Comcast will have to learn the hard way that bandwidth is (or at least should be) a commodity, and therefore is not to be policed. They sell X GB/month of transfer at a speed of Y mb/s for a price N. A P2P Bill of Rights is absurd - if you want to throttle me, I'll switch providers.
The only thing that's letting them get away with this at the moment is the virtual monopoly most of these ISP's have. Which has a lot to do with them pretending to "own" the last mile, paid for by tax dollars.
It's too much to hope for that we could get some legislation to put these companies in their place...
I know at my University for example that there is widespread use of Ritalin for studying purposes once it got out that you can learn entire courses inside and out pulling all-nighters when you're on Ritalin.
A friend of mine is a regular user of Ritalin, and because I knew the guy (and his marks) before he started using I can tell you with some confidence that Ritalin will add a very significant boost to your GPA.
I also have anecdotal evidence of many pre-med students using Ritalin when they study for the MCAT, prerequisite courses, etc. since competition for med school here is so fierce.
If the students are doing it because they're under pressure for higher grades, why wouldn't the professors and scientists be doing it when they're under (arguably greater) pressure to produce research results.
Just how much bandwidth is used up by ads? Over and over again its the ads that hold up the loading of pages. And over and over again those ads pay for the content and services that make that bandwidth worth having.
The problem with Western (I'm assuming American) Winner takes all is that you have 51% of the people literally telling the other 49% what to do without recourse. ...the point that must be made about the American system in particular is that this gets even worse because *entire* states vote for one candidate or the other - which means that in many cases you can have a candidate winning the Presidency who actually lost the popular vote by a significant margin (as occurred with Bush in 2000). So in cases like that, you end up with less than 50% of the population telling greater than 50% of the population what to do.
I totally agree - what's the point in even shelling out for the light-o-rama gear if you're just going to produce seizure-inducing strobe effects?
This one at http://www.holdman.com/christmas/video.asp is one of the few I've seen this season that look like some thought and actual design skill went into producing the show... relatively pleasing to the senses.
I have this same problem, which I admit is annoying, but not that big of an issue - just keep a copy of the Skype DMG somewhere handy, and do a 20-second reinstall whenever you need to start Skype (rather than the drastic move of disabling the firewall completely...).
You're misunderstanding what Comcast is doing in this case - they're *not* acting as a common carrier - not only are they throttling connections (which might be okay - at least the traffic eventually gets through), they are directly interfering with P2P applications by sending reset packets to disable connections between certain peers.
Two very different acts, the former might be okay, but the latter is very much not, and the reason for this lawsuit.
I apologize for not being clearer. What I meant was that the only rules I can think that should stay in place are those for convicted felons - depending on the crime there should be (and is currently in most countries) a period after you're released from jail in which you are not allowed to travel abroad.
They can have a second chance staying in their home country - it's not like it's house arrest, it's "country" arrest, which I think we can all agree isn't much of a punishment. I just believe that after someone commits a crime, they should be extradited to their home country (if not already there) and the home country should be responsible for the criminal's complete rehabilitation (if any) over X years before they are permitted to travel again.
Any nation that adopts that policy will see their average education of it's population fluctuate to global averages (think American Gr 9 on average), any type of social service will be abused thus all will be shut down if this is implemented. On the plus side you will tend to only get the people willing to travel so you'll at least get the most adventurous of the worlds poor, hungry, and sometimes dangerous. This is getting OT now, but the point is that "countries" are artificial constructs - if a Google can be created in the US there's no reason why, long term, that same thing couldn't happen in any other country/continent, including Africa. I think the developed countries need to be the first to open their borders to new (and generally eager) labour - of course you'll get bad ones and good ones, but we already have that here, homegrown criminals and business geniuses.
Once that influx starts to stabilize, then you have huge, legal workforce that is paying taxes and you take that extra money and put it toward educating the kids of immigrants - 30 years later you've got a relatively educated workforce and you're no worse off as a country.
This kind of scrutiny isn't unique to the US, many (if not most) developed countries have problems with illegal immigration. It's just simple economics - if I'm from some poor African country and I can make ten or a hundred times as much by working at McDonald's in the US, then of course I'm going to try my hardest to get in.
So border officers have to be very demanding of visa applicants because once you're in the country, it's much harder to kick you out again instead of just denying entry in the first place.
