Overall, I think all this competition is good, but when third world countries say they hate American wealth, you have to wonder about a country that is so wealthy and yet so bad at regulating itself that it is easier for us to build three or four identical national infrastructures (at huge expense) to achieve the same purpose than to plan effectively.
Think about it this way. BPL, Cable and FTTH (Fibre to the Home) are three different competing systems that are/have recieved little, if any, funding from the gov. The main instigator has been profit for the companies. No one in politics choose which company would be the "Nationaly Approved Provider" of internet. Those countries that planned and had chosen a single way to do things invested huge amounts of government money from taxes to role them out quickly. When (not if) an upgrade comes along the gov would either have to spend money upgrading it or would be apathetic and not do anything at all. With private companies, they have more incentive to upgrade when they are competing against others so they can offer better services and get more customers (hence why DirectTV just launced several new satelites). With a gov, they aren't competing against anyone.
So finally we get may get decent broadband - a utility that should have been available ten years ago.
AT&T is an interesting counterpoint to what I said before. If AT&T had not been broken up, we would have had (this is estimated) DSL to ALL houses in the early 80's. As for finally getting one, 10 years ago it would have been a token ring most likely (and little reason to have it). Today we get multiple companies competing for us, each vying to have the best setup to get more customers. They will maintain and keep up the networks to the best they can so people don't move to one of the alternatives.
Aren't we ranked like fifteenth in the world now for providing broadband internet?
Again, it is because in most of those others the governments heavily invested in and subsidized (and probably still do to keep the costs down) the creation of those networks. The US has not done this. Our moon program is a good example of what can happen when a gov pushes for something. We landed a man on the moon. Yet the technology we created for that wasn't good for anything other than putting a man on the moon for a few days/hours and returnin him home. We developed no infrastructure, no space stations, no permanent ways of doing things. Kennedy set the space program back at least 50 years with that stunt. Otherwise we might have had a permanent space presence at this point.
Between Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) and the Telcos laying Fibre to the Home, Cable will be facing off against a much bigger threat than DSL. Even a partial fibre upgrade has the capability have giving everyone on the phone network DSL (or better) connections. note: by partial fibre upgrade I mean fibre upgrade to the neighborhood or local area breakout box as opposed to the home itself.
For the USA only and not applicable in sweeden: It is a delict. However, major offences can be prosecuted as a crime if they are severe enough. Such as for those major pirates who do it as a business. The question in this case is, does non-business copy right infringement count as a civil or a criminal offence. Again, not having any knowlege of sweedish law this is not completely applicable to this case.
Wireless can't get the raw speed that "wired" can. The maximum throughput on a single strand of fibre is 20Terra Bits per fibre. Wireless also suffers from more interference problems and limited bandwidth (RF bandwidth,not speed) that you can access at one time. It is hard enough for TV stations to get satelite recievers that will do 36Mhz of bandwidth at 80Mbits. And that is recieve only. 802.11a/b/g are pressing the limits they can do in speed over their radio spectrum at those power levels. Wired, on the other hand, is about to come out with 10GBits over copper alone and fibre,as I said before, can do much more.
Wireless is just to slow to be of much use in applications where you need speed such as gaming and streaming video. For voice, it is barely adequate.
Interestingly enough, the telcos getting monopoly status over their lines may lead to an increase in competition:
Telcos upgrade to fibre to the home to compete with cable (Verizon is doing this).
Cable operators drop price/increase bandwidth to compete with Telcos.
Telcos offer Video services.
Cable offers better deals to compete.
Cable offers phone service to compete with Telcos.
Telcos offer better deals to compete.
At this point in technology the two are evolving into natural competitors on multiple fronts.
If the cable corps have to open the lines, it can mean more competition on that front. Either way so long as the status quo is not maintained consumers come out ahead.
I'm going to break up your argument into two issues. That of sharing the lines and that of having two different companies playing under different rules.
Sharing the lines is something most are in favor of but I am not going to get into that.
Right now Telecos are forced by regulation to share their lines that they laid down and maintain for a fee that is around cost. That gives no one a reason to upgrade the networks. And BTW they are working to upgrading to fibre not measley ADSL2+. Having full control of their own lines meand that they can make a profit sooner and have more incentive to do so. They need to compete with cable, afterall.
Cable, on the other hand, supplies internet as well and is under no compulsion to share in either the internet of TV market. This gives them great reason to expand as they have a captive market on their lines and with a few small upgrades can drive the phone companies out of the business.
Cable offers TV and internet and is looking at doing phone. Telcos do phone and internet and are looking at doing TV. Why should one be forced to open up their lines and not the other for the same service? As for competition, they are already competing with each other (or the Telcos are trying but the forced line issue is incentive to not try) so why not have a level playing field to expand the competition?
