An interesting side effect of Google's fiber offering is the sudden competition it's putting in some places where it hardly existed before, and allowing us to examine the results.

I have a friend who lives in Provo (about 10 miles south of me) and will be eligible for Google Fiber when they open it up in his area this March. He has had Comcast Internet service for a couple of years now and is planning on switching to Google when he can. However, about a month ago a Comcast representative came directly to his home, unscheduled, to talk about a "new and improved" service level he was now eligible for.

This Comcast rep told my friend that, effective immediately (all he had to do was call Comcast), he could change his current ISP service to a package that offered 250 Mbps down / 150 Mbps up, no bandwidth cap, for $25 / month. To compare, he was currently getting 25 Mbps down and paying $75 / month. A couple of weeks ago he made the switch and has been very happy with the order of magnitude speed increase and 66% price drop.

I understand the concept behind competition and the magical invisible hand, but this sort of behavior sickens me. If Comcast can drop their prices and increase their service offerings so quickly in response to new competition, it just goes to show how badly they are screwing over most of their other customers. And, of course, when I called them to inquire about this amazing new Internet service they were offering, I was told it was a "not available" in my area and that different "geographical regions" have different prices.

There's a real argument here for municipal/state owned and funded fiber networks being leased out to various commercial (or otherwise) ISPs. If Google and Comcast can both offer this kind of bandwidth for these prices, the current state of affairs in most of the rest of the country is completely unjustified. I'm sick and tired of a few "elite" corporations getting an effective monopoly on Internet service offerings in vast areas, able to charge anything they please because people have no other option.

Was that a Murlock, or the venerable President Nixon? :)

I'd guess there's a disparity between the number of Horde and Alliance players (Blizzard just hasn't done much to try and balance them out). Perhaps merged^Wcoalesced realms might help with that somewhat if they choose the right ones to join.

That, or Alliance just bots more.

That sounds a lot like the timer coalescing added in Windows 7, and it did have notable improvements in power usage over XP. So while the idea isn't new or innovative on the part of Apple, it does help them maintain their lead over Windows when it comes to lower power consumption.

I've always wondered why there's so little real public outcry at the perpetual extension of copyrights and their increasing overreach. But now, after reading the comments on that story, it's no wonder corporations have yet again been able to run roughshod over the public, and it's the same reason as usual -- the public is willingly bending over for them:

Apparently this person forgot the reasons behind the Video Game Crash as well...

Here's a crux of the issue and what republicorps rely on for the public's support -- "When I am rich and famous some day, I want these laws around to protect me!"

Ignoring, I suppose, the fact that he doesn't own any copyright -- Nintendo does.

Wow.

Haha -- not only that, but in order to "decrypt" the ciphertext, you need to supply the original plaintext as the key!

Very nicely put. There's a big difference between Slashdot and a news site or even your average news aggregator, both in audience size and professional makeup, and that's what has made the site so successful for so long. You did a great job expressing that -- now hopefully a corporate suit somewhere will read this and (more importantly) understand it.

I'm not hopeful :(

Exactly. And how does the new design reflect this?

On the new design it looks like you cannot link to a specific comment or thread. Check out your user page and look at your comment history. No links to comments, no comment scores.

I suppose comments are simply an unsightly appendage in their new "modern" design (they must clash with all the bullshit social media icons everywhere). Just think of all the "old cruft" they could get rid of if there were no comments: threaded layout, moderation, meta-moderation, karma, all users with a UID less than 7 digits, etc. Replace all that with a flat "top 20" comments listing and a little "Like this on Facebook!" button and it'll be nirvana.

I hope to hell someone with a say in the matter reads this and understands what it really means. I'll give you a hint:

If you make this change, you will kill Slashdot.

I'm not exaggerating even slightly. Many people spend time here to read and participate in the commentary. By shoehorning the comments into that tiny space beneath the article you're saying "comments aren't important", something which will in all likelihood be soon followed by "comments are a liability" and then "comments now require moderation before being posted". People tolerate the Slash-Bi(sexual) crap now because it takes a second seat to the real meat of the articles and commentary. By reversing those roles you're telling 85% of the active userbase that they're no longer welcome.

Whatever site is left after this change takes effect -- maybe it will make enough advertisement and tracking money to satisfy Dice, but it won't be Slashdot and it won't last a year. Remember what happened to Digg? Yeah, I didn't think so.

By the way, if anyone hasn't gone and looked at the comments section on an article, go look now and then tell me I'm wrong.