So what you're saying is, you want your customers to pay you for bandwidth they consume. OK, fair enough. You want the content provider to pay their ISP for that same chunk of bandwidth as well. Ok, that's still fair. But now you also want the content provider to pay you for that same chunk of bandwidth also? You basically want to double dip... Do you honestly expect that argument to fly here?
Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. You've already been paid once by the customer on the receiving end, and the other ISP has been paid by the content provider on the sending end. Neither end deserves any more than that, PERIOD. What the hell is the point of making a connection to the Internet, AND PAYING FOR IT, if not to use the bandwidth you paid for?
As an Internet user, I expect a network THAT I PAY FOR to not interfere with whatever business I am trying to conduct with the content provider at the other end of the line. If you want to place VoIP or similar time-sensitive protocols on a higher priority than something like P2P or web access, fine - those protocols need higher priority anyway. That does NOT give you license to throttle the living crap out of my connection just because MY bandwidth usage is primarily Youtube and P2P. I PAY for it, so G*d damn it, I AM GOING TO USE IT.
It seems to me that you have a few choices now: Raise the prices to compensate for your perceived financial shortfalls and let your competition drive you out of business, find a cheaper upstream connection and keep making money, buy more bandwidth (I'm sure there are 'bulk' discounts), stop advertising your service without clearly indicating your limits (no, fine print is NOT good enough!), or just do nothing at all.
IIRC, Firewire controllers need to be smarter than USB controllers because they might not be hooked up to a PC. For instance, your video camera might go straight to a recording deck, or some other electronic doodad.
And this is different from USB how? My Epson printer has a similar function - plug a camera (not sure what kind offhand) into it via the USB port on front and it can print out directly from it without being connected to the PC. I've seen similar functions in other printer brands as well.
For the benefit of the GP above who got the last equation wrong, and anyone else who cares to read:
The volume of a sphere: Volume = (4/3) * (pi * r^3)
Since the sphere is 10 feet in diameter, the radius is 5 feet (let's assume that's the inside radius).
5 cubed is 125, so: Volume = (4 / 3) * (3.14159265 * 125)
Which works out to about 523.598775 cubic feet. Google's calculator says that's about 14.8266662 cubic meters.
Wikipedia says that, in liquid form, sodium has a density of about 0.927 kg per cubic meter, so this volume only weighs 13.7443196 kg (30.3010379 pounds), plus the container. I'm guessing the GP thought it was 0.927 g/cc.
For the sake of units/weight comparison, pure water at 20 C weighs about 998.0 kg per cubic meter.
There's a reason people use encryption for stuff like that. Seems to me that only a moron would willingly let SSN, credit, login, bank info, or anything else remotely sensitive go over the wire in the clear like that. Sure, a case could be made for the absolute n00b who knows nothing of people who snoop on their connections, but then again, those same n00bs could be targeted regardless of the presence of any security holes on their router.
Let the crooks just try, they'll get nowhere (unless you're using Windows, then you're just asking for trouble).
It could also be because the burning program needs to know the exact capacity of the disc, which it can't exactly determine if you don't pop it in first. Sure you could set the disc size manually, but I'm guessing most people aren't aware whether or not their favorite software can do this.
Oh please! The reason we have centralized repositories is because it is convenient for both the distro makers and the end users to put everything in one place (from the package manager program's standpoint). The individual programs' authors generally have their own home pages, websites, etc scattered around the 'net, just like they always have had (aside from those programs that have been abandoned).
No, if and when the time comes that we see a large quantity of commercial games for Linux, there will already be a system in place to handle this type of content, if a special system is needed to begin with. There's no reason whatsoever that a company that releases some commercial game for Linux can't make it so that a distribution has the right to spread it - just set the license appropriately and the distro makers will handle the rest, just like they always have. Just make your game work like Quake 3 did, where you need to have the CD/DVD handy to perform the final install (except have the package manager run a script to handle copying data from the CD/DVD, so as to avoid whatever installer the game maker might otherwise use, if possible).
If worst comes to worst, there's nothing physically stopping one or another non-US distribution from just blowing off whatever ridiculous license some game might have and just start distributing the program in question anyway.
I come here because it is a free, informative way to keep up with the world, and is generally free from the usual media bias. Subscribers aside, I suspect that if a mandatory one-time fee were to be implemented, half of Slashdot's readers would jump ship in a heartbeat, precisely because of the poor editing, groupthink, trolling, and so on.
