I paid taxes at 16, when I got my first (legal) job. And yet I didn't have any of the rights of most of the citizens. The truth is, the government takes advantage of kids in a lot of ways under the guise of "protect the children!" The reason it stays that way is because they don't have the right to vote, so not too many people have the incentive to give them other rights. Also, by the time you can vote (and drink, smoke, watch porn, etc.) everyone forgets how much it sucks to be 16, with 17 year old friends trying to go to a rated R movie.
Actually, assuming you maxed the dial-up out at 56 Kbps every second and didn't waste anything on overhead, you could finish downloading it in 32.57275132 days. Not too bad, but probably easier to run to buy it, buy an HD DVD Player, hook it up, watch the movie, return both.
On 768Kbps DSL, it would take 57 Hours (2.375096451 Days).
On 3Mbps DSL/Cable, it would take 14.59 Hours.
On 5Mbps Cable, it would take 8.755 Hours.
On 30Mbps FTTP, it would take 1.45 Hours.
On a T3 (45 Mbps), it would take 58.7 Minutes.
On a OC-3 (155 Mbps), it would take 16.9 Minutes.
And finally, on an OC-768, it would take 3.94 Seconds.
To be fair, Cablevision (Time Warner as well) only charges me $6.95 + $5 (I think) for box + DVR and my HD DVR is closer to a $600 box. Sure they buy them en masse from Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and get them cheaper, but I'll be happy to let them do the buying at discount and lease it to me. Last week, it broke and you know what? I got a new one THAT DAY! Hot damn, for free!
Based on my calculations of going through 2 boxes, it would take 100 months of this agreement for me to start losing money. Also, that's assuming no interest and everything.
Cablevision is happy because I'm hooked on their service. And I'm happy because I'm getting a great service for what I see as reasonable. I'm no cable company lover (not by a long shot) but I have to commend Cablevision on their good service and EXCEPTIONAL prices. (~$90/month for HD DVR, ~200 channels - no movie channels, 15/2 Internet, unlimited VoIP phone -- I'll take it every time.)
What's the justification for a thumb-board when it only serves some applications that are heavily used by only a handful of users?
You mean, used heavily by most users. How many Treo or BB users do you know that don't use their keyboards? If I'm going to have a phone/email device like I currently do (BB 7130e) then I want it to have dedicated buttons for that. Personally, I want the device to do the following -- in the following order.
1. Be a phone - make calls, receive calls, have great voice quality.
2. Do email - receive emails, respond to emails, easy to type on, have fast access to emails and ability to search etc.
3. Browse the web/have network capabilities - be fast, display most every webpage and not cripple my browsing experience.
4. Play multimedia - MP3s, movies, make the sound quality excellent and the display perfection.
I certainly see Apple providing this, and providing it well. Problem is, my priorities might be a little different from Apple. They want me to do multimedia on their gorgeous screen that happens to do email, phone and web browsing. Meanwhile, BB gets me a little bit better and lets me happen to do email and web browsing on a phone with great reliability. I won't consider buying a device that does 4, unless it does 1, 2 and 3 really well (almost to perfection). I doubt the screen on the Apple iPhone can deliver 1, 2 and 3. Note that I have taken a small hit on 1 (the microphone on the BB tends to pick up everything) because the BB does 2 exceptionally well.
Frankly, the only two things I'm really excited about for the Apple iPhone is the WiFi capabilities (more phones need this) and the visual voicemail (no reason more phones couldn't do this, except they need the support from the provider). Although, I want to try out the screen before making any final judgements.
I welcome the Apple iPhone, because it's going to make Treos and BBs much better.
He complains that it takes complicated steps to find the computer's IP address in Vista. Two questions here, 1) do users who care that much about whether the title bar goes transparent on inactive windows really need to know the computer's IP address? 2) I believe you can get it in one step by typing in ipconfig or something like that.
Right on, the guy just wants to write a positive article about Mac OS. He complains and complains about how hard it is to figure out where stuff is changed. An example he gives is Personalization containing resolution. I agree, not very intuitive. Then he starts going off on how you have to click a total of 5 times to get the IP address, whereas Mac OS can do it in 3. And he completely glosses over the fact about where Mac OS keeps this setting:
"Click on the Apple menu, click on "System Preferences," click on "Network" and you get all the information you need. If I needed to find out the IP address being used by my AirPort connection, double-clicking on "AirPort" and selecting the "TCP/IP" tab gives me my answer."
