How does the cost of the cell phone compare to land line? For 'long distance' that is, compared to the phone.
Slight backtrack. Where the cell phone 'used' to be considered a luxury, it is now a common place item or necessity. Times are changing, as the cost has come down.
A question for you, then my anecdote. How was the reliability of the land-line phone system in the UK compared to the US?
I'm under 30, and I keep a land line around, as well as the cell phone. The main reason is that to date, the land line has always been available, especially when the power is out. I don't have long distance on the land line (that is what the cell phone is for), but I keep it around basically for emergencies. It's one reason I dislike the Vonage VoIP commercials. I don't think people realize how good of a phone system AT&T built. If the power goes out, I'll lose VoIP and internet but I'll still be able to use my land line. I also have an early '80s phone that has Ma Bell stamped on the bottom of it, so it doesn't have a problem with no electricity, so long as the phone lines work.
The stuff above ground include access to those things that are below ground, such as manholes. In Chicago, the telephone/electric poles are in easements. There are places in Chicago where the wires are strung above ground there, not buried.
Not 'eminent domain', but 'easement'. Eminent Domain is where the government can force you to sell the property. Easement is where the state/county/city/town/what ever has it written into law that there is an area around your property (typically at the street) where they can run various things. You know, water, sewer, electricity, telephone and other things. The cable companies also purchased/leased a portion of it from the locality to run cable there as well. Here's more info. Remember, this is something that has existed for decades and is nothing new.
One guy I know immigrated to the US from South Africa. He was shocked that cell phones were seen as a luxury in the US. The reason, he discovered, was that in the US, the land line telephone system in the US works for 99.999% (or something like that) of the time. Where as, in South Africa, the odds were that the land line was not working. Cell phones were the only reliable form of communication.
Will you then at least also concede that having one country more limited in it's choices of athletes also affects the outcome? At least one of the US athletes is 18 and would have been able to compete at the 2004 Olympics if the US ignored this rule. Several other countries also put forth gymnasts who were ineligible at the previous games and did not put forth gymnasts who are ineligible at the current games due to the age restriction. Regardless of any physical differences between 14 and 16, you still have the fact that two different rules are then being applied to contestants in the same contest. If 14 year olds were allowed to compete, others may have been selected from other countries to compete. However, because those countries decided to follow the rules, they did not.
If experience, strength and muscle memory could compensate, we would have 20 year olds competing more often.
Also, regardless of the age restriction being arbitrary, having one set of rules for one group of athletes and having another set of rules for another group breaks the equality in the games. The same rules for everyone. If this were drug doping, we would not be having this discussion.
If China had performed poorly, this would not even be a story.
Correct. But only because cheating in that case would not have affected the outcome.
NBC (US TV network) explained the tie-breaking process on TV that night. Judging on the technical (the B score) comes from 6 judges. They drop the highest and lowest score. The average of that is the technical and is added to the start values(the A score). If there is a tie, they compare start values. If there is still a tie, they then drop the next highest score of the technical on both athletes and get the new average. I disagree with this method in that, if I wanted a tie breaker, I would drop the next lowest and highest and not just the lowest. Mind you, this comes from courses in statistics and is not just something I'm pulling our of thin air.
As to the judging itself, I have a dislike for anything being in the Olympics that requires a human to be subjective and Team sports. So I'm automatically slightly biased against Gymnastics to being with. That said, one of the comments I heard was the disparity between the Australian (I believe) judge in that who gave the Liukin Nastia about 0.3 less than Kexin He. No other judge game Liukin Nastia less than 0.1 below their score for Kexin He. Here is hte link for the judging scores Note that B1, whose country is not listed, is supposed to be the Australian judge. Tie breaking methodology - Probably biased, but it gives the tie breaking method in full.
1) Younger kids are more flexible. Increased flexibility is an advantage in Gymnastics. Some of the moves that are performed in Gymnastics are, essentially, nothing but demonstrations of flexibility.
2) It means that other countries Olympic Committees have their eligible gymnasts restricted more than others. The same rules should be for everyone. Not one set of rules for you and one set of rules for me.
