.
It would be very interesting to see how you think that Google would resolve that problem.
It's very generous of Google to provide this facility, but also a useful distraction from the fact that Google itself is datamining your search activity. Know thine frenemy.
But you knew that when you logged onto the google page.
You didn't know about the Chinese government datamining google searches.
Don't like Google Datamining? Find another search engine that doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
So you guys didn't read TFA either?
Quote article:
Non-autistic children with autistic siblings had a different chemical fingerprint than those without any autistic siblings, and autistic children had a different chemical fingerprint than the other two groups.
end-quote.
So even sibs can be distinguished with this test. Presumably they would eat the same foods in the home.
Seems your link has nothing at all to do with the story at hand.
So WHY do Children with autism have a difference in gut bacteria?
Seems rather more important than just some minor trait you can take advantage of in a pee test.
Two points:
First: I make no analogy to the 640k "Enough" argument. Neither does AT&T.
I don't justify these particular tiers, (and I suspect when enough pressure is brought to bear AT&T won't defend them to their death either). In fact I think the lower tier is way too small, judging by monthly usage of family and friends.
I do seek to make the case that Tiering is perfectly reasonable approach to data hogs who raise the price for the average user.
That AT&T could drop the price at least five bucks (16%) for 98% of their 26.8 million users with zero impact on their data usage shows how huge the impact of those 2% of Data-hogs was.
I expect, and I presume AT&T expects per user data consumption to inch inexorably upward. Tiered pricing does nothing to restrict that. When the average user starts exceeding 2gig and paying the over-charges market pressure will force a re-adjustment of those tiers or their prices. These tiers and these prices are not cast in stone.
Second:
2GB is not the maximum "CAP", its just the highest tier. You can always buy additional gigs for some outrageous price by simply blowing thru 2Gig.
At &t wireless does not do business in Canada. You made it up.
We are talking about wireless networks here.
You can not leave a download "sitting in the queue" delivering a few bytes now and then over the course of 8 hours. That traffic pattern will kill wireless device batteries by keeping the radios on all night long. These devices are designed around burst traffic for short periods.
The solution is as you stated in your past paragraph. Upgrade the total system bandwidth.
Nobody is going to replace all the smartphones out there, with versions that allow the level of buffering and prioritization control you are talking about, and your mom would not have a clue how to use such a system. All she wants is to watch the grand kids on YouTube right now, not tomorrow morning.
You are essentially arguing for the Tragedy of the Commons all over again, allowing the sheep to come after the cattle to make sure every blade of grass is eaten, and every packet imagined is sent. Eventually.
And for what? So that people paying an average price can continue to consume 5 to 20 times the average resource?
Its not going to happen. Its not fair. Price has ALWAYS been the most successful method of allocation of shared resources. Nobody does it any other way.
Let's suppose firms and consumers respond to incentives. Also suppose firms wish to maximize their own profits, while consumers wish to maximize their own utility. If AT&T effectively increases their price for data plans, then what do you think competitors will do?
AT&T's plans will effectively CUT costs for 98% of their user base.
Only 2% who slurp down porn flick after porn flick on their mobile phone will ever exceed 2gig. You know who you are...
Verizon will announce similar tiers soon, they have been hinting since march.
Sprint probably won't initially, but they don't have the network capacity to pick up the top 2% of AT&T's bandwidth hogs. They will be forced into some defensive tiering.
So all carriers will end with tiered pricing, just like the rest of the world.
With enough noise, and bad press, AT&T may raise the top rung to 3 Gig, maybe even 4, and they might raise the bottom rung up to 400meg. These caps seem to be laid out to allow some movement to a level that would engender less grousing.
But tiers are here to stay. There is not a glut of infrastructure out there anymore.
Bluetooth is holding down the Geek factor? lol
Sadly, bluetooth is becoming commonplace. Hands free driving laws pretty much mandate the technology. Maybe not in rural Iowa, but common enough everywhere else.
Nobody is going to want to hold a slab the size of this phone to their head for very long.
Because bandwidth can not be stored one needs excess bandwidth, because once you put all that low priority porn in the pipe you can't take it out to service priority traffic. You are pretty well committed once you send it.
Nobody ever plans for 100% utilization of tcp/ip bandwidth because congestion makes things real messy when you get close to 100%. Bandwidth not used is not always bandwidth wasted. Surge capacity is a good thing.
Besides, nobody feels that their traffic should be de-prioritized, and the porn download is just as important to someone and the email.
Nope. You will never convince the industry or anyone who knows anything about networking that slowing down traffic from heavy users after some magical number has been reached is the way to go.
Price is a GREAT arbiter of priority. Pay for what you get. Its the only fair way.
Since the internet was built, the object has been to build the next version. This will always be the case. There is no escaping it. You fund tomorrows network with today's profit.
You can't do that giving away unlimited bandwidth to people who pay a tiny portion of the cost they impose on the system.
Its never going to happen your way.
Nah, I simply got carried away trying to prove that the current model DOES work, and has for the last 20 years.
We will go right on paying. We always have.
>Added Value????
So too the lightbulb in the garage:
Or the glass of water on a hot day as opposed to a cool day"
Should we pay nothing for bandwidth chewed up in spam then?
Since when do we share our perception of the "Value of data" with our service provider?
Side note:
(I seriously doubt they (ATT) can tell if I'm tethering or not without deep packet inspection to see what agent my browser is reporting).
But you do want the content, right? So how do you expect the content providers to pay for the bandwidth they use to provide you with it?
Find a business model that works.
We are all ears!!!
