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Broadband Majority in US
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Aug 19, 2004 01:24 PM
from the that-seems-a-bit-fishy dept.
from the that-seems-a-bit-fishy dept.
TheSync writes "NetworkWorldFusion has a report that the majority of US Internet users now connect using broadband, according to NetRatings. There are 63 million broadband users (51%) and 61 million (49%) dial-up users in the US. Broadband was most prevalent among people ages 18 to 20."
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Spyware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I'm really amazed people agreed to do this. The FA doesn't mention it, but I wonder if they were compensated in some manner.
No way in hell I'd want someone to know how often I visit tubgirl..
But seriously, in my mind this is akin to hardware "spyware" - I wonder if these same people would agree to having a key logger installed.. Maybe this is one of the reasons spyware is so prolific? Maybe some people just don't care what the corporate overloads know about them?
(I never said they were smart.....)
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Informative)
It works the same as Nielsen ratings for TV. A few years ago select viewers were asked to pen down what they were watching every 15 minutes. Now it's a device directly connected to the cable box/TV.
Of course, you have to agree to have one.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Informative)
They wanted a box connected to every device capable of TV reception. I didn't have a problem with them putting them on the TVs or VCRs, but when I found out it included the TV tuner in the Voodoo 3 3500 I had at the time, I told them no. I draw the line right around fucking with my PC, even if it's a completely external device.
But others probably wouldn't care. Hell, if all you do is read e-mail and do a little online browsing, it wouldn't be a big deal, expecially if you got something cool in return.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:4, Funny)
Getting away from the pervasive commercials of TV is an understandable goal. Doing so by burning your TV set seems like an odd method. By all means continue your defiant stance against the media overlords but don't expect any lauditory poems to be written in your honor.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/whatratingsmean/
CC.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Funny)
In other words, if there is a device that is monitering my internet comsumption for a week, I will not be consuming my regular diet of pornography for that week. Mind you, I dont look at porn. I dont. Shut up, I dont. Ok I do. No just kidding I dont.
The idea is that the internet is that its kind of a make your-own-media entertainment. Whereas T.V. is all programmed and time slotted, and is thus passive, on the internet you have to actively seek out and find stuff. You have to decide where to start, where to go, when to leave. Essentially at every turn, on every page, you have to decide what to do. Its like a choose your own adventure story. And since the pathways are so chaotic and turmultuous (the opposite of TV), I'm not sure that there is a whole lot to measure. It might be a window into personal psychology, but mass psychology? I dont know.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the family is told, "If you let us watch your family's surfing habits we'll tell you if little johnny goes to a p0rn site." Of course what they don't know is that little johnny knows how to get around the firewall and get to the p0rn unnotticed.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably. Remember these are typically people that don't even know what Spyware is... Hell, my fiancee's brother removed AdAware and SpyBot from a computer I installed it on "because it causes problems." He also removed the firewall for the same reason.
Spyware be damned! We are talking about people that think WinME is the best OS ever (and no I am not kidding).
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent the time patching the system to the latest of everything, newest SP at the time, all the protection programs I could find, etc. Everything was set to run basically w/o userintervention.
He took over because he obviously knows more about computers than I do (being a devout WinME supporter) and went ahead and removed those pesky pieces of software.
I refused to help from then on out. Let him handle it when the machine is so slow and the webpages won't load properly.
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:4, Insightful)
I refused to help from then on out. Let him handle it when the machine is so slow and the webpages won't load properly.
That's just it. He won't handle it. It'll be one of us technically inclined people, in the end. I don't know how many calls I got as an ISP tech that ended up being due to spyware because people think slow page loads mean "my interweb service provider is slow."
-Grym
Parent
Re:Spyware? (Score:5, Funny)
1) The most important lawsuits in the U.S. are SCO vs IBM, Novell, Autozone, and Daimler Chrysler.
2) The number one server O.S. in the world is OpenBSD followed by Linux and FreeBSD.
3) The number one shopping site on the Internet is newegg.com.
4) The number one electronic reference is O'Reilly's Safari Tech Books Online.
5) Microsoft has more security holes than you can shake a stick at.
Imagine if they monitored several such people and it was interpreted by the major tv networks as representative of Americans:
1) Fox, CNN, and MNBC would have daily reports on the SCO lawsuits.
2) Whenever a show wanted to provide a tech tip, it would be aimed at OpenBSD, Linux, and FreeBSD.
3) Newegg.com would be advertising in the Super Bowl.
4) So would O'Reilly.
5) We'd have a new TV sitcom about an inept software developer at Microsoft who is responsible for fixing all the security holes. We could call it "Clueless In Seattle" or maybe "MS ER".
Parent
NetRatings Confirms It... (Score:5, Funny)
it was ME! (Score:3, Funny)
Ok, so I really wasn't. But after a horrible 9 month period with only dialup, and as of this past Tuesday, I finally have broadband once again. I had to take a half day off of work to get it installed, but it was worth it!
*hugs cable modem*
"oh, how I've missed you..."
Social cast (Score:3, Funny)
(I'd be in knots, too, if I still had dial-up).
Re:it was ME! (Score:3, Funny)
The only reason I had to do a half day was b/c it could be anytime "between 12 and 5"
This just in.... (Score:4, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
In one of those glass-half-empty deals- I'd say it's running at its fastest speed ever, because of all that garbage.
Guess what? Nobody who matters cares. The internet isn't run on ideals and dreamy visions- it's run by backbone companies who, just like the telephone companies with telemarkets- profit from every single bit of it.
Do you really think backbones are going to chase after their customers? Nope. They're going to happily invoice for every bit of it- whether the customer ISP is paying by the byte or needs to upgrade to a faster line, either way- the backbone provider wins. I don't think you'll see them leaping for joy at anti-spam and spyware laws- they'll claim free speech this or that, but in reality be only concerned about loosing traffic that they can bill for.
