If I'm paying for it I might as well get it, but if I'm downloading something than commentaries by people who normally don't want to be commenting isn't important. Same with deleted scenes (which includes endings), though I make a point of watching deleted scenes when I have a DVD because at least they have some content value (normally they get taken out for time reasons, when the go back in it helps out the story).
But yeah that's all fluff, the thing I really want is the TV show, movie, etc. with an english audio track. That's what the first DVD's that came out did, then they decided to use the extra space left on the DVD's to make up for what was a price increase. Eventually prices came down more, but theyed already made fluff standard to all 'Director's Cut', 'Special Edition', & 'Unrated Version' DVDs and found out people now expected that stuff regardless of how low they (The movie & TV companies that is) thought their price was.
Maybe you need to take a look at more Xvid and Divx converted content... Because most of that stuff in those DVD's is fluff (unless you need six audio tracks in 5.1+ surround, the extra 'content', etc which frankly I don't see a need for). Taking it down to a singlw AC3 audio track and going with high quality mpeg4 in either regular or widescreen nets about 300-500 MB per 30-40 minutes (it just happens to be most of what I download in that format are 30-40 minutes). You dont' loose anythign with those in my experience... In fact I have a japanese TV series in Xvid that suggests it was recorded from some sort of widescreen HD format (not sure what exactly japan uses, but this was higher than the res of any DVD I've ever played back) that is stunning...
Unfortunately for me I can't sleep without fan noise anymore since I've had a running PC in my room for a decade now... I even have trouble sleeping in hotels and anywhere else I can't hear PC noises at night...
Guess I'll have to keep using my custom PC's instead...
Never realy had an ink problem, either an expiration date one or a running out of ink & I think it's to expensive when I go to grab a new cartridge problem... Though that wasn't really my point, I was pointing out that functionality comes before other concerns and unfortunately Canon has lacked in fuctionality for awhile now...
Uh unless you mean the book industry (& good lord I know I don't want to know what they have to do with spoiled milk) you might want to say 'dairy' not 'diary'...
Does Canon make a printer yet with: 1. A flatbed paper input tray 2. High res color printing capacity (aka 'photo quality') 3. Both 802.11b and ethernet adapters built-in 4. Multi-format flash card reader 5. good quality flatbed scanner ?
Last I knew I couldn't get all of those at once from Canon, which is why my last printer was an HP...
Yeah I know that's a small market for them... It's an example I'm familiar with though and also an are where that choice was stolen from us by those big companies worried about loosing 'profits' to local government (aka the state of Pennsylvania). Hence why I got a tad biligerent with the person two levels up...
& yes cell towers would be a good community/local government project. To bad this is the US and the companies 'own' the bands used by cellphones making it a good idea that can't legally happen... Not to mention other problems involved in it. The funny thing is all those Verizon "Can you hear me now?" commercials... No, No I can't hear you how about adding a tower...? Though they are better than anyone else locally...
My point is that letting state (& I'm guessing eventually federal) government restrict what local governments can and can't do for their citizens is stupid. And anyone who can't see why this could be important needs to rethink the idea from a different point of view for awhile...
Uh what other network? Maybe you don't live where I do, but I have exactly one choice for phone service (Verizon), one choice for cbale TV (Time Warner), heck I have one choice for grocery store! You damned Moron! For gods sake if it wasn't mandated by law I doubt anyone would bother to offer us phone service. Not even Verizon bothers to offer us cellphone service (neither do the two other local cell providers from that big town I mention) for all that we are 30 miles away!
You want to know why? Well tough no ones bothering to answer you as to why, it just is. Has been, maybe always will be.
In place were their are no choices your statement makes not one bit of sense. Who am I going to go to?!? Their is no one else normally. Moving isn't the option either.
I'm tired of people who don't understand the point that bussiness doesn't allways (or even some of the time) do what is best for the people and so when that happens it might (just might now) make sense to let the local government provide a solution! Instead you'd rather I not have any options aparently, by blocking my (& my neighbors) ability to leverage our local tax dollars and government to help ourselves! What gives you the right to do that exactly?
I know this will go over your head (it has any other time I've ever tried to point this out on slashdot), but government isn't allways bad, heck companies aren't allways bad... What matters is what works for the people in the end. And if nothign else having a municipal run broadband that was successful would spur companies otherwise uninsterested in an area that maybe (just maybe!) their is a market and therefore money to be made giving me chocies in the end.
