Is it offensive? Probably but then when did anyone have the right not to be offended? I see offensive shit all the time out there, particularly against religions. South Park has been positively brutal to the Catholics, the Mormons, the Scientologists, etc.
You'll note that they've never done anything particularly offensive about Islam. The real lesson here is that the Catholics, Mormons and Scientology need to start issuing death threats when South Park insults them. Then the corporate overlords will cave and prevent the South Park guys from mocking their religion.....
Oh, and yes, phone companies CAN refuse any service other than 911 in the country.
No they can't. Landline phone service is a regulated utility in most (all?) US States. They can only refuse to provide you with service for a handful of reasons, i.e: you owe them money. I had Verizon refuse to give me landline service when I declined to share my SSN and birthdate with them. I filed a complaint with the Public Service Commission about this and they compelled Verizon to give me service.
None of my ports are blocked/filtered at the ISP level, and while it's a TOS violation to run a server, it's not something that's really enforced AFAICT. If they started enforcing that clause then it might become more of an issue for me, but they don't so it's not.
That clause isn't enforceable. Technically any application that listens for incoming connections is a "server". That includes multiplayer games, DCC chat/send on IRC, the ident daemon required to effectively use IRC.
I could see them getting upset if you were running something for profit but I've run everything from ssh to apache on my residential Roadrunner account for nearly a decade now and I've never heard a peep out of them. As long as it's for personal use I doubt they even notice, much less care.
As it is, it's not uncommon for me to be able to pull less than 700Kb/s down on my "up to" 10Mb/s connection
Complain about it. My node was overloaded last year when the students came back into town -- couldn't pull more than 2-3mbit/s during peak hours. It took them a few months to address it but they did eventually split the node after confirming that there was a problem. Since they did that I've rarely seen my peak time speeds drop below 8mbit/s.
Document the crappy speeds with their own speed test utility and post them on a forum like DSLReports. They'll take care of it sooner or later.
That's fine and all, but sell it as a 3.0 mbit/s service with higher burst speeds as a bonus. Don't sell it as a 10mbit/s service when you never see those speeds in reality.
That's exactly how most of them do sell it. I've never seen Time Warner advertise a promised speed for a residential connection. They all say "Up to X mbit/s". The "up to" part isn't even in legalese. It's right there in their advertising.
The T-1 (or more properly DS-1) is still 1.544 Mbps and not 100 Mbps as AC mentioned.
I think his theory was that AT&T would sell 66 1.5mbit/s DS-1s (99mbit/s) and a bunch of DSL connections and make them all share the same 100mbit/s backhaul.
go ahead, try and use 1.5mbps up for even 5 hours.
I've run uploads (torrents) 24/7 for weeks on end using nearly of my upstream before. I've also run sustained downloads of ~8mbit/s for the better part of a day before. Haven't heard a peep out of Time Warner. Sorry that you have the misfortune to live in Crapcastic land.
All that means is that they can sell 100MBits to T1 customers on an upstream connection of 102MBits and sell 200MBits/sec to residential customers and reap the profit without having to supply the product.
No it doesn't. If they did it to that extreme they would hemorrhage customers and re-evaluate their business strategy in short order.
Some amount of overselling is necessary in network design. It also makes sense. Most residential customers would rather have the ability to burst up to 10-15mbit/s than have a dedicated connection that runs at 3.0mbit/s (pulling numbers out of the air but you get the gist) 24/7. My cable connection peaks at 10mbit/s but usually sustains around 5-6mbit/s during peak hours. I'm perfectly content with that. The extra bandwidth is there late at night if I want it for sustained downloads and it's there for bursting when I need to download something fast during peak hours.
It would be stupid to roll out a network that restricted your customers to 3.0mbit/s when you can offer them the ability to burst at higher speeds and even sustain them when others don't need them. The trick is in making sure that you don't excessively oversell and that your customers understand the product they are paying for.
They're also lying assholes. yes, they should be able to charge more for a T1 than DSL
But should they be allowed to prioritize the traffic from that T-1 over the traffic from their DSL customers when network congestion is an issue? The T-1 customer probably got an SLA if he was smart. The DSL customer was promised nothing of the kind.
