You have multiple services pulled into your house because you have multiple services. Power lines were engineered to feed electrical power - period. Cable TV systems were engineered to feed analog TV signals in one direction. The same applies to water, sewer, gas, phone,... Just because we've become more inventive in retasking existing infrastructure (i.e. making just about everything digital), doesn't change the nature of that infrastructure.
Broadband over power lines is very possible. And has been for over a decade. It's been problematic since day one -- polutes the radio spectrum, low SNR, easily interfered with... The cable systems were never designed for bidirectional signaling -- in fact, it used to be illegal to transmit back into the cable system. To support the modern world's cable modems and interactive digital crap, the entire thing had to be rebuilt. (Do you remember the long roll outs for cable modems?) We've been hanging off the edge of the envelop in the teleco world for decades. Several years ago, some inventive people started using the phone cables as AM radio antennas and DSL was born.
It's not obsolete until the old infrastructure is pushed aside in favor of something "modern". And then you have the problem of the new stuff not having a proven track record -- compare the decades of reliability of the local telco to that of the local cable company, or power company. Case in point, some monkey half disconnected the cable to my apartment on Friday taking out all cable services (TV, internet, and voip) that had been perfectly reliable for over a year. This sort of thing is fairly common when cable services are turned on/off frequently. (read: the monkeys are in that box often.) It took 3 days to get it fixed. My analog phone line has been unavailable on the span of hours over the last DECADE, in total. (the longest outage occurred about 2 years ago when the SLC system at the CO failed -- took out the entire switch. I noticed immediately as the ISDN line dropped mid-sentence.)
Now I'm all for stringing fiber everywhere and losing coax and twisted pair. Power, water, sewer, gas... there's nothing wrong with those utilities; leave them doing what they've been well engineered to do. The fiber can carry everything digital anyone can dream up. We don't need copper anymore.
You can get OSPF under linux, too. But that's not the point -- a linksys befsr41 doesn't have anywhere near the functionality of a real firewall (it also doesn't have the price.)
Personally, I don't mind the Pix. Yeah, it's not priced for the average home monkey, but it's not supposed to be. You can find 5xx's on ebay in the 1000$ range. The little 501's are about 300$. You can find cases for 50$:-) Everything a Pix does can be built on a linux box. I just don't wanna invest the time to do it (and spend the rest of my life maintaining it.)
First, it doesn't run linux. Linksys's newer model gear runs linux. (If it did, I'd've long ago dumped the crap linksys put on it.) Second, it's technically not a firewall... it's a "gateway" or router. It's far too stupid to be called a "firewall", IMO.
What makes a PIX a PIX and not just a PC? That 1k$ flash card and the PIX OS code from Cisco. If you want to look at it like that, everything is "just a PC." If you really want to see a difference, pick up a PIX 501 -- for >500$ you get ~5 chips (single chip ethernet switch, 2 i82559's (nic), an AMD Elan, and a memory chip or two.) But, the PIX is "true firewall"... full stateful packet inspection, IDS/IPS capabilities, content filtering, VLANs, dynamic routing (RIP and OSPF), etc.
Just be clear here, the SA Tivos have a damn good MPEG encoder chip from Sony. That chip, by itself, costs as much as the tivo -- last time I looked, they were $79 each in lots of 10,000. And therein is one of the problems. Only Microsoft can aford to sell hardware for a loss. (This is why Philips stopped making tivos.)
In many respects, Tivo, Inc. has a history of over-designing the hardware. They're very good at the software, but should stay away from designing hardware. Look at the S1 vs. S2 DTivo. The S1 could've been a DISH Tivo had there not been dealings with DirectTV to preclude it.
Since when has register.com ever been a "sane registrar"? You do know they've been drug into court several times for fraud, predatory business practices, and yes, transfering domain registrations without authorization. Specificly, they were sending domain renewal notices (that looked almost exactly like netsol's notices) for domains that weren't their customers. And weren't expiring either.
I'd be interested in getting ahold of one of these $195 MPS systems just to take it apart.
However, as a system on the whole, how is this any different from the long standing (we're talking *decades* here) practice of terminal servers? Citrix has been doing this for many, many years... Citrix WinFrame, Citrix MetaFrame. Cheap ICA terminals ("winterms") have been around for years, for more than just Windows (tm). And the wire protocol is encrypted. The only difference is how many cables one needs to move/plug in.