The big catch is the phrase "in the long-term could be highly competetive", in the near term teh initial expenses are a killer without special financing that only government and large bussinesses can get. For most it would take a fairly wealthy group from within the community to foot the initial expenses. & god forbid lower middle class people might want to try for a loan on something as unproven as community broadband... If it failed their is a high chance those lower middle class people starting it could loose a significant amount of money possibly crippling them economically for the rest of their lives. It's a high risk proposition when their is no one to support you...
I think you are forgetting scale here... Most of theose coops you are talking about serve rather large areas. Most community broadband serves rather small areas.
Why is this important? Simple. Given a large enough area the cost to cover it for things like electricity end up being rather cheap per person. On the other hand the cost of broadband increases the more people served so the initial cost is higher for a large number of people to get the same service.
In effect electricity gets cheaper the larger the area it can cover from one central location. Broadband on the other hand gets more expensive the larger the area covered from one central area.
Government in the case of municpal broadband can often offset the inital costs by sweet loan deals (I have direct experience with this, the rates they get frankly can't be beat) and other options people don't normally have. This is why having the local government setup a netowrk is much les expensive than having the community ddo it.
I trust my local government that I can talk to anytime I feel like it more than I trust a company that most likely doesn't even have a local office let alone someone I can talk to at a whim.
& except for the case of Philly most community broadband is setup by small area not getting serviced by the big companies. Which is exactly where I am. I live in a town of 5000, 6000 if you include the farmers til halfway to the next group of towns. I can see my mayor at my local grocery store or bar... Or even a step further I can visit him at his home. Same with any of the city council members.
Want to talk to Verizon (who 'owns' the local phoen lines and 'sometimes' offers DSL)? Well that's gonna be a 30 mile drive to the biggest city in the region. Then you can talk to a peon behind the billing desk, because no one else will talk to you...
So uh yeah when I can personally smack the mayor upside the head for being a dumbass or a company where I can't even talk to anyone above a receptionist... Well I'll take the local government thanks.
I'm not sure what they are smoking, but the had all sorts of errors in that 'article' (& I use the term loosely here). things like:
"Microsoft has since removed that drive to lower system costs." huh yeah that xbox I bought a few months back doesn't have a HD? I'm pretty darn sure it does...
"ATI supplied the graphics for the PS2, while Nvidia provided the graphics for the original X-Box." Huh when did Ati build a graphics chip for Sony? I'm pretty sure that should be nintendo...
Their are more, but the slashdotting has begun and I can't seem to get back to the second page... But really their were dozens of errors in this thing...
I don't see wireless as an option... While it's good for the 'suburbs' of most urban centers not every urban center has a typical 'suburb' and even those that do can have areas like where I live...
My local urban center (fourth largest city in the state of Pennsylvania, used to be third but since harisburg is the capitol it's used state money to boost itself up to number three and left us high and dry) has suburbs, but it also pulls in people for the next 30 miles in every direction due to the collapse of local industry and the consolidation into larger cities.
We don't even get good cell service out 30 miles from the big urban center due to lack of interest from the companies (local and giant) and the hills. If I can't even get a cellphone to work why shoudl I expect wireless to work...?
The problem here is that in the USA we have no mass transit to talk about... Oh sure some cities have subways and ok bus systems, but those make up something like 5% of the country... If gas prices were to triple for me right now (which would make it $6.5/gallon of gas) I couldn't afford to get to work/ I have no other means than to use a car. No buses, no trains, no subways... And even if I did my schedule doens't match just about anyone elses. Heck my schedule has 2-10pm days, 5-10:30 pm days, and a 11am to 7:30 pm day and which is which day changes all the time... I'd be hard pressed to find mass transit that would accomidate my strange changing schedule. My whoel town is in a similiar hump because all the local jobs for the 5000 of us dried up and blew away within the last 5 years, so each one of us now has to commute at least 20 miles to work. This is also a canadian border state, so that means bikes aren't an option (even if you are in good enough shape to do 20 miles each way per day on a bike) because winter doesn't allow for bikes...
I personally blame private bussiness and the lack of government interest in providing mass transit for the problem, but frankly as it stands their isn't a way to simply cut the need for fossil fuels. Even if we were all (somehow) able to affors shiny new electric cars we'd simply have to rely on dirty means of distributed power (coal, oil, or nuclear) as wind isn't going to work in all these hills very well or with all these trees in the way of towers and solar doesn't work well in winter... That doesn't leave much of an option...
Not to be annoying or anything, but TW has global bandwidth settings that aply to all users and they don't match those numbers you posted.
