ISP To FCC: Using The Internet Is Like Eating Oreos (consumerist.com) 229
New submitter Rick Schumann shares with us a report highlighting an analogy presented by an ISP that relates Double Stuf Oreos to the internet. Specifically, that Double Stuf Oreos cost more than regular Oreos, and therefore you should pay more for internet: The Consumerist reports: "Ars Technica first spotted the crumbly filing, from small (and much-loathed) provider Mediacom. Mediacom's comment is in response to the same proceeding that Netflix commented on earlier this month. However, while Netflix actually addressed data and the ways in which their customers use it, Mediacom went for the more metaphor-driven approach. The letter literally starts out under the header, 'You Have to Pay Extra For Double-Stuffed,' and posits that you, the consumer, are out for a walk with $2 in your pocket when you suddenly develop a ferocious craving for Oreo cookies." Of course their analogy is highly questionable, since transmitting data over a network doesn't actually consume anything, now does it? You eat the cookie, the cookie is gone, but you transmit data over a network, the network is still there and can transmit data endlessly. Mediacom's assertion that the Internet is like a cookie you eat, is like saying copying a file on your computer somehow diminishes or degrades the original file, which of course is ridiculous.
You wouldn't download an Oreo (Score:2, Funny)
Would you?
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If i could download Oreo's, that would mean I could download pretty much anything else I wanted, too? Hello Replicator!
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If i could download Oreo's, that would mean I could download pretty much anything else I wanted, too? Hello Replicator!
I love Oreos, but I stopped eating them when I realized that the delicious white filling was whipped lard and sugar. It says so right on the labels, and when I read that I went "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT???"
I might have one now and then, but as I chew it I can't help but think, "Lard mixed with sugar....lard mixed with sugar..." Ewww. Could there be a less healthy "food" to voluntarily ingest? They make pork rinds look positively beneficial.
But still, damn if they don't taste good....
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I love Oreos, but I stopped eating them when I realized that the delicious white filling was whipped lard and sugar.
Just out of curiosity, which health food did you think composed the filling?
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To be honest, I am surprised it is actually lard. I always thought it was partially hydrogenated soy or cottonseed oil.
As for what I would personally use? Assuming I did not need a shelf life long enough to be able to send the cookies on a 5000 year supply mission to proxima centaur I (like with twinkies) I would use a protein based filling (aka gelatin) whipped with corn syrup and glycerol, with just a touch of unadulterated veggie oil. I would use just enough water in the whipping process to floccuate t
Re:You wouldn't download an Oreo (Score:5, Funny)
>the filling would be less "sweet white paste" and more "marshmallow creme" in consistency though. probably flavor as well.
Couldn't you just add some sweetened lard to firm it up?
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cocoa butter would be a better choice, but might affect flavor.
cocoanut oil is solid at room temp, white, and mostly flavorless. less healthy than cocoa butter though.
and yes, i did see that you were trying to be funny.
i just happen to feel that if you call it creme filling, it should be creamy. not a close competitor of fondant.
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Just create a new flavor of Oreos, the "Coconut Oreo", which is even three times healthier than the original ones.
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Given what we know now, the lard was a good choice. If anything there is a problem, it's the sugar.
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Just out of curiosity, which health food did you think composed the filling?
I thought it was unicorn farts mixed with magic pixie dust, like the stuff inside Twinkies or a Ho-Ho. Boy, was I ever wrong.
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'I love Oreos, but I stopped eating them when I realized that the delicious white filling was whipped lard and sugar. It says so right on the labels'
This comment takes the biscuit!
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'I love Oreos, but I stopped eating them when I realized that the delicious white filling was whipped lard and sugar. It says so right on the labels'
This comment takes the biscuit!
As long as the biscuit is filled with some sweet, sweet lard. MmmmmMmmmmmm.....
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I stopped eating them when I realized that the delicious white filling was whipped lard and sugar.
Not anymore: "In the early 1990s, health concerns prompted Nabisco to replace the lard in the filling with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo
(Which means they're probably not as tasty as you remember them. Lard is delicious!)
