It could also have something to do with the fact that normally foreigners are not allowed in cantonments and other restricted areas and so the use of locals opens both sides up to problems.
My visa specifically mentions which cities I can live in (so I must register with the FRRO in either of those cities; as far as I know, I don't think I can just up and move from say Delhi or Mumbai to somewhere else without getting some additional permitting or a replacement visa first) but it also says "not valid for prohibited / restricted and cantonment areas" meaning I can't even visit those places without getting permission first (which could be a pain in the ass if someone were to actually check my documents as I move around, because sometimes the only way to get from A to B is through such an area).
So apart from the replies concerning bribery (probably a factor), the government may simply be annoyed that Google is recruiting Indians to do stuff for a foreign entity which involves "areas of interest", which is fair enough I suppose - if said foreign entity were a government, wouldn't that basically amount to spying?
I fully 100% agree with you and I'm aware there is plenty of legal p2p traffic. I love when our users use all that sort of stuff and our last-mile networks are designed to take advantage of all that sort of thing, with what you might call "hyper-local" caches from a Bulgarian company, and to a lesser extent users can get direct connections through applications like good old DC++ and such (and it saves them on their traffic quotas if they have one).
A large percentage of ISPs in the US are clecs or resellers in some form or another and have nearly zero control over last mile delivery or local access. Including ourselves to a large extent, so the offerings aren't nearly as cool as they are elsewhere.
What I was referencing though was the idea for Netflix to build or license a client like Popcorn Time which utilizes p2p (currently in a not legal way, though obviously if Netflix rebuilt it to access Netflix' library it would be distributing it's content under license), because, in my own experiments, PT has proven itself to me to work better than Netflix on my own connection in the US (and with a higher quality stream) - especially during certain times of the day.
Plus, as far as I can ascertain it would make that whole "Netflix on Linux" issue easier (depending on the DRM) -- no more hacky silverlight nonsense. Probably.
Wait a second... you say "Cable companies are not under the franchise obligations. They only serve areas that are profitable. That footprint is very tightly held within the profitable part of town"...
I have some contracts that say "franchise agreement" at the top from a few different cities and counties around where I am (the mid-west - not rural rural, but not a big town, either) that would beg to differ on that.
And I don't think they're losing money... based on *my* cost for bandwidth (as delivered) and the prices they're charging multiplied by the number of subscribers in the area it looks like... yup... hand over fist. Helped enormously, no doubt, by all the fees on the bill (like franchise fees and tax) being extra.
Same applies to many parts of northern Europe, although it's a bit more than $30/mo (99EUR for Gigabit last I checked)... although we had 10/10 for I think 10EUR a month in Finland and 100/100 included in our rent somewhere else... in 2005-6.
Even countries like Georgia have better Internet than the US - and excellent ping times, too (London roundtrip in 31ms for circa 3500km/2200mi... I can get that from Southern IL to Chicago maybe but couldn't get that from here to say LA, which is only about 75% of the distance).
We need more people to be given the freedom to do things like this... to push the limits of existing stuff and expand on it. How else are we supposed to expect innovation?
What Mr Wetzel did was just that, and it was a good thing. These days of course, there'd be too much flak from insurance companies and lawyers.
When I used to travel between Saijo/Matsuyama (Ehime-ken) and Tokyo or Fukuoka 2-3 times a week, the only reason I took a plane was because of the whole island thing. If I needed to do something on the same island, it was always the train... but in either case, I was rarely ever waiting around at either a station or airport.
I believe if your Shinkansen is late, you get a note to explain why... do you still get the ticket-price credit?
And in the airport, you used to put your drink on some kind of scanner which would determine if you could take it on board - there was no policy of "throw any and all liquids away"... is that still true?
Ahh memories. Kind of want to move back there now.
Then stop buying from AT&T and start buying from someone else - if you're in or near a large city, paying over $10/mbit/month is absurd.
Of course, if you're in a rural are that may be a different story as there may be no competition, in which case, yeah.
Something else that some providers are willing to do is provide a single Internet connection/gateway at a single location and then connect satellite sites to it via some form of LAN (exactly what is offered may vary by provider) - so you might have 1 library connected with say 500mb of Internet access on a gigabit port (preferably in the cheapest market for that) and 9 satellite campuses connected to the primary campus via private lines with some load balancing and voila* - you might save yourself 30 or 40% over getting 10 separate 50mb connections**
*My description is a bit simplified, but you should get the jist. We were going to be doing something like this to connect a few offices of the same company - some of which were in different states - together and route everything through a single Internet gateway. The performance hit of a few extra milliseconds involved in routing were not significant enough to outweigh the cost savings.