Since some phones still transmit a minimal signal even when "off", and most phones have a removable battery, I'd say the simplest solution is to yank said battery and wrap it in a piece of cloth or store it in a baggie (to guard the electrical contacts).
Commodore has been doing this since the 1970's. Each standard 1541 disk drive has a 1 MHz CPU and 2K of RAM, and communicates via a daisy-chained serial bus. Aside from the usual purpose of the drive's CPU/RAM, there have been one or two programs in the past that would use a drive as a second, general-purpose computing node, so any C64 with a few drives could be called a cluster if programmed for that purpose. There's a limit to how many drives the serial bus can handle (due to signal degradation), but if you feel like a little hacking, you could connect a few C64+drives setups together via the user port. It isn't going to solve global warming, but it would be fun at least.
By their nature of being a diode, and hence a rectifier, an LED can also be run using AC. Exactly how much current you can pass through it depends on the design of the LED, but if you put two in parallel, in opposing polarity, add a few high-value resistors to act as a voltage divider and current limiter and a small case to contain everything, you can hook them directly to 110 VAC mains and not have much 60Hz flicker (if any). It's a purely passive circuit but it would probably work well enough initially.
Inflation and other variables will balance out whatever dollar gains the farmer gets, if he's lucky. If he's unlucky, he'll lose money. I'm pretty sure this can all be traced back to the skyrocketing cost of fuel. Someone has to pay for all of the gas used to ship the food, and the electricity (again, fuel) to process it along the way and keep it cold once it reaches the store display shelf, not to mention paying the workers along the route between the farmland and my grocer's fridge. The same holds true for any product that has to be sent long distances regularly. Hell - just to move the fuel itself around requires, in essence, burning some of it (for now) to power the machines that do the work.
If I normally pay $10 for some fixed quantity of a product, I figure the farmer gets maybe $5 of that. He has a relatively fixed amount of work to be done, which means he's gotta burn a fairly predictable amount of fuel. With the rise in fuel costs lately, the store eventually decides they have to charge $20 for the same quantity of the same product to keep their net profit on that product from dropping, and might pass $7-8 of that to the farmer. Thanks to inflation, the farmer won't see any appreciable gain in his net wealth, while the oil companies continue to make insane profits, since one way or another, they're getting the bulk of the $20 I spent. THIS is how the market "adjusts". Any way you look at it, it still boils down to pure, simple GREED.
Your poor farmer is just as poor as ever no matter how high the sale price gets, if he's lucky enough to not *lose* money. Just because I pay more does not even begin to correlate with Mr. Farmer making more, nevermind doubling his income. The only way that's going to happen is if he does something insane like more than doubling what he charges for his produce, after he's already accounted for inflation. If he does that, no one in the supply chain will absorb the cost increase - they'll just pass it on to me.
My favorite example of this whole process is the cost of a particular chocolate I like. Four (4) years ago, I could buy it from the store shelf for $2 for a full pound, imported from Belgium. Eventually it was re-badged under a generic label, and the price went up to $2.72, and that's only for 14 ounces. Today, still in the generic packaging, it costs $3.94 for 14 ounces (about $4.50 a pound). I somehow doubt that making chocolate has gotten significantly more expensive over the last three years, but the cost of fuel to get it from Belgium to my desk sure as hell has. Therefore, I place the blame squarely on the oil companies (and I no longer buy that brand of chocolate, by the way).
I live here. I was born and raised here. My family has been on this soil for several generations. I can't move because it's just too damned expensive (and dangerous!), so I'm left with only my voice, my vote, and if I have to use it - my gun. With that in mind, my proposal to complete your quote:
I withdraw allegiance to the flag
of the United States of Amerika
and from the republic,
for which it stood.
One nation: Under surveillance,
with liberty and justice for none.
This is a sad state of affairs when someone like me, who was once proud of her country, can say things like this with a straight face. The "k" in "Amerika" is to signify that this country is well on the way to becoming that which we so greatly fear - an oppressive regime not unlike modern-day China.
(3) Offer something fairly slow but really cheap, say $10/mo for 256kbps. Sell it as a speed upgrade versus dialup, that won't raise your prospective customer's pre-existing bill. Hell, you could even offer "downgrades" to your existing customers so they can save money and you can save bandwidth. Quadruple your customer base and make a bundle. Combine that with the tax money we gave you in the 90's, and the billions you already make in net profits, and use that for building-out. Make everyone happy while lining your own pockets.
