That's why they're rolling this out in markets where they have no competition; they don't need to worry about many people leaving. Maybe that's why the caps are so laughably low as well.
I have no problem paying for what I use, but not when its essentially price gouging. There is no way that Time Warner's expenses for my line are anywhere near what they are charging me now. Especially when you take into account that my tax dollars are covering at least some of their setup costs regardless of whether I'm a customer.
If these monopoly/duopoly companies want to meter Internet like utilities, they should be regulated like those utilities as well. Prove what your per GB costs are and have a fixed price ceiling of what you can charge for providing them.
I feel compelled to comment on this issue. Looking at many of the articles floating around concerning this issue show that TW is only doing this in areas that have little to no competition. (See DSL Reports Article, too lazy to link it right now sorry.)
Like andymadigan I live in the Rochester area and will be effected by this if TW actually imposes these changes. To expand on my point above, the local telephone company in this area (Frontier Telephone of Rochester/Citizens Communications) is a joke and I say this as someone who used to enjoy their services. However, at this point the only thing they're doing is keeping FIOS out of our area. If you happen to live within a block of the CO you might get good service if they haven't totally messed up the loop length. Otherwise, you can forget about it.
When I lived about 600 feet from the nearest CO I was getting comparable speeds to TW and paying slightly less. However, after purchasing a house in a different part of the area (only about 1 mile outside the city border and within 1 mile of the airport where they offer free WiFi) I was lucky to get 1mpbs service and the modem had to be rebooted daily just to maintain any sort of decent speeds without packet loss. They refuse to upgrade lines anywhere outside of extremely densly populated areas and yet wonder why they can't compete with TW.
So TW has no problem trying to screw over their customers as we have very little options to get better service. I will be calling TW to complain about this issue, I will be contacting the State AG about this, and I've already looked into other options. Earthlink at a 7mbps connection for $42/mo is slightly more expensive and a little slower, but lets be honest I never see the full 10mb down from RR and at least my connection won't be capped through Earthlink. If Earthlink gets screwed because they are leasing TW's lines I will move to dish. Good ping times are not that important compared to not being able to use my Internet service the way I want to.
The only thing TW is trying to do here is test the viability of keeping their Internet customers purchasing their cable TV as well. If you don't have the bandwidth to stream/download movies, you will keep buying cable right? At least thats what their banking on. I already pay $80/mo for a cable connection I use to watch 3 or 4 shows regularly and be able to DVR them so I can watch them when I want. If TW isn't making enough money off me that way they will be making no money off me in the short future.
For the record all of the online services I use, I'm paying for. Either via ads for free services like Hulu and YouTube, or via subscriptions for Netflix.
I think that the US should make the drivers license exam (the practical part) a lot harder. Driving on a mountain-side road with a lot of hairpin-turns in a manual gearbox car (possibly on snow or other bad conditions), teaches one about driving more than 1000 hours on a motorway.
Personally, I think the manual gearbox would be a help in snow covered mountain roads with hairpin-turns. I love my standard tranny in the winter because it gives me more control of my car especially in bad road conditions.
I'm not trying to flame you; in fact I mostly agree with you. Most drivers here are horrible and too busy doing something else while driving. I've had to basically force my wife to learn standard in the off-chance she needs to drive my car in an emergency. Her main reason for disliking the standard transmission is because it keeps her from doing everything else she wants to do while driving. Silly me thought she was joking at first. I find it absolutely disturbing that people feel the need/ability to do so many things while driving other than actually paying attention to the road and what is going on around them. Some days I find it amazing that the majority of people make it to and from work everyday.
Remember, mirrors are only really for putting your makeup on while driving.
Typically when a company does something that negatively effects you or your department, you're going to feel that they wouldn't have done it if they had their facts straight. Or, they just don't realize how it effects us. Or wah, wah, wah.
I'm not trying to put you down, because I know exactly how you feel and a lot of times react the same way as you have. However, thats not the way the "big wigs" are going to look at it.
If the head of Marketing has a "great" idea they are going to make sure it happens regardless of how the techies or most anyone else feels about it. Now, I agree with you that if the two departments were in communication with one another on what was happening that there would have been some compensation for the expected extra traffic.
I believe these deals are bad for a different reason. The entire idea of insanely cheap promotions in stores is in the hope that people are going to buy other expensive items while in the store so that they make up for some/all of the lost profits on the deals. That just can't happen online. If you are selling something at an insanely low price online, people are just going to buy the one product and be done. As many people will do in a regular store, but at least you have them there and they have to walk around the store to get to the deals. Most store don't line up their Black(Green, or whatever we're calling it this year) Friday deals directly in front of the register so people can just grab the item and check out.