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Ironically, they potentially made it more unhealthy with the switch, as partially hydrogenated oils will contain trans fats. Due to an intentional loophole, they can get away with labeling a food with trans fat content below some threshold as containing 0g trans fat, to hide that fact.
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Vindication! i was right!
they could use cocoanut oil instead though. it is healthier for you than hydrogenated soy and cottonseed oils. (but not as cheap.)
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... (Which means they're probably not as tasty as you remember them. Lard is delicious!)
Lard is also more healthy than hydrogenated vegetable oil. I'd take lard and sugar over glycerol and HFCS any day.
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You know why healthy food is "healthy"? Because we have the free choice of what food we eat. And what do we eat, given the choice? Well, of course food that is best tasting. What is best tasting? Fat and sugar (or, more specifically, carbon hydrates). Why? Because they bring along a load of energy. And why is that something that we consider "tasty"? Because those ancestors that ate a lot of that stuff survived because back then food wasn't easy to get and plentiful, and only those survived that managed to e
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Why would a berry lie?
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I would if I could download milk along with it.
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You transmit data over a network, the time it spend transmitting, the network could have been transmitting someone else's data. Thats opportunity cost.
The network costs a fortune so that it can transfer data. Thats capital costs.
The network consum
Re: You wouldn't download an Oreo (Score:5, Insightful)
Standard Oreo cookies on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R... [slashdot.org]">$0.19/oz
Oreo Double Stuf cookies on Amazon: $0.17/oz [amazon.com]
Double Stuf Oreos don't cost more, so the idiot metaphor isn't even accurate if it did make sense, which it doesn't. Why? The filling is whipped vegetable oil and sugar, which is cheaper than cookie, but takes more volume.
The guy who made this comparison is also an idiot because when you purchase internet service, you pay whether you use it or not. I don't see them offering rebates for under-usage, why do they think it's cool to charge my parents who just do email and facebook the same amount as someone who hits the cap every month?
These fucker ISPs don't get it both ways. Either charge flat fees and stop over subscribing the shit out of the network, or charge usage fees and watch your profits disappear.
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The current "Double Stuft" Oreos are merely the original amount of filling re-packaged. Back when Double Stuft was actually double, they did cost a little more, but today, they're nothing more than the original Oreo for the sucker with a short memory. Sort of like the size of candy bars and soup cans. So these asshats couldn't have picked a worse metaphor this side of "a series of tubes."
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You transmit data over a network, the time it spend transmitting, the network could have been transmitting someone else's data. Thats opportunity cost.
Ah, I see. So it doesn't matter if, say, I decide to download a large file at 3:00am on a Sunday night, when (theoretically, for purposes of this discussion) network usage is at a low point, I'm still edging out some theoretical traffic.
Hey, wait, I have a solution! How about you charge for the actual bandwidth in megabits per second, instead of for some arbitrary number of gigabytes per month? Then there's a hard mathematical limit to how much you can download in a month instead of distracting customers w
You can buy it that way (T3), makes you unhappy (Score:5, Insightful)
> Hey, wait, I have a solution! How about you charge for the actual bandwidth in megabits per second, instead of for some arbitrary number of gigabytes per month? ... Then everybody's happy, right?
You CAN buy bandwidth that way. I do. It's exactly the opposite of what you want for your home internet connection. Those connections are called T1, T3, DS1, DS3, and you may remember ISDN. That's exactly how to make you UNhappy.
At home, you want to load a Slashdot, have it load in less than a second, then spend 300 seconds reading it. Then you go get a snack for another 300 seconds. You do that for a few hours, then go to bed. The next day, you go to work, then come home and use the internet. You'll use it for a few seconds at a time, for a couple of hours. You do NOT want to sit there and wait for stuff to load - you want the connection to be much, much faster than what you're actually using each hour.