$10/mo for a 256 kbps connection versus say $35/mo for a 3 Mbps connection is not a very good deal in terms of units of bandwidth per dollar, but it is a wonderful deal for the average Joe Sixpack who probably is more interested in his bottom line, when flat-rate services are involved, and who probably doesn't do much beyond email and basic web browsing.
Quadrupling your customer base is probably unrealistic, but my point stands. It is a lot cheaper in bandwidth costs to serve 400,000 customers using 256kbps 100% of the time than it is to serve 100,000 customers who use 3 Mbps even half of the time, and you still make more gross income ($40 versus $36,not considering overhead to maintain customer records).
They might if you explicitly and clearly ask them the right questions.
I currently have 3/300 cablemodem service from CableOne and am about to drop them like a bad habit, as they have a particularly strict policy that - surprise! - I was not informed about when I signed up. At the time, they wanted the least amount of money up front, which was my most important factor initially. Their only real competition is AT&T, who wanted a nice chunk of change originally.
I discovered not long ago that, between the hours of 11:59am and 11:59pm, if I download more than ~1.3 GB, they hard-limit my bandwidth to either 750 kbps or 1.5 Mbps, depending on their mood it seems, until midnight. I have actually watched my speed drop to 75 kB/sec as my network meter clicked past the ~1.3 GB mark, and I've watched it jump up *sharply* from 75 kB/sec to some 360 kB/sec as midnight clicked over. More than once in both cases. I looked it up and what I'm experiencing is their official company policy on the issue.
I shopped around and decided to give AT&T another call. Turns out they are running a promotion right now where they'll waive the install and setup fees. I'm not sure I like the idea of going with AT&T, considering they've cooperated in that wiretapping incident, but they're worth another try. I spent the better part of 75 minutes talking to the rep, and throughly grilled him, just to make sure nothing of importance was overlooked. Basically I was trying to confirm what I had read.
I'm paraphrasing the conversation a little here since I never thought to actually record the call, but my questions were clear, as were the rep's responses once he understood the nature of my questions. The meat of the exchange went something like this:
Me: Ok, so just to make sure we are 100% clear on this, the 6 Mbps service you are offering me, line quality and net congestion aside, really is 6 Mbps. AT&T Rep: Yes, that's right. Me: Ok. Can you tell me exactly what the conditions are that would cause me not to get the full 6 Mbps? AT&T Rep: Network congestion, line quality. [the mundane stuff, he said] Me: Ok, but what I meant was after the line is in place and working. You know how a lot of other ISP's out there engage in what they call 'traffic shaping' or what we call 'throttling'. AT&T Rep: Yes...? Me: Well, I use bittorrent. I download music, software, I use YouTube. I am not a light user - I use what I pay for. AT&T Rep: [said something in general agreement] Me: You and I both know those things add up to a lot of bandwidth really fast. AT&T Rep: Yeah, they certainly do. Me: What I want to know is, what else would have an effect on my speed? AT&T Rep: [started to explain the mundane speed-killing stuff again] Me: [Interrupting] Well, what what I mean is, aside from network congestion, line noise and whatever. Can you tell me exactly what your conditions are? What exactly is AT&T's policy on throttling? AT&T Rep: I see what you're getting at... good question, let me ask my floor manager.
[ A few minutes pass while I wait on hold. ] AT&T Rep: My manager says that you can download as much as you like. She said we don't throttle your traffic. Me: Ok, so just to be crystal clear on this, you are telling me this is an unlimited service? AT&T Rep: Yes, that's correct.
$35/mo for 3 Mbps that I was lucky to get half of thanks to their throttling, or $36/mo for 6 Mbps unlimited from a questionable company. Honestly, it was a tough choice.
The rep offered a number of rebates as well, with service to be connected in about a week from now. That was enough to tip the scales in their favor. Given my usage pattern, I estimate that this change will equate to about 2.5 to 3 times the actual bandwidth I get from CableOne. Hell, I even sprang for a ~$24/m
Just a nit pick - CD's are indeed supposed to bit-for-bit identical data each time they are used. Since they don't always do so, they have an error correction mechanism that goes on underneath the CDDA file itself. Graceful degradation != no error correction.