The current model works. Simply suggesting it doesn't is not good enough. The evidence is all around you.
WE (yee olde web surfers, game players, and facebook fanboys) built the infrastructure in this country. We built it $30 per month, year after year. We added more dial-up lines. We added cable modems. We paid. We demanded faster connections so we could game. We paid. We tossed out old modems, bought new modems. We paid.
There is very little government money in our current infrastructure. Instead, you paid. I paid.
We accepted the ads, because those allowed us to read a blog, or visit a site for free, without having to open an account there. Could you imagine having to have an account at every site you visited? Could you imagine having a charge from Slashdot appear on each credit card statement, or watching your cable bill balloon each time you visit facebook?
The model works.
Part of the problem is the new ubiquity of advertising in apps. Why should we subsidize ads directed at us? It wasn't a big deal with an unlimited plan but now every byte is precious.
And maybe you will start avoiding those sites with huge loads of ads. Or maybe you will send off a bitchy note to the web master.
That webmaster is not ATT's customer, and ATT can't discipline them or charge them more. You are the customer, the only one ATT has by the short hairs, so your behavior is the only behavior ATT can influence.
Charging people by bit is the wrong model. The infrastructure is there and costs nearly the same if tons of data is going over it or no data is going over it.
EVEN if you postulated a glut of infrastructure, your argument still wouldn't make sense.
But given AT&T can't keep up with the build-out of the 3G system with a DO-OVER to LTE staring them in the face, it makes absolutely no sense at all.
There is no glut. There is no idle infrastructure. There is a very real shortage of infrastructure, and the fairest rationing method always comes down to price.
If your boss (or your mom) asks you to do twice the amount of work, for the same wage (allowance), but you can prioritize so that you can put some tasks off till the weekend in order to do the rush jobs now, would you think that was fair? More work, less downtime, same pay?
People who use too much bandwidth (or tasks on your to-do list) should PAY for that bandwidth, that way ATT can build more towers, lease more frequencies, string better back-haul fiber.
Simply slowing down some traffic doesn't remove congestion. The pipe is full. Queuing up some data for later does not improve anything, it just prolongs the congestion.
If the traffic is important to you, why should it be LAST? Why can't you pay to have it first, of at least arrive in sequence?
If its not important to you, why not help you make that decision, by making it affect your pocket book?
Charging by the bit is the only rational model.
And I really don't mind the concept of making high-usage customers pay higher costs.
But this nonsense of a fee for tethering? Why?
Continuing with the Popular Mechanics analogy of buying electricity, why should I pay more just to light a bulb in my garage instead of my house? As long as I pay for the kilowatts what does it matter?
Huge iPhone like device. Not something you want to hold up to your ear, bluetooth recommended just to hold down the Geek-factor.
http://www.androidcentral.com/dell-streak-coming-att-later-summer
Speculation about carrier based on the frequencies is at best guesswork, because new radios can be swapped into the design very easily. Most radio chipset manufacturers can give you a radio with the same pin-outs and die size for any flavor of cell system you want to talk to, and the programming interfaces are all standardized as well.
It could be on sprint tomorrow if they wanted.
Why?
Is McDonalds going to hire a hit man?
Why would the tipster contact an elected official rather than the CPSC directly? After all, they have a web page just for this process: http://www.cpsc.gov/talk.html
Was there some political motivation in going thru an elected official? Is this an insider?, a Competitor? Does it matter?
Never the less, we are already perilously close to "making facts 'proprietary' and allowing news organizations to copyright them."
The first news organization to publish a story often has a monopoly on that story until another journalist (no bloggers need apply) gets there and files a report (usually after the fact).
For that interval, the story is for all intents and purposes proprietary. Doesn't matter what Joe Citizen saw (unreliable eyewitness), or what Polly Pajama Blogger posts (unprofessional). The story is essentially OWNED by the first agency.
It is not that hard to imagine our current copyright law being tweaked to extend this ownership for some period of time (weeks, then months) in the interest "protecting intellectual property" (aks propping up the current news infrastructure).
Yeah, 10.04 is what I have, but I can't induce this on the 3G.
Might be my USB drivers, since my ubuntu machines are in a virtual machine. I'll try it on real hardware tomorrow.
Seems not to do this on my older iPhone 3G.
All it sees is the camera via digicam.
So he either has some additional libraries on his Ubuntu or some hack-ness on his phone, or this bug was introduced on the 3Gs model.
We see the Universe the way it is, because if it was different, we wouldn't be here to see it.
On the contrary, we would be perfectly suited to survive in any universe that spawned us.
A few years ago, it was reported that without a moon life on earth would be impossible.
Now we are told any little difference in Jupiter's orbit would also render life impossible.
There seems to be a great tendency to suggest we live in a giant "Just So" story and could not exist in any other scenario, while at the same time we are finding life in the most inhospitable places imaginable.
"WE" might be a different "WE" if we evolved in slightly altered environments but never the less the belief that conditions must be just like earth for something nearly human in capabilities, chemistry, and societal structure is pretty close to the geocentric view of the universe so handily debunked by Copernicus.
Not anymore you don't.
SSL is extremely transient.
It would be very interesting to see how you think that Google would resolve that problem.
It's very generous of Google to provide this facility, but also a useful distraction from the fact that Google itself is datamining your search activity. Know thine frenemy.
But you knew that when you logged onto the google page.
You didn't know about the Chinese government datamining google searches.
Don't like Google Datamining? Find another search engine that doesn't.
It would be very interesting to see how you think that Google would resolve that problem.
Maybe the little Cashed link would be of help?