You want a very fast connection, maybe 20-100 Mbps, but you're only downloading 1GB per day, which means you're actually using the connection 0.1% of the time. 99.9% of the time, you're not actually using it. Even you you did 300 GB / month, that 100 Mbps connection would sit idle 99% of the time.
It's good that you don't actually want to use it 99% of the time because a full-transit connection from your home through to the internet costs about $10-$25 per mbps. A full transit 100 Mbps line, about $1,200 / month, depending on location. The great news is, because you're using it less than 1% of the time, you can SHARE it with your neighbors and split the cost. If you each use it 1% of the time or so, 30 neighbors can all share that $1,200/month bill, paying $40 each. THAT is what you want for home internet service.
That's the basic reason why your cable modem at 35 Mbps is SO much cheaper than the 35 Mbps serving your office. Your office likely doesn't share the bandwidth with other companies, and doesn't share the cost. They get the full 35 Mbps 24/7 and pay the full $500 / month.
Sharing a fast connection is awesome, you save tons of money, but one problem arises. One of your neighbors sets up a server and hosts web sites for three or four of his friends, then another neighbor leaves Netflix streaming 24/7 in two different rooms, when he's not even home. That's quite wasteful, but what does he care, he's only paying a tiny fraction of the cost. You get less of the shared bandwidth because dumbass is streaming HD video to an empty living room.
There is no perfect solution to that, but about the best solution we have are caps. Unfortunately ISPs haven't been clear about what the caps are for different pricing tiers. Most consumers probably don't know how many GBs they want, so that's part of the problem. I think the best might be if the major ISPs offered three plans:
Light use economy plan.
Standard plan - perfect for daily browsing with some Youtube.
Power user / HD video plan - for people who watch a lot of Netflix.
Each plan should a little bit higher usage allowance than it's name suggests, so almost everyone people who doesn't use IP video or torrent regularly will be happy with the medium sized plan. That way everyone is paying for their fair share of the shared connection, and everyone is getting what they pay for. That would make customers happy.
Selling you 45 Mbps of dedicated, guaranteed bandwidth on a T3 line for $800 would make CenturyLink happy, but it wouldn't make you very happy. You'd rather share the cost, and the capacity.
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But since they have 100 people sharing that 100Mbps line, they should be charging $1,200/100 = $1.20.
Note that a T is going to include better than fine nines uptime in the SLA. A careful reading of the TOS in residential cable internet shows no uptime guarantees.
Re: You can buy it that way (T3), makes you unhapp (Score:2)
Urm. $1200/100=$12. Add the extra capital of connecting to multiple locations, and admin overheads and stuff, and $20-30 is quite reasinable. (Those pesky damned off-by-1 errors when you're working log10...)
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Granted, off by one. Too bad they charge $75-100.
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Usage limits are completely ridiculous, and are definitely not what people actually want. Everyone buys a usage limit that exceeds their actual usage, "to be on the safe side", and the ISPs are raking in the cash. You really should enter the 21st century and abolish usage limits.
Right now, I'm on DSL line provided to me by my employer, which is nominally 30/3, guaranteed at least 25/2. No ifs or buts, that is the absolute minimum speed my line will run at. If I wanted to pay for a faster connection, I can g
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...
The network consumes land, power, leased lines, leased fiber that the power company put up, equipment maintenance, etc etc. Thats operating cost.
Double stuffed Oreo cookies should cost more than Oreo cookies, and faster, better networks should cost more than shitty ones.
Exactly.
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I pull up a chair... (Score:3)
I also make popcorn, and get ready to watch the (rightfully earned) invective fly :)
cookie (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, I get double-stuf Oreos for the same price (and weight) as the regular Oreos. No doubt there are less cookies per bag, but the bag weighs the same and costs the same. And when it's on sale, it's under $2 per bag.
Hell, when it goes on sale, I should be able to buy a ton of cookies and consume them when I need to. So if they want to use this analogy, I should be
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Actually, they sell you the promise of delivering 20 boxes of cookies a day, but you won't get more than 60 boxes a month.
