The argument that "if we tell you the limit, you'll just abuse it" is ridiculous.
My cell phone provider tells me how many minutes of talk time I get per month.
Further, if you're going to cut me off for exceeding an unknown and undisclosed and unclarified limit -- then I'm ALREADY "abusing" this limit. So why not tell me what it is? The worst that will happen is that, instead of me going over it by a huge amount as I would have to be doing to be kicked off, I'll remain UNDER it.
A song is 3mb? What crappy bitrate do they think people encode to? A decent quality rip is going to be around 7mb. Possibly more.
They need to get off it and stop being so cryptic. They also need to realize that "excessive use" can be easily exceeded by completely reasonable means.
Today, I downloaded some demos on XBOX. That was about 10gb. I downloaded some video/demo/subscription content via both XBOX and PS3 this past month, too. So that's another 10gb (all of the TGS content from Microsoft via XBL alone is about 3gb).
I downloaded my weekly podcasts (video and audio). That was about 3gb.
I am 1500 miles from my home town, so I stream the local radio station (256kbps) all day every day (about 30gb/mo, probably).
My roommate also streams his favorite radio station most of the day. Another 20gb or so per month.
I streamed several movies from a pay service (like vongo) this week. Figure that's another 15gb/mo.
My roommate watched a few movies the same way. Another 5gb.
I downloaded three linux ISOs via torrent and seeded them to 100%. That's another 5gb.
I uploaded about 20gb of MP3s to my mp3tunes account.
This doesn't count surfing or watching youtube style content or FTPing to my remote server or connecting to my machine in the office via VNC and VPN. With completely reasonable uses, I've just accounted for 118gb between two people on one residential account. I presume the use would be higher if there were more people. Say, a four or five person family, for example.
And of course, the biggest issue here is that they've simply avoided answering the question altogether. The title of this submission is inaccurate. They didn't answer anything, yet offered a response that can be turned against any user by simply adjusting how big these pictures and emails supposedly are supposed to be for this calculation.
Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.
Someone has recently been playing around with the generation age-frames, because almost ten years ago, baby boomers were between 50 and 60 already. Now, baby boomers include anyone who is 42 to 64. That's right. 42 is a baby boomer, apparently (shouldn't that be generation X?). I'm also now defined as a "generation Xer" even though five years ago, I was considered several years too young.
With such a wealth of poorly phrased material in the article blurb, I think I'd have to look past simple over-use of punctuation and right on to the following senseless sentence:
who are asking nVidia fix rendering issues these 3D 16-bit games on their newer video cards and drivers.
It's sad that at the age of 30, I am still forced by industry and society to have the content and entertainment I consume dumbed down to the acceptability level of a fourth grade child.
They would still bitch. I would still bitch. Aside from intrusiveness, I simply don't want 90% of my screen real-estate to be taken by annoying, flashy, blinking, animated, noisey, idiotic advertisements. I don't need every second of my life to be consumed with advertising.
Further, I believe that a service is either worth PAYING for (by the visitor) or it is worth GIVING THE SERVICE FOR FREE (by the provider). For instance, I don't want my users to be annoyed by pages full of disruptive advertising, so the 60,000 members to my website do not have to deal with advertising, period. I have kept up with that for more than eight years and I'm willing to do away with the few bucks from advertising and pay for all expenses out of my pocket in return for not being another annoying sell-out.
Is this some sort of Slashdot attempt to still look topical and relevant by discussing the behind the scenes events of some "underground" site that all the kids are talking about these days?
You can have five billion machines all hitting a single "atomic clock". Or you could have a few servers hit it and hundreds of servers that sync up with *those* servers. Seriously, even in cases where all machines of an organization or university or corporation sync off one single internal NTP server (which itself them hits one of the servers in this pool, I'd presume) -- you're still talking about billions of machines that need to have the proper time synced on a daily bases across the globe.
I mean . . . you don't have just one single DNS server for the entire planet, because adding more would just raise inaccuracies... you have DNS servers all over the planet to serve various geographies and balance the load.
How are they supposed to track what subversive materials I'm reading or what kind of groups I'm congregating with or who I'm socializing with or what my personal views and beliefs are, otherwise?!
Light pollution is irrelevant in the long run when it comes to astronomical observation. We can build observation facilities in our orbit. Problem solved.
Light pollution as far as people wanting to be able to "sit in a field and feel like they're floating around the galaxy while viewing stars in a dark night sky"...? Who cares. Your proverbial cloud-watching is insignificant compared to the technological and industrial progress of civilization.
Seriously. They are working to own every other bit of information. Why not "own" the method by which machines maintain time by throwing a thousand machines at it (an insignificant number compared to the 500k or more that make up their own server farm).
Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America
on
Help Find Steve Fossett
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the insinuation that such a technology and effort would ONLY be made available to a rich white man is jaded and wrong.
I am sure that this technology and effort would be made, also, for any pretty white girl. Especially if she's blond.
And unless you're a white millionaire or a pretty white blond girl, who cares if you're missing? I've watched Fox News enough to know that nobody except pretty white blond girls ever go missing *anyway*.
What I don't understand is . . . who does some rich wealthy adventurer not have some sort of backup plan or beacon or something? And besides that, what has he ever done for society other than be rich? Traveling around the globe in a hot air balloon hardly benefits mankind. *shrug*
I'm not saying he shouldn't be found or that I wish any ill will on him. I just don't see what he's done to warrant such a high concern on an international level beyond any other missing person... except at least someone who was kidnapped is less responsible for their situation than some adventurer who puts himself in harms way for hobby.
I don't see what the big deal is with cell phone bills. They don't seem all that complex to me. The problems I've had with phone bills is six straight months where I had to spend hours each month on the phone, because they were double-billing me. Or the many months I had to deal with them where they kept adding services to my account that I specifically refused and asked not to have... and that they would add back again after I spent hours on the phone removing them. Or the two times they turned off my unlimited net access on my phone, causing me to rack up thousands of dollars in bills for what should have been a $20 unlimited fee.
None of these were due to the contract. These were all due to crappy business practices and nothing else.
There shouldn't be anything *deceiving* in a phone bill. I can certainly agree with that. But I don't see why they should be legally bound to make a phone bill read at a fifth grade level like the daily newspaper.
To be fair, people who were stupid enough to watch a thirty-minute Saturday morning toy advertisement is going to be stupid enough to watch any crap movie and enjoy it, too.
Seriously, are all these bitches on Slashdot honestly whining about what was originally a Saturday morning ADVERTISEMENT to push a stupid toy now talking about "GI Joe" selling-out?! That's like bitching about the Country-Crock couple on those Country-Crock Spread commercials "selling out".
At least the greenpeace solidier wouldn't rape a fourteen year old girl and then kill and burn her entire family to cover it up and invent a story that they were under attack when it all happened.
What is it exactly that makes the WWII generation better than every other generation that has ever existed? Is it that they spent themselves into an enormous debt habit? Is it that they gave themselves Social Security so they'd always be taken care of? Is it that they fought in a popular war?
What makes them better than today's generation? Today's generation is the one PAYING their self-given Social Security. What about the interment camps? What about the massive racism? Sure, racism still exists today, but we scorn it as a society wherever it creeps up. Were they a better generation than the current generation and the one before us, because they died fighting the Japanese and Germans while the generation after them merely fought a bunch of Vietnamese in an unpopular war and the current generation is fighting an extremely unpopular war? Is my death any less valiant and my sacrifice any less, because those in power send me to fight for different things in a different place than they sent YOU?! In fact, isn't it exactly THAT generation that sent the Vietnam generation to Vietnam and the current generation to... everywhere?
Just because Tom Brokaw tells them that they're the saving grace of an entire nation doesn't mean they are.
As for GI Joe... Who fucking cares?! It's a god damned half hour long advertisement that used to run on Saturdays. Who the hell is dumb enough to sit and actively watch a commercial for a toy? (And yes, the toy company that puts out GI Joe used to slot GI JOE as an advertisement; not a "show").
The WWII generation is the "greatest generation" the way that Guliani is "America's Greatest Mayor". Not so much because of doing anything great, but just happening to be alive during a period that certain events happened in the world.
When have you ever read a discussion about government or corporate intrusion into privacy or infringement on fair use rights and various copyright extension idiocies without a few people claiming that either the government has the right to do so, because you shouldn't care unless you are a bad person with something awful to hide -- or justifying ridiculous draconian commercial efforts to limit your rights as a consumer and relegating you to a subscriber of *everything* (even a book, even though you physically "own" it) by saying that if you make a big deal out of it, you must be a pirate and looking to commit massive theft on said company?
People who say that immediately lose all credibility due to their inability to understand what a fucking THEORY actually is.
For the record, THEORIES are essentially feasible and reasonable extrapolations based on a combination of FACTS that can be DEMONSTRATED and TESTED in a scientific manner.
For instance, I can test the "theory" of gravity. I can not test the "theory" of an afterlife.
Slashdot Mirror
These limitations include both directions. For example, if you download 70gb and upload 30gb, you've reached the 100gb limit.
The argument that "if we tell you the limit, you'll just abuse it" is ridiculous.
My cell phone provider tells me how many minutes of talk time I get per month.