Well I've observed people for 13 years in internet usage and I see that people need more bandwidth (I said statistics, not opinion). And if you read the article, you'd realize the point is that the US is lagging seriously behind other industrialized nations in the adoption and availability of broadband to consumers. I seriously doubt consumers in Japan, South Korea, Finland, France, and Canada are all rushing out and paying for optical carrier and running fiber to their house. Their carriers are providing better infrastructure and higher capacity consumer lines, and at a cost that is sufficiently affordable that consumers are adopting them. And I'm sorry, but if you think SONET is a consumer grade infrastructure you've got your head wedged firmly up your ass.
Well then, we can start with the number of dial up users who don't want broadband yet. link Oh, and in several of those countries you listed, broadband has been subsidized by the government. So the actual cost is somewhat hidden compared to the US. linklinklink Oh, and I never said a SONET was consumer grade. I said that if you wanted high speed you could always buy it. Apparently you don't consider it worth it to do so.
Grandma is not representative of what "most people need". Grandma is a demographic of what working consumers wanted 50 years ago. The US had better start paying attention to what the demographic of current and emerging working consumers are wanting -bandwidth. Bandwidth for services that both do and don't currently exist. We have terabyte sized disks and we want to fill them with video and audio. We have HD televisions and we want dozens of stations in 1080p. We have XBoxes, Wiis, and playstations that communicate over the internet, and we want the content from those links to be high quality and fast. We have digital telephones, and video communications equipment and software. Every internet-aware product and service that is released will continue to use more and more bandwidth to provide a better experience. As was said in TFA, "Speed defines what is possible on the internet." I don't give a shit if you're happy with grandma being the standard of the internet consumer, the rest of the industrialized world is seeing the benefit in widely available, high capacity communications. There's no reason we should be left behind in a communications backwater.
"Working Consumers" are not the average internet user. After all, that doesn't include 12 year olds, for instance. The "rest of the industrialized world" as you put it is using taxes to pay for internet rollout and still subsidizing the monthly fees. Also, most of them have a denser population areas than in the US. Trying to say if they can do it and why can't we is comparing apples and oranges. You want faster speed? Go set up a company yourself to deploy it or buy it yourself. In the meantime, the US companies are operating without subsidies to do the same thing. Further, grandma does light websurfing, email and whatnot. That is what the average internet user does. What is possible is not what people do. You keep trying to claim that if people can do something they will. That is not reality. Reality is people will start to do something, bandwidth needs will increase, and companies will offer faster speeds.
1080P, and internet capably everything you list are not what the average person has, they are the bleeding edge. The average person does not have that. Also, the game systems do not need 20mbps. They use less than 1mbps. No game uses more than that.
I'd love to see your source for those conflicting statistics. And I'd also like to point out that th 95th or 99th or whatever percentile of customers out of several million customers still represents tens of thousands or more customers, and they deserve their needs to be addressed for the money they pay too.
Observation of people for 12 years in internet usage. And nothing is stopping you from going to someone offering faster service. For example, you could always purchase on OC192 for your house. You'd pay several thousand a month for it, but you can buy it. You want something cheaper? You could always start your own business for it.
Grandma on her couch looking at knitting web sites and downloading pictures of her grandbaby does not encompass the needs or desires of all US communications consumers.
Of course not, but she is more representative of what most people need than you are. That is what businesses start out offering, to the average person. You are a niche market. Businesses that cater only to the niche tend to go out of business.
No, they will tell you not to do that because it stresses their network. Besides, the time to plan for the future is not 10 years after it's gone by. Why does it make sense for people to pay money for a congested broadband connection while they wait for the provider to finally decide the time is right to finally adapt to their load?
Because if they do not look to the future and expand the capabilities, then people will look to others for faster service. Companies like to make money. They need customers in order to do so. If companies don't like their current service, they will look for someone else to provide it for them.
It depends on how much driving is being done. If you generally drive within the capacity of the batter, the CO2 from gasoline will be much less. I pulled up the original study to check the numbers they used. click here A larger batter or less driving would result in skewing the favor even more towards the electric (See page 9). From the source:
The PHEV 20 produces
approximately the same GHG emissions as an HEV if powered by electricity from coal-fired
power plants that do not capture CO2,
Note: PHEV 20 means plug in w/ 20 mile battery range.