More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't more like if the grocery store sells you a plan that lets you consume up to 10 cookies a day. Then after you've eaten 30 cookies over a week's time they say "Whoa, no more cookies for you, you've eaten up your quota for the month" - you'll have to pay us more money if you want to eat more, or sign up for our 20 cookie a day plan where you can eat 50 cookies before we cut you off.
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Re:More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't more like if the grocery store sells you a plan that lets you consume up to 10 cookies a day. Then after you've eaten 30 cookies over a week's time they say "Whoa, no more cookies for you, you've eaten up your quota for the month" - you'll have to pay us more money if you want to eat more, or sign up for our 20 cookie a day plan where you can eat 50 cookies before we cut you off.
I forgot to add the best part:
Then the grocery store goes to Oreo and says 'Hey, your unlimited cookie plans are becoming very popular with our customers who are paying us to distribute the cookies. In fact, many of our customers are buying our service just because of your cookie plans. So, we think *you* ought to be paying us too. Otherwise we might start dropping cookies while distributing and your customers are going to blame you for the poor quality cookies. We don't care that you deliver the cookies to our loading dock by the truck-load and all we have to do is unpack them and hand them out, or that our customers are already paying us for this service, you better pay us too or suffer the consequences - we'll make your cookies so bad that your customers will come to us for our inferior cookies.
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So, we think *you* ought to be paying us too.
They already do that. It's called shelf space.
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Netflix should fight back hard. They have variable bit rate streams that adapt to network conditions already, so why not add a little pop-up message that says "Comcast network congested". Make it clear where the problem is.
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And they will only have one guy handing out cookies. This works ok as long as you're the only one wanting cookies. It works decently when there's like a dozen people. But they won't hire more just 'cause they now have hundreds of hungry people wanting cookies. So you better eat your cookie slowly, it's gonna be a while 'til you get the next one.
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Data caps are difficult and I don't think all of them can be seen as equal. And they definitely can't be expressed well in terms of cookies.
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The whole idea that the internet is anything what so ever like a consumable is stupid ie, if I consume some of the internet that does not mean some of it is now missing, some one else can come right after me and consume that same internet and I am not shitting out the cookie so that can eat it after I eat it. When it comes to the internet and cookies it is more like the oven that while it is capable of producing a infinite number of cookies it can not produce them all at once. So if rent part of that oven a
Analogy fails on all levels...'cuz oreos are oreos (Score:2)
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which costs more? a pound of regular oreos or a pound of double stuff oreos?
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Re: Analogy fails on all levels...'cuz oreos are o (Score:2)
Amazon shows standard oreos at $0.19/oz, and $0.17/oz for Double Stuf Oreos.
The shitty metaphor isn't even true, and is still shitty.
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So the analogy is apt, considering that the "maintenance" on the cables is dwarfed by the overhead for bureaucracy, bookkeeping, advertising, management and all the other crap you don't give a shit about.
And ISPs are like cookie monsters (Score:3)
They want MORE money and MORE and MORE and MORE and never want to stop eating those tasty green dollar bills!
I have this 'ISP' (Score:5, Informative)
Because only other alternative is 1.5mbps DSL. That's what Mediacom preys on: cities that have 0 choice.
Moreover, they are fighting heavily for things to stay that way
Mediacom readies lawsuit against Iowa City
http://www.press-citizen.com/s... [press-citizen.com]
Questionable analogy and questionable analysis. (Score:3)
The cookie analogy fails, on several levels, but so do the criticisms.
".. since transmitting data over a network doesn't actually consume anything," This is fallacious, as capacity is consumed and is a limited capacity. Take every criticism the article levels and apply it to seats on an airplane, which is a far better proxy for explaining the limits of network capacity, and you can see they're just as flawed as the original argument.
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Nope. Capacity is used, if capacity was consumed that capacity would no longer be there when usage drops until physically replaced. It should be obvious that this isn't the case.
You can argue that bandwidth is a finite resource ( since it is ), but with proper** QoS routing and shaping this is less of an issue than the big ISPs want you to think.