Further, if you're going to cut me off for exceeding an unknown and undisclosed and unclarified limit -- then I'm ALREADY "abusing" this limit. So why not tell me what it is? The worst that will happen is that, instead of me going over it by a huge amount as I would have to be doing to be kicked off, I'll remain UNDER it.
What competitors? Comcast (as with other cable providers) have regional monopolies.
A song is 3mb? What crappy bitrate do they think people encode to? A decent quality rip is going to be around 7mb. Possibly more.
They need to get off it and stop being so cryptic. They also need to realize that "excessive use" can be easily exceeded by completely reasonable means.
Today, I downloaded some demos on XBOX. That was about 10gb. I downloaded some video/demo/subscription content via both XBOX and PS3 this past month, too. So that's another 10gb (all of the TGS content from Microsoft via XBL alone is about 3gb).
I downloaded my weekly podcasts (video and audio). That was about 3gb.
I am 1500 miles from my home town, so I stream the local radio station (256kbps) all day every day (about 30gb/mo, probably).
My roommate also streams his favorite radio station most of the day. Another 20gb or so per month.
I streamed several movies from a pay service (like vongo) this week. Figure that's another 15gb/mo.
My roommate watched a few movies the same way. Another 5gb.
I downloaded three linux ISOs via torrent and seeded them to 100%. That's another 5gb.
I uploaded about 20gb of MP3s to my mp3tunes account.
This doesn't count surfing or watching youtube style content or FTPing to my remote server or connecting to my machine in the office via VNC and VPN. With completely reasonable uses, I've just accounted for 118gb between two people on one residential account. I presume the use would be higher if there were more people. Say, a four or five person family, for example.
And of course, the biggest issue here is that they've simply avoided answering the question altogether. The title of this submission is inaccurate. They didn't answer anything, yet offered a response that can be turned against any user by simply adjusting how big these pictures and emails supposedly are supposed to be for this calculation.
Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.
Someone has recently been playing around with the generation age-frames, because almost ten years ago, baby boomers were between 50 and 60 already. Now, baby boomers include anyone who is 42 to 64. That's right. 42 is a baby boomer, apparently (shouldn't that be generation X?). I'm also now defined as a "generation Xer" even though five years ago, I was considered several years too young.
With such a wealth of poorly phrased material in the article blurb, I think I'd have to look past simple over-use of punctuation and right on to the following senseless sentence:
who are asking nVidia fix rendering issues these 3D 16-bit games on their newer video cards and drivers.
Then how do you get your self-esteem, if you aren't using social networks? I do not understand.
It's sad that at the age of 30, I am still forced by industry and society to have the content and entertainment I consume dumbed down to the acceptability level of a fourth grade child.
A $10m ad campaign for Halo 3?
Isn't that like having a multi-million dollar campaign to let everyone know the sky is blue?
They would still bitch. I would still bitch. Aside from intrusiveness, I simply don't want 90% of my screen real-estate to be taken by annoying, flashy, blinking, animated, noisey, idiotic advertisements. I don't need every second of my life to be consumed with advertising.
Further, I believe that a service is either worth PAYING for (by the visitor) or it is worth GIVING THE SERVICE FOR FREE (by the provider). For instance, I don't want my users to be annoyed by pages full of disruptive advertising, so the 60,000 members to my website do not have to deal with advertising, period. I have kept up with that for more than eight years and I'm willing to do away with the few bucks from advertising and pay for all expenses out of my pocket in return for not being another annoying sell-out.
Is this some sort of Slashdot attempt to still look topical and relevant by discussing the behind the scenes events of some "underground" site that all the kids are talking about these days?
Well, the concept is this:
You can have five billion machines all hitting a single "atomic clock". Or you could have a few servers hit it and hundreds of servers that sync up with *those* servers. Seriously, even in cases where all machines of an organization or university or corporation sync off one single internal NTP server (which itself them hits one of the servers in this pool, I'd presume) -- you're still talking about billions of machines that need to have the proper time synced on a daily bases across the globe.
I mean . . . you don't have just one single DNS server for the entire planet, because adding more would just raise inaccuracies... you have DNS servers all over the planet to serve various geographies and balance the load.
How are they supposed to track what subversive materials I'm reading or what kind of groups I'm congregating with or who I'm socializing with or what my personal views and beliefs are, otherwise?!
Google's server farms are distributed around the world. both coasts and in between as well as Ireland, Belgium and elsewhere.
Light pollution is irrelevant in the long run when it comes to astronomical observation. We can build observation facilities in our orbit. Problem solved.
Light pollution as far as people wanting to be able to "sit in a field and feel like they're floating around the galaxy while viewing stars in a dark night sky"...? Who cares. Your proverbial cloud-watching is insignificant compared to the technological and industrial progress of civilization.
This sounds like a job for Google.