We're also laughing because, professional pirate organizations in China et.al aside, the majority of casual pirates do what they do because they can't pay for the media they consume or they (like me) just don't believe it is worth the money asked, and they do this in a non-commercial capacity. The big corps like SonyBMG can afford to pay for what they use, and their use is purely commercial. As far as I have observed, this pattern has not changed. So yes, we've been consistent.
In other words, if they're going to bitch at us consumers/customers for this kind of behaviour, they sure as hell better not even think of engaging in the same behaviour. As far I'm concerned, the moment they do, that gives us every right to continue what we do.
Going along with what the previous poster said about junk pages (I rarely have those problems anymore), I have to say something: Google's search results have declined in recent years.
When I search for something, I expect my search terms to be honored. If I search for a few words, I expect all of those words (or reasonable variants of them) to appear in each item returned in the search results. I realize sites update their material frequently, but I'm talking about the summaries in the results page. Sometimes I can force it by repeating the missing word a few times, e.g search for: word1 word2 missing missing missing .
Google does not allow you to search for an exact arbitary string of characters other than regexp syntax (which makes no sense to the majority of people, myself included). If, for example, I search for "( Score: 5", you'd think the first results page would be plastered with slashdot posts. Nope. There's one, archived on someone else's site, at the bottom, and it still doesn't match the character-for-character string I searched for. Add slashdot after and outside the previously mentioned quoted string, and sure enough Slashdot posts start showing up - but still none of the results matches my exact search string (I asked for spaces around the score for a reason!).
These things really do need fixed; Google is not that fun to use when you're searching for a specific, often cryptic, error message for example.
Who's to say that one couldn't design a large version of this chip (or something remotely similar), and implant it just under the skin? You'd want to put it somewhere on/in the patient's upper back, neck, just under the scalp, or anywhere else that is naturally warm and at the same time, usually exposed to the ambient air. Seems to me that would be the easiest way to get a fairly large gradient, especially on a cool day.
The same should hold true for the lower legs - the body surely has to expend at least some energy keeping the legs warm in the face of cool ambient air, and skirts and trousers aren't exactly the best insulators in the world.
The article doesn't make it clear just how much power this chip can actually generate with a given temperature gradient and surface area, but it begs the question: Could this chip or some variant of it be used to power a prostetic limb, if you were to harness and store the power it generates (say with a supercapacitor), on a 24/7/365 basis? I'm thinking of how a plug-in hybrid car works - charge it while you sleep, use that stored power while you're awake.
Does the average person move around too much during their waking hours to let this work?
You know you're a geek when a person uses pseudocode to make a joke and you actually 'get it', but you know that you're dealing with a bunch of geeks when several others actually pick that code apart and go so far as to rewrite it! Gotta love Slashdot.:-)
How about: "You put your content on a public, open system designed to give everyone access to it. I am not, cannot be, and WILL NOT be forced to download something I don't want from your website, and I sure as hell WILL NOT let you forceably retreive something from my machine. If you don't want me seeing what you've put online, then put it behind an account/password mechanism, encrypt it, hide it, whatever. PERIOD."
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Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. You've already been paid once by the customer on the receiving end, and the other ISP has been paid by the content provider on the sending end. Neither end deserves any more than that, PERIOD. What the hell is the point of making a connection to the Internet, AND PAYING FOR IT, if not to use the bandwidth you paid for?
As an Internet user, I expect a network THAT I PAY FOR to not interfere with whatever business I am trying to conduct with the content provider at the other end of the line. If you want to place VoIP or similar time-sensitive protocols on a higher priority than something like P2P or web access, fine - those protocols need higher priority anyway. That does NOT give you license to throttle the living crap out of my connection just because MY bandwidth usage is primarily Youtube and P2P. I PAY for it, so G*d damn it, I AM GOING TO USE IT.
It seems to me that you have a few choices now: Raise the prices to compensate for your perceived financial shortfalls and let your competition drive you out of business, find a cheaper upstream connection and keep making money, buy more bandwidth (I'm sure there are 'bulk' discounts), stop advertising your service without clearly indicating your limits (no, fine print is NOT good enough!), or just do nothing at all.
And this is different from USB how? My Epson printer has a similar function - plug a camera (not sure what kind offhand) into it via the USB port on front and it can print out directly from it without being connected to the PC. I've seen similar functions in other printer brands as well.