The only reason that ISPs are whining right now is that they are severely oversold on their capacity, and they don't want to upgrade the capacity they have. The dat
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So, if I understand you correctly, if I download 1GB, then for the rest of that month, the routers can only handle their normal traffic minus 1GB? And so on for every user?
No, your explanation is flawed because it assumes that, at a given time, one individual can consume all the bandwidth, locking out other users. In reality, of course, what happens is that everyone's Internet service slows down so that the sum total matches the capa
Bandwidth caps are BULLSHIT (Score:2)
Bandwidth caps are BULLSHIT.
On CenturyLink, if you're under 7mbps speed, you get a 300GB cap. Over 7mbps, you get a 600GB cap. Luckily, these are higher than 6 months ago when I signed up, which was at 150GB and 300GB respectively. However, if you're on a 1gbps line, you're uncapped. This is completely arbitrary. So, if 100 users at 5mbps saturated their link non-stop, they would consume 500mbps, and hit their cap pretty damn quick. Whereas a single 1gbps user using only 50% of their capacity can do so endl
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So, TLDR: Data caps are ridiculous if we are paying for dedicated bandwidth. I don't think most of us are, we just assumed we are. I think we would be shocked at what the price would be for dedicated bandwidth.
Right now, I can order a 300/60 line for ~$52/month, with dedicated bandwidth, no data cap. Actual proper dedicated bandwidth, minimum speed 300/60 guaranteed.
Some places can already get 500Mbit, and 1Gbit support is being rolled out over the next couple of years. Sometimes it's just hella nice living in a small country with relatively compact infrastructure.
maybe Google & city & state govts (Score:2)
yes it is! (Score:2)
Using the Internet is like eating Oreos: fattening, unhealthy, and you end up with a sugar high followed by depression.
How to describe this to the non-technical... (Score:5, Insightful)
You pay, say, $100 per month for an HD cable package with premium channels. You're allowed to watch all the TV you want on the channels you pay for. This is a concept that everyone understands.
But now imagine the cable company wants to cap the number of hours you can watch TV per month. You still pay the same $100 base price, but if you want to watch more than 30 hours per month, you'll need to pay another $10 for every block of 10 hours you want to watch above the base amount. The cable company argues that by watching more TV, you're somehow incurring costs that your $100/month doesn't already cover.
The notion is ridiculous to anyone who has ever paid for cable before, and is a perfect example of what they're trying to do to the internet.
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But now imagine the cable company wants to cap the number of hours you can watch TV per month. You still pay the same $100 base price, but if you want to watch more than 30 hours per month, you'll need to pay another $10 for every block of 10 hours you want to watch above the base amount.
And since the cable company is delivering TV digitally over the exact same wire using the exact same hardware, this isn't a metaphor. This is a completely literal description of what they're trying to get away with.
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To be fair, it costs them the same in terms of infrastructure if you watch 1 hour of TV a month or 700 hours. With internet service, there is additional cost the more people use it.
And to be completely fair, caps are still bullshit. The main cost is having enough infrastructure to cope with peak times. Everyone gets home and turns on Netflix or downloads patches for their games around the same time. The actual external bandwidth costs are mostly flat, in that they just pay for a peering arrangement and get
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And that proves you have no clue how cable modems works. Scaling bandwidth is a trade off between number of channels being used for internet (gear dependent) and how small you break down each zone. Yes the bandwidth is fixed as the cable modem standard only supports X - Y number of channels and thus bandwidth but it's a pretty simple engineering process to break things into increasingly smaller units to get more aggregate bandwidth in the last mile. It's not like a town has a limit to how much bandwidth
But how (Score:3)
But how do the Oreos fit through the tubes??
Mediacom Are Full of Shit (Score:2)
To illustrate this, here's a tray of regular Oreos(TM) [raleys.com], and here's a similarly sized tray of double-stuf(TM) Oreos(TM) [raleys.com]. And if you were to consider the per-cookie cost, as Mediacom is clearly hoping you will, then yes, double-stuf(TM) Oreos(TM) cost more than regular Oreos(TM).