Yes, it will. The efficiency of using only a coal power plant to charge an EV is so much greater than a standard gasoline engine that the CO2 produces is cut by 1/3. And, as no one ever truly uses pure coal power, it is really a bit more.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1569/69/
Congratulations, you are in the 95th percentile. However, the article did not talk about the 99th, it talked about the 50th. The 50th percentile of people in the US do none of what you mentioned. As they start to, bandwidth will go up to handle the new demands. Until then, people will not buy internet plans that are several times what they need as it is more than they use.
And when companies do start to try to supply video that stresses the connection, people will push for more bandwidth. When there comes the demand, then there comes the supply. In the mean time, 60mbps connections are a solution in search of a problem. Of course, you could always purchase a T3 if you want it, it will just cost you an arm and a leg.
10 years ago, cable internet was non-existent and dial-up was the norm. Then people started needing faster connections and the cable company complied.
Anyone? No. And you should probably have used 640kpbs instead. Either way, throttling you would be too easy a death.
But back on topic. Seeing as the article looks at the median internet speed I figured we should look at what the median internet user does. People buy the internet connection that gives them enough bandwidth for what they do, no more as it would be a 'waste' of money. So look at what the median internet usage is. It sure as hell doesn't require 60mbps. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even require 6mbps.
Ok then, why do you want 60mbps? It won't improve VOIP, gaming, or anything your iphone or blackberry does. Another poster mentioned Youtube, but that doesn't use a high bitrate either.
Why do you need to own a car that can reach a speed of 145Mph?
Top speed is related to acceleration. I may never go 145, but by having an engine that can, I get decent acceleration (0-60 in 10 seconds) in my normal everyday life. It's a byproduct of something else I need.
Why do you need a 20,000sqft home?
I think you have a typo here. Al Gores mansion isn't even that big.
Most people use the internet for email and websurfing. The difference between 6mbps and 60mbps doesn't make a difference to the human. It's still all in the blink of an eye. Then there is the 1/3(?) of the US that doesn't even want to upgrade from their modems that was mentioned on/. earlier.
Slashdot Mirror
How does the cost of the cell phone compare to land line? For 'long distance' that is, compared to the phone.
Slight backtrack. Where the cell phone 'used' to be considered a luxury, it is now a common place item or necessity. Times are changing, as the cost has come down.
A question for you, then my anecdote. How was the reliability of the land-line phone system in the UK compared to the US?
I'm under 30, and I keep a land line around, as well as the cell phone. The main reason is that to date, the land line has always been available, especially when the power is out. I don't have long distance on the land line (that is what the cell phone is for), but I keep it around basically for emergencies. It's one reason I dislike the Vonage VoIP commercials. I don't think people realize how good of a phone system AT&T built. If the power goes out, I'll lose VoIP and internet but I'll still be able to use my land line. I also have an early '80s phone that has Ma Bell stamped on the bottom of it, so it doesn't have a problem with no electricity, so long as the phone lines work.
The stuff above ground include access to those things that are below ground, such as manholes. In Chicago, the telephone/electric poles are in easements. There are places in Chicago where the wires are strung above ground there, not buried.
Not 'eminent domain', but 'easement'. Eminent Domain is where the government can force you to sell the property. Easement is where the state/county/city/town/what ever has it written into law that there is an area around your property (typically at the street) where they can run various things. You know, water, sewer, electricity, telephone and other things. The cable companies also purchased/leased a portion of it from the locality to run cable there as well. Here's more info. Remember, this is something that has existed for decades and is nothing new.
One guy I know immigrated to the US from South Africa. He was shocked that cell phones were seen as a luxury in the US. The reason, he discovered, was that in the US, the land line telephone system in the US works for 99.999% (or something like that) of the time. Where as, in South Africa, the odds were that the land line was not working. Cell phones were the only reliable form of communication.
Will you then at least also concede that having one country more limited in it's choices of athletes also affects the outcome? At least one of the US athletes is 18 and would have been able to compete at the 2004 Olympics if the US ignored this rule. Several other countries also put forth gymnasts who were ineligible at the previous games and did not put forth gymnasts who are ineligible at the current games due to the age restriction. Regardless of any physical differences between 14 and 16, you still have the fact that two different rules are then being applied to contestants in the same contest. If 14 year olds were allowed to compete, others may have been selected from other countries to compete. However, because those countries decided to follow the rules, they did not.
If experience, strength and muscle memory could compensate, we would have 20 year olds competing more often.