The volume of a sphere: Volume = (4/3) * (pi * r^3)
Since the sphere is 10 feet in diameter, the radius is 5 feet (let's assume that's the inside radius).
5 cubed is 125, so: Volume = (4 / 3) * (3.14159265 * 125)
Which works out to about 523.598775 cubic feet. Google's calculator says that's about 14.8266662 cubic meters.
Wikipedia says that, in liquid form, sodium has a density of about 0.927 kg per cubic meter, so this volume only weighs 13.7443196 kg (30.3010379 pounds), plus the container. I'm guessing the GP thought it was 0.927 g/cc.
For the sake of units/weight comparison, pure water at 20 C weighs about 998.0 kg per cubic meter.
"Earth women who experience sexual ecstasy with mechanical assistance always tend to feel guilty!"
Zero words:^W^W
Let the crooks just try, they'll get nowhere (unless you're using Windows, then you're just asking for trouble).
Should I be scared that I can actually read that? *shakes head in disgust*
It could also be because the burning program needs to know the exact capacity of the disc, which it can't exactly determine if you don't pop it in first. Sure you could set the disc size manually, but I'm guessing most people aren't aware whether or not their favorite software can do this.
No, if and when the time comes that we see a large quantity of commercial games for Linux, there will already be a system in place to handle this type of content, if a special system is needed to begin with. There's no reason whatsoever that a company that releases some commercial game for Linux can't make it so that a distribution has the right to spread it - just set the license appropriately and the distro makers will handle the rest, just like they always have. Just make your game work like Quake 3 did, where you need to have the CD/DVD handy to perform the final install (except have the package manager run a script to handle copying data from the CD/DVD, so as to avoid whatever installer the game maker might otherwise use, if possible).
If worst comes to worst, there's nothing physically stopping one or another non-US distribution from just blowing off whatever ridiculous license some game might have and just start distributing the program in question anyway.
I come here because it is a free, informative way to keep up with the world, and is generally free from the usual media bias. Subscribers aside, I suspect that if a mandatory one-time fee were to be implemented, half of Slashdot's readers would jump ship in a heartbeat, precisely because of the poor editing, groupthink, trolling, and so on.
Since some phones still transmit a minimal signal even when "off", and most phones have a removable battery, I'd say the simplest solution is to yank said battery and wrap it in a piece of cloth or store it in a baggie (to guard the electrical contacts).
er, I should qualify that by saying that the "1970's" part refers to PET machines and 8050 drives, which had a similar amount of raw CPU power.
Commodore has been doing this since the 1970's. Each standard 1541 disk drive has a 1 MHz CPU and 2K of RAM, and communicates via a daisy-chained serial bus. Aside from the usual purpose of the drive's CPU/RAM, there have been one or two programs in the past that would use a drive as a second, general-purpose computing node, so any C64 with a few drives could be called a cluster if programmed for that purpose. There's a limit to how many drives the serial bus can handle (due to signal degradation), but if you feel like a little hacking, you could connect a few C64+drives setups together via the user port. It isn't going to solve global warming, but it would be fun at least.
By their nature of being a diode, and hence a rectifier, an LED can also be run using AC. Exactly how much current you can pass through it depends on the design of the LED, but if you put two in parallel, in opposing polarity, add a few high-value resistors to act as a voltage divider and current limiter and a small case to contain everything, you can hook them directly to 110 VAC mains and not have much 60Hz flicker (if any). It's a purely passive circuit but it would probably work well enough initially.
Inflation and other variables will balance out whatever dollar gains the farmer gets, if he's lucky. If he's unlucky, he'll lose money. I'm pretty sure this can all be traced back to the skyrocketing cost of fuel. Someone has to pay for all of the gas used to ship the food, and the electricity (again, fuel) to process it along the way and keep it cold once it reaches the store display shelf, not to mention paying the workers along the route between the farmland and my grocer's fridge. The same holds true for any product that has to be sent long distances regularly. Hell - just to move the fuel itself around requires, in essence, burning some of it (for now) to power the machines that do the work.
If I normally pay $10 for some fixed quantity of a product, I figure the farmer gets maybe $5 of that. He has a relatively fixed amount of work to be done, which means he's gotta burn a fairly predictable amount of fuel. With the rise in fuel costs lately, the store eventually decides they have to charge $20 for the same quantity of the same product to keep their net profit on that product from dropping, and might pass $7-8 of that to the farmer. Thanks to inflation, the farmer won't see any appreciable gain in his net wealth, while the oil companies continue to make insane profits, since one way or another, they're getting the bulk of the $20 I spent. THIS is how the market "adjusts". Any way you look at it, it still boils down to pure, simple GREED.