I'm sure there are. I'm just saying it's pretty absurd to think you could just take an off the shelf smartphone and throw it into the field for heavy duty use. There is actually some method to the madness of government procurement.
Just because they claim it's constitutional does not make it so. Even if it were I would still refuse on general principle. The Government already has a track record of abusing the data it collects via the census. I see no reason to give them anything beyond the number of people at my residence.
And no, I don't give a rats ass if they misrepresented me.
If the US had waited a few years until GPS enabled phones were available they might have had more success.
If the US had limited itself to just counting the people (as authorized and mandated by the Constitution) instead of collecting all manner of non-relevant information it could probably have conducted the census with a lot less manpower and paperwork. Heck, it'd be a lot easier to build an electronic device to conduct that census than to build one to conduct the information harvesting exercise that currently masquerades as a census.
The point is to get an accurate count of EVERYONE.
If that's the point then why don't they just knock on my door and ask how many people live there? Why do they have to ask for all manner of information (race/gender/age) besides that? The Constitution mandates the Federal Government count the populace every ten years. It does not mandate or authorize the Federal Government to collect biographical or statistical information beyond the number of people in the country.
I filled in the number of people living at my house on my census form and left everything else blank. When they knocked on my door a few months later I told them that three people live at this address and slammed the door in woman's face. Never heard from them again.
In the US, you worry about the government spying on you or infringing on your rights, while giving the corporations free pass to fuck you in the butthole all day and night.
Corporations can't assfuck you unless you do business with them. You don't have a choice about doing business with the Government. That's the difference.
You guys won't even allow homosexuals to marry, wtf is that for civil liberties
The proper way to fix that is to get the state out of the "marriage" business altogether. Civil unions that recognize one's legal rights regarding their partner (right to make medical decisions, tax benefits, etc.) should be the only involvement that the state has in "marriage". Let the churches argue about what "marriage" is. As far as the state is concerned it should be nothing more than a legal agreement between two consenting adults.
BTW, per capita cost of health care in Norway (the most expensive country to live in in the world) costs less than half what it costs in the US, yet covers everyone.
So what? What are the disease survival rates in Norway? The United States boasts higher cancer survival rates than Europe. If your socialized health care systems are so superior why do people receive less access to cancer screening tests that could save their lives? Perhaps our health care system is more expensive because it delivers a better quality product?
It did nothing a smart phone couldn't do, but appeared to be an over-engineered yet poorly featured military industrial complex piece of crap. I'm SURE it cost way too much money, especially compared with the cost of an LG smart phone.
Why don't you drop that "poorly featured military industrial complex piece of crap" onto a rock alongside the LG smart phone and see which one remains functional?
Anyone who says this really has no idea what Feingold is about. He has consistently stood up against this kind of BS. He is still against this kind of thing now that they have that new guy in the president's office.
And yet he voted for legislation that takes away my freedom of association and compels me to do business with for-profit insurance companies. So the previous point about Feingold not following the Constitution is a valid one.
Well, that's one way to do it. I would carry a revolver if I was any good at shooting them. I'm much better with pistols though. The weight distribution on a revolver feels all wrong to me.
Don't worry too much about the reloads. Statistics say that the vast majority of civilian self-defense encounters involve 3-5 shots. I only carry a spare magazine because of Murphy's law -- if the one in the gun fails for whatever reason I'm SOL without a spare.
I'm in Binghamton and have a lot of friends up your way:)
I based the local news joke on our local stations here but it seems that they ALL do that. Please watch our whole broadcast including commercials before we tell you what could be KILLING YOUR FAMILY.
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Is it offensive? Probably but then when did anyone have the right not to be offended? I see offensive shit all the time out there, particularly against religions. South Park has been positively brutal to the Catholics, the Mormons, the Scientologists, etc.
You'll note that they've never done anything particularly offensive about Islam. The real lesson here is that the Catholics, Mormons and Scientology need to start issuing death threats when South Park insults them. Then the corporate overlords will cave and prevent the South Park guys from mocking their religion.....