Also, regardless of the age restriction being arbitrary, having one set of rules for one group of athletes and having another set of rules for another group breaks the equality in the games. The same rules for everyone. If this were drug doping, we would not be having this discussion.
If China had performed poorly, this would not even be a story.
Correct. But only because cheating in that case would not have affected the outcome.
The original spreadsheets have been removed. Google's cache of it is gone. The only thing left are the Baidu cache pages, which are HTML.
NBC (US TV network) explained the tie-breaking process on TV that night. Judging on the technical (the B score) comes from 6 judges. They drop the highest and lowest score. The average of that is the technical and is added to the start values(the A score). If there is a tie, they compare start values. If there is still a tie, they then drop the next highest score of the technical on both athletes and get the new average. I disagree with this method in that, if I wanted a tie breaker, I would drop the next lowest and highest and not just the lowest. Mind you, this comes from courses in statistics and is not just something I'm pulling our of thin air.
As to the judging itself, I have a dislike for anything being in the Olympics that requires a human to be subjective and Team sports. So I'm automatically slightly biased against Gymnastics to being with. That said, one of the comments I heard was the disparity between the Australian (I believe) judge in that who gave the Liukin Nastia about 0.3 less than Kexin He. No other judge game Liukin Nastia less than 0.1 below their score for Kexin He. Here is hte link for the judging scores Note that B1, whose country is not listed, is supposed to be the Australian judge. Tie breaking methodology - Probably biased, but it gives the tie breaking method in full.
Yes, for two reasons.
1) Younger kids are more flexible. Increased flexibility is an advantage in Gymnastics. Some of the moves that are performed in Gymnastics are, essentially, nothing but demonstrations of flexibility.
2) It means that other countries Olympic Committees have their eligible gymnasts restricted more than others. The same rules should be for everyone. Not one set of rules for you and one set of rules for me.
Well I've observed people for 13 years in internet usage and I see that people need more bandwidth (I said statistics, not opinion). And if you read the article, you'd realize the point is that the US is lagging seriously behind other industrialized nations in the adoption and availability of broadband to consumers. I seriously doubt consumers in Japan, South Korea, Finland, France, and Canada are all rushing out and paying for optical carrier and running fiber to their house. Their carriers are providing better infrastructure and higher capacity consumer lines, and at a cost that is sufficiently affordable that consumers are adopting them. And I'm sorry, but if you think SONET is a consumer grade infrastructure you've got your head wedged firmly up your ass.
Well then, we can start with the number of dial up users who don't want broadband yet. link Oh, and in several of those countries you listed, broadband has been subsidized by the government. So the actual cost is somewhat hidden compared to the US. link link link Oh, and I never said a SONET was consumer grade. I said that if you wanted high speed you could always buy it. Apparently you don't consider it worth it to do so.
Grandma is not representative of what "most people need". Grandma is a demographic of what working consumers wanted 50 years ago. The US had better start paying attention to what the demographic of current and emerging working consumers are wanting -bandwidth. Bandwidth for services that both do and don't currently exist. We have terabyte sized disks and we want to fill them with video and audio. We have HD televisions and we want dozens of stations in 1080p. We have XBoxes, Wiis, and playstations that communicate over the internet, and we want the content from those links to be high quality and fast. We have digital telephones, and video communications equipment and software. Every internet-aware product and service that is released will continue to use more and more bandwidth to provide a better experience. As was said in TFA, "Speed defines what is possible on the internet." I don't give a shit if you're happy with grandma being the standard of the internet consumer, the rest of the industrialized world is seeing the benefit in widely available, high capacity communications. There's no reason we should be left behind in a communications backwater.
"Working Consumers" are not the average internet user. After all, that doesn't include 12 year olds, for instance. The "rest of the industrialized world" as you put it is using taxes to pay for internet rollout and still subsidizing the monthly fees. Also, most of them have a denser population areas than in the US. Trying to say if they can do it and why can't we is comparing apples and oranges. You want faster speed? Go set up a company yourself to deploy it or buy it yourself. In the meantime, the US companies are operating without subsidies to do the same thing. Further, grandma does light websurfing, email and whatnot. That is what the average internet user does. What is possible is not what people do. You keep trying to claim that if people can do something they will. That is not reality. Reality is people will start to do something, bandwidth needs will increase, and companies will offer faster speeds. 1080P, and internet capably everything you list are not what the average person has, they are the bleeding edge. The average person does not have that. Also, the game systems do not need 20mbps. They use less than 1mbps. No game uses more than that.