Seriously. They are working to own every other bit of information. Why not "own" the method by which machines maintain time by throwing a thousand machines at it (an insignificant number compared to the 500k or more that make up their own server farm).
I think the insinuation that such a technology and effort would ONLY be made available to a rich white man is jaded and wrong.
I am sure that this technology and effort would be made, also, for any pretty white girl. Especially if she's blond.
And unless you're a white millionaire or a pretty white blond girl, who cares if you're missing? I've watched Fox News enough to know that nobody except pretty white blond girls ever go missing *anyway*.
What I don't understand is . . . who does some rich wealthy adventurer not have some sort of backup plan or beacon or something? And besides that, what has he ever done for society other than be rich? Traveling around the globe in a hot air balloon hardly benefits mankind. *shrug*
I'm not saying he shouldn't be found or that I wish any ill will on him. I just don't see what he's done to warrant such a high concern on an international level beyond any other missing person... except at least someone who was kidnapped is less responsible for their situation than some adventurer who puts himself in harms way for hobby.
Um... aren't *I* the enemy of my enemy?
More importantly, Halflife 2 is *how* many years old now?
Why would I want to play it on ANY platform anymore than I want to play FEAR on the 360? These are games that are about three years old now.
I don't see what the big deal is with cell phone bills. They don't seem all that complex to me. The problems I've had with phone bills is six straight months where I had to spend hours each month on the phone, because they were double-billing me. Or the many months I had to deal with them where they kept adding services to my account that I specifically refused and asked not to have... and that they would add back again after I spent hours on the phone removing them. Or the two times they turned off my unlimited net access on my phone, causing me to rack up thousands of dollars in bills for what should have been a $20 unlimited fee.
None of these were due to the contract. These were all due to crappy business practices and nothing else.
There shouldn't be anything *deceiving* in a phone bill. I can certainly agree with that. But I don't see why they should be legally bound to make a phone bill read at a fifth grade level like the daily newspaper.
To be fair, people who were stupid enough to watch a thirty-minute Saturday morning toy advertisement is going to be stupid enough to watch any crap movie and enjoy it, too.
Seriously, are all these bitches on Slashdot honestly whining about what was originally a Saturday morning ADVERTISEMENT to push a stupid toy now talking about "GI Joe" selling-out?! That's like bitching about the Country-Crock couple on those Country-Crock Spread commercials "selling out".
At least the greenpeace solidier wouldn't rape a fourteen year old girl and then kill and burn her entire family to cover it up and invent a story that they were under attack when it all happened.
What is it exactly that makes the WWII generation better than every other generation that has ever existed? Is it that they spent themselves into an enormous debt habit? Is it that they gave themselves Social Security so they'd always be taken care of? Is it that they fought in a popular war?
What makes them better than today's generation? Today's generation is the one PAYING their self-given Social Security. What about the interment camps? What about the massive racism? Sure, racism still exists today, but we scorn it as a society wherever it creeps up. Were they a better generation than the current generation and the one before us, because they died fighting the Japanese and Germans while the generation after them merely fought a bunch of Vietnamese in an unpopular war and the current generation is fighting an extremely unpopular war? Is my death any less valiant and my sacrifice any less, because those in power send me to fight for different things in a different place than they sent YOU?! In fact, isn't it exactly THAT generation that sent the Vietnam generation to Vietnam and the current generation to... everywhere?
Just because Tom Brokaw tells them that they're the saving grace of an entire nation doesn't mean they are.
As for GI Joe... Who fucking cares?! It's a god damned half hour long advertisement that used to run on Saturdays. Who the hell is dumb enough to sit and actively watch a commercial for a toy? (And yes, the toy company that puts out GI Joe used to slot GI JOE as an advertisement; not a "show").
The WWII generation is the "greatest generation" the way that Guliani is "America's Greatest Mayor". Not so much because of doing anything great, but just happening to be alive during a period that certain events happened in the world.
When has that ever happened?!
When have you ever read a discussion about government or corporate intrusion into privacy or infringement on fair use rights and various copyright extension idiocies without a few people claiming that either the government has the right to do so, because you shouldn't care unless you are a bad person with something awful to hide -- or justifying ridiculous draconian commercial efforts to limit your rights as a consumer and relegating you to a subscriber of *everything* (even a book, even though you physically "own" it) by saying that if you make a big deal out of it, you must be a pirate and looking to commit massive theft on said company?
"just a THEORY"
People who say that immediately lose all credibility due to their inability to understand what a fucking THEORY actually is.
For the record, THEORIES are essentially feasible and reasonable extrapolations based on a combination of FACTS that can be DEMONSTRATED and TESTED in a scientific manner.
For instance, I can test the "theory" of gravity. I can not test the "theory" of an afterlife.