Yes, because Systems Preferences was exactly where I thought to look for my IP address. And then I thought for sure to click TCP/IP - because I'm some idiot user. The truth is, I dislike using Mac OS because I can't find the simple things that I know exactly where to go on Windows. It's the same reason he hates Vista.
Net Neutrality is bad because the people passing the laws have no f---ing idea how the Internet works. All it takes is one bogus law like Net Neutrality to keep us stuck at "Web 2.0" forever.
Let's get rid of all of the incentives for companies to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure! Let's see how fast we get high speed (20, 30, 100, 1000Mbps) to the home then!
I'm a city dweller myself ($500/sqft if I wanted to buy in this area) so I don't have much insight on this lower density stuff, but what exactly is the point of buying a 26000 sqft school in an area where "population density isn't terribly high". Wouldn't it be easier to buy an acre of land and build from there? I mean, unless you're really into renovation or want the kitsch of saying "I live in an old school."
I would be shocked if Qwest remained independant for long, and after that, I think they'll buy the non-wireless portions of Verizon
Not so sure about this. I would expect Verizon to hang on to their landline and ILEC status in most areas. Additionally, I will be floored if anyone makes a bid for Qwest or any of their landlines. Unfortunately for those in the Qwest service area, it's looking like those rural areas are no longer profitable for the big companies. It doesn't mean some small company won't come to town to give you super fast internets. Although I can't find the link now, you can see this trend with Verizon starting to get out of its more rural lines in Maine and Vermont.
They actually bought them for the backbone and the services that come with it. SBC had no internet backbone previous to the SBC acquisition and as a result was using Sprint (in many cases) for transport to the internet. This is pricey, especially with all those DSL users. Classic AT&T has a great managed internet service for companies, very profitable VPN services and a ton of business VoIP customers. Once SBC bought AT&T, they could use their backbone and become a legitimate Tier 1 Provider -- and immediately bought legitimacy into the lucrative B2B internet service world.
However, typo remains -- this article is about BellSouth, not SBC. Some argue that this BellSouth "merger" is mostly to put Cingular under one roof. I agree. The rest of BellSouth isn't that valuable to the new AT&T. Cingular is generating a lot of money for the two companies and consolidation is in the companies best interest.
Draw as fast as you can - but I'd rather have you try to solve the problem of what to do in an apartment complex or even a multi dwelling townhouse so you can bring this stuff to the masses in metro areas, instead of just the suburbs.
The analogy all of you are looking for isn't hard -- it's already in place and all of us understand it. The postal system.
Want your stuff overnight? Pay more. Want your packets faster? Pay more. It's already in place and it works. There are plenty of things (magazines, junk mail) that people are happy to send lowest priority, it's not time sensitive. This is the email and web surfing of our analogy. Then there is that stuff like legal documents or the great thing you just ordered from Amazon that needs to be delivered quicker, but you don't want to pay a lot. This is like the download you want to get quickly. Finally, there is the part that you absolutely must have, the contract that absolutely needs to be signed and that's the voice and video of the analogy.
Make sense? Sure, but we've been living in a digital world where everything takes the same package and takes two days to get somewhere.
My main server probably costs no more than $2 maybe $5 a month to run 24/7.
How do you figure? Maybe my math is wrong.
300W x 24 hours / day x 30 days / month = 216kW-hours per month
In my area, a kW-hour costs about 14 cents. But, lets say you live in CA where I understand electricity runs about 12 cents/kWh.
216kWh / month x 0.12 $ / kWh = $25.92 / month.
Looks like you might be running up a bigger bill than you think.
The net connection where I am has only gone down twice in nearly four years and this was only due to planned moves.
Seriously? I have to get me one of those, mine is down at least once a month, until I reboot the modem. Also, we generally have cable outages 6-8 times a year for an extended period (2-10 hours). Who provides your internet service?
You bring up a lot of good points. My biggest concern would be traveling. As someone who does a significant amount of travel for business, I would be worried if we went to a network based Office Suite. It's still not easy for me to get internet access everywhere -- and planes are still a nightmare. I can usually hop on a WiFi point at the airport or the train, but not always. One thing I used to be able to do is setup expense reports on the plane on the way home. I liked doing it then because I was almost always bored, but the expenses were fresh in my mind. Now the company has moved to a completely web based expense system. While it's great when I'm in the office, if I'm on a plane, I can't do anything except organize my receipts.