Last year it was 3 Mbit/s down & 384 kbit/s up.
This year it's become 5 Mbit/s down & stayed 384 bit/s up.
Even in their 'test markets' they haven't upped the upload speeds (still claiming that people don't want higher upload bandwidth)... Course I would love a higher upload rate, but oh well...
Now I should mention they also now offer a premium service which is 8 Mbit/s down & 512kbit/s up... Not sure hwo much that is, btu with the words "Premium Service" I knwo it's not going to cost ~$45 dollars like my 5&384 does...
Well while flacco and shaitand did pretty well explaining my point (even though somehow I seem to have gotten modded to zero and you got a 'insightful'), I do have a few points I will counter directly...
"So, you *complained* that someone wasn't doing something for you for free, and people were dismissive - and you were surprised?"
No, it's more like I made comments and asked questions and when people told me they couldn't care less I did what most people do an asked what the option was... To which everyoen almsot universally replied: "Do it yourself because we don't want to, because the tools/standards however cryptic atm work for me".
When I responded by saying: "I'm not a programming I cna't do that", the response I got back was "Well then learn". Not really an option for me, so eventually yes I did get a bit pissy... But I did so after other people were downright rude to me. I compressed all that down to "All I got when I complained their wasn't any tools to help setup some fairly basic netowrking options". Which to you seems to have not been decompressed as intended.
Now as to "Most networking setup doesn't require knowledge of C or C++; shell/perl would probably do." Well I don't understand shell or perl anymore than C or C++... I understand how a computer works and talks to other computers, not how programs talk to each other or how to make a person and a program able to communicate... Well not unless you want to talk about my vaguely remembered days of programming basic in HS and COBOL later, neither of which did I ever learn well enough to do much in...
This isn't a draw-back on an OSX, (old school) Novell, or Windows system. OSX frankly doesn't want anything except the OS playing with settings beyond very small things. Windows on the other hand provides nice GUI tools for configuring everything and so does a Novell Netware setup... No shell or Perl required.
Now... "what do you mean by 'we'" By 'We' I meant people who want to be able to use Linux on workstations and manage them like Novell clients, Windows AD workstations, or even to some degree OSX systems...
& lastly I find it funny that years later we find out !shiock! OMG! Someone does care about this sort of thing! So that very thing I brought up years ago now comes back to haunt those people that told me things were fine as is. That is what I find funny.
Well that may be to soem extent, but I know from personal experience I can be in full Bishido gear (trying to explain without a picture would be hard, so google for it instead) and use this quite well. If all it did was use was a sensitivity to static then it would seem much less use. I'm sure that's part of it, but personally I can extend my range over most of a large room and nine times out of ten sense even things being thrown at me from over 20 feet away (& from behind me). I kinda doubt it is solely from this one source.
We are far more complex than science fully understands and sometimes people seem to not understand that sometimes even without knowing the 'why' we can still use those things we might not be able to answer that question for. I guess it's coming to close to that 'mystical' concept science is portrayed as opposing... I've never believed they must be opposites and so I can use something I can't fully understand why I'm able to do it...
Strangely you may think of this as pseudoscience, but I know I can often tell if someone is behind me even if I didn't hear any footsteps or see them come near. Their are actually alot of cases of sensing things not directly related to your main senses. Several martial arts for example understand the concept of a 'Zone of Authority/Control'. Used correctly you know what's going on in any area within this zone without directly using any of your normal five senses as we understand them.
That said in this specific example I think things could better be contributed to actualy usign their eyes to notice the natural changes proceeding the event.
Well I should respond to this on another few key points...
The first is to your last response. Government may only give tax money to a program like that, but it has some key things random individuals in a area might not have. Namely organization, contacts with existing business interests in the area, and better understanding of the area in general. It's also much easier for a government to get better deals on loans and other short term solutions needed while creating a network. If I wanted to do a setup a broadband ISP bussiness in my town I'd need all of those and more. I'd also have to get the municipalities permission if I was going to physically run lines and since phone and cable lines are 'owned' by those groups I'd have to do that or go wireless (I live in a naturally hilly area though so wireless is short ranged at best).
If their was an already existing business that wanted to setup broadband access then your idea works. But in most cases their is no business like that in these places. That leaves it to the people of those areas and frankly I doubt they could do it without involving the local government the way things stand. I know from personal experience my town never could. See I know because I tried. I spent a year workign out what was needed to create a local broadband infrastructure for my town of 5000. When I was done the cost was huge and frankly no one would loan me or anyone else with the experience and desire to do this the money required. So I asked the local government for help. They had access to better loans than me, wouldn't be turned down by the banks like I would, and had resources for all the things I found hard to get... Unfortunately they had zero interest in doing anything to help me start such a thing and stated they were happy waiting for Verizon and Time Warner to decide we were ready...
