Slashback: Bandwidth, Animation, Gruvin'

Slashback this evening brings you news and updates on several previous stories, including (not limited to) @home service, Linuxgruven, and some followups to Slashdot book reviews.

More news you can use on the @home front. Anubis333 writes: "After a while talking with customer support, I have learned that Comcast@Home (Soon to be ATT Broadband) has instituted a network-wide cap on user upload to 15KB! (Thats not much more than dialup) Also, they have now capped Usenet news access. What am I paying 50 dollars a month for again? More info on usenet here.

Upon even longer hold times, I found out that when Comcast switches over to ATT the cap will be set to 128KB and the usenet caps will be lifted, also they will support more groups. The full change over will be complete by the end of Feb. Any users in the Savannah Ga. Area, they will start here Jan. 15 and end in early feb. Call support for exact local dates if interested."

Yessir, about oh, yea big by a few more inches ... Dave contributed a link showing a side-by-side comparison of the current Apple laptop line, including the new bigger iBook. Shame about the resolution, though ...

By their fruits ye shall know them. zsazsa writes: "According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has sued James Hibbits and Michael Webbs, the two founders of Linuxgruven for deceptive business practices. He alleges that interviewers were actually salespeople paid to enroll job applicants in training programs costing up to $3,150."

Would the FSF call Sun "GNU-minded"? maitas writes: "It seems that Sun has removed Solaris for Intel from its free download list. It's really sad to see a company that promotes its 'GNU minded' culture to go back on the few good things it had made. They even removed the Solaris source code from their site! Sad, sad, sad."

That them thar' book larnin' Stardance points to an interview at Salon with Steve Grand, in which the "designer of the artificial life program 'Creatures', talks about the stupidity of computers, the role of desire in intelligence and the coming revolution in what it means to be 'alive.'" You may remember Grand's book Creation: Life & How to Make It, reviewed on these pages. Speaking of reviews, several readers have contributed links to the New York Times' review of Lawrence Lessig's new book.

No wonder people are forced to use windows...

[curunir]

So I have my iBook, but the resolution is too low, so I thought I'd get a PC laptop, but I don't want windows on it, so I'm thinking...Linux...that's the way to go, problem is when I go to take a class, I get defrauded, so now I'm thinking...Solaris Intel...that'll solve all my problems, so I go to download it and wouldn't you know sun removed it from their website, but that's ok cause I got this friend who has an ISO on his box at home and says I can download it, so I go to download it, but it turns out his upload speed is capped at 15K/sec which is just way too slow for pulling an entire ISO, so now I'm basically stuck with Windows (*sigh*)...oh well, at least /. recommended some cool books to read during the install.

Re:"shame about the resolution though..."

[BlackGriffen]

You should be greatful for that 1024*768! Why, I got a blue iBook with a 12" screen and 800*600. You youngans are such ingrates! Why, I'd step over my own mother to get two more inches and another step of res! Sides, if ya don't like tha bigga screen, you can still buy the smaller one, ya cheap bastard.

And another thing, when I was young...

;)

BlackGriffen

Re:15KB...

[aka-ed]

And faster than that if the v.92 protocols are in use (not much of that yet).

Still, 128kb is plenty for most "consumer" uses of the Internet. It's a drag for servers, and for filetrading in p2p, ftp and irc. Most users don't care about these issues, and "most users" pay the freight for the high-bandwidth users.

Face it, folks, you will have to pay cmmercial rates to get commercial-level bandwidth.

The Usenet cap is even more laughable -- 3 gigabytes for every three days? I wouldn't call that a cap! If you are pulling 30 gigs a month off Usenet, I'd like to know the retail value of the equivalent audio cd's, software, and movies you're downloading. It can't be just pr0n, you'd run yourself raw!