If the network is to provide me all my services and applications, we need to get better at providing internet access everywhere. 95% of the time having internet is good, but not perfect. Similarly, we need to up the access in many places. Public hot spots are great for checking news or maybe getting on email really quickly, but are unresponsive if you have to work on web applications.
He's looking at it from completely the wrong angle
Speaking of looking at it from the wrong angle... did you read your own post?
. It would provide vital services that each family needs: web server, mail server, VPN server, file server, print server, time server, etc...
Time Server? VPN Server? Mail Server? What family needs any of this stuff? Almost every family can barely keep a Windows (or Mac) system operational and doing what they want, let alone administer a mail server! I'm a nerd, but even I don't want to worry about a mail server on my premise. What if my internet connection goes down? What if my power goes out? What if there's a power surge? What if my HD goes bad? Think of the power costs! I'd rather outsource my own mail (Gmail) and have pretty good assurance that it'll be up most of the time. Or at least, more often then my own internet connection is up. What kind of person are you?
I don't know about you, but I don't even trust my e-mail to anyone but myself. I run my own mail server.
Oh, never mind, this post was probably lost on you.
You rent a car for a weekend trip, or because the car you own is in the shop for major repairs. You rent an apartment or house because you need someplace to stay, but you aren't in a position, financially, where you can buy a house yet. You likely rent furniture or appliances from a "rent a center" type of establishment because you want to live above your means, and don't have the patience to save up to buy it. So tell me again why I'd want to continuously RENT my applications rather then buy software licenses and install/run the stuff on my OWN equipment?
Depreciation. You rent your applications and your servers because it's a lot cheaper than buying them. There are plenty of people that rent their cars rather than buy them -- it's called leasing. Generally, anything that will depreciate over time (cars, servers, computers) you want to lease because you don't want to be stuck with the equipment. Is there a resale market for my 5 year old server? Probably not. On eBay maybe, but it's not a significant percentage to be worth the hassle of reselling it. If I leased that server, at the end of 5 years I could get a new one, and pay roughly the same cost. Same thing with Office 2K. I don't want to own Office 2K licenses once I buy Office 2K7 licenses. If I leased (rented, paid for the services) then I could just upgrade to Office 2K7 when it comes out and not pay for the Office 2K licenses. Things like houses, you don't want to rent, because they go up in value.
Of course, the other big part of this that you're missing is that running your own IT shop in house is generally expensive and not cost-effective. Since you're reading this I'm assuming you're part of an IT shop that is costing your company a lot of money to maintain servers. Try to figure out how much you cost a month (in salary, benefits, equipment, physical space, etc.) and then figure out how many servers you can manage. Now figure out what the servers cost (capex, electricity, cooling, space) and see if all of that boils down to a couple bucks a month for a hosted application per user. It'll probably be very close. Unless of course, you're in a very small IT shop that only has a few people doing the work of many, or a huge company that has managed to get economies of scale to work.
Also some people work at Best Buy for the significant discount
When I worked at Best Buy (6 years ago) it had a terrible discount. It was something screwy like 10% more than we purchased from the distributor. Doesn't sound too bad until you realize that on most items, Best Buy's markup was only 20% or so. It was kind of like getting 10% off - you could wait for sales and have a better price. Additionally, the big ticket items like TVs and Computers had very little to no markup, so you paid the in store price. (Sidenote: Best Buy makes almost all their money on the A - accessories and the P - Performance Service Plans) Generally the discount was good for saving a few bucks on DVDs, a little bit on CDs and about 50% on cables, ink cartridges and blank media.
Contrast that discount with the discount for those working in retail clothes. It's not unusual to see retail clothes employees getting 40% off the lowest marked price.
Disclaimer, I worked there 6 years ago, my memory isn't perfect and they could have very well changed the discount.
THis is especially true since our republican controlled government have not raised the minimum wage in 10 years. In the UK the minimum wage is closer to $10/hr.
Yes, because raising the minimum wage will solve all the problems! It won't make that stuff at Walmart/Target/BigBoxMart more expensive, it won't make eating at McDonalds/Burger King/GoodFoodQuickly more expensive, it won't in turn push up all the other prices -- just keep telling yourself that. If they raise minimum wage, everything gets more expensive. That, in turn, hurts those of us who don't see a bump (because we're already above minimum wage). At the same time, it has the awesome effect of not helping those who make minimum wage (they tread water) and yet simultaneously hurting those who have no jobs. It's really a terrible idea all around. If anything, we should be getting rid of minimum wage -- but I'll be happy as long as some idiot politician doesn't try to up it another 2 quarters to move his poll numbers.
