please don't try to fool us into thinking that we have *no idea* how much internet we use.
We don't. I don't mean we don't know what we usually use in a month. I mean we don't know what the "next killer app" is going to need. By going with metered access you significantly reduce how many people are going to be willing to try out the "next killer app" when whatever it is, is still in its infancy.
You can be pretty sure that some of the best stuff yet to come is going to be bandwidth intensive. But if we move to metered billing that stuff may never get the opportunity to take root and become popular.
We've all seen the recent profitability reports from Comcast and others showing that internet service is their most profitable division and it just keeps getting more and more profitable. Maybe one day that will change, but until then, it seems pretty clear that there is absolutely no need for metered access and that adopting it would be a wholesale drag on innovative uses of the net.
So how about instead of requiring the law enforcement be omniscient enough to catch every hitman before he strikes, we prohibit the hitmen from advertising to help stop hits being ordered?
Wouldn't you rather have hitmen advertising out in the open so the cops can find them and run a sting rather than keeping it all underground where it is even harder for the cops to figure out what is going on?
Besides, we have this concept that freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our society and that the exact same argument could be made about all kinds of crimes - if we only did such-and-such then the police won't have to work so hard. Freedom isn't free and Mussolini made the trains run on time.
If you really believe in free speech, then you must support the most degenerate speech as much as you do discussions about motherhood and apple pie. Anything less is just believing in sorta-kinda free speech.
grave harm could come about just because of something that somebody said
No, grave harm can not come about just because of something that somebody said. Grave harm pretty much requires an actual actor to take action. That actor is the one responsible for the harm that results. Anything less is just someone trying to shirk the responsibility for their actions.
apparently there was a swine flu outbreak in 1976, and the US was quite proactive in stopping it, encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. The problem came when more people died from the vaccine than from the flu.
So much for the "better safe than sorry" crowd, eh?
As for me, being young and healthy, looks like I'm about to roll one of my d20. Whatever happens happens, I'll enjoy it to the end.
IIRC fatality rate is 5% - so get more than a 1 on that roll and you are fine.
On the flipside, I bought a few computer cases from TD because the price was really, really good. I was fully aware of their suckage, having experienced it personally in the past. But this order for ~$200 went just fine.
Fast forward to a year later and I decided to buy a bunch of hard disks from them because their price, after shipping, was still 10% less than any other vendor and I wanted to get my RAID on, especially the Inexpensive part of RAID.
Their website took the order, and succesfully put a hold on my card for the entire amount.
But then they would not ship to me. After going around and around with them, it turns out they refuse to ship to private mailboxes (PMBs, like those at The UPS Store formerly Mailboxes etc). Despite the fact that they shipped the prior order to the exact same address. I use a PMB for privacy and because my street address is brand spanking new and most companies have no idea the street even exists.
So I offer to change my shipping address to my real street address. And despite the fact that it won't match my billing address (which is at the PMB), the lady says that will be fine. Except of course my address is so new, they can't find it in their database... I asked her to escalate the problem to her supervisor whom she said would call me back. She never called back, not even a hangup without leaving voicemail.
One good thing came out of that snafu -- knowing they won't ship to me completely eliminates any ability they have to seduce me into risking a purchase with them.
So your solution to TW's bandwidth problem....is to just use FIOS? not exactly on option TW probably wants to take.
I guess it is no surprise you missed it the second time since you missed it the first time.
don't 'cap' but rate limit. Doesn't DirecTV's internet access do this already?
Verizon's FIOS is essentially that.
Capisce?
FIOS is nicely unsaturated not due to any policies but because they don't have the user base yet that cable does. Obviously the fiber-optics push their saturation point farther out, but they will still get there.
Obviously? Why is it so obvious that Verizon would fail to learn from mistakes others in the industry have made? Why is it obvious that Verizon is not building out internet infrastructure in sufficient proportion to their intranet build-out?
Nah, seriously,/. must learn to separate one of MS employers opinion from the company's opinion.
Now, I could say that the Linux community wants more don.net integration just because Icaza, one of the most active contributors to the Linuzz community advocates this on his blog.
Are you angling for BadAnalogyGuy's job?
What you could say is that Novell wants more dot.net integration just because Icaza, one of their employees and a VP of the company, advocates that on his blog.
No, you're wrong. I own a Kindle 2, and I copy books to it via USB with the wireless totally disabled.
You need to be much more clear.
Do you copy FREE, unencrypted (cleartext) books to it via USB without any wireless connection?
Or are you only copying books that have already been "touched" by amazon in some way (drm already applied and mobipocketized).