I'd love to see your source for those conflicting statistics. And I'd also like to point out that th 95th or 99th or whatever percentile of customers out of several million customers still represents tens of thousands or more customers, and they deserve their needs to be addressed for the money they pay too.
Observation of people for 12 years in internet usage. And nothing is stopping you from going to someone offering faster service. For example, you could always purchase on OC192 for your house. You'd pay several thousand a month for it, but you can buy it. You want something cheaper? You could always start your own business for it.
Grandma on her couch looking at knitting web sites and downloading pictures of her grandbaby does not encompass the needs or desires of all US communications consumers.
Of course not, but she is more representative of what most people need than you are. That is what businesses start out offering, to the average person. You are a niche market. Businesses that cater only to the niche tend to go out of business.
No, they will tell you not to do that because it stresses their network. Besides, the time to plan for the future is not 10 years after it's gone by. Why does it make sense for people to pay money for a congested broadband connection while they wait for the provider to finally decide the time is right to finally adapt to their load?
Because if they do not look to the future and expand the capabilities, then people will look to others for faster service. Companies like to make money. They need customers in order to do so. If companies don't like their current service, they will look for someone else to provide it for them.
12.5 square miles of silicon, and it still generates less than a single average sized block of a nuclear power plant (~1000 MW).
You:
is that counting all the space taken for the railways to bring in and store the coal? (or for the mine for the coal)
Me: Since when does Nuclear or Solar require Coal?
As opposed to green-on-black?
The PHEV 20 produces approximately the same GHG emissions as an HEV if powered by electricity from coal-fired power plants that do not capture CO2,
Note: PHEV 20 means plug in w/ 20 mile battery range.
Dammit, you beat me to it. That was the first game I ever played on the Wii. Great game, and the first FPS console game I've liked the interface for.
It won't help with global warming though :(
Yes, it will. The efficiency of using only a coal power plant to charge an EV is so much greater than a standard gasoline engine that the CO2 produces is cut by 1/3. And, as no one ever truly uses pure coal power, it is really a bit more. http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1569/69/
Congratulations, you are in the 95th percentile. However, the article did not talk about the 99th, it talked about the 50th. The 50th percentile of people in the US do none of what you mentioned. As they start to, bandwidth will go up to handle the new demands. Until then, people will not buy internet plans that are several times what they need as it is more than they use.
Yeah, and Individuals, like you, will stress their connection. As that happens, companies will offer faster connections.
And when companies do start to try to supply video that stresses the connection, people will push for more bandwidth. When there comes the demand, then there comes the supply. In the mean time, 60mbps connections are a solution in search of a problem. Of course, you could always purchase a T3 if you want it, it will just cost you an arm and a leg.
10 years ago, cable internet was non-existent and dial-up was the norm. Then people started needing faster connections and the cable company complied.
Genetic manipulation will lead to swimmers born with flipper feet. Hows the IOC gonna stop that?
I think that's already happened. Ever hear of Thalidomide?
Anyone? No. And you should probably have used 640kpbs instead. Either way, throttling you would be too easy a death.
But back on topic. Seeing as the article looks at the median internet speed I figured we should look at what the median internet user does. People buy the internet connection that gives them enough bandwidth for what they do, no more as it would be a 'waste' of money. So look at what the median internet usage is. It sure as hell doesn't require 60mbps. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even require 6mbps.
Ok then, why do you want 60mbps? It won't improve VOIP, gaming, or anything your iphone or blackberry does. Another poster mentioned Youtube, but that doesn't use a high bitrate either.
Why do you need to own a car that can reach a speed of 145Mph?
Top speed is related to acceleration. I may never go 145, but by having an engine that can, I get decent acceleration (0-60 in 10 seconds) in my normal everyday life. It's a byproduct of something else I need.
Why do you need a 20,000sqft home?
I think you have a typo here. Al Gores mansion isn't even that big.
Most people use the internet for email and websurfing. The difference between 6mbps and 60mbps doesn't make a difference to the human. It's still all in the blink of an eye. Then there is the 1/3(?) of the US that doesn't even want to upgrade from their modems that was mentioned on /. earlier.