Your poor farmer is just as poor as ever no matter how high the sale price gets, if he's lucky enough to not *lose* money. Just because I pay more does not even begin to correlate with Mr. Farmer making more, nevermind doubling his income. The only way that's going to happen is if he does something insane like more than doubling what he charges for his produce, after he's already accounted for inflation. If he does that, no one in the supply chain will absorb the cost increase - they'll just pass it on to me.
My favorite example of this whole process is the cost of a particular chocolate I like. Four (4) years ago, I could buy it from the store shelf for $2 for a full pound, imported from Belgium. Eventually it was re-badged under a generic label, and the price went up to $2.72, and that's only for 14 ounces. Today, still in the generic packaging, it costs $3.94 for 14 ounces (about $4.50 a pound). I somehow doubt that making chocolate has gotten significantly more expensive over the last three years, but the cost of fuel to get it from Belgium to my desk sure as hell has. Therefore, I place the blame squarely on the oil companies (and I no longer buy that brand of chocolate, by the way).
I withdraw allegiance to the flag
of the United States of Amerika
and from the republic,
for which it stood.
One nation: Under surveillance,
with liberty and justice for none.
This is a sad state of affairs when someone like me, who was once proud of her country, can say things like this with a straight face. The "k" in "Amerika" is to signify that this country is well on the way to becoming that which we so greatly fear - an oppressive regime not unlike modern-day China.
(3) Offer something fairly slow but really cheap, say $10/mo for 256kbps. Sell it as a speed upgrade versus dialup, that won't raise your prospective customer's pre-existing bill. Hell, you could even offer "downgrades" to your existing customers so they can save money and you can save bandwidth. Quadruple your customer base and make a bundle. Combine that with the tax money we gave you in the 90's, and the billions you already make in net profits, and use that for building-out. Make everyone happy while lining your own pockets.
$10/mo for a 256 kbps connection versus say $35/mo for a 3 Mbps connection is not a very good deal in terms of units of bandwidth per dollar, but it is a wonderful deal for the average Joe Sixpack who probably is more interested in his bottom line, when flat-rate services are involved, and who probably doesn't do much beyond email and basic web browsing.
Quadrupling your customer base is probably unrealistic, but my point stands. It is a lot cheaper in bandwidth costs to serve 400,000 customers using 256kbps 100% of the time than it is to serve 100,000 customers who use 3 Mbps even half of the time, and you still make more gross income ($40 versus $36 ,not considering overhead to maintain customer records).
I currently have 3/300 cablemodem service from CableOne and am about to drop them like a bad habit, as they have a particularly strict policy that - surprise! - I was not informed about when I signed up. At the time, they wanted the least amount of money up front, which was my most important factor initially. Their only real competition is AT&T, who wanted a nice chunk of change originally.
I discovered not long ago that, between the hours of 11:59am and 11:59pm, if I download more than ~1.3 GB, they hard-limit my bandwidth to either 750 kbps or 1.5 Mbps, depending on their mood it seems, until midnight. I have actually watched my speed drop to 75 kB/sec as my network meter clicked past the ~1.3 GB mark, and I've watched it jump up *sharply* from 75 kB/sec to some 360 kB/sec as midnight clicked over. More than once in both cases. I looked it up and what I'm experiencing is their official company policy on the issue.
I shopped around and decided to give AT&T another call. Turns out they are running a promotion right now where they'll waive the install and setup fees. I'm not sure I like the idea of going with AT&T, considering they've cooperated in that wiretapping incident, but they're worth another try. I spent the better part of 75 minutes talking to the rep, and throughly grilled him, just to make sure nothing of importance was overlooked. Basically I was trying to confirm what I had read.
I'm paraphrasing the conversation a little here since I never thought to actually record the call, but my questions were clear, as were the rep's responses once he understood the nature of my questions. The meat of the exchange went something like this:
Me: Ok, so just to make sure we are 100% clear on this, the 6 Mbps service you are offering me, line quality and net congestion aside, really is 6 Mbps.
AT&T Rep: Yes, that's right.
Me: Ok. Can you tell me exactly what the conditions are that would cause me not to get the full 6 Mbps?