I hate the trend towards dumbing down the user interface of these programs as well, but the problem is the users. I don't mind hiding the settings either...hiding is fine as long as its accessable. These new security software packages don't just hide settings - they remove them.
I'm 'doing my time' in tech support right now and these programs need to be dumbed down for the users, but when it is impossible to even turn them off without uninstalling them that is taking it a little too far. Some of the newer versions of these programs already have no way to grant or deny specific access to programs except when it first runs.
For once anyways MS got it partially right. Their firewall may not be great, but it at least stops the majority of crap flung at a windows machine constantly without asking the user who can barley type whether they want to grant or deny access to don't_you_wish_this_was_more_descriptive.exe.
Our moon is also responsible for the length of a day because the tidal forces you described actually slow down the rotation of the Earth. Most importantly, the moon is responsible for keeping our planet tilted within the range it is. Otherwise, the tilt of our planet could easily fluctuate causing very destabled weather, sunlight patterns and basically distroy life on the planet. Unfortuanetly, the moon is also moving away from Earth at about 1-1.5cm a year (this has been proved through bouncing lasers off mirrors placed on the moon by the Apollo missions). Eventually it will totally escape the gravity of our planet and may cause the demise of life as we know it. Better than the moon slowly moving towards the Earth and causing a catastrophic collision I suppose.
Dude they didn't have 56K back then. Heck, I remeber going from 14.4 to 28.8 and almost crapping in my pants over it. Anything 56K or higher was like a wet dream for geeks back then. Ahh the good ol' days.
Yeah, more like every few years they will come out with some ultra-new technology that is really crackproof. Then eventually someone will crack it; maybe not quickly, but it will be done.
The cycle will continue for some time. Personally I don't see how one side will ever win. Companies will always want to protect their intrests, and people will always want to be able to copy the material.
Yeah that really seems to stop companies from offering products/services that are illegal in the US. How would you explain gambling sites that have US customers while their operations are outside the States to avoid prosecution. Sure law enforcement would like to arrest them and shut them down, but thats kind of hard if their operations are in a country that doesn't care about US laws or their relations with the US government.
I agree, I think the problem is that the Anime market is too small for most companies to distribute it. Businees is always out for profit one way or another and I just don't think most companies see it as being profitable to bring the majority of this stuff over to the States.
I know a lot of geeks, nerds, whatever that are into Anime, and are constantly complaining that they can't find a lot of it here and even fewer retailers actually carry it. However, I also know a lot more geeks, nerds, whatever (including myself) that really have no interest in anime. A lot of it has to do with the constant storylines that all seem pretty much the same to someone that isn't really that into anime.
Either those are some lousy links or the site is slashdotted already. Would be interesting to actually RTFA though. Maybe it'll be up and running when I get home from work.
You're amp usually isn't powering subs anyway which I thought was why it was always x.1 -> because the subwoofer has it's own amp and only needs the signal.
I though some P4's and Athlons were considered low-cost or entry systems at this point. The last time I built a PC was over a year ago and couldn't find anything that was under 1.8GHz. So I would think there are low-cost/entry systems out there that are running a P4 or Athlon.
"I wouldn't say I'd be 'missing' work"
on
Star Wars Sickout
·
· Score: -1
I wouldn't miss work if I go during the first two days, but going to a midnight showing won't exactly make me productive the next day.
I'm all for the government providing cheap broadband access to people. However, this seems like it will be just like other systems that were setup by the government and then had to be sold to a private company and then it's still funded by tax payers because they cannot turn a profit selling their services at the cheap rate they were contracted to do so.
So unless this can be done right I'd rather just pay my local phone company $40/month than pay my local government $20/month + the increase in taxes to support a failing system.
Yeah because projectors are really cheap accessories and so simple to haul around. Even if you have a case for your projector with wheels on it they're still a pain. Now in a classroom thats equipt of course a project is better. However, I could see in a cramped setting how this would be perfect.
Having said all that; I really hope it's not a continuing trend.
If own a company and I produce Product A and someone has figured out how to produce a version of Product A that is better than mine; I'm going to buy that company/product. If it happens to be from the Open Source community all the better. Then there are less people to buy off. Unfortunately, this is simply how business operates. It isn't usually a financially sound investment to try and copy an idea without violating copyright laws. It is much easier to just buy said product and try to "reinvent the wheel."
So if Open Source developers are making better products than commercial developers this will be a continuing trend. Especially when it's easier to hire the lead programmer, or buy the rights to their product than to develop your own version.
Slashdot Mirror
Ve vant ze money, Lebowski.
Ja, uzzervize ve kill ze girl.
Ja, it seems you have forgotten our little deal, Lebowski.
That's why they're rolling this out in markets where they have no competition; they don't need to worry about many people leaving. Maybe that's why the caps are so laughably low as well.