Local telephone companies (who own the wires) are required by law to sell allow other companies access to their wires (whereby the other company can supply local service) at below market costs. Sometimes around or below how much it costs them to maintain the wires as well. This way we can have competition between multiple local phone companies on the same set of wires. This was extended to DSL some years ago.
Now, Cable companies (who sometimes own the wires and sometimes don't, in my are the county officially owns the wires and we still only have one cable company) are not required to open up their cable lines to competing companies.
A grand isn't a slap on the wrist to someone who's just out of college, looking for a job and has to repay student loans. That said, I'd expect this to be somewhere between $1000 and $5000. $500 isn't much of a punishment and any more than $5000 and he won't be able to pay it back without filing for bankruptcy. Unless Apple has some nice repayment plans worked out.
I'm not sure if the is I.E. or File Explorer that allows you to do that. I do know that when I launch file explorer I can do that and go to the other computer and the same with I.E.. I also know that you can do the same thing using Total Commander. Then again, I'm pretty sure that I.E. and File Explorer are the same program.
I agree. It'd be like totally impractical to divide them into several smaller pages, such as by type, subject or theme.
I did that already. Them: Show, Subject: Individual Character (which is seperated from groups of characters). Thats how they are divided up and they still take that long to load on the larger collections.
Depends on what you are designing. I have several image galleries that take several minutes to load when viewing the page on the host machine. Longer of a lan connection and more time than I care to think about over 56k.
While I agree that you should program pages for 56k viewing, there are some applications where it is not practical. Oh, and those load times are using thumbnails and not the acutal images (there just happens to be a lot of images).
We think along the same lines. I don't plan on giving up the landline (and I always keep at least 1 corded phone that does not require a power outlet) for when the power goes out or an emergency. As usefull as my cellphone is, it doesn't have the same QoS as a POTS line.
I've had Seagate and WD drives die on me but never Maxtor
In the past 15 years I've had 3 drives die on me. One was an old 80mb 10 years ago. Another was my 40GB maxtor that died last year after 4 years of continuos heavy usage and the third was a ten year old drive (that replaced the 80) that we just found out had died last week. I only know the manufacturer of the 40GB.
That is on my personal machines. I built a machine for my parents and decided to go with a Wester Digital (WD). It died the first day (no joke). Follwoed by the replacement on I exchanged it for. (That makes 2 different WDs.) After that, I decided to stick with Maxtor. My last computer I bought (and then heavily modified). It cam with Seagates and I have been happy with them so I am switching to them for the SATA drives I buy. Maxtor is good, Seagate is good. WD I no longer trust.
Two-Pint? I didn't think the brits were that light weight from reading BOFH. Come on, if the three guys down the hall from me can drink a 30-rack (each) on a friday night the brits have got to be able to be at least Tommy Six-Pints.
The amount of crops that can be grown worldwide will shrink for every degree the planet goes up, until evolution kicks in.
The amount of crops in other areas grow for each degree the temp goes up as well. Places like Siberia and Canada get warmer and become capable of supporting plant life. The growing season gets longer and more crops are produced as well. What we have in temperature vs. crop yield is an upside down parabola with a peak somewhere. If we are on the side of the peak where temperatures get warmer and crop yeilds go up or the other side where they go down I do not know.
How much trust should we put into a study where the computer simulations code does not come under peer review (closed source) versus one where it does come under peer review (open source). Seems to me that the code is as much part of the "study" as the results and data are. Especially considering how much finagling can be gone on in source code.
Also, since the results have to be reproducable by ANYBODY, without the source you can not garuntee that the program is doing what it is being said it can do. After all the complaining I have heard about black box voting, this should probably come under the same heading of "If you want us to trust you SHOW US THE CODE!".
Hmm. You may be right that "dismissal" is the new euphemism for being jailed or killed. I'll have to be careful about how I use the term should I end up working with Chinese contractors.
Firewalls+total control of the information infrastructure+ willingness to do anything necessary+trusted computing (well, that last one is a comin).
You may not be able to shut it off completely with the current level of technology, but you can block it off to 99+% of the populace that use electronics. With all the evolution in computers lately, it is essentially an arms race between blocking those who want access to all info outside the great fire wall and those who control the fire wall and are trying to control access. So far those who want access are are winning, but it wouldn't take much technological advnacement to leapfrog the fire wall ahead. (Such as if China mandated all computers must be of this specific type that the gov has complete control of, kinda like paladium).
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Overall, I think all this competition is good, but when third world countries say they hate American wealth, you have to wonder about a country that is so wealthy and yet so bad at regulating itself that it is easier for us to build three or four identical national infrastructures (at huge expense) to achieve the same purpose than to plan effectively.