That was five years ago. TW and Verizon (even before they were Verizon) had told us almost 3 years before that about hwo theyed roll out broadband 'soon'. Last year Time Warner did get their act together and now we do have a broadband solution, but it only covers the town itself. Verizon can cover areas that TW can't with their DSL services, but they gutted our local loops nearly 5 years ago when they became Verizon and only selective 're-upgrade' our local loops to the CO to support DSL. That means for instance that because they don't think my section of town (near the edge of the city) is a valuable enough market to rewire our neighborhood loop to provide DSL even after they 'enabled' DSL at the CO. They also ignore the outlying areas that they could support, but don't feel it's worth doing. That means they only go where TW goes, and then not even to all the places TW does go. Hence currently I use TW.
Now you live in a very different place, though less than 10 miles away from us their is a town much like yours. The dynamics of a college town are much much different though. If I'm upset about how my local government uses my tax money I can go to the house of any councilman or the mayor and demand an answer. Most often they will even give me one! Some far off company that doesn't even want to put an local office (TW's closest office is 10 miles away, Verizon's closest office is 21 miles away) in my town, don't inspire the same level of confidance in me as my local government does. In a town this size the local government has to give their best as they are accountable to all their neighbors and they know it! The companies just really don't care at all on the other hand...
Looking back I wish the local government hadn't turned me down. In that time the two biggest businesses localy both closed. One was a woodworking company that had been here since this town was a lumber town. The other was a custom fiber glass comapny that had a hand in making parts for the hubble space telescope. Both lost market to other better equiped areas and nothing has replaced them because their is no insentive for a new company to come here. Broadband is primitive and selective, we aren't
Ya know while to some extent I agree with you, I do have a few points I need to counteract...
First the state government shouldn't restrict local government from being able to build any sort of communications network (which this does). Heck they shouldn't even stop them from being an ISP if that's what the people want... Maybe you don't really deal with local government much, but I have... Local government is a meeting of all concerned citizens and (normally) everyone gets their say ya or nay... If everyone does agree they want free wifi or say broadband service why shouldn't they be able to build it through the local government?
Second the 'f Wi-fi is important enough to enough people then it will get built' is funny. I see thsi all the time with broadband. Markets of over five thousand people which are ignored by phone and cable providers and who can't realistically use Satelite services (want to sometimes play a game online or do some other similiar activity). Business could care less about them. Their best option is to create their own, but they are much better off getting municipal broadband started then creating their own business (or attempting to at least). Not everyone has the skills to do that sort of business or the right knowledge to do it correctly. The local government in those cases makes far more sense as a facilitator than having to start a bussiness to create such services does...
Has NDS seriously changed since I last used it 5 years ago...?
I ask because I've used NDS (From 4.1/4.11 if my memory is working) and AD (2000 & 2003 version), as well as played with the linux side of things... And frankly as far as ease of use and ease of change AD won over NDS... That said I should clarify I used NDS for 2 years and since I changed companies 5 years ago I haven't touched NDS. My current company doesn't use any, but I've gone back to school to finish my degree in CIS: Networking within the last five years which was all based on using AD. My current job on the other hand refuses to implement any form of remote administration and really needs to be shot... repeatedly... Luckily for me (sort of) I don't do networking where I work now, so it's not my headache...
Ya know it's funny I said almost exactly what you did... Only four or five years ago when I last used linux as my only OS (I've since gone back to dual booting with linux being the one I use less, so go ahead and shoot me for being evil now)...
All I got when I complained their wasn't any tools to help setup some fairly basic netowrking options for a none peer to peer network (no I'm not taliing about P2P apps), was that if "I cared so much I'd write them myself". Well uh yeah I have a degree in networking... I have only a basic understanding of C or C+ or any other programming language... Nor do I have any desire to learn those, then figure out who to write a GUI , investigate every detail of the networking control apps and tools available and bundle them into one compelte package...
So yeah four or five years later were still sitting aroudn waiting for that sorta thing... I find it really funny...
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm paying for it I might as well get it, but if I'm downloading something than commentaries by people who normally don't want to be commenting isn't important. Same with deleted scenes (which includes endings), though I make a point of watching deleted scenes when I have a DVD because at least they have some content value (normally they get taken out for time reasons, when the go back in it helps out the story).