I have no problem paying for what I use, but not when its essentially price gouging. There is no way that Time Warner's expenses for my line are anywhere near what they are charging me now. Especially when you take into account that my tax dollars are covering at least some of their setup costs regardless of whether I'm a customer. If these monopoly/duopoly companies want to meter Internet like utilities, they should be regulated like those utilities as well. Prove what your per GB costs are and have a fixed price ceiling of what you can charge for providing them.
I feel compelled to comment on this issue. Looking at many of the articles floating around concerning this issue show that TW is only doing this in areas that have little to no competition. (See DSL Reports Article, too lazy to link it right now sorry.)
Like andymadigan I live in the Rochester area and will be effected by this if TW actually imposes these changes. To expand on my point above, the local telephone company in this area (Frontier Telephone of Rochester/Citizens Communications) is a joke and I say this as someone who used to enjoy their services. However, at this point the only thing they're doing is keeping FIOS out of our area. If you happen to live within a block of the CO you might get good service if they haven't totally messed up the loop length. Otherwise, you can forget about it.
When I lived about 600 feet from the nearest CO I was getting comparable speeds to TW and paying slightly less. However, after purchasing a house in a different part of the area (only about 1 mile outside the city border and within 1 mile of the airport where they offer free WiFi) I was lucky to get 1mpbs service and the modem had to be rebooted daily just to maintain any sort of decent speeds without packet loss. They refuse to upgrade lines anywhere outside of extremely densly populated areas and yet wonder why they can't compete with TW.
So TW has no problem trying to screw over their customers as we have very little options to get better service. I will be calling TW to complain about this issue, I will be contacting the State AG about this, and I've already looked into other options. Earthlink at a 7mbps connection for $42/mo is slightly more expensive and a little slower, but lets be honest I never see the full 10mb down from RR and at least my connection won't be capped through Earthlink. If Earthlink gets screwed because they are leasing TW's lines I will move to dish. Good ping times are not that important compared to not being able to use my Internet service the way I want to.
The only thing TW is trying to do here is test the viability of keeping their Internet customers purchasing their cable TV as well. If you don't have the bandwidth to stream/download movies, you will keep buying cable right? At least thats what their banking on. I already pay $80/mo for a cable connection I use to watch 3 or 4 shows regularly and be able to DVR them so I can watch them when I want. If TW isn't making enough money off me that way they will be making no money off me in the short future.
For the record all of the online services I use, I'm paying for. Either via ads for free services like Hulu and YouTube, or via subscriptions for Netflix.
OMGPonies??!!! Where??!!?!111one!!!
Personally, I think the manual gearbox would be a help in snow covered mountain roads with hairpin-turns. I love my standard tranny in the winter because it gives me more control of my car especially in bad road conditions.
I'm not trying to flame you; in fact I mostly agree with you. Most drivers here are horrible and too busy doing something else while driving. I've had to basically force my wife to learn standard in the off-chance she needs to drive my car in an emergency. Her main reason for disliking the standard transmission is because it keeps her from doing everything else she wants to do while driving. Silly me thought she was joking at first. I find it absolutely disturbing that people feel the need/ability to do so many things while driving other than actually paying attention to the road and what is going on around them. Some days I find it amazing that the majority of people make it to and from work everyday.
Remember, mirrors are only really for putting your makeup on while driving.
Shocking that its Slashdotted already!
Typically when a company does something that negatively effects you or your department, you're going to feel that they wouldn't have done it if they had their facts straight. Or, they just don't realize how it effects us. Or wah, wah, wah.
I'm not trying to put you down, because I know exactly how you feel and a lot of times react the same way as you have. However, thats not the way the "big wigs" are going to look at it. If the head of Marketing has a "great" idea they are going to make sure it happens regardless of how the techies or most anyone else feels about it. Now, I agree with you that if the two departments were in communication with one another on what was happening that there would have been some compensation for the expected extra traffic.
I believe these deals are bad for a different reason. The entire idea of insanely cheap promotions in stores is in the hope that people are going to buy other expensive items while in the store so that they make up for some/all of the lost profits on the deals. That just can't happen online. If you are selling something at an insanely low price online, people are just going to buy the one product and be done. As many people will do in a regular store, but at least you have them there and they have to walk around the store to get to the deals. Most store don't line up their Black(Green, or whatever we're calling it this year) Friday deals directly in front of the register so people can just grab the item and check out.
I hate the trend towards dumbing down the user interface of these programs as well, but the problem is the users. I don't mind hiding the settings either...hiding is fine as long as its accessable. These new security software packages don't just hide settings - they remove them.