Or are you running an unofficial, unsupported desktop app or firmware hack on the Kindle like Savory to do what Amazon normally does to convert free cleartext books to something the Kindle will display?
Yes tiered pricing is in place from a number of vendors, even cable vendors. The issue here is when your sum total amount of downloaded bits goes over a fixed limit you can't download AT ALL without incurring fees regardless of what speed plan you've signed up for.
No, you missed my point.
FIOS has no caps. Or rather your cap is equal to your bandwidth tier x the number of seconds in a month.
Do you understand that you have conflated a regulatory board with a service provider? Or are you just randomly ranting instead of addressing the issue at hand?
regulatory bodies don't do anything good. In fact, I'd rather be screwed by a company that I have a power (no matter how limited) to get into the market and make a better product then to be screwed by the regulatory bodies where I have zero control over them.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
As long as the wires need to cross multiple properties, the only way they will ever get emplaced is via local government. You've got more chance of voting in a new regulatory board than you do of competing with a telco monopolist. In fact, you probably have more chance of being personally elected to such a board than you do have of competing with a telco monopolist.
If it's only 5%, set the cap just below where they are and only punish the *actual* problem children...or better yet, don't 'cap' but rate limit. Doesn't DirecTV's internet access do this already?
Verizon's FIOS is essentially that. It varies a little bit by location, but they've got three rates: 5mbps 20mbps 50mbps
Each one costs more than the other. So, if you really need to suck down a lot of data, you can pay the premium for it. I know a few people who are happy to pay the ~$150/month for the full-speed 50mbps option vs ~$60/month for 20mbps.
I never claimed it would stop illegal immigration. I do claim that it fixes the problem of citizen babies being left behind when their illegal parents are deported: if the babies aren't citizens, they get deported too.
We can fix the problem of people getting adult onset diabetes by executing them first.
The "separating families" issue is being used as an emotional lever to try and push through another amnesty bill, which has been proven to make illegal immigration problems worse.
Metamatic is wrong, only the Kindle 1 allowed you to copy "free" books over usb. With the Kindle 2 you must download them over the network using the built in browser. The one they disabled when they killed that guy's account.
You don't even need to do that. Is there anything that says the illegal alien parents can't take their children with them when they are being deported? Are they forced to leave their children behind?
Yeah, that's not going to work. You can't force the parents to take the children with them. You can bet that any parent is going to think long and hard about leaving their kid here in the land of opportunity in the care of an uncle or even the state versus taking them back to their land of no opportunity.
I think the main problem is all the work the US has put in to make border crossing difficult. Nominally it has been to keep the illegals out. And it works, it works so well that once someone makes it across the border they stay because they never want to take that risk of crossing the border again.
So we've converted the immigration "problem" from a bunch of illegal seasonal workers to a bunch of permanent illegal residents. Since they no longer go home every year they start to put roots down here instead, that means kids and it also means no job when the seasons change.
Make it easy for the seasonal workers to come and go and you'll eliminate the problem of most of them becoming permanent illegal residents.
Want to eliminate the problem of all forms of illegal immigration? That will never happen - people have been trying for decades and so far, all they've accomplished is to make the problem worse.
You're either born to parents who are citizens or you apply for it like an immigrant. That's how it's done in pretty much every other country in the world.
And in pretty much every other country of the world it hasn't fixed any of their immigration problems. If it didn't work for them, why should it work for us?
Unfortunately, the coal industry only has one solution for the global warming crowd. They suggest we bury the carbon dioxide underground. This in itself is controversial, because nobody knows if it will work on such a massive scale.
I suggest a space elevator with a tube running along the length of the cable. Then we can just pump the CO2 into outer space.
The solution is to delete the technicality that creates such heartbreaking situations in the first place: birth citizenship.
It is no panacea. Jus Soli does not exist in most of Europe, some countries there have actually abolished it just like you suggest. Yet they still have plenty of "immigration problems" too.
In my opinion, the real problem - just like copyright - is a system that tries to fight human nature. You can never win that fight. People come to america because it is the land of opportunity. If they want to come and work to better themselves - the American Dream, then let them come. Just don't give them handouts if they fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Or they had just heard about how abysmally inaccurate previous all-digital elections had been and figured, "why bother?"
Nah. Dis stay Hawai'i brah, no ones know bout all da kine kapakai. We's jus wen to da beach an forgot about da kine.
please don't try to fool us into thinking that we have *no idea* how much internet we use.
We don't. I don't mean we don't know what we usually use in a month. I mean we don't know what the "next killer app" is going to need. By going with metered access you significantly reduce how many people are going to be willing to try out the "next killer app" when whatever it is, is still in its infancy.