Think of someone taking a shit on baby Jesus in a manger, or pissing in the holy water.
There's no law against either of those things, assuming that the manger and/or holy water belongs to the person taking a piss on it.
on one hand I agree that this pastor is clearly a little Hitler
So what if he is? If Adolf Hilter was reincarnated tomorrow as an American he would have the same rights as the rest of us.
Canada clearly has less protection of free speech than the United States does.
Oh, and yes, phone companies CAN refuse any service other than 911 in the country.
No they can't. Landline phone service is a regulated utility in most (all?) US States. They can only refuse to provide you with service for a handful of reasons, i.e: you owe them money. I had Verizon refuse to give me landline service when I declined to share my SSN and birthdate with them. I filed a complaint with the Public Service Commission about this and they compelled Verizon to give me service.
To be free from persecution.
Please explain to us how burning a book equates to persecution.
None of my ports are blocked/filtered at the ISP level, and while it's a TOS violation to run a server, it's not something that's really enforced AFAICT. If they started enforcing that clause then it might become more of an issue for me, but they don't so it's not.
That clause isn't enforceable. Technically any application that listens for incoming connections is a "server". That includes multiplayer games, DCC chat/send on IRC, the ident daemon required to effectively use IRC.
I could see them getting upset if you were running something for profit but I've run everything from ssh to apache on my residential Roadrunner account for nearly a decade now and I've never heard a peep out of them. As long as it's for personal use I doubt they even notice, much less care.
As it is, it's not uncommon for me to be able to pull less than 700Kb/s down on my "up to" 10Mb/s connection
Complain about it. My node was overloaded last year when the students came back into town -- couldn't pull more than 2-3mbit/s during peak hours. It took them a few months to address it but they did eventually split the node after confirming that there was a problem. Since they did that I've rarely seen my peak time speeds drop below 8mbit/s.
Document the crappy speeds with their own speed test utility and post them on a forum like DSLReports. They'll take care of it sooner or later.
That's fine and all, but sell it as a 3.0 mbit/s service with higher burst speeds as a bonus. Don't sell it as a 10mbit/s service when you never see those speeds in reality.
That's exactly how most of them do sell it. I've never seen Time Warner advertise a promised speed for a residential connection. They all say "Up to X mbit/s". The "up to" part isn't even in legalese. It's right there in their advertising.
The T-1 (or more properly DS-1) is still 1.544 Mbps and not 100 Mbps as AC mentioned.
I think his theory was that AT&T would sell 66 1.5mbit/s DS-1s (99mbit/s) and a bunch of DSL connections and make them all share the same 100mbit/s backhaul.
go ahead, try and use 1.5mbps up for even 5 hours.
I've run uploads (torrents) 24/7 for weeks on end using nearly of my upstream before. I've also run sustained downloads of ~8mbit/s for the better part of a day before. Haven't heard a peep out of Time Warner. Sorry that you have the misfortune to live in Crapcastic land.
All that means is that they can sell 100MBits to T1 customers on an upstream connection of 102MBits and sell 200MBits/sec to residential customers and reap the profit without having to supply the product.
No it doesn't. If they did it to that extreme they would hemorrhage customers and re-evaluate their business strategy in short order.
Some amount of overselling is necessary in network design. It also makes sense. Most residential customers would rather have the ability to burst up to 10-15mbit/s than have a dedicated connection that runs at 3.0mbit/s (pulling numbers out of the air but you get the gist) 24/7. My cable connection peaks at 10mbit/s but usually sustains around 5-6mbit/s during peak hours. I'm perfectly content with that. The extra bandwidth is there late at night if I want it for sustained downloads and it's there for bursting when I need to download something fast during peak hours.
It would be stupid to roll out a network that restricted your customers to 3.0mbit/s when you can offer them the ability to burst at higher speeds and even sustain them when others don't need them. The trick is in making sure that you don't excessively oversell and that your customers understand the product they are paying for.
