Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Comcast CEO Brian Roberts opens his mouth and inserts his foot

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: At a recent conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts rationalized charging Netflix to deliver content by comparing Comcast to the Post Office, saying that Netflix pays to mail DVDs to its customers but now expects to be able to deliver the same content over the internet for free. He forgot to mention that the Post Office does not charge recipients for those DVDs. The underlying issue in this debate is who will invest in the Internet infrastructure that we badly need? Comcast has a disincentive to invest because, if things bog down, people will blame content providers like Netflix and the ISP will be able to charge the content provider for adequate service. If ISPs have insufficient incentive to invest in infrastructure, who will? Google? Telephone companies? Government (at all levels)? Premises owners?

Submission + - I want a Kindle Killer from Apple, Google or Microsoft

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: Amazon's Kindle is a good e-reader and they've sold around 40 million units, but it is far from perfect. It could be significantly improved with speech recognition for commands and text entry, a well-designed database for marginal notes and annotations, and integration with laptop and desktop computers. Google, Apple and Microsoft all have device design and manufacturing experience as well as stores that sell books and other written material. A Kindle-killing e-reader would be low-hanging fruit for Apple, Google or Microsoft — think of the competition if they each built one!

Submission + - BASIC and Computer Literacy Courses are 50 Years Old

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: May 1 will mark the birth of the BASIC programming language. BASIC was developed by professors John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz to support their pioneering computer literacy course at Dartmouth College. Developing BASIC was a key step toward achieving their broader goal — introducing all students, regardless of their major, to the skills and concepts they needed for success as students and after graduation as professionals and citizens. IT literacy courses are common today — the skills and many (not all) of the concepts have changed, but the goal remains the same. You can read more about BASIC and their computer literacy project here.

Submission + - My son pays $22/month for symmetric, 100 Mbps Internet service in South Korea

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: My son lives about 50 miles outside of Seoul and has a choice of three major Internet service providers and several smaller ones. He pays $22 per month for symmetric, 100 Mbps Internet connectivity (with a two year contract). The Korean ISP market is highly competitive — the major company prices are within a few dollars of each other and repairs and other service is excellent. How is it that Korea has achieved intense ISP competition? There is no simple answer, but the government has pursued a multifaceted policy encouraging investment and demand creation and providing common infrastructure, which is used by compteting ISPs (as in Singapore, Sweden or Latvia).

Submission + - Office for the iPad -- yawn -- It's the browser, stupid.

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: Microsoft finally released Office for the iPad four years after it came out. Folks can debate whether they waited too long, but, regardless, tablets and phones were the previous battleground for Microsoft and they pretty well lost in spite of holding Office back. The next battleground will be the browser and the chromebook. Don’t take my word for it — in a 1998 memo to Microsoft executives, Bill Gates wrote “Allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company...This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows.” Who has the advantage — Microsoft or Google? MS has a lead in productivity apps and the enterprise, Google has Chrome and the lead on the Internet and both may use Mainframe 2 if that works out. Maybe it will be a tie — that would be best for customers and society.

Submission + - The Net routes around censorship in Turkey (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been embarrassed by social media showing corruption, vowed yesterday to "eradicate Twitter." He followed through by cutting off access, but users soon found work-arounds like posting by email and using VPNs. The hashtag #TwitterOlmadanYaayamam (I can't live without Twitter) quickly rose to the top of Twitter's worldwide trending topics.

Comment Re:I cut my cable bill by 100% (Score 1) 206

by lpress (#46374663) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

Based on the email address and the info on the blog, it puts you right in dense Los Angeles suburbia.

The email address is my school. I live in West Los Angeles, but in a house built in 1946 that is and pretty far from my C. O. That being said, they may be lying about the distance and old wires -- it may be that they have under-provisioned the C. O.or backhaul. I don't trust them any more than I trust TWC. It would be nice if there were some viable competition. Maybe Google Fiber some day -- LA is shopping around for a municipal network partner -- but even Google may become "Comcastic" at some point.

FttH

I agree 100%. You might even own the line coming to your house -- the way you own your water, gas pipes and sewer pipes.

Comment Re:I cut my cable bill by 100% (Score 1) 206

by lpress (#46374593) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

Nope, you still get cable TV. At least the several places I've had TWC Internet in NY, I also got free(ish) basic cable. It's only ten or twelve channels, but it includes the major networks and the local news.

Right -- same in Los Angeles -- a bunch of local channels -- many foreign language. I even got a $5 gift card from TWC because they mistakenly (?) blocked the Super Bowl (which I watched anyhow using a rabbit ear antenna).

Comment Re:I cut my cable bill by 100% (Score 2) 206

by lpress (#46374429) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

On the phone -- I could not drop it on the spot without talking to my wife ... plus lazy inertia. But, I do have telephone alternatives, which is more than I can say for Internet connectivity.

Verizon DSL is another weird story. I was their customer many years ago, getting around 5 Mbps down on a plan that promised up to 7. One day, they throttled it down to 1.5. When I complained, they told me that at my location with my geriatric wiring, I could only get 1.5. They were not willing to un-throttle it in spite of the fact that I had been getting 5 Mbps the day before. That is the day I became a TWC customer.

I just rechecked my Verizon DSL availability. They say I can get "high speed Internet enhanced" -- 1.1-3.0 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up.

In general, many people are like me -- busy and lazy -- and it takes something big like Verizon throttling my DSL or hearing that I was paying $40 for phone service to get them to get our attention.

Slashdot Top Deals

If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.

Close