If bandwidth used by DDoS's and spam couldn't be charged for, the problem would have been stamped out a long, long, long time ago by ISPs and backbones. They have the ability to stop zombies and whatnot- they just don't give a shit.
Parent
The role of ISPs and backbone providers (Score:5, Insightful)
It might not be that simple. Imagine if the backbone providers did exercise this supposed power and used it to squish zombies and other Internet Undead. Something tells me there would be a hue and cry about excessive corporate power over the Internet.
Backbone providers likely see it as a utility. You can use electricity to power a hospital or power a meth lab. It's essentially out of their purvue, and they likely want to stay out of policing what people do with the bandwidth they provide. It's good business, and it's probably better for the rest of us, too.
Parent
HPB's (Score:5, Interesting)
Fantastic! Goodbye HTML! (Score:5, Funny)
College (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:College (Score:5, Insightful)
Splitting a $50/mo Internet connection between two or three people is nothing and you still get fast movie/music/porn downloads.
Parent
... In other news: Congratulations! (Score:4, Funny)
Now problem is how many of those dial-up users are still AoLers who are creating the majority of the problems on the intenet (ie: opening up silly attachments, spamming, not trolling slashdot...)
Re:... In other news: Congratulations! (Score:5, Informative)
Broadband penetration in Europe hasn't even reached 20%:
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=1
Canada's around 65%, and South Korea is 80% or more. Everyone else is lower than the US.
Parent
So, what's next? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, we've got broadband. What's the next big thing?
I'm serious - I'd love a 10Mbs or 100Mbs connection - when is that kind of thing going to be domestically available? When are we going fiber optic?
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Problem in the survey method (Score:5, Funny)
I recently got broadband a few months ago. Before that I was on dialup and only had one phoneline. Had they tried to call me for this survey, they would have gotten a busy signal.
I wonder how many dialup users were not interviewed because of this.
Not so fast... (Score:4, Insightful)
With that said, is it safe to assume that the people that agreed to do this would be generally more savvy than generic dialup population? Is it also safe to assume that people with broadband are generally more interested in the Internet and computers than their dialup counterparts? (and possibly therefore more likely to participate when they got that "random" call?) Granted there's huge cross-over, I may be over-generalizing, and the assumption doesn't accomidate to users that have "no other choice" than dialup, but how accurate could this possibly be?
-Aaron
Re:Not so fast... (Score:3)
Well the broadband users were more likely to take the call because they could actually get the call. The dialup users were handing out busy signals. *70!
Dorm (Score:3, Informative)
Statistics should be taken by Area, not Population (Score:4, Interesting)
BROADBAND FOR PODUNK!
Re:Statistics should be taken by Area, not Populat (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know what a side effect of getting away from the cities is? Getting away from the technology. The cost for installing broadband is dependent more on the area covered than the people covered. It's trivial to run cable to 30 houses when they're all on the same block. When they're each 0.5 mi away from each other, it's not so easy, and the return on investment goes to the shitter.
When you move out of densely populated areas, you should not expect the same level of service, be it sewers, trash collection, police and fire protection, utility service, transportation options, retail access, etc. You pay lower property taxes out there for a reason.
Parent
big picture (Score:5, Interesting)
and 45% have no internet access at all (Score:3, Interesting)
Broadband? (Score:4, Interesting)
Our broadband here is more like dialup in comparison to other countries lol. my line with SBC costs $53/mo for 3mb/384... though really it should be the 'budget' plan costing $9.95/mo considering its dynamic and SLOW compared to 'real' lines.
I'm hoping our US providers will eventually bring our country's internet to the top of the industry - or do they really like lagging behind?
Are such statistics useful? (Score:4, Insightful)
RBL time now (Score:3, Insightful)
Now let's get down to business. Who's got the best list of the IP addresses of all these broadband blocks so we can blacklist them? It's just a matter of time before almost every single one becomes worm-infected and starts up rogue SMTP relays? I've had it with this crap.
The majority of spam now comes from zombie machines on broadband connections. If the ISPs themselves won't release the IP lists of their DUL users, we should set up a master one ourselves so we can stop this zombie army.
SBC (Score:4, Informative)
This says absolutely nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
In Korea, most households have 100 Mbit/s bidirectional. In Scandinavia, 10-20 Mbit/s bidirectional is the norm. In the US, 2 Mbit/s download and less upload is considered much. Yet all of these go under the bland moniker "broadband".
A much better meter would be, say, "average household bandwidth".
I'm never giving up dial-up! (Score:5, Funny)
any chance of a change in /. policy? (Score:4, Interesting)
And "broadband" means what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
I have broadband only because I have the knowlege to set up a 1 mile 802.11b point to point link to someone willing to let me put DSL on their phone-line.
Before that, I lived with a 56k full-time dial-up connection for many years.
Parent
Price. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to sell these folks on the idea of paying 5 times as much by telling them it'll be "faster", when their entire online experience lasts a half hour a month.
The "killer app" for broadband hasn't really materialized yet.
That said, I could never go back to dialup.
Parent
Re:This is Likely Not Very Accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it's very likely with the 51%/49% results here that, due to the margin of error, there isn't a detectable majority of either broadband or dialup users. The statistics for qualitative questions like "what kind of Internet do you use" are a little fuzzy (i.e. way beyond what I learned in my AP=basic-college-intro-101-level Stats), but the principle is the same.
I would absoutely trust that -about- 49% and 51% of Internet users surveyed use dialup and broadband, respectively, but I'm not sure that there's a detectable majority.
Parent
Not Very Accurate - for different reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent