>>>"There is no difference between downloadng a thousand websites and downloading a movie. Data is data"
Ironically:
That's exactly what we're talking about: BBC Player (abd also NBC, FOX, CW players) are websites. The ISPs are complaining because these websites are too large! So you're right: Data is data, but if you download two or three 1000 megabyte webpages, your ISP still won't be happy. They don't have enough cables to handle the demand.
I don't remember any U.S. internet companies charging per minute rates. When did this happen?
I remember national BBSes like QuantumLink charging $1/hour, but those were back in the 1980s, and not ISPs. Not applicable and probably unknown to newbies of the 90s.
>>>"With data, there is only the initial outlay on infrastructure and afterwards the same minimal cost to run it whether it's sitting idle or if it's feeding me High Definition movies all day long."
Completely false.
A network moving bits is going to use a lot, lot more power than a network sitting idle (which of course will increase the ISP's electric bill; and that trickles down to us).
Also: The fact is the network is NOT completely finished. As of right now, I estimate if every home started downloading at the same instant, there's only enough national capacity to handle 0.5 megabit/sec/home. Perhaps less. Clearly there's still a lot of room for growth (and that's going to require more money collected from customers' bills.)
Cost: I still think this plan is good:
$100 == unlimited $50 == 100 gigabyte cap $15 == 25 gigabyte cap
Different tiers for different customer requirements. The more you use; the more you pay. The less you use; the more you save.
I think the article said it accurately: "ISPs needed to stop using the term 'unlimited' to describe their services and make it clear that if people wanted to watch hours of downloaded video content they would have to pay a higher tariff," he added.'
Yes.
An internet company simply *cannot* provide gigabytes of video for every person, and only charge $30 a month. It's financially impossible to provide that many cables to each home & maintain such a low price.
(1) If I never abandon Yahoo, why would it I need to forward my emails someplace else?
(2) Yahoo has POP3 and IMAP support (it's how I read my pop.psu.edu account).
Like I said, I just don't see any reason to abandon yahoomail and switch to googlemail. (Of course, I also still use a Commodore=64 and Amiga 500, so maybe I just like to cling to old things.) (shrug)
>>>"it should be mandatory that the parents show up with their kids!"
Considering the parents are the ones paying the School Tax/School Tuition, they should be able to attend any class they feel like attending. Who knows? Maybe I'd learn something useful in this "computer safety 101" class.
No. I don't want to shut the fuck up. I stand by what I said regarding Lucas' contract giving him rights to the merchandise (hence making him filthy rich), and this other fellow failing to make the same request. C'est la Vie.
>>>"when a person manufactures some artistic creation, that person by default has the right to profit from said creation."
Unless your idea is created while on somebody else's dime. For example, any new device I might engineer, automatically becomes the property of my employer, per my contract. Likewise anything Ainsworth created while in the employ of Fox, becomes Fox Studios property.
If ISPs become liable for the content passing over their lines, then they could be open to suing by the RIAA. Which means the ISPs will act to stop my downloads of music or movies or tv shows.:-(
Google (or any other photographer) does not need permission to capture the sunlight bouncing off your house, if they perform that act while standing on public property (the street runs 20 feet away; it's easy to photo my house). I may not like having my house on google.com, but I'm sure someday a Google van will drive past my place and snap a photo. Oh well! They have not violated my rights; they have not done anything wrong.
Win 3.1 is the most ugly screen I have ever seen (and the worst GUI).
I always like the classic Commodore 64 combination of light blue on a dark blue background. It was easy to read, and specifically-designed by Commodore to work well with low-resolution analog TVs (other colors tended to blur).
But in my day-to-day routine, I just use traditional black-on-white with the brightness set very low.
>>>"property ownership is simply a state-granted exclusive right of control to something to begin with."
No, the right to property is an inalienable right of a human being. You own your body. You own the product of your body's labor. If you build a chair, it's your chair, because it's the product of your body's labor. (If somebody else wants your chair, that is theft of your body's labor. That's a violation.) (Let them go build their own damn chair with their own body.)
The state, aka government, only exists because the people created it. See the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
- 10x of "almost nothing" is still almost nothing. The USA doesn't have many reserves left, because we already burned them up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (I speak as a citizen of a former oil-rich state; Pennsylvania; now a poor state.)
- If we were smart, we would SAVE our oil, drain the Mideast dry (circa 2050), and then say, "Hey guys; we've got oil over in America" and charge $1000 a barrel. We'd be rich. (But of course, we're short-term thinkers; we won't do that.)
Building a car is approximately equivalent to burning 50,000 miles of gasoline (at 25mpg).
I still use plastic bags at the groecery store, but I reuse them over-and-over. It benefits the environment because of less waste, and it benefits me because I get 3 cents per bag (discount). If more Americans would just learn to think of how they can help others, we could make a huge drop in consumption.
Oh well.
Perhaps the doubling/tripling prices will make people cut-back. I know a lot of people who are turning-off their heat, which of course helps reduce oil consumption too.
I've seen videos on History and Discovery Channel. It isn't one giant mass of garbage. It's a nice clear ocean, and then suddenly your ship will come-upon a ship-sized "mass" of accumulated garbage just floating in the middle of noplace. The ocean currents tend to gather trash in a few discrete locations (which should make it easy to clean-up, if any nation decided to take-on that task).
re: Running out of cars.
If they find themselves running out of New York subway cars, maybe they could try using passenger cars. We've got plenty of them laying around, just waiting to become a "fish condo".
I'd like Disney to revive its traditional 2D hand-drawn animation. Even if that means they produce only one movie every 3-4 years, I'd still like to see it revived. Hand-drawn art is gorgeous.
According to the History Channel, this is not the first time climate change has destroyed an industry.
The "Mini Ice Age" of 1400-1800 destroyed the Wine Industry in Britannia. For 1400 years Romans and their descendents had been growing vineyards and producing wine in the warm England climate. Then suddenly the earth grew cold, and the vines stopped growing.
England seemed to survive this catastrope, and I'm sure Australia will too.
- Reduce the human population by 90% (preferably using a humane manner; like fewer babies). Instead of 6 billion, you'll have 600 million. There will be plenty of resources for everyone to go around, and pollution will be decreased by 90% of current levels.
- or -
- Wait for mother nature to do it for us (disease or starvation).
The overpopulation of human animals, and their gradual destruction of the environment, will be fixed one way or the other. If we don't do it, some other mechanism will take care of the problem.
Apparently you've never read the Caves of Steel series, or the Foundation series, or one of the 500+ completely original short stories (like Nightfall or The Last Question). All of them have well-developed characters.
With analog I get ~23 channels. With digital I get just 8 channels. (And a lot of blue screens of death, because those channels are too weak to receive.) How is getting 1/3rd as many channels a "better" system? I am losing Baltimore and Philadephia sports. I am losing MyNetworkTV. I am losing Telemundo. I am losing PBS and ABC. I am losing the independent "rerun channel" that has my favorite shows like Davinci's Inquest, Cold Squad, Stargate, and Farscape.
How is this in any way a "better" system?!?!? I call it a worse system. With fewer choices.
The poster has a pretty good point though. I printed-off 5 coupons from healthychoice.com, and then they told me I had hit my limit. No more than 5. So I used some creative photoshopping, and made about 100 more. The grocery stores accepted these coupons without question. (The coupons were for $4 Steamer Meals... a ridiculously high price IMHO... hence why I used the coupons to bring them down to a reasonable rate.)
I imagine a much-better counterfeiter than myself could quite easily scan, edit, and the print-off tons of $40 paper coupons. By using plastic the government makes it more difficult to clone.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>"There is no difference between downloadng a thousand websites and downloading a movie. Data is data"
Ironically:
That's exactly what we're talking about: BBC Player (abd also NBC, FOX, CW players) are websites. The ISPs are complaining because these websites are too large! So you're right: Data is data, but if you download two or three 1000 megabyte webpages, your ISP still won't be happy. They don't have enough cables to handle the demand.
I don't remember any U.S. internet companies charging per minute rates. When did this happen?
I remember national BBSes like QuantumLink charging $1/hour, but those were back in the 1980s, and not ISPs. Not applicable and probably unknown to newbies of the 90s.