I smell marketing bullshit. If all your files, applications, and processing are in the MPS, why does there need to be this $10k to $40k SOBA server? I bet the SOBA is the dual PPC machine (where everything happens) and the MPS is just a USB flash drive (or two) with a tiny linux image to run on the "host computer" (read: USB bootable x86 PC with linux supported hardware.) ThinkNIC did this sorta thing with a mediaGX PC -- the CD it booted from will boot in most PCs, 'tho you'll be missing most of the hardware it's expecting.
And you're not a system administrator either, are you? The applications don't have to be installed on the local PC; they need only be accessible from the PC. Now, there are some bad applications that need registry entries and/or local configuration(s) on the host machine (eg. Exceed), but that's workable from a logon script. I've been places where I could logon any machine in the network and go to work -- both with Windows (TM) PC's and UNIX (tm) systems. (It's easier with UNIX (tm), but still doable with Windows (tm).)
I've never seen a PC capable of doing this. The BIOS knows it's been hibernated and resumes immediately. So, without knowing how to clear the BIOS's flag (good luck getting this from BIOS vendors), this is not likely. Additionally, some machines cannot boot from USB. And "any computer" includes things that aren't x86 PC's.
Well, in all fairness, with a regenerative power system, battery "UPS" backup is unnecessary. The power is backed up by a generator and the kenetic energy of the flywheel while the generator spins up. In such configurations, complicated transfer switches aren't necessary. Simply disconnecting from utility and connecting to the generator (break-before-make) to feed the flywheel motors is far easier than phase sync'd make-before-break transfers. That's simply a "relay"; a clean power transition is unnecessary as the machines in the colo are only connected to regenerated power.
Teremark's facility in Miami has regenerated power systems. They were all over it in every presentation. It is much cheaper, and less prone to failures. But the jury is still out on "better".
"THESE THINGS HAPPEN" -- however rare. Short of installing your own UPSes in your co-lo racks, which many co-lo's either frown upon or strongly discourage, you are at the mercy of the facilities which means their utility power, generator(s), and UPS(es).
I'd trust Internap to know how to power a co-lo facility. This is just one of those events you look at and shake your head. It's too rare an event to take steps to avoid it (like integrated system power supply and UPS, which I don't think exist anymore.)
Power can only be so redundant. More than once, the entire server room at a previous employer went dark. Multiple circuits and multiple power supplies won't do any good when a battery in the UPS explodes and blows the main (150A) breaker -- the entire floor went dark... disconnected from UPS, generator, and utility.
(Once from a battery failure, and once again from a phase mismatch coming off generator that no one caught before the UPS was drained -- the alarm panel was outside the break room and no one that knew what it was walked past it.)
I recall a story from a CP&L (now Prgress Energy) lineman about how someone had shot the fiber line strung on the high voltage tower -- between the million volt lines. As he put it, you put a pencil through the hole and line up where the "hick" (his word) proped up the rifle to shoot what he must've thought was a power line. It no fun working up there. And even less fun having to make fusion plices surrounded by million volt lines. (linemen work up there, not fiber techs.)
And I'm saying the internet is not, yet, a "public good." There are thousands (millions?) of people who go about their lives everyday completely absent of the internet. They are still just as productive members of society as those spending every waking hour tied to the net.
Having grown up with a phone (and tv, and air conditioning, and video games, etc.), we have trouble understanding how people could live with out it. But they did, and some still do. It has become a standard part of society. The internet has not. Not everyone uses the internet. You don't have to use the internet to get everything done... shopping, banking, movie renting can all be done in person; bills can be paid in person and by mail; one can communicate with others in person, by mail, or by phone. WE use the internet all the time, so it's understandable for us to have a hard time seeing how anyone can live without. (I often feel the same w.r.t. Tivo. How the f*** do people watch TV without Tivo?!)
And phone service wasn't cheap either. Are you old enough to remember party lines? Technology has come a long way, but high speed internet access is not yet a universal service (nor does it need be.) Little Timmy isn't going to die because his mom's dialup connection was too slow to access the poison control center's website.
Granted, with the growth of VoIP, a network failure could very well lead to little Timmy's death. So who gets sued then?
Actually, that'd be even more misleading. Most CO's cover more than one zip, esp. in rural areas. Just how many CO's across the land don't have a DSLAM in there? I'd guess that number is really, really small.