Think about it this way. BPL, Cable and FTTH (Fibre to the Home) are three different competing systems that are/have recieved little, if any, funding from the gov. The main instigator has been profit for the companies. No one in politics choose which company would be the "Nationaly Approved Provider" of internet. Those countries that planned and had chosen a single way to do things invested huge amounts of government money from taxes to role them out quickly. When (not if) an upgrade comes along the gov would either have to spend money upgrading it or would be apathetic and not do anything at all. With private companies, they have more incentive to upgrade when they are competing against others so they can offer better services and get more customers (hence why DirectTV just launced several new satelites). With a gov, they aren't competing against anyone.
So finally we get may get decent broadband - a utility that should have been available ten years ago.
AT&T is an interesting counterpoint to what I said before. If AT&T had not been broken up, we would have had (this is estimated) DSL to ALL houses in the early 80's. As for finally getting one, 10 years ago it would have been a token ring most likely (and little reason to have it). Today we get multiple companies competing for us, each vying to have the best setup to get more customers. They will maintain and keep up the networks to the best they can so people don't move to one of the alternatives.
Aren't we ranked like fifteenth in the world now for providing broadband internet?
Again, it is because in most of those others the governments heavily invested in and subsidized (and probably still do to keep the costs down) the creation of those networks. The US has not done this. Our moon program is a good example of what can happen when a gov pushes for something. We landed a man on the moon. Yet the technology we created for that wasn't good for anything other than putting a man on the moon for a few days/hours and returnin him home. We developed no infrastructure, no space stations, no permanent ways of doing things. Kennedy set the space program back at least 50 years with that stunt. Otherwise we might have had a permanent space presence at this point.
Between Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) and the Telcos laying Fibre to the Home, Cable will be facing off against a much bigger threat than DSL. Even a partial fibre upgrade has the capability have giving everyone on the phone network DSL (or better) connections. note: by partial fibre upgrade I mean fibre upgrade to the neighborhood or local area breakout box as opposed to the home itself.
see this post for proof that it was Clintons fault, not Shrubs. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143718&cid =12046012
GEESH! Those aren't prisons, they're summer camps! And yes, I did RTFA.
For the USA only and not applicable in sweeden: It is a delict. However, major offences can be prosecuted as a crime if they are severe enough. Such as for those major pirates who do it as a business. The question in this case is, does non-business copy right infringement count as a civil or a criminal offence. Again, not having any knowlege of sweedish law this is not completely applicable to this case.
Think the dating scene is bad now. Think about how it would be if there were one girl to every three guys or vice versa.
I like the vice versa, actually. Haven't you heard the song "Two girls for every boy" by the California Beach Boys?
Wireless can't get the raw speed that "wired" can. The maximum throughput on a single strand of fibre is 20Terra Bits per fibre. Wireless also suffers from more interference problems and limited bandwidth (RF bandwidth,not speed) that you can access at one time. It is hard enough for TV stations to get satelite recievers that will do 36Mhz of bandwidth at 80Mbits. And that is recieve only. 802.11a/b/g are pressing the limits they can do in speed over their radio spectrum at those power levels. Wired, on the other hand, is about to come out with 10GBits over copper alone and fibre,as I said before, can do much more.
Wireless is just to slow to be of much use in applications where you need speed such as gaming and streaming video. For voice, it is barely adequate.
Some people are worried about the purity of the english language? Since when did we become French?
Interestingly enough, the telcos getting monopoly status over their lines may lead to an increase in competition:
Telcos upgrade to fibre to the home to compete with cable (Verizon is doing this).
Cable operators drop price/increase bandwidth to compete with Telcos.
Telcos offer Video services.
Cable offers better deals to compete.
Cable offers phone service to compete with Telcos.
Telcos offer better deals to compete.
At this point in technology the two are evolving into natural competitors on multiple fronts.
If the cable corps have to open the lines, it can mean more competition on that front. Either way so long as the status quo is not maintained consumers come out ahead.
I'm going to break up your argument into two issues. That of sharing the lines and that of having two different companies playing under different rules.
Sharing the lines is something most are in favor of but I am not going to get into that.
Right now Telecos are forced by regulation to share their lines that they laid down and maintain for a fee that is around cost. That gives no one a reason to upgrade the networks. And BTW they are working to upgrading to fibre not measley ADSL2+. Having full control of their own lines meand that they can make a profit sooner and have more incentive to do so. They need to compete with cable, afterall.
Cable, on the other hand, supplies internet as well and is under no compulsion to share in either the internet of TV market. This gives them great reason to expand as they have a captive market on their lines and with a few small upgrades can drive the phone companies out of the business.
Cable offers TV and internet and is looking at doing phone. Telcos do phone and internet and are looking at doing TV. Why should one be forced to open up their lines and not the other for the same service? As for competition, they are already competing with each other (or the Telcos are trying but the forced line issue is incentive to not try) so why not have a level playing field to expand the competition?
if you write in a living will that you wish to not be given artificial life support then your request will be honored.