AT&T Rep: Network congestion, line quality. [the mundane stuff, he said]
Me: Ok, but what I meant was after the line is in place and working. You know how a lot of other ISP's out there engage in what they call 'traffic shaping' or what we call 'throttling'.
AT&T Rep: Yes...?
Me: Well, I use bittorrent. I download music, software, I use YouTube. I am not a light user - I use what I pay for.
AT&T Rep: [said something in general agreement]
Me: You and I both know those things add up to a lot of bandwidth really fast.
AT&T Rep: Yeah, they certainly do.
Me: What I want to know is, what else would have an effect on my speed?
AT&T Rep: [started to explain the mundane speed-killing stuff again]
Me: [Interrupting] Well, what what I mean is, aside from network congestion, line noise and whatever. Can you tell me exactly what your conditions are? What exactly is AT&T's policy on throttling?
AT&T Rep: I see what you're getting at... good question, let me ask my floor manager.
[ A few minutes pass while I wait on hold. ]
AT&T Rep: My manager says that you can download as much as you like. She said we don't throttle your traffic.
Me: Ok, so just to be crystal clear on this, you are telling me this is an unlimited service?
AT&T Rep: Yes, that's correct.
$35/mo for 3 Mbps that I was lucky to get half of thanks to their throttling, or $36/mo for 6 Mbps unlimited from a questionable company. Honestly, it was a tough choice.
The rep offered a number of rebates as well, with service to be connected in about a week from now. That was enough to tip the scales in their favor. Given my usage pattern, I estimate that this change will equate to about 2.5 to 3 times the actual bandwidth I get from CableOne. Hell, I even sprang for a ~$24/m
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Interleaved_Reed-Solomon_Coding
We're also laughing because, professional pirate organizations in China et.al aside, the majority of casual pirates do what they do because they can't pay for the media they consume or they (like me) just don't believe it is worth the money asked, and they do this in a non-commercial capacity. The big corps like SonyBMG can afford to pay for what they use, and their use is purely commercial. As far as I have observed, this pattern has not changed. So yes, we've been consistent.
In other words, if they're going to bitch at us consumers/customers for this kind of behaviour, they sure as hell better not even think of engaging in the same behaviour. As far I'm concerned, the moment they do, that gives us every right to continue what we do.
So I second the previous posts: Ha, ha!
- When I search for something, I expect my search terms to be honored. If I search for a few words, I expect all of those words (or reasonable variants of them) to appear in each item returned in the search results. I realize sites update their material frequently, but I'm talking about the summaries in the results page. Sometimes I can force it by repeating the missing word a few times, e.g search for: word1 word2 missing missing missing .
- Google does not allow you to search for an exact arbitary string of characters other than regexp syntax (which makes no sense to the majority of people, myself included). If, for example, I search for "( Score: 5", you'd think the first results page would be plastered with slashdot posts. Nope. There's one, archived on someone else's site, at the bottom, and it still doesn't match the character-for-character string I searched for. Add slashdot after and outside the previously mentioned quoted string, and sure enough Slashdot posts start showing up - but still none of the results matches my exact search string (I asked for spaces around the score for a reason!).
These things really do need fixed; Google is not that fun to use when you're searching for a specific, often cryptic, error message for example.The same should hold true for the lower legs - the body surely has to expend at least some energy keeping the legs warm in the face of cool ambient air, and skirts and trousers aren't exactly the best insulators in the world.
The article doesn't make it clear just how much power this chip can actually generate with a given temperature gradient and surface area, but it begs the question: Could this chip or some variant of it be used to power a prostetic limb, if you were to harness and store the power it generates (say with a supercapacitor), on a 24/7/365 basis? I'm thinking of how a plug-in hybrid car works - charge it while you sleep, use that stored power while you're awake.
Does the average person move around too much during their waking hours to let this work?
You know you're a geek when a person uses pseudocode to make a joke and you actually 'get it', but you know that you're dealing with a bunch of geeks when several others actually pick that code apart and go so far as to rewrite it! Gotta love Slashdot. :-)
How about: "You put your content on a public, open system designed to give everyone access to it. I am not, cannot be, and WILL NOT be forced to download something I don't want from your website, and I sure as hell WILL NOT let you forceably retreive something from my machine. If you don't want me seeing what you've put online, then put it behind an account/password mechanism, encrypt it, hide it, whatever. PERIOD."