**Educated guess - your mileage may vary.
As an added bonus, the networks connecting each campus might even be considered internal and thus eligible for a subsidy (maybe).
The language seems to suggest that they're trying to outlaw things like DOS attacks and "hacking"/revealing information on US persons, government activities and the like (so all the Snowden type stuff despite the whistleblower act, as well as identity theft or release of credit card numbers and stuff), especially on private/corporate/government networks (so target/tj maxx security breaches etc) -- rather than things like Netflix on residential connections.
I'd have thought the computer fraud and abuse act 1986 already had stuff about doing malicious things to systems (including but not limited to DOS attacks and all of the rest), meaning this bill appears... redundant, despite some of the new terminology introduced in there.
But, maybe I'm skim-reading too much and not delving in to the references cited in the bill; or maybe the language really is too broad to be safe for our "Internet rights" and I just haven't picked up on it, but can anybody point me at the passage(s) which could be interpreted to mean that high-bandwidth services such as Netflix on the public Internet would be a problem?
You need to learn more about your visa system. H-1B is *not* an immigrant visa, nor a path to citizenship or even permanent residency.
You couldn't legally hire a person on an H-1B or J visa (J is for foreign exchange students and such) even if you wanted to - unless you are prepared to sponsor them, in which case, you're supposed to try hard to find a local first anyway.
It's some of those big companies, usually in software consultancy and other such BS, who seem to be taking advantage of the situation, gaming the system and giving immigrants a bad name.
Pity the H1-B visa is not an immigrant visa. Once it expires (for any reason, whether it be job loss or the maximum time period has been spent), they have to GTFO. The path to citizenship is through an entirely different set of available visa classes which are, in many cases, are more difficult to obtain. If they get citizenship after working here for 5 or 10 years, they probably were not an H1-B to begin with.
Most of the H1-Bs I know want to make as much money as possible and go home and be entrepreneurs (and with the rupee being so bad at the moment, it's not that hard even if their earnings by US standards aren't that great). Others want a leg up on their non-H1-B counterparts when applying for the higher/better paying positions back home.
For the record, I do not hire any H1-Bs in my US operations and I'm neither a US citizen (nor do I want to be) or resident, even if I do spend swaths of time in the US.
Perhaps, but in terms of a "Netflix leased line", the point in the network where bandwidth is being choked is usually the same point in the network where bandwidth is really rather cheap.
An HD stream is what, 5 or 6mbit/s, right? Multiply that by about 30 cents per megabit per month and you've got a cost of $1.80 to handle the peak traffic (we're talking multi-gig levels here, so if a supplier can offer a gigabit at $4,600 a month, 10ge or more at $30,000 a month seems attainable).
Would customers be willing to fork out an extra $4 a month for guaranteed HD Netflix? Probably not. Should they have to? Hell no. Would providers find a way of raising their tariffs to cover the cost even though their margins are fairly obscene already? You bet your ass. Should it be illegal for them to do that sort of traffic discrimination? Definitely. Will it be? Not likely.
Is it me or is Germany's deciding to abandon nuclear a bit of a knee-jerk reaction?
Few of the things that actually caused the problems at Fukushima are present in Germany. Like Japan, German engineering is generally considered high quality, but unlike Japan, they don't really have earthquakes (certainly not like any country on the ring of fire) and not much of a coastline.
Considering all the alternatives and costs thereof, nuclear does give pretty good bang for the buck and is (relatively speaking) safe - apart from the number of actual disasters which we can all count on one-hand, there just haven't been that many problems over the past 50-or-so years.
Especially when compared to the alternatives, but we can calculate the risk, and if we calculate said risk to any factor, Nuclear doesn't fare badly, it's just the specter where **IF** something goes wrong at a nuclear facility it can be a **BIG** problem -- but that's a pretty big IF, and a modern reactor design such as what would be used to build a plant likely mitigates the hell out of all that.
Why? Tigerdirect and the like has plenty of decent refurbs which come with Win7 Pro. If your mother is anything like mine, even the specs on a lower-end refurb should be more than sufficient.
We'd be up for it. Strictly speaking we're for profit but as a non-American I may also have some socialistic or altruistic tendencies which might be advantageous for such a project.
