I dunno, I was a "real nerd" in high school and college - never played D&D or got into comic books, but spent way too much time in a computer lab (high school job gave me unlimited access to a VAX - and uunet!), and think the show is funny. Maybe because I see a lot of myself and my friends in the characters. Though we never hooked up with any women nearly as hot as Penny, Bernadette, or even Amy Farah Fowler.

My mom threw away my old Atari 2600 console in the late 1980's along with a dozen cartridges. If anyone wants to mount an expedition to recover it, I can tell you approximately where it's buried. Oh, and there were some umm... magazines with it that I used to keep under my bed, you can keep the 2600, but I'd like to have the magazines back for educational purposes --I haven't finished reading the articles.

I don't think you understand how Netflix works -- they don't push movies over my broadband connection without permission. Instead, they send me content that I asked for -- which is the entire reason I have a high speed internet connection in the first place. If I wasn't watching streaming video, instead of a 25mbit cable internet connection, I'd have a 3 - 6mbit DSL connection for less cost.

If the cable company can't afford to handle the traffic with their infrastructure, then they ought to increase their rates. I'm happy to pay the cable company a fair price for internet service, but I don't want to pay it in hidden charges for all of the bandwidth heavy websites I use, I want to see exactly how much internet service costs so I can shop around to different providers and to make it more likely that a competitor will step in as the price of service increases.

Why do you think the local loop was the bottle neck? Netflix speeds increased literally overnight after they paid Comcast to upgrade the internet connection at the peering points, no local loop upgrades needed.

Looks like he might be able to fit it into an old Motorola MicroTAC phone body:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Ahh, so you're on a crusade to stop the evolution of the English language.

Alack, I fear your wood gardyloo shan't end in a fain result, meseems evolution is too puissant and your quest will end in wanion.

I see where you're confused, Comcast is the carrier, and I am paying *Comcast* to deliver the data to my house. That's the entire reason I pay Comcast for internet, if I wasn't watching Netflix I'd use a much cheaper ADSL provider that can only give me 3mbit of bandwidth.

Sure they are -- Netflix's CDN will deliver the data directly to Comcast's network. Or Comcast can set up some content caching servers to further reduce bandwidth demands.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm paying for. I don't expect 20mbit to every place in the world, but I'd expect 20mbit to well connected sites.

That's a strawman argument, that's not what I said and you know it.

Comcast can peer with Netflix's CDN just like other large ISP's do (like Google Fiber) -- it's Comcast's customers that are demanding Netflix traffic, Netflix isn't forcing it on anyone.

You can build your own Nest-like thermostat:

http://blog.spark.io/2014/01/1...

It still uses cloud based software, but at least it's not Google's cloud, and since it's open source, you can see exactly what it's sending to the cloud.

They already do:

http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/s...

Gee, you'd think they could put some metering on their *own* equipment to figure out peak demand and plan accordingly.

Where do you live that you have rolling blackouts? That sounds like a huge failing on the part of the power company - they already know how much power an "average" house uses in each neighborhood (so they can plan capacity for new customers), and they already know how aggregate power usage correlates to temperature, so they can plan for 100 degree summer days.

Of course, the big problem is getting them to actually *make* the investment in new power generating capacity where it is needed.

Perhaps if we were in Ancient Rome, you might have a point. However, while many words in English have their origins in Latin, their modern meanings have deviated from the original Latin roots.

Funny thing about English - many words have more than one meaning:

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

They already charge different users differently -- I pay more money for a faster connection since I use Netflix heavily. If I didn't watch streaming video, instead of a 25mbit connection, I'd buy their cheap 6mbit connection (or would use an ADSL provider). If they find charging for bandwidth alone to be unsustainable, then they can charge for data too -- charge $20 for each 100GB, or whatever covers their costs. They have lots of flexibility in their pricing structure. They can add peak surcharges or whatever else they need to do to pay for their network.

How can a startup expect to charge money to large users like Netflix, Amazon, etc? If Joe's House of Internet tried to force Netflix to pay up, Netflix would tell them to shove off and wouldn't worry about losing a few customers. But when Comcast (with over 15 million internet customers) tells them to pay up, they have little choice, since they can't afford to lose millions of customers.

Netflix isn't incurring costs on Comcast, I (as a Comcast customer) am incurring the cost by requesting the data from Netflix, so I should be paying for that -- Netflix isn't forcing me to accept their data, I am requesting it.

Because, it's a hidden cost and I can't see the true cost of my Comcast connection. If I pay $50/month to Comcast, and have a hidden $5 for Netflix, $3 for Amazon, $5 for Youtube, $1 for Facebook, etc, the true cost of my bill might really be over $100, and if I knew that, I might find another ISP more cost effective. And more importantly, if Comcast charged their true cost of delivering service and that ended up being $100/month, that might be a level that makes it profitable for another provider to come in, while if the content provider subsidies kept Comcast rates artificially low, then there would be less incentive for a competitor to enter the market since he wouldn't get the same subsidies yet he'd be competing against Comcast's subsidized rates.

It seems that the difference is that it's *not* the same as "they blocked a regular lane to turn it into a carpool lane" as the grandparent poster was claiming.

Sure, and that's all borne by the carrier that's driving on the roads to deliver the package to my door -- I pay that carrier just like I pay Netflix, but I don't expect my city to charge Fedex Priority truck a surchage when they let Fedex Ground trucks drive for free.

The problem with analogies is that they don't always translate well to the real world problem.

Let's see what Comcast says on their High Speed internet page:

Gee, I don't see anything there or their terms of use that says "Note: High speed internet applies only to providers that pay us to deliver their data to you".

I don't know why you think I don't want Comcast to be able to recover their costs of providing service -- they already have an efficient means to pay those costs -- they send me a bill each month, and if that bill isn't paying their costs, they can increase the rates I pay. That way I can fairly compare prices among different ISP's (luckily I'm in an area where I can choose from a few). When Netflix subsidizes Comcast, that makes the true cost of my internet service hidden since part of the cost is hidden in my Netflix bill (and eventually Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc will all have to pay). The largest ISP's shouldn't be allowed to use their near monopoly market penetration to extract fees from content providers when they are already charging customers for internet access.

They are both identifiers, one identifies a person, one identifies a post.

Because it's impossible to conduct any reasonable discussion with an AC since that "one" AC may be many different people with differing arguments.

I didn't even know Slashdot banned anyone except outright trolls and spammers. You can always sign in again if are going to complain about Ad Hominen attacks when you aren't even a Hominem, it's not like it's hard to use create Slashdot accounts. Quoting the point you're arguing against wouldn't hurt either.