You were thinking of harassment. Assault is when you physically touch someone. Harassment is when you just threaten them with words. Harrassment vs. Assault. Technically, the comment has committed nothing under the rules of the US, as we do support Free Speech and to qualify for harassment it has to be said a few times or actually be threatening. Or something like that...
In the days of Windows 98 and (God forbid) Windows ME, every couple of weeks, there would be an issue with the Windows computer. Of course, my family stuck with it because I was there to help. However, since Windows XP came out, and Windows XP SP2 especially, there have been no issues AT ALL with any of the computers. In about 4 years, I think I have had my mom call me four times with help with her "wireless", all times it ended up being a computer generic problem (two times the router or modem needed a reboot and twice the cable company had turned off service due to cable cuts). My dad, girlfriend and both of my sisters haven't called with a problem since. I think the automatic updates, increased security of SP2 and that I got them all on Firefox really helped out a lot.
Sure, I still get lots of computer questions, but they're not "tech support". It's more like: what is the best program to edit this photo? Do you know a website where I can...? How do I make Excel do this or that? What is this bittorrent thing and how do I get music off of it? The most impressive part is that everyone, including my dad (who now watches his fantasy football teams on the web -- don't laugh, this is a big deal for him) are doing MORE with computers now, and running into less problems. They're not specifically more computer savvy (they don't edit the registry, or install tweaks into Windows, or even seek out Firefox extensions) but they are getting into less "trouble". Based on my anecdotal evidence, I think that Windows has gotten a LOT more secure and easier to use at the same time. Contrast that with trying to get my family over to OS X (which would be hard because I hardly know my way around it) and I can only imagine the questions - where are my applications, how do I install this, what happened to the minimize button, what is this Apple key you keep talking about?
In fact, now that I think about it, the software that I get the most "usability" questions about is iTunes -- because it doesn't act in the standard way of Windows applications -- with it's poor updating scheme and goofy interface.
I could use my router, but then every time I VPN'd in, I would get ads. So, no thanks. Adblock is much better for me. I get to have easier control, and the ads are ALWAYS blocked.
I agree. Something like this would be good for certain people. Take my parents for instance. They have a place they go to in the summer, and another in the winter. They want to have computer access everywhere, but have no desire to maintain two different computers (with different settings, emails etc on either). I pitched the idea of a network backup that would allow them to sync settings and other important files between two machines -- but that didn't fly. they wanted something simpler. So my mom got one of those huge Dell laptops (not one of these, it was a few years ago). She uses it in both places, and occasionally moves it from room to room, but generally it stays in the study, plugged into the printer and power, and sometimes even Ethernet (even though there is wireless around the house). When they go to a different house, they take the laptop. Generally it's a car ride, or sometimes a plane ride away. She doesn't take it on vacation with her and she doesn't ever use it on the plane. She has no desire for a laptop with a smaller screen (she's on 17") or lighter weight (must be 6-8 lbs) or even better battery life. She just wants something that is "portable" at the very roughest sense of the word.
Now, contrast that with my situation. I'm always on the go. I work from home, the office, the other office, the road, hotels, sometimes even cafes (although I hate it). I have a company issued laptop - Thinkpad - that suits my needs, although I wish it had better screen resolution (1024x768). When I'm home, I have a docking station with 17" monitor, same thing at work. When I travel, if I had to lug around something bigger than this, I would get pretty tired pretty quickly. Additionally, many times I'm just using my Blackberry to respond to emails quickly, without loading up the laptop. This is good for the many times I find myself without network access. The Dell reviewed would be a disaster in my hands.
The point is - different strokes for different folks.
No offense, as it's a touchy subject, but this is the lamest way to pull information for a paper. At best you're going to pull anecdotal evidence from pissed off divorcees and their counterparts who are happily married.
Why don't you use your time looking for surveys based on occupation vs. divorce rates?
100Mbps Copper? Great, but not Fiber. We already have 100Mbps copper -- it's call Ethernet, it runs over the little Cat 5e (or 6) wiring in my house. 100Mbps that's not fiber speeds, that's copper speeds. Obviously, doing it over 2 wire copper to supplant DSL, that's impressive, but the headline is misleading. Fiber speeds are 10Gbps+ in my mind. Sure there's slower speed fiber out there (as slow as 5Mbps on FiOS) but that's due to provisioning.