That said, I'd prefer that any developed country not have immigration rules in place at all, other than to block convicted felons.
If you want to compare it to University tuition, it's more like a University raising tuition by 400% or so in one shot, and then realizing when it's too late that they have to shut down for good since every single one of their students left.
If they were smart, they would gradually increase royalty percentages until they started getting close to maximizing their revenue (more money from the big radio players, and only losing a few small time guys to the increases).
One big jump as big as this seems to be is just going to lose them money when everyone drops out of the business.
Use uTorrent, and just limit your uploading throughout the month. You won't go over your limit, and you'll still be able to suck bandwidth to your heart's desire.
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Comcast will have to learn the hard way that bandwidth is (or at least should be) a commodity, and therefore is not to be policed. They sell X GB/month of transfer at a speed of Y mb/s for a price N. A P2P Bill of Rights is absurd - if you want to throttle me, I'll switch providers.
The only thing that's letting them get away with this at the moment is the virtual monopoly most of these ISP's have. Which has a lot to do with them pretending to "own" the last mile, paid for by tax dollars.
It's too much to hope for that we could get some legislation to put these companies in their place...
I know at my University for example that there is widespread use of Ritalin for studying purposes once it got out that you can learn entire courses inside and out pulling all-nighters when you're on Ritalin.
A friend of mine is a regular user of Ritalin, and because I knew the guy (and his marks) before he started using I can tell you with some confidence that Ritalin will add a very significant boost to your GPA.
I also have anecdotal evidence of many pre-med students using Ritalin when they study for the MCAT, prerequisite courses, etc. since competition for med school here is so fierce.
If the students are doing it because they're under pressure for higher grades, why wouldn't the professors and scientists be doing it when they're under (arguably greater) pressure to produce research results.
I totally agree - what's the point in even shelling out for the light-o-rama gear if you're just going to produce seizure-inducing strobe effects? This one at http://www.holdman.com/christmas/video.asp is one of the few I've seen this season that look like some thought and actual design skill went into producing the show... relatively pleasing to the senses.
I have this same problem, which I admit is annoying, but not that big of an issue - just keep a copy of the Skype DMG somewhere handy, and do a 20-second reinstall whenever you need to start Skype (rather than the drastic move of disabling the firewall completely...).
You're misunderstanding what Comcast is doing in this case - they're *not* acting as a common carrier - not only are they throttling connections (which might be okay - at least the traffic eventually gets through), they are directly interfering with P2P applications by sending reset packets to disable connections between certain peers.
Two very different acts, the former might be okay, but the latter is very much not, and the reason for this lawsuit.
I apologize for not being clearer. What I meant was that the only rules I can think that should stay in place are those for convicted felons - depending on the crime there should be (and is currently in most countries) a period after you're released from jail in which you are not allowed to travel abroad. They can have a second chance staying in their home country - it's not like it's house arrest, it's "country" arrest, which I think we can all agree isn't much of a punishment. I just believe that after someone commits a crime, they should be extradited to their home country (if not already there) and the home country should be responsible for the criminal's complete rehabilitation (if any) over X years before they are permitted to travel again.
Once that influx starts to stabilize, then you have huge, legal workforce that is paying taxes and you take that extra money and put it toward educating the kids of immigrants - 30 years later you've got a relatively educated workforce and you're no worse off as a country.
This kind of scrutiny isn't unique to the US, many (if not most) developed countries have problems with illegal immigration. It's just simple economics - if I'm from some poor African country and I can make ten or a hundred times as much by working at McDonald's in the US, then of course I'm going to try my hardest to get in. So border officers have to be very demanding of visa applicants because once you're in the country, it's much harder to kick you out again instead of just denying entry in the first place. That said, I'd prefer that any developed country not have immigration rules in place at all, other than to block convicted felons.
is still nothing.
If you want to compare it to University tuition, it's more like a University raising tuition by 400% or so in one shot, and then realizing when it's too late that they have to shut down for good since every single one of their students left. If they were smart, they would gradually increase royalty percentages until they started getting close to maximizing their revenue (more money from the big radio players, and only losing a few small time guys to the increases). One big jump as big as this seems to be is just going to lose them money when everyone drops out of the business.
Use uTorrent, and just limit your uploading throughout the month. You won't go over your limit, and you'll still be able to suck bandwidth to your heart's desire.