That's the reason the cable companies like to make. But, honestly, stringing a mile of cable down the poles is not expensive. The added coverage would pay for itself in a matter of months. But monopolies don't think like that... if they aren't currently losing money to someone else, they don't want to spend any, which means they won't want to run cable to you until someone else does.
They (TW) did the same stupid shit at my parents house 2.5 decades ago. There's a 1 mile dead area in the middle of cable-land. Had the asshats ran the cable (at a cost then of about 2k$), it would've made them millions by today -- and have kept several dozen subscribers from ever becoming DISH/Directv customers. EVERY ONE of the houses in that dead zone have sat TV -- some still have C-band dishes. None of them have "broadband" as we're like 25 miles from the CO. (none of them's crazy enough to try directway/starband.)
DSL is not POTS. Placing a remote dslam in every pedistal in the country would cost billions. Imagine how expensive DSL (and regular phone service) would be if the telco's were required to spend that kind of cash for network upgrades? Bellsouth charged a surcharge for touch tone for over 20 years to "recover costs for equipment upgrades" -- for NC alone, that's a total of well over $100mil, and there were few real upgrades across the network (installing a $10,000 DTMF decoder doesn't count... replacing a rotary relay switch, which were still in operation back then, that counts.)
[They're doing the same damned thing for local number portability, too. At least the NCPUC was smart enough to remember the touch-tone BS and limit the surcharge to 5 years. BTW, LNP is a software (key) enabled option, assuming the switch isn't running decade old code. Think X2 and V.90 modem upgrades...]
Cable modem service is, by comparision, free. All they have to do is run cables (most hung from utility poles), hang boosters, and install additional headend(s) to support additional runs. It's a lot cheaper and easier than installing RDSLAMs in messy, cramped peds that get rained in, sometimes hit by cars:-(, etc.
And to what percent of their income does that equate? My $41.95 per month cable modem (3M/384k) is about 1.5% of my monthly paycheck. (less than 3% for almost all subscribers, best estimate.)
That not withstanding, in the US, we have a lazy monopolist's attitude to blame for slow technology adoption. RR increased download rates from 2M to 3M a year ago. They didn't change one molecule of the network to do that; they didn't replace all the headends, they simply told the modems to use 3M instead of 2M. We know they can support faster because they are now selling faster connections (7M/512k(?) for $89/month.) [The equipment can handle 30M down and 10M up per channel.]
They are concerned about losing money more than thinking about opportunities to make more money... Cary, NC got cable modems only after the city council threatened to run their own cable network (and revoke TW's contract for cable TV in the city.) Raleigh only received cable modems after various ISPs began offering DSL services. (Bellsouth had no plans for selling DSL until after others began doing it.) Basicaly, new markets scare them. [No competition equals no proven market.]
Well, it contains the letters D-S-L, so it must be broadband. *shakes head* Bellsouth even lists ISDN as DSL -- that's the only place I can find any mention of ISDN anymore, and even then, the pages are about a decade old.
IDSL (144k) is not broadband; even bonded IDSL (max 576k) isn't broadband. ADSL/SDSL is not always broadband either -- ranging from 160k to around 7M. (down anyway)
For the modern world (read: the world we live in right now), dialup is just too damned slow to get anything done. I've had ISDN (64k and 128k) since 1997, but switched to cable over a year ago because ISDN was just too slow. (and DSL wasn't available this far away from the CO)
This is simply not true. It's certainly not true in NC. While it is true Bell cannot refuse to sell access to the cable plant, there's very little to regulate the costs for that access... how much do they charge for the space for your DSLAM? how many strings are attached to that rack space? how much do they charge per order to connect you to a line? (and they will not connect a 3rd party to a line carrying phone service.) how much do they charge to fix it when they break it? (which happens too frequently) how much for "escorted access" to the DSLAM when you need to work on it? AND, you can only ask to place equipment in recognized central offices -- pedistals, "remote offices", etc. are off limits. (But they aren't a monopoly. They aren't hendering competition. *cough*bullshit*cough*)
I never saw the entire "agreement" between Interpath and Bellsouth ('98 or so.) It was rejected (and, I was told, laughed at) because HellSouth wanted 60$/month for access to a dry copper pair -- bell was selling DSL for $59.99/month. They would gladly resell connections from their DSLAM if you bought a DS3 trunk for the traffic -- thousands per month. (Covad wholesales DSL in the same manner, but at much more reasonable rates.) [Interpath eventually partnered with Northpoint (short lived as they were) and Covad and let them deal with bell.]