Next time you claim something runs at Fiber Speeds, make sure it hits at least 1Gbps, please.
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An 18 year old can pay taxes, ...
I paid taxes at 16, when I got my first (legal) job. And yet I didn't have any of the rights of most of the citizens. The truth is, the government takes advantage of kids in a lot of ways under the guise of "protect the children!" The reason it stays that way is because they don't have the right to vote, so not too many people have the incentive to give them other rights. Also, by the time you can vote (and drink, smoke, watch porn, etc.) everyone forgets how much it sucks to be 16, with 17 year old friends trying to go to a rated R movie.
I'm glad I'm older.
Actually, assuming you maxed the dial-up out at 56 Kbps every second and didn't waste anything on overhead, you could finish downloading it in 32.57275132 days. Not too bad, but probably easier to run to buy it, buy an HD DVD Player, hook it up, watch the movie, return both.
On 768Kbps DSL, it would take 57 Hours (2.375096451 Days).
On 3Mbps DSL/Cable, it would take 14.59 Hours.
On 5Mbps Cable, it would take 8.755 Hours.
On 30Mbps FTTP, it would take 1.45 Hours.
On a T3 (45 Mbps), it would take 58.7 Minutes.
On a OC-3 (155 Mbps), it would take 16.9 Minutes.
And finally, on an OC-768, it would take 3.94 Seconds.
That last one is 40Gbps....sweet.
To be fair, Cablevision (Time Warner as well) only charges me $6.95 + $5 (I think) for box + DVR and my HD DVR is closer to a $600 box. Sure they buy them en masse from Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and get them cheaper, but I'll be happy to let them do the buying at discount and lease it to me. Last week, it broke and you know what? I got a new one THAT DAY! Hot damn, for free!
Based on my calculations of going through 2 boxes, it would take 100 months of this agreement for me to start losing money. Also, that's assuming no interest and everything.
Cablevision is happy because I'm hooked on their service. And I'm happy because I'm getting a great service for what I see as reasonable. I'm no cable company lover (not by a long shot) but I have to commend Cablevision on their good service and EXCEPTIONAL prices. (~$90/month for HD DVR, ~200 channels - no movie channels, 15/2 Internet, unlimited VoIP phone -- I'll take it every time.)
What's the justification for a thumb-board when it only serves some applications that are heavily used by only a handful of users?
You mean, used heavily by most users. How many Treo or BB users do you know that don't use their keyboards? If I'm going to have a phone/email device like I currently do (BB 7130e) then I want it to have dedicated buttons for that. Personally, I want the device to do the following -- in the following order.
1. Be a phone - make calls, receive calls, have great voice quality.
2. Do email - receive emails, respond to emails, easy to type on, have fast access to emails and ability to search etc.
3. Browse the web/have network capabilities - be fast, display most every webpage and not cripple my browsing experience.
4. Play multimedia - MP3s, movies, make the sound quality excellent and the display perfection.
I certainly see Apple providing this, and providing it well. Problem is, my priorities might be a little different from Apple. They want me to do multimedia on their gorgeous screen that happens to do email, phone and web browsing. Meanwhile, BB gets me a little bit better and lets me happen to do email and web browsing on a phone with great reliability. I won't consider buying a device that does 4, unless it does 1, 2 and 3 really well (almost to perfection). I doubt the screen on the Apple iPhone can deliver 1, 2 and 3. Note that I have taken a small hit on 1 (the microphone on the BB tends to pick up everything) because the BB does 2 exceptionally well.
Frankly, the only two things I'm really excited about for the Apple iPhone is the WiFi capabilities (more phones need this) and the visual voicemail (no reason more phones couldn't do this, except they need the support from the provider). Although, I want to try out the screen before making any final judgements.
I welcome the Apple iPhone, because it's going to make Treos and BBs much better.
He complains that it takes complicated steps to find the computer's IP address in Vista. Two questions here, 1) do users who care that much about whether the title bar goes transparent on inactive windows really need to know the computer's IP address? 2) I believe you can get it in one step by typing in ipconfig or something like that.
Right on, the guy just wants to write a positive article about Mac OS. He complains and complains about how hard it is to figure out where stuff is changed. An example he gives is Personalization containing resolution. I agree, not very intuitive. Then he starts going off on how you have to click a total of 5 times to get the IP address, whereas Mac OS can do it in 3. And he completely glosses over the fact about where Mac OS keeps this setting:
"Click on the Apple menu, click on "System Preferences," click on "Network" and you get all the information you need. If I needed to find out the IP address being used by my AirPort connection, double-clicking on "AirPort" and selecting the "TCP/IP" tab gives me my answer."