The question is finding *enough* people & money to make it work. Geek-heavy sites like./ and the like make it seem easy because for the most part we do care about our technology and our Internets, but talk to your neighbours 10-houses on either side and find out how many of them care as much about their Internet services as you or I do.
The main incentive for most people would be financial but the financial relief as compared to their existing service would have to be significant otherwise it gets chucked in the "too hard" basket.
Are you sure? I've been reading a lot of franchise agreements lately from a few towns in and around the mid-west, and they all seem to say "non-exclusive".
Of course, that's not going to stop a cableco making up reasons to sue and/or preventing us from having access to poles or making it prohibitively expensive to do so, and it's not going to stop a town that already has 7 providers with fiber in the ground (none of which is open for lease by competitors) saying "no more fiber in the ground because what if we need to repair city utilities".
Of course, exclusivity may apply where you are but even in a town that is co-operative on the surface, franchise agreements are only a very small part of the puzzle.
Seriously folks, what's with all of the hate? If a person can perform their duties, there is no reason to dismiss them regardless of whether obesity is a disability or not. That is a discriminatory practice. A person's condition is also no reason to speculate upon its cause without evidence. We have a name for that too, it's called prejudice.
I care about my employees. I want them to be happy AND healthy. I don't want them to keel over and die of a heart attack at 36. Or 46. Or even 56. But I do have prejudice against people who do things to themselves (over-eat) and moreso against people who won't help themselves - instead opting to bitch and moan about being discriminated against.
On the other hand, if you have an *actual* disease (something that you can't do anything about) then I won't discriminate -- unless it's one of those things that you can control with medication or something but you refuse it.
Long story short, if you are 1 employee and you are rocking the boat (or look like you're going to rock the boat) for all the other employees by asking for a jumbo-sized chair, extra-strong toilet, walmart sized doors or whatever, you're either going to be fired or not hired at all, in much the same way that any other person who looks like they would be disruptive to the work environment would be fired or not hired.
All else being equal, I do and will continue to "discriminate" against obese people for most roles in my companies, even in the US - unless the candidate can demonstrate skills which far "outweigh" their thinner counterparts.
Many of the reasons have already been discussed (health and people "prone" to taking more days off, causing financial "loss" to me and unfair increase in workload on others; perceived lack of discipline, higher insurance costs et cetera), but one to be considered is that of safety.
Some of what we do involves being at 20ft or more above the ground, so I'm not going to hire a 300+lb/150+kg person because they won't be able to climb a ladder or because I don't trust the weight distribution on a cherry-picker.
Or if you're in the office, the last thing you need is a job that has you sitting on your arse all day unless you in a wheelchair for reasons other than being obese. And there is no way in hell I'm buying extra-large chairs or widening the doors because you call yourself "husky".
Or if you're out in the field, I don't want to give a bad impression to prospects & clients by having a sweating, wheezing mass wearing a now damp shirt with our logo on it (most of the areas in which we operate are fairly warm and humid).
In fact, I can't even really think of any jobs in my companies where obesity would be an advantage, save maybe being an anchor for someone on the side of a building.
While I accept that there is *some* truth in obesity being a medical condition (people don't know when to stop eating because the mechanism is broken, they quit smoking etc), it's still by and large a choice for the vast majority of excuse-makers. You're not big-boned, you're big-arsed. Either get used to it or change your habits - you can eat tasty food without resorting to the drive-through and you don't have to stick to a carrot a day to lose weight, either.
If you're obese and you really want to work for me, get to a healthier weight and then come back to me so that I can pick (or reject) you based on your merits.
Actually, I'd quite like to see something like the Japanese law that fines the obese implemented in the west.
I'm streaming NFLX right now on Mediacom (So-IL) but have not seen that message. It refuses to stream in HD though, even on a 50mb connection. Traceroutes suggest NFLX traffic is coming from Chicago via Level3 then AT&T rather than directly by Level3 for no apparent reason.
Are you sure? Last I read, Netflix and Verizon had signed a direct interconnection deal too. The difference here seems to be that, unlike when the Comcast interconnects took effect, the experience has not been improved for Verizon subscribers.
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It could also have something to do with the fact that normally foreigners are not allowed in cantonments and other restricted areas and so the use of locals opens both sides up to problems.
My visa specifically mentions which cities I can live in (so I must register with the FRRO in either of those cities; as far as I know, I don't think I can just up and move from say Delhi or Mumbai to somewhere else without getting some additional permitting or a replacement visa first) but it also says "not valid for prohibited / restricted and cantonment areas" meaning I can't even visit those places without getting permission first (which could be a pain in the ass if someone were to actually check my documents as I move around, because sometimes the only way to get from A to B is through such an area).