>>>"With data, there is only the initial outlay on infrastructure and afterwards the same minimal cost to run it whether it's sitting idle or if it's feeding me High Definition movies all day long."
Completely false.
A network moving bits is going to use a lot, lot more power than a network sitting idle (which of course will increase the ISP's electric bill; and that trickles down to us).
Also: The fact is the network is NOT completely finished. As of right now, I estimate if every home started downloading at the same instant, there's only enough national capacity to handle 0.5 megabit/sec/home. Perhaps less. Clearly there's still a lot of room for growth (and that's going to require more money collected from customers' bills.)
Cost: I still think this plan is good:
$100 == unlimited
$50 == 100 gigabyte cap
$15 == 25 gigabyte cap
Different tiers for different customer requirements. The more you use; the more you pay. The less you use; the more you save.
I think the article said it accurately: "ISPs needed to stop using the term 'unlimited' to describe their services and make it clear that if people wanted to watch hours of downloaded video content they would have to pay a higher tariff," he added.'
Yes.
An internet company simply *cannot* provide gigabytes of video for every person, and only charge $30 a month. It's financially impossible to provide that many cables to each home & maintain such a low price.
That was a JOKE, not a troll. (Ya know, as in, laugh or smirk.)
Jeez; grow a sense of humor.
(1) If I never abandon Yahoo, why would it I need to forward my emails someplace else?
(2) Yahoo has POP3 and IMAP support (it's how I read my pop.psu.edu account).
Like I said, I just don't see any reason to abandon yahoomail and switch to googlemail. (Of course, I also still use a Commodore=64 and Amiga 500, so maybe I just like to cling to old things.) (shrug)
>>>"it should be mandatory that the parents show up with their kids!"
Considering the parents are the ones paying the School Tax/School Tuition, they should be able to attend any class they feel like attending. Who knows? Maybe I'd learn something useful in this "computer safety 101" class.
No. I don't want to shut the fuck up. I stand by what I said regarding Lucas' contract giving him rights to the merchandise (hence making him filthy rich), and this other fellow failing to make the same request. C'est la Vie.
Oh well in that case, Lucas has no legal standing in the United Kingdom. Anybody can copy his Star Wars models and sell them.
;-)
(shrug). Sucks to be him.
I don't think he'll go poor.
>>>"when a person manufactures some artistic creation, that person by default has the right to profit from said creation."
Unless your idea is created while on somebody else's dime. For example, any new device I might engineer, automatically becomes the property of my employer, per my contract. Likewise anything Ainsworth created while in the employ of Fox, becomes Fox Studios property.
If ISPs become liable for the content passing over their lines, then they could be open to suing by the RIAA. Which means the ISPs will act to stop my downloads of music or movies or tv shows. :-(
>>>"...it should be an opt-in service."
Bzzzz.
Google (or any other photographer) does not need permission to capture the sunlight bouncing off your house, if they perform that act while standing on public property (the street runs 20 feet away; it's easy to photo my house). I may not like having my house on google.com, but I'm sure someday a Google van will drive past my place and snap a photo. Oh well! They have not violated my rights; they have not done anything wrong.
They don't need my permission.
>>>"Part of the functionality your brother has now is the ability to tune in the broadcast signals should his cable go out.... "
Nope. No antenna.
He truly has no need for an off-the-air DTV box (which is why he gave me his two coupons).
Win 3.1 is the most ugly screen I have ever seen (and the worst GUI).
I always like the classic Commodore 64 combination of light blue on a dark blue background. It was easy to read, and specifically-designed by Commodore to work well with low-resolution analog TVs (other colors tended to blur).
But in my day-to-day routine, I just use traditional black-on-white with the brightness set very low.
>>>"property ownership is simply a state-granted exclusive right of control to something to begin with."
No, the right to property is an inalienable right of a human being. You own your body. You own the product of your body's labor. If you build a chair, it's your chair, because it's the product of your body's labor. (If somebody else wants your chair, that is theft of your body's labor. That's a violation.) (Let them go build their own damn chair with their own body.)
The state, aka government, only exists because the people created it.