Yes, because Systems Preferences was exactly where I thought to look for my IP address. And then I thought for sure to click TCP/IP - because I'm some idiot user. The truth is, I dislike using Mac OS because I can't find the simple things that I know exactly where to go on Windows. It's the same reason he hates Vista.
Net Neutrality is bad because the people passing the laws have no f---ing idea how the Internet works. All it takes is one bogus law like Net Neutrality to keep us stuck at "Web 2.0" forever.
Let's get rid of all of the incentives for companies to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure! Let's see how fast we get high speed (20, 30, 100, 1000Mbps) to the home then!
I'm a city dweller myself ($500/sqft if I wanted to buy in this area) so I don't have much insight on this lower density stuff, but what exactly is the point of buying a 26000 sqft school in an area where "population density isn't terribly high". Wouldn't it be easier to buy an acre of land and build from there? I mean, unless you're really into renovation or want the kitsch of saying "I live in an old school."
I would be shocked if Qwest remained independant for long, and after that, I think they'll buy the non-wireless portions of Verizon
Not so sure about this. I would expect Verizon to hang on to their landline and ILEC status in most areas. Additionally, I will be floored if anyone makes a bid for Qwest or any of their landlines. Unfortunately for those in the Qwest service area, it's looking like those rural areas are no longer profitable for the big companies. It doesn't mean some small company won't come to town to give you super fast internets. Although I can't find the link now, you can see this trend with Verizon starting to get out of its more rural lines in Maine and Vermont.
They actually bought them for the backbone and the services that come with it. SBC had no internet backbone previous to the SBC acquisition and as a result was using Sprint (in many cases) for transport to the internet. This is pricey, especially with all those DSL users. Classic AT&T has a great managed internet service for companies, very profitable VPN services and a ton of business VoIP customers. Once SBC bought AT&T, they could use their backbone and become a legitimate Tier 1 Provider -- and immediately bought legitimacy into the lucrative B2B internet service world.
However, typo remains -- this article is about BellSouth, not SBC. Some argue that this BellSouth "merger" is mostly to put Cingular under one roof. I agree. The rest of BellSouth isn't that valuable to the new AT&T. Cingular is generating a lot of money for the two companies and consolidation is in the companies best interest.
Draw as fast as you can - but I'd rather have you try to solve the problem of what to do in an apartment complex or even a multi dwelling townhouse so you can bring this stuff to the masses in metro areas, instead of just the suburbs.
For who? Verizon or Cablevision? FiOS is already wired in Hoboken, it's just that little MDU thing that's holding about 99% of the town back.
The analogy all of you are looking for isn't hard -- it's already in place and all of us understand it. The postal system.
Want your stuff overnight? Pay more. Want your packets faster? Pay more. It's already in place and it works. There are plenty of things (magazines, junk mail) that people are happy to send lowest priority, it's not time sensitive. This is the email and web surfing of our analogy. Then there is that stuff like legal documents or the great thing you just ordered from Amazon that needs to be delivered quicker, but you don't want to pay a lot. This is like the download you want to get quickly. Finally, there is the part that you absolutely must have, the contract that absolutely needs to be signed and that's the voice and video of the analogy.
Make sense? Sure, but we've been living in a digital world where everything takes the same package and takes two days to get somewhere.
My main server probably costs no more than $2 maybe $5 a month to run 24/7.
How do you figure? Maybe my math is wrong.
300W x 24 hours / day x 30 days / month = 216kW-hours per month
In my area, a kW-hour costs about 14 cents. But, lets say you live in CA where I understand electricity runs about 12 cents/kWh.
216kWh / month x 0.12 $ / kWh = $25.92 / month.
Looks like you might be running up a bigger bill than you think.
The net connection where I am has only gone down twice in nearly four years and this was only due to planned moves.
Seriously? I have to get me one of those, mine is down at least once a month, until I reboot the modem. Also, we generally have cable outages 6-8 times a year for an extended period (2-10 hours). Who provides your internet service?
You bring up a lot of good points. My biggest concern would be traveling. As someone who does a significant amount of travel for business, I would be worried if we went to a network based Office Suite. It's still not easy for me to get internet access everywhere -- and planes are still a nightmare. I can usually hop on a WiFi point at the airport or the train, but not always. One thing I used to be able to do is setup expense reports on the plane on the way home. I liked doing it then because I was almost always bored, but the expenses were fresh in my mind. Now the company has moved to a completely web based expense system. While it's great when I'm in the office, if I'm on a plane, I can't do anything except organize my receipts.
