The plan is in the final stage of completion, according to a department official who requested anonymity...
Oh, the irony. This official can see the importance of protecting his piracy in the small matter of making a statement to the press, and yet is comfortable with a plan to undermine the ability any citizen anywhere to protect their own privacy.
Wait, does something have to be surprising to be ironic?
To actually provide everyone the ability to download at max speed 24/7 would raise the prices from 45 bucks a month into the hundreds. That's not very realistic. They just need to be more upfront about the limitations of a shared connection.
The trouble with your airplane analogy is that airplane seats are all or nothing, not to mention that missing a flight typically has far greater consequences than a slow downloading email. I'd say a better analogy would be a restaurant that advertises fast service. They try to maintain a level of service, but when three buses full of people pull into the parking lot, there's going to be a slowdown. They could avoid this problem by purchasing a larger building and keeping two dozen extra staff on hand at all times, but then they would have to charge $75 for a hamburger to cover expenses.
Most of their ideas are cute but not especially helpful to anyone. I'd throw all those ideas out for a real laundry machine. I want to toss my dirty clothes in at night, and the next morning have them waiting for me, cleaned, dried, ironed, sorted, and folded.
Comcast is taking over my current cable provider, which is a less than pleasing fact given all the news about them lately. Still, I don't have a problem with them slowing down certain traffic, so long as certain conditions are met:
1. They clearly disclose their policies about slowing traffic. 2. They don't discriminate by specific domains, IPs, or traffic content. They should only discriminate by broad categories, such as prioritizing all http traffic over all p2p traffic. 3. They don't interfere with packets, drop them, or modify them. They don't force connections to end as they have been accused of lately. They apply a speed limit and that is it. 4. They only limit speeds when necessary based on network traffic. If the network can handle the current traffic load, don't slow anything down.
It makes sense that perhaps my p2p download (of linux isos of course) shouldn't slow my neighbors' web surfing to a crawl. But it shouldn't be restricted if there is plenty of bandwidth available. And the Comcast Sports website definitely should have no advantage over espn.com.
This reminds me of the music business. "Oh no, nobody is buying our shitty, derivative, over-produced, over-hyped music!" Or in this case, "Oh no, nobody is clicking on our annoying, pointless, untargeted, punch-the-monkey ads."
Give the people something they actually find intriguing and pleasant, and they'll buy your CDs and click on your ads.
Blu-Ray Lawyer: "Your honor, I move that this case be dismissed by reason of insanity."
Judge: "Please explain."
Blu-Ray Lawyer: "The plaintiff purchased the product in question when it was untested, unproven, excessively priced, and played a format that was at risk of going the way of the Dodo. Clearly he is insane."
Storage space has been a big issue of contention on Dreamhost as well. I signed up for their service, feeling happy that I had 500G of remote storage to use as I pleased. It turned out it wasn't that simple.
Unlimited sounds great, until you start using a large amount of space and Yahoo has to find some reason to say that you're not complying with their terms of service.
JSON is lightweight, and yet it remains human readable and editable. XML lets you forget some of the security concerns of JSON, and has the advantage of not being tied to a specific programming language.
If only there was a standardized format that combined these advantages, without all that XML bloat. There is! Try YAML.
XML's big win is supposed to be its semantics: it tells you not only what data you have, but what sort of data it is. This allows you to create all sorts of dreamy scenarios about computers being able to understand each other and act super intelligently. In reality, it leads to massively bloated XML specifications and protracted fights over what's the best way to describe one's data, but not to any of the magic.
As my all time favorite Slashdot sig said: "XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, you aren't using enough of it."
But a flight is 3-4 hours, and probably cheaper unless the train is mostly subsidized. Trains could replace some driving over short to medium distances, if they were designed properly. However, many places in America were designed around the car. Even if you can get a train to your destination town, you will often need a car to get around that town. I'm in favor of trains but we have to consider what it would take to make train use practical and economical so people would choose it.
Yes, how about an iPod Touch with an SD card reader? I'm already using SD cards as camera memory, thumb drive memory, and car stereo memory. I don't want to buy new storage every time I buy a new portable thing, nor do I want to throw away storage when the portable thing gets replaced.
(If you're curious, here is my car stereo. I love having a USB port in the glove box!)
That sounds fair and honest, which is what most people really want. Don't take advantage of people who go over an arbitrary limit by nailing them with huge fees (e.g. cell phone companies.) Don't take advantage of the fact that you're providing internet access by trying to control how they use it, and trying to force other services down their throats (most cable internet providers.) Kudos to you for playing fair, I hope the market rewards you for it!