But yeah that's all fluff, the thing I really want is the TV show, movie, etc. with an english audio track. That's what the first DVD's that came out did, then they decided to use the extra space left on the DVD's to make up for what was a price increase. Eventually prices came down more, but theyed already made fluff standard to all 'Director's Cut', 'Special Edition', & 'Unrated Version' DVDs and found out people now expected that stuff regardless of how low they (The movie & TV companies that is) thought their price was.
Maybe you need to take a look at more Xvid and Divx converted content... Because most of that stuff in those DVD's is fluff (unless you need six audio tracks in 5.1+ surround, the extra 'content', etc which frankly I don't see a need for). Taking it down to a singlw AC3 audio track and going with high quality mpeg4 in either regular or widescreen nets about 300-500 MB per 30-40 minutes (it just happens to be most of what I download in that format are 30-40 minutes). You dont' loose anythign with those in my experience... In fact I have a japanese TV series in Xvid that suggests it was recorded from some sort of widescreen HD format (not sure what exactly japan uses, but this was higher than the res of any DVD I've ever played back) that is stunning...
Oh come on slahdotters! I thought it was funny... To bad I don't have any mod points today...
Unfortunately for me I can't sleep without fan noise anymore since I've had a running PC in my room for a decade now... I even have trouble sleeping in hotels and anywhere else I can't hear PC noises at night...
Guess I'll have to keep using my custom PC's instead...
Ok how did the last post not go under the comment it said it was attaching this to? Gotta be some wierd slashcode error...
Never realy had an ink problem, either an expiration date one or a running out of ink & I think it's to expensive when I go to grab a new cartridge problem... Though that wasn't really my point, I was pointing out that functionality comes before other concerns and unfortunately Canon has lacked in fuctionality for awhile now...
Uh unless you mean the book industry (& good lord I know I don't want to know what they have to do with spoiled milk) you might want to say 'dairy' not 'diary'...
Does Canon make a printer yet with:
1. A flatbed paper input tray
2. High res color printing capacity (aka 'photo quality')
3. Both 802.11b and ethernet adapters built-in
4. Multi-format flash card reader
5. good quality flatbed scanner
?
Last I knew I couldn't get all of those at once from Canon, which is why my last printer was an HP...
Yeah I know that's a small market for them... It's an example I'm familiar with though and also an are where that choice was stolen from us by those big companies worried about loosing 'profits' to local government (aka the state of Pennsylvania). Hence why I got a tad biligerent with the person two levels up...
& yes cell towers would be a good community/local government project. To bad this is the US and the companies 'own' the bands used by cellphones making it a good idea that can't legally happen... Not to mention other problems involved in it. The funny thing is all those Verizon "Can you hear me now?" commercials... No, No I can't hear you how about adding a tower...? Though they are better than anyone else locally...
My point is that letting state (& I'm guessing eventually federal) government restrict what local governments can and can't do for their citizens is stupid. And anyone who can't see why this could be important needs to rethink the idea from a different point of view for awhile...
Uh what other network? Maybe you don't live where I do, but I have exactly one choice for phone service (Verizon), one choice for cbale TV (Time Warner), heck I have one choice for grocery store! You damned Moron! For gods sake if it wasn't mandated by law I doubt anyone would bother to offer us phone service. Not even Verizon bothers to offer us cellphone service (neither do the two other local cell providers from that big town I mention) for all that we are 30 miles away!
You want to know why? Well tough no ones bothering to answer you as to why, it just is. Has been, maybe always will be.
In place were their are no choices your statement makes not one bit of sense. Who am I going to go to?!? Their is no one else normally. Moving isn't the option either.
I'm tired of people who don't understand the point that bussiness doesn't allways (or even some of the time) do what is best for the people and so when that happens it might (just might now) make sense to let the local government provide a solution! Instead you'd rather I not have any options aparently, by blocking my (& my neighbors) ability to leverage our local tax dollars and government to help ourselves! What gives you the right to do that exactly?
I know this will go over your head (it has any other time I've ever tried to point this out on slashdot), but government isn't allways bad, heck companies aren't allways bad... What matters is what works for the people in the end. And if nothign else having a municipal run broadband that was successful would spur companies otherwise uninsterested in an area that maybe (just maybe!) their is a market and therefore money to be made giving me chocies in the end.