If the network is to provide me all my services and applications, we need to get better at providing internet access everywhere. 95% of the time having internet is good, but not perfect. Similarly, we need to up the access in many places. Public hot spots are great for checking news or maybe getting on email really quickly, but are unresponsive if you have to work on web applications.
He's looking at it from completely the wrong angle
Speaking of looking at it from the wrong angle... did you read your own post?
. It would provide vital services that each family needs: web server, mail server, VPN server, file server, print server, time server, etc...
Time Server? VPN Server? Mail Server? What family needs any of this stuff? Almost every family can barely keep a Windows (or Mac) system operational and doing what they want, let alone administer a mail server! I'm a nerd, but even I don't want to worry about a mail server on my premise. What if my internet connection goes down? What if my power goes out? What if there's a power surge? What if my HD goes bad? Think of the power costs! I'd rather outsource my own mail (Gmail) and have pretty good assurance that it'll be up most of the time. Or at least, more often then my own internet connection is up. What kind of person are you?
I don't know about you, but I don't even trust my e-mail to anyone but myself. I run my own mail server.
Oh, never mind, this post was probably lost on you.
You rent a car for a weekend trip, or because the car you own is in the shop for major repairs. You rent an apartment or house because you need someplace to stay, but you aren't in a position, financially, where you can buy a house yet. You likely rent furniture or appliances from a "rent a center" type of establishment because you want to live above your means, and don't have the patience to save up to buy it. So tell me again why I'd want to continuously RENT my applications rather then buy software licenses and install/run the stuff on my OWN equipment?
Depreciation. You rent your applications and your servers because it's a lot cheaper than buying them. There are plenty of people that rent their cars rather than buy them -- it's called leasing. Generally, anything that will depreciate over time (cars, servers, computers) you want to lease because you don't want to be stuck with the equipment. Is there a resale market for my 5 year old server? Probably not. On eBay maybe, but it's not a significant percentage to be worth the hassle of reselling it. If I leased that server, at the end of 5 years I could get a new one, and pay roughly the same cost. Same thing with Office 2K. I don't want to own Office 2K licenses once I buy Office 2K7 licenses. If I leased (rented, paid for the services) then I could just upgrade to Office 2K7 when it comes out and not pay for the Office 2K licenses. Things like houses, you don't want to rent, because they go up in value.
Of course, the other big part of this that you're missing is that running your own IT shop in house is generally expensive and not cost-effective. Since you're reading this I'm assuming you're part of an IT shop that is costing your company a lot of money to maintain servers. Try to figure out how much you cost a month (in salary, benefits, equipment, physical space, etc.) and then figure out how many servers you can manage. Now figure out what the servers cost (capex, electricity, cooling, space) and see if all of that boils down to a couple bucks a month for a hosted application per user. It'll probably be very close. Unless of course, you're in a very small IT shop that only has a few people doing the work of many, or a huge company that has managed to get economies of scale to work.
Also some people work at Best Buy for the significant discount
When I worked at Best Buy (6 years ago) it had a terrible discount. It was something screwy like 10% more than we purchased from the distributor. Doesn't sound too bad until you realize that on most items, Best Buy's markup was only 20% or so. It was kind of like getting 10% off - you could wait for sales and have a better price. Additionally, the big ticket items like TVs and Computers had very little to no markup, so you paid the in store price. (Sidenote: Best Buy makes almost all their money on the A - accessories and the P - Performance Service Plans) Generally the discount was good for saving a few bucks on DVDs, a little bit on CDs and about 50% on cables, ink cartridges and blank media.
Contrast that discount with the discount for those working in retail clothes. It's not unusual to see retail clothes employees getting 40% off the lowest marked price.
Disclaimer, I worked there 6 years ago, my memory isn't perfect and they could have very well changed the discount.
THis is especially true since our republican controlled government have not raised the minimum wage in 10 years. In the UK the minimum wage is closer to $10/hr.