Except she didn't write a living will. The husband claims that she told him this but there is no written or recorded proof.
Local telephone companies (who own the wires) are required by law to sell allow other companies access to their wires (whereby the other company can supply local service) at below market costs. Sometimes around or below how much it costs them to maintain the wires as well. This way we can have competition between multiple local phone companies on the same set of wires. This was extended to DSL some years ago.
Now, Cable companies (who sometimes own the wires and sometimes don't, in my are the county officially owns the wires and we still only have one cable company) are not required to open up their cable lines to competing companies.
A grand isn't a slap on the wrist to someone who's just out of college, looking for a job and has to repay student loans. That said, I'd expect this to be somewhere between $1000 and $5000. $500 isn't much of a punishment and any more than $5000 and he won't be able to pay it back without filing for bankruptcy. Unless Apple has some nice repayment plans worked out.
I'm not sure if the is I.E. or File Explorer that allows you to do that. I do know that when I launch file explorer I can do that and go to the other computer and the same with I.E.. I also know that you can do the same thing using Total Commander. Then again, I'm pretty sure that I.E. and File Explorer are the same program.
Can I add another good example of the official harry Potter website?
I agree. It'd be like totally impractical to divide them into several smaller pages, such as by type, subject or theme.
I did that already. Them: Show, Subject: Individual Character (which is seperated from groups of characters). Thats how they are divided up and they still take that long to load on the larger collections.
Depends on what you are designing. I have several image galleries that take several minutes to load when viewing the page on the host machine. Longer of a lan connection and more time than I care to think about over 56k.
While I agree that you should program pages for 56k viewing, there are some applications where it is not practical. Oh, and those load times are using thumbnails and not the acutal images (there just happens to be a lot of images).
Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital's stock prices rose $0.25 upon news of the announcement.
We think along the same lines. I don't plan on giving up the landline (and I always keep at least 1 corded phone that does not require a power outlet) for when the power goes out or an emergency. As usefull as my cellphone is, it doesn't have the same QoS as a POTS line.
I've had Seagate and WD drives die on me but never Maxtor
In the past 15 years I've had 3 drives die on me. One was an old 80mb 10 years ago. Another was my 40GB maxtor that died last year after 4 years of continuos heavy usage and the third was a ten year old drive (that replaced the 80) that we just found out had died last week. I only know the manufacturer of the 40GB.
That is on my personal machines. I built a machine for my parents and decided to go with a Wester Digital (WD). It died the first day (no joke). Follwoed by the replacement on I exchanged it for. (That makes 2 different WDs.) After that, I decided to stick with Maxtor. My last computer I bought (and then heavily modified). It cam with Seagates and I have been happy with them so I am switching to them for the SATA drives I buy. Maxtor is good, Seagate is good. WD I no longer trust.
Two-Pint? I didn't think the brits were that light weight from reading BOFH. Come on, if the three guys down the hall from me can drink a 30-rack (each) on a friday night the brits have got to be able to be at least Tommy Six-Pints.
The amount of crops that can be grown worldwide will shrink for every degree the planet goes up, until evolution kicks in.
The amount of crops in other areas grow for each degree the temp goes up as well. Places like Siberia and Canada get warmer and become capable of supporting plant life. The growing season gets longer and more crops are produced as well. What we have in temperature vs. crop yield is an upside down parabola with a peak somewhere. If we are on the side of the peak where temperatures get warmer and crop yeilds go up or the other side where they go down I do not know.
How much trust should we put into a study where the computer simulations code does not come under peer review (closed source) versus one where it does come under peer review (open source). Seems to me that the code is as much part of the "study" as the results and data are. Especially considering how much finagling can be gone on in source code.
Also, since the results have to be reproducable by ANYBODY, without the source you can not garuntee that the program is doing what it is being said it can do. After all the complaining I have heard about black box voting, this should probably come under the same heading of "If you want us to trust you SHOW US THE CODE!".
Hmm. You may be right that "dismissal" is the new euphemism for being jailed or killed. I'll have to be careful about how I use the term should I end up working with Chinese contractors.
I thought the word for that was "termination".
Firewalls+total control of the information infrastructure+ willingness to do anything necessary+trusted computing (well, that last one is a comin).
You may not be able to shut it off completely with the current level of technology, but you can block it off to 99+% of the populace that use electronics. With all the evolution in computers lately, it is essentially an arms race between blocking those who want access to all info outside the great fire wall and those who control the fire wall and are trying to control access. So far those who want access are are winning, but it wouldn't take much technological advnacement to leapfrog the fire wall ahead. (Such as if China mandated all computers must be of this specific type that the gov has complete control of, kinda like paladium).