I'm 'doing my time' in tech support right now and these programs need to be dumbed down for the users, but when it is impossible to even turn them off without uninstalling them that is taking it a little too far. Some of the newer versions of these programs already have no way to grant or deny specific access to programs except when it first runs.
For once anyways MS got it partially right. Their firewall may not be great, but it at least stops the majority of crap flung at a windows machine constantly without asking the user who can barley type whether they want to grant or deny access to don't_you_wish_this_was_more_descriptive.exe.
Our moon is also responsible for the length of a day because the tidal forces you described actually slow down the rotation of the Earth. Most importantly, the moon is responsible for keeping our planet tilted within the range it is. Otherwise, the tilt of our planet could easily fluctuate causing very destabled weather, sunlight patterns and basically distroy life on the planet. Unfortuanetly, the moon is also moving away from Earth at about 1-1.5cm a year (this has been proved through bouncing lasers off mirrors placed on the moon by the Apollo missions). Eventually it will totally escape the gravity of our planet and may cause the demise of life as we know it. Better than the moon slowly moving towards the Earth and causing a catastrophic collision I suppose.
Dude they didn't have 56K back then. Heck, I remeber going from 14.4 to 28.8 and almost crapping in my pants over it. Anything 56K or higher was like a wet dream for geeks back then. Ahh the good ol' days.
Finally!! I can download songs from iTunes hoping that I get free stuff.....otherwise I'll be stuck with a bunch of useless material or buy an iPod.
Yeah, more like every few years they will come out with some ultra-new technology that is really crackproof. Then eventually someone will crack it; maybe not quickly, but it will be done.
The cycle will continue for some time. Personally I don't see how one side will ever win. Companies will always want to protect their intrests, and people will always want to be able to copy the material.
Unless you're MS and then you only pick one....I'll leave it up to you to guess on which one ;)
Yeah that really seems to stop companies from offering products/services that are illegal in the US. How would you explain gambling sites that have US customers while their operations are outside the States to avoid prosecution. Sure law enforcement would like to arrest them and shut them down, but thats kind of hard if their operations are in a country that doesn't care about US laws or their relations with the US government.
I agree, I think the problem is that the Anime market is too small for most companies to distribute it. Businees is always out for profit one way or another and I just don't think most companies see it as being profitable to bring the majority of this stuff over to the States.
I know a lot of geeks, nerds, whatever that are into Anime, and are constantly complaining that they can't find a lot of it here and even fewer retailers actually carry it. However, I also know a lot more geeks, nerds, whatever (including myself) that really have no interest in anime. A lot of it has to do with the constant storylines that all seem pretty much the same to someone that isn't really that into anime.
Either those are some lousy links or the site is slashdotted already. Would be interesting to actually RTFA though. Maybe it'll be up and running when I get home from work.
You're amp usually isn't powering subs anyway which I thought was why it was always x.1 -> because the subwoofer has it's own amp and only needs the signal.
Dude I don't know what you're talking about....Anal Leakage f***ing rules!
Then instead of extinguishing the person's flame/torch their PC is treated to a beating of Office Space proportions.
I though some P4's and Athlons were considered low-cost or entry systems at this point. The last time I built a PC was over a year ago and couldn't find anything that was under 1.8GHz. So I would think there are low-cost/entry systems out there that are running a P4 or Athlon.
I wouldn't miss work if I go during the first two days, but going to a midnight showing won't exactly make me productive the next day.
How did they get 80GB onto a CD? Step 1: Zip files Step 2: Rar zip file Step 3: Repeat until it fits on one CD or you're cool like a h4x0r!! /sarcasm
I'm all for the government providing cheap broadband access to people. However, this seems like it will be just like other systems that were setup by the government and then had to be sold to a private company and then it's still funded by tax payers because they cannot turn a profit selling their services at the cheap rate they were contracted to do so.
So unless this can be done right I'd rather just pay my local phone company $40/month than pay my local government $20/month + the increase in taxes to support a failing system.
Yeah, if projectors didn't exist.
Yeah because projectors are really cheap accessories and so simple to haul around. Even if you have a case for your projector with wheels on it they're still a pain. Now in a classroom thats equipt of course a project is better. However, I could see in a cramped setting how this would be perfect.
Having said all that; I really hope it's not a continuing trend.
If own a company and I produce Product A and someone has figured out how to produce a version of Product A that is better than mine; I'm going to buy that company/product. If it happens to be from the Open Source community all the better. Then there are less people to buy off. Unfortunately, this is simply how business operates. It isn't usually a financially sound investment to try and copy an idea without violating copyright laws. It is much easier to just buy said product and try to "reinvent the wheel."
So if Open Source developers are making better products than commercial developers this will be a continuing trend. Especially when it's easier to hire the lead programmer, or buy the rights to their product than to develop your own version.