They're also lying assholes. yes, they should be able to charge more for a T1 than DSL
But should they be allowed to prioritize the traffic from that T-1 over the traffic from their DSL customers when network congestion is an issue? The T-1 customer probably got an SLA if he was smart. The DSL customer was promised nothing of the kind.
I'm sure there are. I'm just saying it's pretty absurd to think you could just take an off the shelf smartphone and throw it into the field for heavy duty use. There is actually some method to the madness of government procurement.
Just because they claim it's constitutional does not make it so. Even if it were I would still refuse on general principle. The Government already has a track record of abusing the data it collects via the census. I see no reason to give them anything beyond the number of people at my residence.
And no, I don't give a rats ass if they misrepresented me.
If the US had waited a few years until GPS enabled phones were available they might have had more success.
If the US had limited itself to just counting the people (as authorized and mandated by the Constitution) instead of collecting all manner of non-relevant information it could probably have conducted the census with a lot less manpower and paperwork. Heck, it'd be a lot easier to build an electronic device to conduct that census than to build one to conduct the information harvesting exercise that currently masquerades as a census.
The point is to get an accurate count of EVERYONE.
If that's the point then why don't they just knock on my door and ask how many people live there? Why do they have to ask for all manner of information (race/gender/age) besides that? The Constitution mandates the Federal Government count the populace every ten years. It does not mandate or authorize the Federal Government to collect biographical or statistical information beyond the number of people in the country.
I filled in the number of people living at my house on my census form and left everything else blank. When they knocked on my door a few months later I told them that three people live at this address and slammed the door in woman's face. Never heard from them again.
In the US, you worry about the government spying on you or infringing on your rights, while giving the corporations free pass to fuck you in the butthole all day and night.
Corporations can't assfuck you unless you do business with them. You don't have a choice about doing business with the Government. That's the difference.
You guys won't even allow homosexuals to marry, wtf is that for civil liberties
The proper way to fix that is to get the state out of the "marriage" business altogether. Civil unions that recognize one's legal rights regarding their partner (right to make medical decisions, tax benefits, etc.) should be the only involvement that the state has in "marriage". Let the churches argue about what "marriage" is. As far as the state is concerned it should be nothing more than a legal agreement between two consenting adults.
BTW, per capita cost of health care in Norway (the most expensive country to live in in the world) costs less than half what it costs in the US, yet covers everyone.
So what? What are the disease survival rates in Norway? The United States boasts higher cancer survival rates than Europe. If your socialized health care systems are so superior why do people receive less access to cancer screening tests that could save their lives? Perhaps our health care system is more expensive because it delivers a better quality product?
It did nothing a smart phone couldn't do, but appeared to be an over-engineered yet poorly featured military industrial complex piece of crap. I'm SURE it cost way too much money, especially compared with the cost of an LG smart phone.
Why don't you drop that "poorly featured military industrial complex piece of crap" onto a rock alongside the LG smart phone and see which one remains functional?
Anyone who says this really has no idea what Feingold is about. He has consistently stood up against this kind of BS. He is still against this kind of thing now that they have that new guy in the president's office.
And yet he voted for legislation that takes away my freedom of association and compels me to do business with for-profit insurance companies. So the previous point about Feingold not following the Constitution is a valid one.
I never forget a face. Mister..... Schmidt, isn't it? I never thought to see your face again.
Short and Kimmel weren't promoted. In fact they were drummed out of the service and turned into scapegoats for the failures of others.
In Episode V Yoda advised Luke to abandon his friends. As I said, the Jedi have no claim to moral superiority or goodness.
Well, that's one way to do it. I would carry a revolver if I was any good at shooting them. I'm much better with pistols though. The weight distribution on a revolver feels all wrong to me.
Don't worry too much about the reloads. Statistics say that the vast majority of civilian self-defense encounters involve 3-5 shots. I only carry a spare magazine because of Murphy's law -- if the one in the gun fails for whatever reason I'm SOL without a spare.
I'm in Binghamton and have a lot of friends up your way :)
I based the local news joke on our local stations here but it seems that they ALL do that. Please watch our whole broadcast including commercials before we tell you what could be KILLING YOUR FAMILY.