Yes, because raising the minimum wage will solve all the problems! It won't make that stuff at Walmart/Target/BigBoxMart more expensive, it won't make eating at McDonalds/Burger King/GoodFoodQuickly more expensive, it won't in turn push up all the other prices -- just keep telling yourself that. If they raise minimum wage, everything gets more expensive. That, in turn, hurts those of us who don't see a bump (because we're already above minimum wage). At the same time, it has the awesome effect of not helping those who make minimum wage (they tread water) and yet simultaneously hurting those who have no jobs. It's really a terrible idea all around. If anything, we should be getting rid of minimum wage -- but I'll be happy as long as some idiot politician doesn't try to up it another 2 quarters to move his poll numbers.
I guess I should have gotten battery that time.... kidding.
I stand corrected. Thanks Slashdot!
You were thinking of harassment. Assault is when you physically touch someone. Harassment is when you just threaten them with words. Harrassment vs. Assault. Technically, the comment has committed nothing under the rules of the US, as we do support Free Speech and to qualify for harassment it has to be said a few times or actually be threatening. Or something like that...
Maybe my family is a bit off from most.
In the days of Windows 98 and (God forbid) Windows ME, every couple of weeks, there would be an issue with the Windows computer. Of course, my family stuck with it because I was there to help. However, since Windows XP came out, and Windows XP SP2 especially, there have been no issues AT ALL with any of the computers. In about 4 years, I think I have had my mom call me four times with help with her "wireless", all times it ended up being a computer generic problem (two times the router or modem needed a reboot and twice the cable company had turned off service due to cable cuts). My dad, girlfriend and both of my sisters haven't called with a problem since. I think the automatic updates, increased security of SP2 and that I got them all on Firefox really helped out a lot.
Sure, I still get lots of computer questions, but they're not "tech support". It's more like: what is the best program to edit this photo? Do you know a website where I can...? How do I make Excel do this or that? What is this bittorrent thing and how do I get music off of it? The most impressive part is that everyone, including my dad (who now watches his fantasy football teams on the web -- don't laugh, this is a big deal for him) are doing MORE with computers now, and running into less problems. They're not specifically more computer savvy (they don't edit the registry, or install tweaks into Windows, or even seek out Firefox extensions) but they are getting into less "trouble". Based on my anecdotal evidence, I think that Windows has gotten a LOT more secure and easier to use at the same time. Contrast that with trying to get my family over to OS X (which would be hard because I hardly know my way around it) and I can only imagine the questions - where are my applications, how do I install this, what happened to the minimize button, what is this Apple key you keep talking about?
In fact, now that I think about it, the software that I get the most "usability" questions about is iTunes -- because it doesn't act in the standard way of Windows applications -- with it's poor updating scheme and goofy interface.
I could use my router, but then every time I VPN'd in, I would get ads. So, no thanks. Adblock is much better for me. I get to have easier control, and the ads are ALWAYS blocked.
I agree. Something like this would be good for certain people. Take my parents for instance. They have a place they go to in the summer, and another in the winter. They want to have computer access everywhere, but have no desire to maintain two different computers (with different settings, emails etc on either). I pitched the idea of a network backup that would allow them to sync settings and other important files between two machines -- but that didn't fly. they wanted something simpler. So my mom got one of those huge Dell laptops (not one of these, it was a few years ago). She uses it in both places, and occasionally moves it from room to room, but generally it stays in the study, plugged into the printer and power, and sometimes even Ethernet (even though there is wireless around the house). When they go to a different house, they take the laptop. Generally it's a car ride, or sometimes a plane ride away. She doesn't take it on vacation with her and she doesn't ever use it on the plane. She has no desire for a laptop with a smaller screen (she's on 17") or lighter weight (must be 6-8 lbs) or even better battery life. She just wants something that is "portable" at the very roughest sense of the word.
Now, contrast that with my situation. I'm always on the go. I work from home, the office, the other office, the road, hotels, sometimes even cafes (although I hate it). I have a company issued laptop - Thinkpad - that suits my needs, although I wish it had better screen resolution (1024x768). When I'm home, I have a docking station with 17" monitor, same thing at work. When I travel, if I had to lug around something bigger than this, I would get pretty tired pretty quickly. Additionally, many times I'm just using my Blackberry to respond to emails quickly, without loading up the laptop. This is good for the many times I find myself without network access. The Dell reviewed would be a disaster in my hands.
The point is - different strokes for different folks.
No offense, as it's a touchy subject, but this is the lamest way to pull information for a paper. At best you're going to pull anecdotal evidence from pissed off divorcees and their counterparts who are happily married.
Why don't you use your time looking for surveys based on occupation vs. divorce rates?
Next time you claim something runs at Fiber Speeds, make sure it hits at least 1Gbps, please.