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Comment Re:how (Score 1) 174

Don't worry, the next round of Republican voting will ensure he's replaced by a guy that uses a drawl, could beat up the other candidate physically, and asks God for guidance on good encryption policy.

But...but..

Robert Byrd is dead and was a Democrat, besides he didn't look all that tough! Maybe he was a bit more spry back in his younger days when he was burning crosses on 'uppity' black family's front lawns with Al Gore Sr.

Strat

Comment Re:when? (Score 2) 182

Stop holding back the future by asking for comparisons from today.

There are tens of millions of people that get to make the following choice:
1. Dial up.
2. High latency capped satellite.

If they're "lucky" they one or two more choices:
3. Slow and asymmetric ADSL
4. Fast but capped LTE.

I have no desire to hold back the future but if you ask me to rate my frustrations with the residential internet marketplace in the United States a lack of gigabit+ speeds doesn't make the list.

Incidentally, the sentence that you quoted had the word "residential" in bold. You listed a bunch of potential business and academic applications to refute my assertion that connections like these are useless in the residential setting.

Comment Re:when? (Score 1) 182

If you're working from home on a regular basis you can spring for a business class connection with the money you're not spending on transportation. Better yet, your employer should be paying for it. This thread is about residential use. I know that's a blurry line for a lot of people (myself included) but let's at least acknowledge that residential service is not intended for business proposes.

Comment Re: Kill the entire H1B program (Score 1) 636

I guess the point that I was trying to make is why is the H-1B program any different than agriculture, taxi driving, or any other position that's stereotypically filled by immigrants? You can tout out the, "They're just doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do." line if you wish but it rings hollow with me.

The hostility here towards H-1B feels hypocritical to me. You're either in favor of the free movement of people, goods, and labor, or you're not. You can't cheer on immigration so long as they're limited to grunt work.

Comment Re:Two million lines of code (Score 1) 160

In fairness, a screwed up insulin level won't immediately kill you and the symptoms are recognizable by anyone with an understanding of diabetes or basic first aid training. Your link says that blood tests are still needed and it sounds like that pump exists not to save life but to make it easier. When they're using iOS to run a pacemaker we can talk..... :)

Comment Re:when? (Score 3, Interesting) 182

150 down, 150 up... really a wonderful thing... That 700MB download? About 39 seconds...

Pretty cool, but still not a fundamental change in the way you use the internet. I'd rather see society make a concerted effort to get everybody a 10/10 connection than roll out gigabit speeds to a handful of lucky cities. We've got whole swathes of the country that are lucky to see T1 speeds on the download side and a pittance on upload. Of course, 25/25 would be better, 50/50 awesome, and 100/100 future proof.

As an aside, I'm jealous that you can max out your 150/150 FIOS connection but my old 15Mbps Verizon DSL connection dropped to <5mbit/s during peak hours. They haven't bothered to maintain their ATM network and gave up all pretenses several years ago when they capped DSL connections in our market at 3Mbps regardless of how good your loop is. My current apartment has a loop under 1,500 feet but they won't sell me a DSL connection faster than 3Mbps.

TWC neglects our area nearly as badly as Verizon; we didn't have DOCSIS 3 until 18 months ago and if you were unlucky enough to live on a congested node you'd see peak hour speeds dip below 1Mbps. This is a city of 50k with metro area of 250k, we're not talking about cow country. Head out into the sticks and you've got nothing but satellite or (maybe) LTE, neither of which makes for an acceptable wireline replacement.

Comment Re: when? (Score 5, Funny) 182

And the arms race between porn producers and porn consumers continues..... :)

1980s: Wait three hours for the xmodem bbs download of the latest low resolution images. Annoy your housemates that need to make or receive a telephone call. Discard 99% of the photos after viewing them once.

1990s: Wait three hours for the high resolution alt.binaries.erotica.* jpg photoset to download on your POTS modem. Annoy your housemates that need to make or receive a telephone call. Discard 99% the photos five minutes after the download finishes.

2000s: Wait three hours for the torrent of SD videos to download on your cable modem. Annoy all of your DOCSIS node neighbors who just want to surf the web without lag. Discard 99% of the videos five minutes after the download finishes.

2010s: Wait three hours for the torrent of HD videos to download. Annoy all of your DOCSIS node neighbors who just want to watch Netflix without buffering. Discard 99% of videos upon download completion.

2020s: Wait three hours for the 4K videos to download......

2030s: Wait three hours for the 8K videos to download......

2300s: Wait three hours for the holodeck programs to download. Annoy the Captain when his request for tea, earl grey, hot is delayed. Discard 99% of the programs......

Comment Re:You ignore real household use (Score 1) 182

hat if two kids are watching YouTube in 1080p, another person is using Netflix, and then someone fires up a PS4? I just got one the other day and wanted to play two game demos - over *2GB* each thank you very much. I had to play the next day because *I* don't have 2GB fiber...

Are you being factitious or serious? Because that scenario is well within the range of a 100Mbps connection:

YouTube @ 1080p = ~6Mbps x 2 = ~12Mbps
Netflix HD = ~5Mbps

That leaves you with more than 80Mbps for your PS4. At 70Mbps (a fair approximation of what you'll achieve with overhead) your 2GB game will download in about four minutes. You can bump the Netflix stream up to 4K (25Mbps) if you insist and still have more than half your connection left over for the game download that you just can't wait for.....

Comment Re: One thing I can say about John Cornyn - (Score 1) 56

I use insults to be insulting. Why else would I use an insult you dolt? I used it to describe her as I see her. I heard it when she spouted that and it meant exactly what she said. Trying to twist it after the fact so it doesn't mean what she said is silly and useless. No one is buying your bullshit. I'm not a fan of many politicians on either side of the aisle but Nancy is in a league of her own.

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