You can be pretty sure that some of the best stuff yet to come is going to be bandwidth intensive. But if we move to metered billing that stuff may never get the opportunity to take root and become popular.
We've all seen the recent profitability reports from Comcast and others showing that internet service is their most profitable division and it just keeps getting more and more profitable. Maybe one day that will change, but until then, it seems pretty clear that there is absolutely no need for metered access and that adopting it would be a wholesale drag on innovative uses of the net.
So how about instead of requiring the law enforcement be omniscient enough to catch every hitman before he strikes, we prohibit the hitmen from advertising to help stop hits being ordered?
Wouldn't you rather have hitmen advertising out in the open so the cops can find them and run a sting rather than keeping it all underground where it is even harder for the cops to figure out what is going on?
Besides, we have this concept that freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our society and that the exact same argument could be made about all kinds of crimes - if we only did such-and-such then the police won't have to work so hard. Freedom isn't free and Mussolini made the trains run on time.
New measurement for the top500
It's called the Green500 list.
It is possible, in fact quite easy, to believe in free speech without believing that hitmen/child pornographers be able to advertise their wares.
So what? They aren't hurting ANYONE by "soliciting."
But obviously ,it's not the type of speech that the Framers intended to protect.
People like you always make that claim to omniscience sooner or later.
If they intended to rule out some kinds of speech, why didn't they?
If you really believe in free speech, then you must support the most degenerate speech as much as you do discussions about motherhood and apple pie. Anything less is just believing in sorta-kinda free speech.
grave harm could come about just because of something that somebody said
No, grave harm can not come about just because of something that somebody said.
Grave harm pretty much requires an actual actor to take action. That actor is the one responsible for the harm that results. Anything less is just someone trying to shirk the responsibility for their actions.
He probably meant a Mac II or IIx.
apparently there was a swine flu outbreak in 1976, and the US was quite proactive in stopping it, encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. The problem came when more people died from the vaccine than from the flu.
So much for the "better safe than sorry" crowd, eh?
As for me, being young and healthy, looks like I'm about to roll one of my d20. Whatever happens happens, I'll enjoy it to the end.
IIRC fatality rate is 5% - so get more than a 1 on that roll and you are fine.
On the flipside, I bought a few computer cases from TD because the price was really, really good. I was fully aware of their suckage, having experienced it personally in the past. But this order for ~$200 went just fine.
Fast forward to a year later and I decided to buy a bunch of hard disks from them because their price, after shipping, was still 10% less than any other vendor and I wanted to get my RAID on, especially the Inexpensive part of RAID.
Their website took the order, and succesfully put a hold on my card for the entire amount.
But then they would not ship to me. After going around and around with them, it turns out they refuse to ship to private mailboxes (PMBs, like those at The UPS Store formerly Mailboxes etc). Despite the fact that they shipped the prior order to the exact same address. I use a PMB for privacy and because my street address is brand spanking new and most companies have no idea the street even exists.
So I offer to change my shipping address to my real street address. And despite the fact that it won't match my billing address (which is at the PMB), the lady says that will be fine. Except of course my address is so new, they can't find it in their database... I asked her to escalate the problem to her supervisor whom she said would call me back. She never called back, not even a hangup without leaving voicemail.
One good thing came out of that snafu -- knowing they won't ship to me completely eliminates any ability they have to seduce me into risking a purchase with them.
You don't use kindlepid? The program Amazon has been working hard to kill?
So your solution to TW's bandwidth problem....is to just use FIOS? not exactly on option TW probably wants to take.
I guess it is no surprise you missed it the second time since you missed it the first time.
don't 'cap' but rate limit. Doesn't DirecTV's internet access do this already?
Verizon's FIOS is essentially that.
Capisce?
FIOS is nicely unsaturated not due to any policies but because they don't have the user base yet that cable does. Obviously the fiber-optics push their saturation point farther out, but they will still get there.
Obviously? Why is it so obvious that Verizon would fail to learn from mistakes others in the industry have made? Why is it obvious that Verizon is not building out internet infrastructure in sufficient proportion to their intranet build-out?
I always found the OSS crowd's sense of entitlement even more impressive
"Open source your software, then spend development time porting it to our platform so we can use it for free!"
My favorite example is Chrome.
You would have a much better point if your favorite example wasn't ~90% OSS to start with, such as WebKit.
Nah, seriously, /. must learn to separate one of MS employers opinion from the company's opinion.
Now, I could say that the Linux community wants more don.net integration just because Icaza, one of the most active contributors to the Linuzz community advocates this on his blog.
Are you angling for BadAnalogyGuy's job?
What you could say is that Novell wants more dot.net integration just because Icaza, one of their employees and a VP of the company, advocates that on his blog.
No, you're wrong. I own a Kindle 2, and I copy books to it via USB with the wireless totally disabled.
You need to be much more clear.
Do you copy FREE, unencrypted (cleartext) books to it via USB without any wireless connection?
Or are you only copying books that have already been "touched" by amazon in some way (drm already applied and mobipocketized).
Or are you running an unofficial, unsupported desktop app or firmware hack on the Kindle like Savory to do what Amazon normally does to convert free cleartext books to something the Kindle will display?
I think you missed the point.
Yes tiered pricing is in place from a number of vendors, even cable vendors. The issue here is when your sum total amount of downloaded bits goes over a fixed limit you can't download AT ALL without incurring fees regardless of what speed plan you've signed up for.
No, you missed my point.
FIOS has no caps. Or rather your cap is equal to your bandwidth tier x the number of seconds in a month.
Good luck trying to cancel a government service
Do you understand that you have conflated a regulatory board with a service provider? Or are you just randomly ranting instead of addressing the issue at hand?
regulatory bodies don't do anything good. In fact, I'd rather be screwed by a company that I have a power (no matter how limited) to get into the market and make a better product then to be screwed by the regulatory bodies where I have zero control over them.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
As long as the wires need to cross multiple properties, the only way they will ever get emplaced is via local government. You've got more chance of voting in a new regulatory board than you do of competing with a telco monopolist. In fact, you probably have more chance of being personally elected to such a board than you do have of competing with a telco monopolist.
If it's only 5%, set the cap just below where they are and only punish the *actual* problem children...or better yet, don't 'cap' but rate limit. Doesn't DirecTV's internet access do this already?
Verizon's FIOS is essentially that.
It varies a little bit by location, but they've got three rates:
5mbps
20mbps
50mbps
Each one costs more than the other. So, if you really need to suck down a lot of data, you can pay the premium for it. I know a few people who are happy to pay the ~$150/month for the full-speed 50mbps option vs ~$60/month for 20mbps.
I never claimed it would stop illegal immigration. I do claim that it fixes the problem of citizen babies being left behind when their illegal parents are deported: if the babies aren't citizens, they get deported too.
We can fix the problem of people getting adult onset diabetes by executing them first.
The "separating families" issue is being used as an emotional lever to try and push through another amnesty bill, which has been proven to make illegal immigration problems worse.
Proven, by who, Michael Savage?
Metamatic is wrong, only the Kindle 1 allowed you to copy "free" books over usb. With the Kindle 2 you must download them over the network using the built in browser. The one they disabled when they killed that guy's account.
You don't even need to do that. Is there anything that says the illegal alien parents can't take their children with them when they are being deported? Are they forced to leave their children behind?
Yeah, that's not going to work. You can't force the parents to take the children with them. You can bet that any parent is going to think long and hard about leaving their kid here in the land of opportunity in the care of an uncle or even the state versus taking them back to their land of no opportunity.
I think the main problem is all the work the US has put in to make border crossing difficult. Nominally it has been to keep the illegals out. And it works, it works so well that once someone makes it across the border they stay because they never want to take that risk of crossing the border again.
So we've converted the immigration "problem" from a bunch of illegal seasonal workers to a bunch of permanent illegal residents. Since they no longer go home every year they start to put roots down here instead, that means kids and it also means no job when the seasons change.
Make it easy for the seasonal workers to come and go and you'll eliminate the problem of most of them becoming permanent illegal residents.
Want to eliminate the problem of all forms of illegal immigration? That will never happen - people have been trying for decades and so far, all they've accomplished is to make the problem worse.
You're either born to parents who are citizens or you apply for it like an immigrant. That's how it's done in pretty much every other country in the world.
And in pretty much every other country of the world it hasn't fixed any of their immigration problems.
If it didn't work for them, why should it work for us?
Unfortunately, the coal industry only has one solution for the global warming crowd. They suggest we bury the carbon dioxide underground. This in itself is controversial, because nobody knows if it will work on such a massive scale.
I suggest a space elevator with a tube running along the length of the cable.
Then we can just pump the CO2 into outer space.
The solution is to delete the technicality that creates such heartbreaking situations in the first place: birth citizenship.
It is no panacea. Jus Soli does not exist in most of Europe, some countries there have actually abolished it just like you suggest. Yet they still have plenty of "immigration problems" too.
In my opinion, the real problem - just like copyright - is a system that tries to fight human nature. You can never win that fight. People come to america because it is the land of opportunity. If they want to come and work to better themselves - the American Dream, then let them come. Just don't give them handouts if they fail.