(Note: Bell relaxed some of their stupider practices a number of years ago in order to open the door to being a long distance carrier.)
Knowing requires, well, actually knowing, not assuming or susspecting but "actual knowledge". While I doubt the "I don't go back there" defense would work in a civil case, it's hard to ignore in a criminal case. The mere presence of poker chips and cards doesn't mean gambling is occuring -- they could be trading or selling these things; on their way to or from a game...
Loki has a hard row to hoe, but they do have a case. There is, in fact, no illegally distributed copyrighted content on the site. Any member can upload any torrent they want; none of it is policed or checked in any way (and how can it when the torrent doesn't contain any copyrighted material?) Of course, the MPAA has room to argue, too.
Proving a conspiracy to commit (civil) copyright infringement will be a very hard thing to do.
(And no, one cannot police content based solely on the name of the torrent or the filenames within the torrent. Many law firms have been bitten in the ass for doing that already.)
a) People download a song off Napster, et. al., because they want one song, not the other 13 crappy songs on the CD. The recording industry has been doing this sort of thing for decades... it's where the term "on the flip side" comes from: back in the day of the 45rpm LP singles, there was the song everyone wanted on side A, and the song "they" wanted pushed "on the flip side". As Apple's iTunes Music Store is proving, people will pay for exactly want they want.
And getting basic cable by way of getting a cable modem is not stealing. If the cable company didn't want you to have basic cable, they'd've installed a signal trap and you'd not have cable TV. It's not stealing when they've given it to you -- their mistake of not, it's being provided to you for free. (unless they can prove collusion, i.e. you bribed the cable installer.) [The cable dude (TW employee) didn't install a trap when he hooked up my cable for the modem.]
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You have multiple services pulled into your house because you have multiple services. Power lines were engineered to feed electrical power - period. Cable TV systems were engineered to feed analog TV signals in one direction. The same applies to water, sewer, gas, phone, ... Just because we've become more inventive in retasking existing infrastructure (i.e. making just about everything digital), doesn't change the nature of that infrastructure.
Broadband over power lines is very possible. And has been for over a decade. It's been problematic since day one -- polutes the radio spectrum, low SNR, easily interfered with... The cable systems were never designed for bidirectional signaling -- in fact, it used to be illegal to transmit back into the cable system. To support the modern world's cable modems and interactive digital crap, the entire thing had to be rebuilt. (Do you remember the long roll outs for cable modems?) We've been hanging off the edge of the envelop in the teleco world for decades. Several years ago, some inventive people started using the phone cables as AM radio antennas and DSL was born.
It's not obsolete until the old infrastructure is pushed aside in favor of something "modern". And then you have the problem of the new stuff not having a proven track record -- compare the decades of reliability of the local telco to that of the local cable company, or power company. Case in point, some monkey half disconnected the cable to my apartment on Friday taking out all cable services (TV, internet, and voip) that had been perfectly reliable for over a year. This sort of thing is fairly common when cable services are turned on/off frequently. (read: the monkeys are in that box often.) It took 3 days to get it fixed. My analog phone line has been unavailable on the span of hours over the last DECADE, in total. (the longest outage occurred about 2 years ago when the SLC system at the CO failed -- took out the entire switch. I noticed immediately as the ISDN line dropped mid-sentence.)
Now I'm all for stringing fiber everywhere and losing coax and twisted pair. Power, water, sewer, gas... there's nothing wrong with those utilities; leave them doing what they've been well engineered to do. The fiber can carry everything digital anyone can dream up. We don't need copper anymore.
You can get OSPF under linux, too. But that's not the point -- a linksys befsr41 doesn't have anywhere near the functionality of a real firewall (it also doesn't have the price.)
:-) Everything a Pix does can be built on a linux box. I just don't wanna invest the time to do it (and spend the rest of my life maintaining it.)
Personally, I don't mind the Pix. Yeah, it's not priced for the average home monkey, but it's not supposed to be. You can find 5xx's on ebay in the 1000$ range. The little 501's are about 300$. You can find cases for 50$
- A linksys befsr41...
First, it doesn't run linux. Linksys's newer model gear runs linux. (If it did, I'd've long ago dumped the crap linksys put on it.) Second, it's technically not a firewall... it's a "gateway" or router. It's far too stupid to be called a "firewall", IMO.What makes a PIX a PIX and not just a PC? That 1k$ flash card and the PIX OS code from Cisco. If you want to look at it like that, everything is "just a PC." If you really want to see a difference, pick up a PIX 501 -- for >500$ you get ~5 chips (single chip ethernet switch, 2 i82559's (nic), an AMD Elan, and a memory chip or two.) But, the PIX is "true firewall"... full stateful packet inspection, IDS/IPS capabilities, content filtering, VLANs, dynamic routing (RIP and OSPF), etc.
That's a hardware firewall as firewall functioning is all it does. For example, it's not an LDAP/RADIUS/TACACS server and web server as well.
Just be clear here, the SA Tivos have a damn good MPEG encoder chip from Sony. That chip, by itself, costs as much as the tivo -- last time I looked, they were $79 each in lots of 10,000. And therein is one of the problems. Only Microsoft can aford to sell hardware for a loss. (This is why Philips stopped making tivos.)
In many respects, Tivo, Inc. has a history of over-designing the hardware. They're very good at the software, but should stay away from designing hardware. Look at the S1 vs. S2 DTivo. The S1 could've been a DISH Tivo had there not been dealings with DirectTV to preclude it.
Since when has register.com ever been a "sane registrar"? You do know they've been drug into court several times for fraud, predatory business practices, and yes, transfering domain registrations without authorization. Specificly, they were sending domain renewal notices (that looked almost exactly like netsol's notices) for domains that weren't their customers. And weren't expiring either.
I'd be interested in getting ahold of one of these $195 MPS systems just to take it apart.
However, as a system on the whole, how is this any different from the long standing (we're talking *decades* here) practice of terminal servers? Citrix has been doing this for many, many years... Citrix WinFrame, Citrix MetaFrame. Cheap ICA terminals ("winterms") have been around for years, for more than just Windows (tm). And the wire protocol is encrypted. The only difference is how many cables one needs to move/plug in.
I smell marketing bullshit. If all your files, applications, and processing are in the MPS, why does there need to be this $10k to $40k SOBA server? I bet the SOBA is the dual PPC machine (where everything happens) and the MPS is just a USB flash drive (or two) with a tiny linux image to run on the "host computer" (read: USB bootable x86 PC with linux supported hardware.) ThinkNIC did this sorta thing with a mediaGX PC -- the CD it booted from will boot in most PCs, 'tho you'll be missing most of the hardware it's expecting.
- ...
- drive mappings...
And you're not a system administrator either, are you? The applications don't have to be installed on the local PC; they need only be accessible from the PC. Now, there are some bad applications that need registry entries and/or local configuration(s) on the host machine (eg. Exceed), but that's workable from a logon script. I've been places where I could logon any machine in the network and go to work -- both with Windows (TM) PC's and UNIX (tm) systems. (It's easier with UNIX (tm), but still doable with Windows (tm).)I've never seen a PC capable of doing this. The BIOS knows it's been hibernated and resumes immediately. So, without knowing how to clear the BIOS's flag (good luck getting this from BIOS vendors), this is not likely. Additionally, some machines cannot boot from USB. And "any computer" includes things that aren't x86 PC's.
However, it's a good theory.
Marketing and appearance. UPSes ain't cheap or small.
Well, in all fairness, with a regenerative power system, battery "UPS" backup is unnecessary. The power is backed up by a generator and the kenetic energy of the flywheel while the generator spins up. In such configurations, complicated transfer switches aren't necessary. Simply disconnecting from utility and connecting to the generator (break-before-make) to feed the flywheel motors is far easier than phase sync'd make-before-break transfers. That's simply a "relay"; a clean power transition is unnecessary as the machines in the colo are only connected to regenerated power.
Teremark's facility in Miami has regenerated power systems. They were all over it in every presentation. It is much cheaper, and less prone to failures. But the jury is still out on "better".
"THESE THINGS HAPPEN" -- however rare. Short of installing your own UPSes in your co-lo racks, which many co-lo's either frown upon or strongly discourage, you are at the mercy of the facilities which means their utility power, generator(s), and UPS(es).
I'd trust Internap to know how to power a co-lo facility. This is just one of those events you look at and shake your head. It's too rare an event to take steps to avoid it (like integrated system power supply and UPS, which I don't think exist anymore.)
Power can only be so redundant. More than once, the entire server room at a previous employer went dark. Multiple circuits and multiple power supplies won't do any good when a battery in the UPS explodes and blows the main (150A) breaker -- the entire floor went dark... disconnected from UPS, generator, and utility.
(Once from a battery failure, and once again from a phase mismatch coming off generator that no one caught before the UPS was drained -- the alarm panel was outside the break room and no one that knew what it was walked past it.)
I recall a story from a CP&L (now Prgress Energy) lineman about how someone had shot the fiber line strung on the high voltage tower -- between the million volt lines. As he put it, you put a pencil through the hole and line up where the "hick" (his word) proped up the rifle to shoot what he must've thought was a power line. It no fun working up there. And even less fun having to make fusion plices surrounded by million volt lines. (linemen work up there, not fiber techs.)
And I'm saying the internet is not, yet, a "public good." There are thousands (millions?) of people who go about their lives everyday completely absent of the internet. They are still just as productive members of society as those spending every waking hour tied to the net.
Having grown up with a phone (and tv, and air conditioning, and video games, etc.), we have trouble understanding how people could live with out it. But they did, and some still do. It has become a standard part of society. The internet has not. Not everyone uses the internet. You don't have to use the internet to get everything done... shopping, banking, movie renting can all be done in person; bills can be paid in person and by mail; one can communicate with others in person, by mail, or by phone. WE use the internet all the time, so it's understandable for us to have a hard time seeing how anyone can live without. (I often feel the same w.r.t. Tivo. How the f*** do people watch TV without Tivo?!)
And phone service wasn't cheap either. Are you old enough to remember party lines? Technology has come a long way, but high speed internet access is not yet a universal service (nor does it need be.) Little Timmy isn't going to die because his mom's dialup connection was too slow to access the poison control center's website.
Granted, with the growth of VoIP, a network failure could very well lead to little Timmy's death. So who gets sued then?
per month, not per paycheck. I certainly hope you make more than 15,000$ per year -- which is poor even to poor people.
Actually, that'd be even more misleading. Most CO's cover more than one zip, esp. in rural areas. Just how many CO's across the land don't have a DSLAM in there? I'd guess that number is really, really small.
That's the reason the cable companies like to make. But, honestly, stringing a mile of cable down the poles is not expensive. The added coverage would pay for itself in a matter of months. But monopolies don't think like that... if they aren't currently losing money to someone else, they don't want to spend any, which means they won't want to run cable to you until someone else does.
They (TW) did the same stupid shit at my parents house 2.5 decades ago. There's a 1 mile dead area in the middle of cable-land. Had the asshats ran the cable (at a cost then of about 2k$), it would've made them millions by today -- and have kept several dozen subscribers from ever becoming DISH/Directv customers. EVERY ONE of the houses in that dead zone have sat TV -- some still have C-band dishes. None of them have "broadband" as we're like 25 miles from the CO. (none of them's crazy enough to try directway/starband.)
DSL is not POTS. Placing a remote dslam in every pedistal in the country would cost billions. Imagine how expensive DSL (and regular phone service) would be if the telco's were required to spend that kind of cash for network upgrades? Bellsouth charged a surcharge for touch tone for over 20 years to "recover costs for equipment upgrades" -- for NC alone, that's a total of well over $100mil, and there were few real upgrades across the network (installing a $10,000 DTMF decoder doesn't count... replacing a rotary relay switch, which were still in operation back then, that counts.)
:-(, etc.
[They're doing the same damned thing for local number portability, too. At least the NCPUC was smart enough to remember the touch-tone BS and limit the surcharge to 5 years. BTW, LNP is a software (key) enabled option, assuming the switch isn't running decade old code. Think X2 and V.90 modem upgrades...]
Cable modem service is, by comparision, free. All they have to do is run cables (most hung from utility poles), hang boosters, and install additional headend(s) to support additional runs. It's a lot cheaper and easier than installing RDSLAMs in messy, cramped peds that get rained in, sometimes hit by cars
And to what percent of their income does that equate? My $41.95 per month cable modem (3M/384k) is about 1.5% of my monthly paycheck. (less than 3% for almost all subscribers, best estimate.)