The big catch is the phrase "in the long-term could be highly competetive", in the near term teh initial expenses are a killer without special financing that only government and large bussinesses can get. For most it would take a fairly wealthy group from within the community to foot the initial expenses. & god forbid lower middle class people might want to try for a loan on something as unproven as community broadband... If it failed their is a high chance those lower middle class people starting it could loose a significant amount of money possibly crippling them economically for the rest of their lives. It's a high risk proposition when their is no one to support you...
I think you are forgetting scale here... Most of theose coops you are talking about serve rather large areas. Most community broadband serves rather small areas.
Why is this important? Simple. Given a large enough area the cost to cover it for things like electricity end up being rather cheap per person. On the other hand the cost of broadband increases the more people served so the initial cost is higher for a large number of people to get the same service.
In effect electricity gets cheaper the larger the area it can cover from one central location. Broadband on the other hand gets more expensive the larger the area covered from one central area.
Government in the case of municpal broadband can often offset the inital costs by sweet loan deals (I have direct experience with this, the rates they get frankly can't be beat) and other options people don't normally have. This is why having the local government setup a netowrk is much les expensive than having the community ddo it.
I said thsi last time, but I'll say it again:
I trust my local government that I can talk to anytime I feel like it more than I trust a company that most likely doesn't even have a local office let alone someone I can talk to at a whim.
& except for the case of Philly most community broadband is setup by small area not getting serviced by the big companies. Which is exactly where I am. I live in a town of 5000, 6000 if you include the farmers til halfway to the next group of towns. I can see my mayor at my local grocery store or bar... Or even a step further I can visit him at his home. Same with any of the city council members.
Want to talk to Verizon (who 'owns' the local phoen lines and 'sometimes' offers DSL)? Well that's gonna be a 30 mile drive to the biggest city in the region. Then you can talk to a peon behind the billing desk, because no one else will talk to you...
So uh yeah when I can personally smack the mayor upside the head for being a dumbass or a company where I can't even talk to anyone above a receptionist... Well I'll take the local government thanks.
I'm not sure what they are smoking, but the had all sorts of errors in that 'article' (& I use the term loosely here). things like:
"Microsoft has since removed that drive to lower system costs." huh yeah that xbox I bought a few months back doesn't have a HD? I'm pretty darn sure it does...
"ATI supplied the graphics for the PS2, while Nvidia provided the graphics for the original X-Box." Huh when did Ati build a graphics chip for Sony? I'm pretty sure that should be nintendo...
Their are more, but the slashdotting has begun and I can't seem to get back to the second page... But really their were dozens of errors in this thing...
So...
Move along, nothing to see here...
I don't see wireless as an option... While it's good for the 'suburbs' of most urban centers not every urban center has a typical 'suburb' and even those that do can have areas like where I live...
My local urban center (fourth largest city in the state of Pennsylvania, used to be third but since harisburg is the capitol it's used state money to boost itself up to number three and left us high and dry) has suburbs, but it also pulls in people for the next 30 miles in every direction due to the collapse of local industry and the consolidation into larger cities.
We don't even get good cell service out 30 miles from the big urban center due to lack of interest from the companies (local and giant) and the hills. If I can't even get a cellphone to work why shoudl I expect wireless to work...?
The problem here is that in the USA we have no mass transit to talk about... Oh sure some cities have subways and ok bus systems, but those make up something like 5% of the country... If gas prices were to triple for me right now (which would make it $6.5/gallon of gas) I couldn't afford to get to work/ I have no other means than to use a car. No buses, no trains, no subways... And even if I did my schedule doens't match just about anyone elses. Heck my schedule has 2-10pm days, 5-10:30 pm days, and a 11am to 7:30 pm day and which is which day changes all the time... I'd be hard pressed to find mass transit that would accomidate my strange changing schedule. My whoel town is in a similiar hump because all the local jobs for the 5000 of us dried up and blew away within the last 5 years, so each one of us now has to commute at least 20 miles to work. This is also a canadian border state, so that means bikes aren't an option (even if you are in good enough shape to do 20 miles each way per day on a bike) because winter doesn't allow for bikes...
I personally blame private bussiness and the lack of government interest in providing mass transit for the problem, but frankly as it stands their isn't a way to simply cut the need for fossil fuels. Even if we were all (somehow) able to affors shiny new electric cars we'd simply have to rely on dirty means of distributed power (coal, oil, or nuclear) as wind isn't going to work in all these hills very well or with all these trees in the way of towers and solar doesn't work well in winter... That doesn't leave much of an option...
except he wouldn't be gaming with satelite... those ~500 ms ping times would crush any attempt at gaming over satelite...
Not to be annoying or anything, but TW has global bandwidth settings that aply to all users and they don't match those numbers you posted.
Last year it was 3 Mbit/s down & 384 kbit/s up.
This year it's become 5 Mbit/s down & stayed 384 bit/s up.
Even in their 'test markets' they haven't upped the upload speeds (still claiming that people don't want higher upload bandwidth)... Course I would love a higher upload rate, but oh well...
Now I should mention they also now offer a premium service which is 8 Mbit/s down & 512kbit/s up... Not sure hwo much that is, btu with the words "Premium Service" I knwo it's not going to cost ~$45 dollars like my 5&384 does...
Well while flacco and shaitand did pretty well explaining my point (even though somehow I seem to have gotten modded to zero and you got a 'insightful'), I do have a few points I will counter directly...
"So, you *complained* that someone wasn't doing something for you for free, and people were dismissive - and you were surprised?"
No, it's more like I made comments and asked questions and when people told me they couldn't care less I did what most people do an asked what the option was... To which everyoen almsot universally replied: "Do it yourself because we don't want to, because the tools/standards however cryptic atm work for me".
When I responded by saying: "I'm not a programming I cna't do that", the response I got back was "Well then learn". Not really an option for me, so eventually yes I did get a bit pissy... But I did so after other people were downright rude to me. I compressed all that down to "All I got when I complained their wasn't any tools to help setup some fairly basic netowrking options". Which to you seems to have not been decompressed as intended.
Now as to "Most networking setup doesn't require knowledge of C or C++; shell/perl would probably do." Well I don't understand shell or perl anymore than C or C++... I understand how a computer works and talks to other computers, not how programs talk to each other or how to make a person and a program able to communicate... Well not unless you want to talk about my vaguely remembered days of programming basic in HS and COBOL later, neither of which did I ever learn well enough to do much in...
This isn't a draw-back on an OSX, (old school) Novell, or Windows system. OSX frankly doesn't want anything except the OS playing with settings beyond very small things. Windows on the other hand provides nice GUI tools for configuring everything and so does a Novell Netware setup... No shell or Perl required.
Now... "what do you mean by 'we'" By 'We' I meant people who want to be able to use Linux on workstations and manage them like Novell clients, Windows AD workstations, or even to some degree OSX systems...
& lastly I find it funny that years later we find out !shiock! OMG! Someone does care about this sort of thing! So that very thing I brought up years ago now comes back to haunt those people that told me things were fine as is. That is what I find funny.
Well that may be to soem extent, but I know from personal experience I can be in full Bishido gear (trying to explain without a picture would be hard, so google for it instead) and use this quite well. If all it did was use was a sensitivity to static then it would seem much less use. I'm sure that's part of it, but personally I can extend my range over most of a large room and nine times out of ten sense even things being thrown at me from over 20 feet away (& from behind me). I kinda doubt it is solely from this one source.
We are far more complex than science fully understands and sometimes people seem to not understand that sometimes even without knowing the 'why' we can still use those things we might not be able to answer that question for. I guess it's coming to close to that 'mystical' concept science is portrayed as opposing... I've never believed they must be opposites and so I can use something I can't fully understand why I'm able to do it...
Strangely you may think of this as pseudoscience, but I know I can often tell if someone is behind me even if I didn't hear any footsteps or see them come near. Their are actually alot of cases of sensing things not directly related to your main senses. Several martial arts for example understand the concept of a 'Zone of Authority/Control'. Used correctly you know what's going on in any area within this zone without directly using any of your normal five senses as we understand them.
That said in this specific example I think things could better be contributed to actualy usign their eyes to notice the natural changes proceeding the event.
Well I should respond to this on another few key points...
The first is to your last response. Government may only give tax money to a program like that, but it has some key things random individuals in a area might not have. Namely organization, contacts with existing business interests in the area, and better understanding of the area in general. It's also much easier for a government to get better deals on loans and other short term solutions needed while creating a network. If I wanted to do a setup a broadband ISP bussiness in my town I'd need all of those and more. I'd also have to get the municipalities permission if I was going to physically run lines and since phone and cable lines are 'owned' by those groups I'd have to do that or go wireless (I live in a naturally hilly area though so wireless is short ranged at best).
If their was an already existing business that wanted to setup broadband access then your idea works. But in most cases their is no business like that in these places. That leaves it to the people of those areas and frankly I doubt they could do it without involving the local government the way things stand. I know from personal experience my town never could. See I know because I tried. I spent a year workign out what was needed to create a local broadband infrastructure for my town of 5000. When I was done the cost was huge and frankly no one would loan me or anyone else with the experience and desire to do this the money required. So I asked the local government for help. They had access to better loans than me, wouldn't be turned down by the banks like I would, and had resources for all the things I found hard to get... Unfortunately they had zero interest in doing anything to help me start such a thing and stated they were happy waiting for Verizon and Time Warner to decide we were ready...
That was five years ago. TW and Verizon (even before they were Verizon) had told us almost 3 years before that about hwo theyed roll out broadband 'soon'. Last year Time Warner did get their act together and now we do have a broadband solution, but it only covers the town itself. Verizon can cover areas that TW can't with their DSL services, but they gutted our local loops nearly 5 years ago when they became Verizon and only selective 're-upgrade' our local loops to the CO to support DSL. That means for instance that because they don't think my section of town (near the edge of the city) is a valuable enough market to rewire our neighborhood loop to provide DSL even after they 'enabled' DSL at the CO. They also ignore the outlying areas that they could support, but don't feel it's worth doing. That means they only go where TW goes, and then not even to all the places TW does go. Hence currently I use TW.
Now you live in a very different place, though less than 10 miles away from us their is a town much like yours. The dynamics of a college town are much much different though. If I'm upset about how my local government uses my tax money I can go to the house of any councilman or the mayor and demand an answer. Most often they will even give me one! Some far off company that doesn't even want to put an local office (TW's closest office is 10 miles away, Verizon's closest office is 21 miles away) in my town, don't inspire the same level of confidance in me as my local government does. In a town this size the local government has to give their best as they are accountable to all their neighbors and they know it! The companies just really don't care at all on the other hand...
Looking back I wish the local government hadn't turned me down. In that time the two biggest businesses localy both closed. One was a woodworking company that had been here since this town was a lumber town. The other was a custom fiber glass comapny that had a hand in making parts for the hubble space telescope. Both lost market to other better equiped areas and nothing has replaced them because their is no insentive for a new company to come here. Broadband is primitive and selective, we aren't
Ya know while to some extent I agree with you, I do have a few points I need to counteract...
First the state government shouldn't restrict local government from being able to build any sort of communications network (which this does). Heck they shouldn't even stop them from being an ISP if that's what the people want... Maybe you don't really deal with local government much, but I have... Local government is a meeting of all concerned citizens and (normally) everyone gets their say ya or nay... If everyone does agree they want free wifi or say broadband service why shouldn't they be able to build it through the local government?
Second the 'f Wi-fi is important enough to enough people then it will get built' is funny. I see thsi all the time with broadband. Markets of over five thousand people which are ignored by phone and cable providers and who can't realistically use Satelite services (want to sometimes play a game online or do some other similiar activity). Business could care less about them. Their best option is to create their own, but they are much better off getting municipal broadband started then creating their own business (or attempting to at least). Not everyone has the skills to do that sort of business or the right knowledge to do it correctly. The local government in those cases makes far more sense as a facilitator than having to start a bussiness to create such services does...
Has NDS seriously changed since I last used it 5 years ago...?
I ask because I've used NDS (From 4.1/4.11 if my memory is working) and AD (2000 & 2003 version), as well as played with the linux side of things... And frankly as far as ease of use and ease of change AD won over NDS... That said I should clarify I used NDS for 2 years and since I changed companies 5 years ago I haven't touched NDS. My current company doesn't use any, but I've gone back to school to finish my degree in CIS: Networking within the last five years which was all based on using AD. My current job on the other hand refuses to implement any form of remote administration and really needs to be shot... repeatedly... Luckily for me (sort of) I don't do networking where I work now, so it's not my headache...
Ya know it's funny I said almost exactly what you did... Only four or five years ago when I last used linux as my only OS (I've since gone back to dual booting with linux being the one I use less, so go ahead and shoot me for being evil now)...
All I got when I complained their wasn't any tools to help setup some fairly basic netowrking options for a none peer to peer network (no I'm not taliing about P2P apps), was that if "I cared so much I'd write them myself". Well uh yeah I have a degree in networking... I have only a basic understanding of C or C+ or any other programming language... Nor do I have any desire to learn those, then figure out who to write a GUI , investigate every detail of the networking control apps and tools available and bundle them into one compelte package...
So yeah four or five years later were still sitting aroudn waiting for that sorta thing... I find it really funny...