Just out of curiosity, do you charge fair rates for those who go over their limits? In other words, if you are on a plan that gives 50G per month for $50, and you use an extra 20G, what would the charge be? A fair rate would be significantly under $1 per gig for overage. However, given what I've seen cell phone companies and others do, I wouldn't be surprised to see some companies charge something insane like $10 per gig.
It's all about those Neilsen boxes. If one person with a box goes to watch the game at church rather than at home, that shows up in the statistics as thousands of people not watching.
What I want to know is is the NFL has any legal basis for the ban, or if they're just intimidating folks.
That's a good point. On the flip side, the fact that Google only got half their wishes makes it more likely they will try to actually win this auction. If they got all their wishes, it wouldn't have mattered as much to them who controlled the spectrum, but now they may try to own it simply to make it open.
Yahoo has earned a good deal of respect from coders in recent years. They do a lot of great open source work, such as the excellent YUI. Things like this have made me a fan of the company.
Their corporate philosophy as well as the practical aspect of what software they choose to run are not at all congruent with Microsoft. (FreeBSD, PHP, etc.) Microsoft is going to have to make big changes - that's how they do business - and it's going to worsen Yahoo's technologies and piss off many of their employees.
A much better idea would be for IBM to buy Yahoo. Their open source mindset would be a much better fit, and Yahoo's search and email technology would be a nice addition to IBM.
Why shouldn't U2's copyright for Joshua Tree be expired by now? Haven't they had an adequate chance to make money off of it already? Wouldn't the world be a better place if it was freely available?
Remind me again, is copyright supposed to encourage creative works, or is it supposed to create never ending money streams for work done over 20 years ago?
That's probably true for many big name artists, whose main goal when recording an album is to produce one or two radio hits. But I love listening to music as an album, and many of my favorite artists are still making albums, not just songs. I would hate to see albums die off as music goes online. Songs can really gain something by being a part of a larger work.
My post was making fun of the AC for bothering to make such a useless, uninformed, knee-jerk analysis of the advantages of PHP v. Perl. Thank you for following up with more of the same. I suppose uninformed isn't fair in your case - you're just informed enough to be puerile.
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Wait, does something have to be surprising to be ironic?
To actually provide everyone the ability to download at max speed 24/7 would raise the prices from 45 bucks a month into the hundreds. That's not very realistic. They just need to be more upfront about the limitations of a shared connection.
The trouble with your airplane analogy is that airplane seats are all or nothing, not to mention that missing a flight typically has far greater consequences than a slow downloading email. I'd say a better analogy would be a restaurant that advertises fast service. They try to maintain a level of service, but when three buses full of people pull into the parking lot, there's going to be a slowdown. They could avoid this problem by purchasing a larger building and keeping two dozen extra staff on hand at all times, but then they would have to charge $75 for a hamburger to cover expenses.
Most of their ideas are cute but not especially helpful to anyone. I'd throw all those ideas out for a real laundry machine. I want to toss my dirty clothes in at night, and the next morning have them waiting for me, cleaned, dried, ironed, sorted, and folded.
Comcast is taking over my current cable provider, which is a less than pleasing fact given all the news about them lately. Still, I don't have a problem with them slowing down certain traffic, so long as certain conditions are met:
1. They clearly disclose their policies about slowing traffic.
2. They don't discriminate by specific domains, IPs, or traffic content. They should only discriminate by broad categories, such as prioritizing all http traffic over all p2p traffic.
3. They don't interfere with packets, drop them, or modify them. They don't force connections to end as they have been accused of lately. They apply a speed limit and that is it.
4. They only limit speeds when necessary based on network traffic. If the network can handle the current traffic load, don't slow anything down.
It makes sense that perhaps my p2p download (of linux isos of course) shouldn't slow my neighbors' web surfing to a crawl. But it shouldn't be restricted if there is plenty of bandwidth available. And the Comcast Sports website definitely should have no advantage over espn.com.
This reminds me of the music business. "Oh no, nobody is buying our shitty, derivative, over-produced, over-hyped music!" Or in this case, "Oh no, nobody is clicking on our annoying, pointless, untargeted, punch-the-monkey ads."
Give the people something they actually find intriguing and pleasant, and they'll buy your CDs and click on your ads.
...so wear a raincoat?
Blu-Ray Lawyer: "Your honor, I move that this case be dismissed by reason of insanity."
Judge: "Please explain."
Blu-Ray Lawyer: "The plaintiff purchased the product in question when it was untested, unproven, excessively priced, and played a format that was at risk of going the way of the Dodo. Clearly he is insane."
Judge: "That is insane. Case dismissed!"
Plaintiff: "I'm Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!"
Storage space has been a big issue of contention on Dreamhost as well. I signed up for their service, feeling happy that I had 500G of remote storage to use as I pleased. It turned out it wasn't that simple.
Unlimited sounds great, until you start using a large amount of space and Yahoo has to find some reason to say that you're not complying with their terms of service.
JSON is lightweight, and yet it remains human readable and editable. XML lets you forget some of the security concerns of JSON, and has the advantage of not being tied to a specific programming language.
If only there was a standardized format that combined these advantages, without all that XML bloat. There is! Try YAML.
XML's big win is supposed to be its semantics: it tells you not only what data you have, but what sort of data it is. This allows you to create all sorts of dreamy scenarios about computers being able to understand each other and act super intelligently. In reality, it leads to massively bloated XML specifications and protracted fights over what's the best way to describe one's data, but not to any of the magic.
As my all time favorite Slashdot sig said: "XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, you aren't using enough of it."
Ah, but how do you know if it's you or the copy that's being set free?
But a flight is 3-4 hours, and probably cheaper unless the train is mostly subsidized. Trains could replace some driving over short to medium distances, if they were designed properly. However, many places in America were designed around the car. Even if you can get a train to your destination town, you will often need a car to get around that town. I'm in favor of trains but we have to consider what it would take to make train use practical and economical so people would choose it.
Yes, how about an iPod Touch with an SD card reader? I'm already using SD cards as camera memory, thumb drive memory, and car stereo memory. I don't want to buy new storage every time I buy a new portable thing, nor do I want to throw away storage when the portable thing gets replaced.
(If you're curious, here is my car stereo. I love having a USB port in the glove box!)
That sounds fair and honest, which is what most people really want. Don't take advantage of people who go over an arbitrary limit by nailing them with huge fees (e.g. cell phone companies.) Don't take advantage of the fact that you're providing internet access by trying to control how they use it, and trying to force other services down their throats (most cable internet providers.) Kudos to you for playing fair, I hope the market rewards you for it!
Just out of curiosity, do you charge fair rates for those who go over their limits? In other words, if you are on a plan that gives 50G per month for $50, and you use an extra 20G, what would the charge be? A fair rate would be significantly under $1 per gig for overage. However, given what I've seen cell phone companies and others do, I wouldn't be surprised to see some companies charge something insane like $10 per gig.
But 3% of 2011 is over 60 years!
Ballmer's parents are going to have to get past my parents if they hope to invade my basement stronghold.
It's all about those Neilsen boxes. If one person with a box goes to watch the game at church rather than at home, that shows up in the statistics as thousands of people not watching.
What I want to know is is the NFL has any legal basis for the ban, or if they're just intimidating folks.
Sweet, maybe their God and mine will patch things up over a few drinks!
That's a good point. On the flip side, the fact that Google only got half their wishes makes it more likely they will try to actually win this auction. If they got all their wishes, it wouldn't have mattered as much to them who controlled the spectrum, but now they may try to own it simply to make it open.
Yahoo has earned a good deal of respect from coders in recent years. They do a lot of great open source work, such as the excellent YUI. Things like this have made me a fan of the company.
Their corporate philosophy as well as the practical aspect of what software they choose to run are not at all congruent with Microsoft. (FreeBSD, PHP, etc.) Microsoft is going to have to make big changes - that's how they do business - and it's going to worsen Yahoo's technologies and piss off many of their employees.
A much better idea would be for IBM to buy Yahoo. Their open source mindset would be a much better fit, and Yahoo's search and email technology would be a nice addition to IBM.
Please!
(yes, why didn't the defendant say that?)
Goodness, 28355 unsorted comments, each of which opens into a separate PDF! Someone needs to show them how to use Slashcode.
Why shouldn't U2's copyright for Joshua Tree be expired by now? Haven't they had an adequate chance to make money off of it already? Wouldn't the world be a better place if it was freely available?
Remind me again, is copyright supposed to encourage creative works, or is it supposed to create never ending money streams for work done over 20 years ago?
That's probably true for many big name artists, whose main goal when recording an album is to produce one or two radio hits. But I love listening to music as an album, and many of my favorite artists are still making albums, not just songs. I would hate to see albums die off as music goes online. Songs can really gain something by being a part of a larger work.
My post was making fun of the AC for bothering to make such a useless, uninformed, knee-jerk analysis of the advantages of PHP v. Perl. Thank you for following up with more of the same. I suppose uninformed isn't fair in your case - you're just informed enough to be puerile.