That not withstanding, in the US, we have a lazy monopolist's attitude to blame for slow technology adoption. RR increased download rates from 2M to 3M a year ago. They didn't change one molecule of the network to do that; they didn't replace all the headends, they simply told the modems to use 3M instead of 2M. We know they can support faster because they are now selling faster connections (7M/512k(?) for $89/month.) [The equipment can handle 30M down and 10M up per channel.]
They are concerned about losing money more than thinking about opportunities to make more money... Cary, NC got cable modems only after the city council threatened to run their own cable network (and revoke TW's contract for cable TV in the city.) Raleigh only received cable modems after various ISPs began offering DSL services. (Bellsouth had no plans for selling DSL until after others began doing it.) Basicaly, new markets scare them. [No competition equals no proven market.]
Well, it contains the letters D-S-L, so it must be broadband. *shakes head* Bellsouth even lists ISDN as DSL -- that's the only place I can find any mention of ISDN anymore, and even then, the pages are about a decade old.
IDSL (144k) is not broadband; even bonded IDSL (max 576k) isn't broadband. ADSL/SDSL is not always broadband either -- ranging from 160k to around 7M. (down anyway)
For the modern world (read: the world we live in right now), dialup is just too damned slow to get anything done. I've had ISDN (64k and 128k) since 1997, but switched to cable over a year ago because ISDN was just too slow. (and DSL wasn't available this far away from the CO)
This is simply not true. It's certainly not true in NC. While it is true Bell cannot refuse to sell access to the cable plant, there's very little to regulate the costs for that access... how much do they charge for the space for your DSLAM? how many strings are attached to that rack space? how much do they charge per order to connect you to a line? (and they will not connect a 3rd party to a line carrying phone service.) how much do they charge to fix it when they break it? (which happens too frequently) how much for "escorted access" to the DSLAM when you need to work on it? AND, you can only ask to place equipment in recognized central offices -- pedistals, "remote offices", etc. are off limits. (But they aren't a monopoly. They aren't hendering competition. *cough*bullshit*cough*)
I never saw the entire "agreement" between Interpath and Bellsouth ('98 or so.) It was rejected (and, I was told, laughed at) because HellSouth wanted 60$/month for access to a dry copper pair -- bell was selling DSL for $59.99/month. They would gladly resell connections from their DSLAM if you bought a DS3 trunk for the traffic -- thousands per month. (Covad wholesales DSL in the same manner, but at much more reasonable rates.) [Interpath eventually partnered with Northpoint (short lived as they were) and Covad and let them deal with bell.]
(Note: Bell relaxed some of their stupider practices a number of years ago in order to open the door to being a long distance carrier.)
Knowing requires, well, actually knowing, not assuming or susspecting but "actual knowledge". While I doubt the "I don't go back there" defense would work in a civil case, it's hard to ignore in a criminal case. The mere presence of poker chips and cards doesn't mean gambling is occuring -- they could be trading or selling these things; on their way to or from a game...
Loki has a hard row to hoe, but they do have a case. There is, in fact, no illegally distributed copyrighted content on the site. Any member can upload any torrent they want; none of it is policed or checked in any way (and how can it when the torrent doesn't contain any copyrighted material?) Of course, the MPAA has room to argue, too.
Proving a conspiracy to commit (civil) copyright infringement will be a very hard thing to do.
(And no, one cannot police content based solely on the name of the torrent or the filenames within the torrent. Many law firms have been bitten in the ass for doing that already.)
a) People download a song off Napster, et. al., because they want one song, not the other 13 crappy songs on the CD. The recording industry has been doing this sort of thing for decades... it's where the term "on the flip side" comes from: back in the day of the 45rpm LP singles, there was the song everyone wanted on side A, and the song "they" wanted pushed "on the flip side". As Apple's iTunes Music Store is proving, people will pay for exactly want they want.
And getting basic cable by way of getting a cable modem is not stealing. If the cable company didn't want you to have basic cable, they'd've installed a signal trap and you'd not have cable TV. It's not stealing when they've given it to you -- their mistake of not, it's being provided to you for free. (unless they can prove collusion, i.e. you bribed the cable installer.) [The cable dude (TW employee) didn't install a trap when he hooked up my cable for the modem.]