Good points to remember with any call center call. Play along with their script but be clear the problem isn't solved, eh?

Good suggestion - I'll give that a try. I suspect we're just overloaded on the DSLAM here in our "holler" but I'll take any relief I can get.

Some friends have tried satellite. It costs more for much poorer latency, as you note. And being on the north slope of the mountain doesn't help. It was my first house purchase and first time living in mountains so I haven't even had to think of these things before. Sigh - should have done more research.

hehehe

It was an...unusual situation to even get service. I had to know someone who knew someone at the provider who got me set up with a plan. I suppose you're right.

I'll see if that's somewhere in the paperwork - thanks.

I'll have to dig up the documentation, but I suspect you're correct. I'm basically stuck with their service whether I like it or not as the only viable option.

Competition would be nice, but there's basically none where I am.

The house is 12 years old, but good point. Since the pattern of bandwidth drop is consistently in the evening - 5 pm to 10 pm - I'm guessing a bandwidth issue somewhere in our area.

Apparently, EM pulses have also been studied by the Pentagon for fighting fires http://www.stormingmedia.us/97/9736/A973683.html

Mod parent up please

If the US News & World Report model actually captures good things about a university, then what's wrong with attempting to match that model?

That a university tries to match what it considers a good model shouldn't be surprising. The validity of the model may be questioned. The methods to match the institution to that model may be questioned. But I don't see how attempting to get better under some model they consider good (by whatever criteria they pick) is bad.

I don't know enough about it to know if the USNews model is any good - maybe, maybe not. But I know that institutions I'm generally familiar with land about where I might expect in the rankings. Ivy leagues on top, small underfunded state colleges much lower.

Now, the claim that Clemson administrators purposefully rank other universities lower, that's a different matter. That is the most troubling claim to me in the whole bit. That action is highly unethical and I would be sorry to find out that it is true of Clemson, or anywhere for that matter.

I'll echo that - I'm an Industrial Engineer employed far from industry/manufacturing. The broad background in technical, management, and systems thinking has been very beneficial. Never got my PE license, though I'm not sure the tests would really measure something useful about me with respect to my career path.