See the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
I think he has a valid point; and all it takes is a little "back of the envelope" calculations:
- I burn about 1500 gallons of gasoline per year, which is around 7500 pounds of oil-based product.
- I use about 250 bags per year, which is perhaps 10 pounds of oil-based product.
Clearly the majority of my oil usage goes towards gasoline, and the plastic bag impact is negligible... just as the other guy was telling us.
Oh, forgot to comment on the frakkin' article:
- 10x of "almost nothing" is still almost nothing. The USA doesn't have many reserves left, because we already burned them up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (I speak as a citizen of a former oil-rich state; Pennsylvania; now a poor state.)
- If we were smart, we would SAVE our oil, drain the Mideast dry (circa 2050), and then say, "Hey guys; we've got oil over in America" and charge $1000 a barrel. We'd be rich. (But of course, we're short-term thinkers; we won't do that.)
Building a car is approximately equivalent to burning 50,000 miles of gasoline (at 25mpg).
I still use plastic bags at the groecery store, but I reuse them over-and-over. It benefits the environment because of less waste, and it benefits me because I get 3 cents per bag (discount). If more Americans would just learn to think of how they can help others, we could make a huge drop in consumption.
Oh well.
Perhaps the doubling/tripling prices will make people cut-back. I know a lot of people who are turning-off their heat, which of course helps reduce oil consumption too.
I've seen videos on History and Discovery Channel. It isn't one giant mass of garbage. It's a nice clear ocean, and then suddenly your ship will come-upon a ship-sized "mass" of accumulated garbage just floating in the middle of noplace. The ocean currents tend to gather trash in a few discrete locations (which should make it easy to clean-up, if any nation decided to take-on that task).
re: Running out of cars.
If they find themselves running out of New York subway cars, maybe they could try using passenger cars. We've got plenty of them laying around, just waiting to become a "fish condo".
Forget 3D.
I'd like Disney to revive its traditional 2D hand-drawn animation. Even if that means they produce only one movie every 3-4 years, I'd still like to see it revived. Hand-drawn art is gorgeous.
According to the History Channel, this is not the first time climate change has destroyed an industry.
The "Mini Ice Age" of 1400-1800 destroyed the Wine Industry in Britannia. For 1400 years Romans and their descendents had been growing vineyards and producing wine in the warm England climate. Then suddenly the earth grew cold, and the vines stopped growing.
England seemed to survive this catastrope, and I'm sure Australia will too.
Well I have a modest proposal:
- Reduce the human population by 90% (preferably using a humane manner; like fewer babies). Instead of 6 billion, you'll have 600 million. There will be plenty of resources for everyone to go around, and pollution will be decreased by 90% of current levels.
- or -
- Wait for mother nature to do it for us (disease or starvation).
The overpopulation of human animals, and their gradual destruction of the environment, will be fixed one way or the other. If we don't do it, some other mechanism will take care of the problem.
Apparently you've never read the Caves of Steel series, or the Foundation series, or one of the 500+ completely original short stories (like Nightfall or The Last Question). All of them have well-developed characters.
P.S.
I'm not really happy with DTV.
With analog I get ~23 channels. With digital I get just 8 channels. (And a lot of blue screens of death, because those channels are too weak to receive.) How is getting 1/3rd as many channels a "better" system? I am losing Baltimore and Philadephia sports. I am losing MyNetworkTV. I am losing Telemundo. I am losing PBS and ABC. I am losing the independent "rerun channel" that has my favorite shows like Davinci's Inquest, Cold Squad, Stargate, and Farscape.
How is this in any way a "better" system?!?!?
I call it a worse system.
With fewer choices.
The poster has a pretty good point though. I printed-off 5 coupons from healthychoice.com, and then they told me I had hit my limit. No more than 5. So I used some creative photoshopping, and made about 100 more. The grocery stores accepted these coupons without question. (The coupons were for $4 Steamer Meals... a ridiculously high price IMHO... hence why I used the coupons to bring them down to a reasonable rate.)
I imagine a much-better counterfeiter than myself could quite easily scan, edit, and the print-off tons of $40 paper coupons. By using plastic the government makes it more difficult to clone.