So apart from the replies concerning bribery (probably a factor), the government may simply be annoyed that Google is recruiting Indians to do stuff for a foreign entity which involves "areas of interest", which is fair enough I suppose - if said foreign entity were a government, wouldn't that basically amount to spying?
I fully 100% agree with you and I'm aware there is plenty of legal p2p traffic. I love when our users use all that sort of stuff and our last-mile networks are designed to take advantage of all that sort of thing, with what you might call "hyper-local" caches from a Bulgarian company, and to a lesser extent users can get direct connections through applications like good old DC++ and such (and it saves them on their traffic quotas if they have one).
A large percentage of ISPs in the US are clecs or resellers in some form or another and have nearly zero control over last mile delivery or local access. Including ourselves to a large extent, so the offerings aren't nearly as cool as they are elsewhere.
What I was referencing though was the idea for Netflix to build or license a client like Popcorn Time which utilizes p2p (currently in a not legal way, though obviously if Netflix rebuilt it to access Netflix' library it would be distributing it's content under license), because, in my own experiments, PT has proven itself to me to work better than Netflix on my own connection in the US (and with a higher quality stream) - especially during certain times of the day.
Plus, as far as I can ascertain it would make that whole "Netflix on Linux" issue easier (depending on the DRM) -- no more hacky silverlight nonsense. Probably.
Wait a second... you say "Cable companies are not under the franchise obligations. They only serve areas that are profitable. That footprint is very tightly held within the profitable part of town"...
I have some contracts that say "franchise agreement" at the top from a few different cities and counties around where I am (the mid-west - not rural rural, but not a big town, either) that would beg to differ on that.
And I don't think they're losing money... based on *my* cost for bandwidth (as delivered) and the prices they're charging multiplied by the number of subscribers in the area it looks like... yup... hand over fist. Helped enormously, no doubt, by all the fees on the bill (like franchise fees and tax) being extra.
Same applies to many parts of northern Europe, although it's a bit more than $30/mo (99EUR for Gigabit last I checked)... although we had 10/10 for I think 10EUR a month in Finland and 100/100 included in our rent somewhere else... in 2005-6.
Even countries like Georgia have better Internet than the US - and excellent ping times, too (London roundtrip in 31ms for circa 3500km/2200mi... I can get that from Southern IL to Chicago maybe but couldn't get that from here to say LA, which is only about 75% of the distance).
2 words: Popcorn Time.
P2P (Bittorrent) and from what I've seen, works great on almost anything.
If only it were a legal source... Maybe Netflix could adopt that client or build a similar one to stream it's library.
Alot of Verizon's FiOS deployment is GPON isn't it?
That might be one reason (although, considering uploads are still usually used way less than downloads, not a very good one).
We need more people to be given the freedom to do things like this... to push the limits of existing stuff and expand on it. How else are we supposed to expect innovation?
What Mr Wetzel did was just that, and it was a good thing. These days of course, there'd be too much flak from insurance companies and lawyers.
Been there, done that, on numerous occasions.
When I used to travel between Saijo/Matsuyama (Ehime-ken) and Tokyo or Fukuoka 2-3 times a week, the only reason I took a plane was because of the whole island thing. If I needed to do something on the same island, it was always the train... but in either case, I was rarely ever waiting around at either a station or airport.
I believe if your Shinkansen is late, you get a note to explain why... do you still get the ticket-price credit?
And in the airport, you used to put your drink on some kind of scanner which would determine if you could take it on board - there was no policy of "throw any and all liquids away"... is that still true?
Ahh memories. Kind of want to move back there now.
Then stop buying from AT&T and start buying from someone else - if you're in or near a large city, paying over $10/mbit/month is absurd.
Of course, if you're in a rural are that may be a different story as there may be no competition, in which case, yeah.
Something else that some providers are willing to do is provide a single Internet connection/gateway at a single location and then connect satellite sites to it via some form of LAN (exactly what is offered may vary by provider) - so you might have 1 library connected with say 500mb of Internet access on a gigabit port (preferably in the cheapest market for that) and 9 satellite campuses connected to the primary campus via private lines with some load balancing and voila* - you might save yourself 30 or 40% over getting 10 separate 50mb connections**
*My description is a bit simplified, but you should get the jist. We were going to be doing something like this to connect a few offices of the same company - some of which were in different states - together and route everything through a single Internet gateway. The performance hit of a few extra milliseconds involved in routing were not significant enough to outweigh the cost savings.
**Educated guess - your mileage may vary.
As an added bonus, the networks connecting each campus might even be considered internal and thus eligible for a subsidy (maybe).
The language seems to suggest that they're trying to outlaw things like DOS attacks and "hacking"/revealing information on US persons, government activities and the like (so all the Snowden type stuff despite the whistleblower act, as well as identity theft or release of credit card numbers and stuff), especially on private/corporate/government networks (so target/tj maxx security breaches etc) -- rather than things like Netflix on residential connections.
I'd have thought the computer fraud and abuse act 1986 already had stuff about doing malicious things to systems (including but not limited to DOS attacks and all of the rest), meaning this bill appears... redundant, despite some of the new terminology introduced in there.
But, maybe I'm skim-reading too much and not delving in to the references cited in the bill; or maybe the language really is too broad to be safe for our "Internet rights" and I just haven't picked up on it, but can anybody point me at the passage(s) which could be interpreted to mean that high-bandwidth services such as Netflix on the public Internet would be a problem?
Of course, then there are some "illegals" who - believe it or not - stay at the request of the US government.
http://travel.state.gov/conten...
You need to learn more about your visa system. H-1B is *not* an immigrant visa, nor a path to citizenship or even permanent residency.
You couldn't legally hire a person on an H-1B or J visa (J is for foreign exchange students and such) even if you wanted to - unless you are prepared to sponsor them, in which case, you're supposed to try hard to find a local first anyway.
It's some of those big companies, usually in software consultancy and other such BS, who seem to be taking advantage of the situation, gaming the system and giving immigrants a bad name.
http://travel.state.gov/conten...
Pity the H1-B visa is not an immigrant visa. Once it expires (for any reason, whether it be job loss or the maximum time period has been spent), they have to GTFO. The path to citizenship is through an entirely different set of available visa classes which are, in many cases, are more difficult to obtain. If they get citizenship after working here for 5 or 10 years, they probably were not an H1-B to begin with.
Most of the H1-Bs I know want to make as much money as possible and go home and be entrepreneurs (and with the rupee being so bad at the moment, it's not that hard even if their earnings by US standards aren't that great). Others want a leg up on their non-H1-B counterparts when applying for the higher/better paying positions back home.
For the record, I do not hire any H1-Bs in my US operations and I'm neither a US citizen (nor do I want to be) or resident, even if I do spend swaths of time in the US.
Perhaps, but in terms of a "Netflix leased line", the point in the network where bandwidth is being choked is usually the same point in the network where bandwidth is really rather cheap.
An HD stream is what, 5 or 6mbit/s, right? Multiply that by about 30 cents per megabit per month and you've got a cost of $1.80 to handle the peak traffic (we're talking multi-gig levels here, so if a supplier can offer a gigabit at $4,600 a month, 10ge or more at $30,000 a month seems attainable).
Would customers be willing to fork out an extra $4 a month for guaranteed HD Netflix? Probably not. Should they have to? Hell no. Would providers find a way of raising their tariffs to cover the cost even though their margins are fairly obscene already? You bet your ass. Should it be illegal for them to do that sort of traffic discrimination? Definitely. Will it be? Not likely.
Is it me or is Germany's deciding to abandon nuclear a bit of a knee-jerk reaction?
Few of the things that actually caused the problems at Fukushima are present in Germany. Like Japan, German engineering is generally considered high quality, but unlike Japan, they don't really have earthquakes (certainly not like any country on the ring of fire) and not much of a coastline.
Considering all the alternatives and costs thereof, nuclear does give pretty good bang for the buck and is (relatively speaking) safe - apart from the number of actual disasters which we can all count on one-hand, there just haven't been that many problems over the past 50-or-so years.
Especially when compared to the alternatives, but we can calculate the risk, and if we calculate said risk to any factor, Nuclear doesn't fare badly, it's just the specter where **IF** something goes wrong at a nuclear facility it can be a **BIG** problem -- but that's a pretty big IF, and a modern reactor design such as what would be used to build a plant likely mitigates the hell out of all that.
Why? Tigerdirect and the like has plenty of decent refurbs which come with Win7 Pro. If your mother is anything like mine, even the specs on a lower-end refurb should be more than sufficient.
We'd be up for it. Strictly speaking we're for profit but as a non-American I may also have some socialistic or altruistic tendencies which might be advantageous for such a project.
The question is finding *enough* people & money to make it work. Geek-heavy sites like ./ and the like make it seem easy because for the most part we do care about our technology and our Internets, but talk to your neighbours 10-houses on either side and find out how many of them care as much about their Internet services as you or I do.
The main incentive for most people would be financial but the financial relief as compared to their existing service would have to be significant otherwise it gets chucked in the "too hard" basket.
Are you sure? I've been reading a lot of franchise agreements lately from a few towns in and around the mid-west, and they all seem to say "non-exclusive".
Of course, that's not going to stop a cableco making up reasons to sue and/or preventing us from having access to poles or making it prohibitively expensive to do so, and it's not going to stop a town that already has 7 providers with fiber in the ground (none of which is open for lease by competitors) saying "no more fiber in the ground because what if we need to repair city utilities".
Of course, exclusivity may apply where you are but even in a town that is co-operative on the surface, franchise agreements are only a very small part of the puzzle.
Seriously folks, what's with all of the hate? If a person can perform their duties, there is no reason to dismiss them regardless of whether obesity is a disability or not. That is a discriminatory practice. A person's condition is also no reason to speculate upon its cause without evidence. We have a name for that too, it's called prejudice.
I care about my employees. I want them to be happy AND healthy. I don't want them to keel over and die of a heart attack at 36. Or 46. Or even 56. But I do have prejudice against people who do things to themselves (over-eat) and moreso against people who won't help themselves - instead opting to bitch and moan about being discriminated against.
On the other hand, if you have an *actual* disease (something that you can't do anything about) then I won't discriminate -- unless it's one of those things that you can control with medication or something but you refuse it.
Long story short, if you are 1 employee and you are rocking the boat (or look like you're going to rock the boat) for all the other employees by asking for a jumbo-sized chair, extra-strong toilet, walmart sized doors or whatever, you're either going to be fired or not hired at all, in much the same way that any other person who looks like they would be disruptive to the work environment would be fired or not hired.
All else being equal, I do and will continue to "discriminate" against obese people for most roles in my companies, even in the US - unless the candidate can demonstrate skills which far "outweigh" their thinner counterparts.
Many of the reasons have already been discussed (health and people "prone" to taking more days off, causing financial "loss" to me and unfair increase in workload on others; perceived lack of discipline, higher insurance costs et cetera), but one to be considered is that of safety.
Some of what we do involves being at 20ft or more above the ground, so I'm not going to hire a 300+lb/150+kg person because they won't be able to climb a ladder or because I don't trust the weight distribution on a cherry-picker.
Or if you're in the office, the last thing you need is a job that has you sitting on your arse all day unless you in a wheelchair for reasons other than being obese. And there is no way in hell I'm buying extra-large chairs or widening the doors because you call yourself "husky".
Or if you're out in the field, I don't want to give a bad impression to prospects & clients by having a sweating, wheezing mass wearing a now damp shirt with our logo on it (most of the areas in which we operate are fairly warm and humid).
In fact, I can't even really think of any jobs in my companies where obesity would be an advantage, save maybe being an anchor for someone on the side of a building.
While I accept that there is *some* truth in obesity being a medical condition (people don't know when to stop eating because the mechanism is broken, they quit smoking etc), it's still by and large a choice for the vast majority of excuse-makers. You're not big-boned, you're big-arsed. Either get used to it or change your habits - you can eat tasty food without resorting to the drive-through and you don't have to stick to a carrot a day to lose weight, either.
If you're obese and you really want to work for me, get to a healthier weight and then come back to me so that I can pick (or reject) you based on your merits.
Actually, I'd quite like to see something like the Japanese law that fines the obese implemented in the west.
I'm streaming NFLX right now on Mediacom (So-IL) but have not seen that message. It refuses to stream in HD though, even on a 50mb connection. Traceroutes suggest NFLX traffic is coming from Chicago via Level3 then AT&T rather than directly by Level3 for no apparent reason.
Are you sure? Last I read, Netflix and Verizon had signed a direct interconnection deal too. The difference here seems to be that, unlike when the Comcast interconnects took effect, the experience has not been improved for Verizon subscribers.
Netflix sh/could send out little testing boxes like truenet.co.nz does to measure speed several times during the day.
Except those with bandwidth quotas. Which is, unfortunately, an increasing percentage of the market.