WRONG (Score:2)
Coincidence? Psychic premonition? (Score:2)
Since I ran out of Kit Kat and Ferrero Rochers I actually was eating an Oreo as I scrolled down to this article .. I had to do a double take, I couldn't believe it.
I suppose from your perspective it's a coincidence but from mine it makes me wonder what forces are out there directing my destiny. Maybe the universe is a crazy simulation my rival or even worse myself set up out of boriedom. No, it can't be .. I doubt I would be this bad to myself. Though you never know. Hmm. I better eat another Oreo.
They still want to prove they spend money... (Score:2)
These guys are still wanting to prove that their infrastructure cost is exponentially proportional to the data people spend. The problem: it's exactly the opposite - technology keeps improving in ways that copper, fiber, wireless and whatever transmit more data for the same amount of cash. Exponentially more. They somehow want to keep maximizing profits by spending pennies on their infrastructure, while the clients who pay more every year for a service that's supposed to have more max throughput. They someh
And the fucked up part (Score:2)
If you actually go shopping, you'll usually find that the same sized packages cost the same amount.
Whether buying regular Oreos, Double Stuff, Double Triples, whatever. You just wind up with fewer individual cookies per-pack.
So. What does this teach us?
That, you get a set commodity at a set price REGARDLESS of how you use it.
But, Mediacom .... (Score:2)
comment subject (Score:2)
If you make it zero-sum, bitches. I totally support the idea, but don't forget your field of crops deserve the same revenue however you slice it, unless you're really just fucking us over a barrel and spouting noisy principles over the sound of cash register bells.
They wouldn't dare. Sure, it costs a little more to carry the wave of Normals guzzling netflix and streaming all day, you have to buy some more hardware (POOR BABY) but they really shouldn't be rocking the boat when grandma lo
Nobel Prize in Culinary Arts for Oreos (Score:2)
Shall we the internet nominate the maker of Oreos for the Nobel Prize in Culinary Arts? It seems that they are the world favorite for Intenet and computer hacking nutrition.
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I was going to make a case for Ballerinas, Tim-Tams, and the international character of the 'Net. But what the hell... Seconded.
I Pay For The Right To Choose... (Score:2)
When I choose my ISP, I select both a provider and a tiered level of service that meets my requirements, then pay the price they ask. In the UK, the previously state-owned provider British Telecom offer an FTTC service (Infinity), giving me unlimited bandwidth and line speeds of up to 76MB/s for £25/month. A similar decision [a
The internet is like an oreo... (Score:2)
...only when it first started, each cookie was filled with tasty filling.
Now every cookie is filled with shitty ads, while every digital provider tries to convince you it tastes the same.
TL; DR - Shit-filled cookies are NOT a food people want to pay for.
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In addition to bandwidth is free you forgot the one about how since the hardware infrastructure for networks is a sunken cost it should be free to use. I haven't figured that one out yet; apparently the underlying assumption is that the investors who paid up front ought to be robbed of their expected returns.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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No one's saying bandwidth is free. We're saying the bits are free. There's a difference. Bandwidth is how many bits per second. Bits is a file transfer or data being streamed. A sliver of a frame of a video. A single millisecond of a song. Once sufficient bandwidth is in place, it costs an ISP nothing if you're downloading at 1 MB/s or 1 GB/s. Other people may suffer at the hands of your use of the total bandwidth at your area of the Internet but the costs do not change because they don't have to put bits i
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Bzzz! Hold it right there! What is "sufficient bandwidth" and is it ever in place? What if twice more of your subscribers have signed-up with Netflix — the company is enjoying amazing growth of subscriber base? What was "sufficient" two months ago no longer is and you have to spend real money again. In this regard bandwidth really is like tangible goods.
Charging the streaming customers for downloading much more than others finances the fur
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No, that isn't a realistic way to look at things. When you order a specific amount of bandwidth it is to support a need. What percentage is to cover peaks vs average loads should be disclosed, but it isn't really material. What is material is that an ISP has adequate bandwidth to support its users needs collectively.
So, how does the ISP deal with customers that have a disproportionate usage profile? Options I see are: pass costs on to other customers, drop subscriber, charge subscriber more, or throttle
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It most defiantly is a matter of public debate and regulation as long as those providers have restricted competition. There are primarily 2 ways to get data, a cable and RF (freespace optics count as "cables") as long as those are monopolies or nearly so it's reasonable to regulate them.
Want company to be able to operate in a free market sure shift the last mile to technology neutral C/DWDM over fiber via muni's or a legacy provider. I'm talking at least one strand per house/business/apartment all the way
Re: Bandiwidth is *free* fallacy.. (Score:2)
"Of course their analogy is highly questionable, since transmitting data over a network doesn't actually consume anything, now does it?"
It's s more like this:
When you stream your new favorite YouTube video, actual bits of data are sent to your device. And when I request MY favorite YouTube video, my bits are requested also. Eventually many users, those of us using this same ISP, all asking for data, ask for more than can be delivered quickly enough so that no one is disappointed by their video stuttering. A
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Once sufficient bandwidth is in place, it costs an ISP nothing if you're downloading at 1 MB/s or 1 GB/s.
That's not exactly true. The equipment is still using power regardless of whether or not it's transmitting anything. They could charge people flat rates based on rough estimates of how many users it would take sending "normal" (however that gets estimated) data to fill the equipment. If 1,000 users could each transmit at 1mbps through their equipment before it reaches capacity, then they could charge each user 1/500th of the cost of the electricity that equipment uses, for example. They would make a pro
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It still costs something but that cost for the hardware is dropping faster than Moore's law to the point where it is not practical to even monitor for a relatively small ISP. The main area of cost for ISPs is the last/first mile. For cable companies node splits are very costly and this is the reason why this executive is complaining. But when you have a proper infrastructure, upgrading is not a big problem. Witness AT&T lifting GigaPower subscribers capped usage.
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Instead, every user, and the companies providing the service, prefer an over-subscribed service that cuts user cost. The only question is where do they put the line. Too much OS and the performance is bad. Too little OS, and the cost is too high. One of the solutions is more OS to cut costs, and bandwidth caps/costs to deter usage f
Re:Bandiwidth is *free* fallacy.. (Score:5, Informative)
Funny then how at the first hint of Google moving in, my ISP managed to triple the cap without upgrading the last mile or raising the price. Either the laws of physics changed or...
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And some of them will switch to another broadband ISP if one's available, costing the original ISP a customer and their money.
So in other words, it costs the ISP more when you're downloading at 1 GB/s than when your network connection is idle.
Next, at the risk of turning this into an economics lesson,
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Bandwidth isn't free. However technology makes it cheaper to produce every day.
My cable internet has the same cables it always had for decades. As the companies course of business where they replace their technogy it gets faster and faster. So for your current price you should expect increased bandwidth.
When I was a kid I use to run a BBS. It was first at 2400bps. Then after the modem died I went to 14.4k my users liked the extra speed and there was no way I could find a 2400bps at the store anymore.
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To use the power analogy, bandwidth ~ power capacity, data ~ energy use (or similarly with water, gas,
Re:What I really want to know is (Score:4, Funny)
Well, in this case, there's certainly an identifiable asshole.
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A 100 megabit network can only move 100 megabits in a second, so a person moving 100 mbps is consuming the entire network.
This is where your analogy falls down; that never happens.
Look at it this way:
The Oreo factory can only make n Oreos a day.
The Oreo company will let you take one cookie a day for a buck a month.
The Oreo company makes that agreement with >>n people.
Some people actually do take one cookie every day, and the Oreo company declares that they should pay more than a buck.
This in itself doesn't have to be a dick move; all the Oreo company need do is be honest about how many cookies one can really take. The a
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If you would have only used a road instead of a sidewalk, this could have been a Bad Car Analogy. And then we'd understand it.