How often do you have access to a teacher when you are running arithmetic drills? It is a waste of time and computers can assist the user in determining when they've made a mistake and perhaps offering useful feedback if a common mistake is detected.

To be honest I've never understood this argument. Is it that companies haven't made their returns on the copper yet, companies find the path of least resistance to be less speedy than for new infrastructure, or that these markets are in greater flux creating more competition which spurs innovation. Of course, it could be something else, but this is what came to my air bubble head just now.

I think it would like something like this:

Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
(Switch to variable interval schedule)
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +0
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +0
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +0
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +1
Pick up that can! (Picks up can.) +0

I'm sure that it will be n-gageing.

The intent is to use SMS as a reliable data transmission system in areas which don't necessarily have access to quality data connections. The type of messages being sent would likely be small updates from remotely deployed sensors or system management commands from remotely deployed hardware. There are pilot projects which have rural satellite hospitals in developing countries use SMS to transmit data.

Oliver also nicely characterized the behavior of SMS networks and added a useful transport layer on top of it.

No. I believe the original poster is just communicating the notion that people do not care about what happens to other until it matters to them. The poem just expresses (really well) how low the phenomenon can take us.

I tend to think of this as being more like network flow control. If the server is overwhelmed with requests it can tell the client to back-off for a bit. Sure the client can keep on hammering the server, but then everyone loses. If the power grid goes down most lose more than a few degrees of comfort.

It also seems silly to create excess capacity for a few peaks during the year. Perhaps they can get away with batteries or other energy stores instead of power plants. However, if the extra capacity/storage is only needed for a few days of the year and the expense can be avoided using a voluntary mechanism, why not implement it?

Additionally, think of this as using individual homes as storage banks. Perhaps the power company can anticipate demand and overheat or overcool your home allowing for more room to cut power later on.

I think the voluntary nature of this arrangement needs to be maintained. What if you decide to start up your home Beowolf cluster on the hottest day of the year.

There are free programs which generate G-Code. Skeinforge is one of them. I'm not sure if it meets your expectations though. See: http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/

I don't think people have a problem with them metering. People are just concerned that AT&T will try and change the cost of their existing data plans. I would feel abused if AT&T promised unlimited (without restriction) bandwidth and then decided that they couldn't meet this promise and cut or changed the terms of the agreement. A renegotiation would be acceptable. However, if the plan does not adequately account for the huge difference in usage patterns (usage encouraged by AT&T) then AT&T should be responsible and not the users who are simply using the device as it is capable of being used and as agreed to.

The tragedy of the commons as you put it was created by implicitly claiming a finite resource can be drawn upon without limit. The best compromise from my perspective would be to throttle bandwidth after X bytes of data are downloaded. This allows users to not be concerned over losing access to essential, but low bandwidth, services but prevents the network from being saturated. This would have been a sane plan, but doesn't advertise well. Unlimited makes sense, but in order for users to appreciate a cap they have to understand what a unit of data is and how much data various applications transfer. Additionally, application writers need to make sure their applications transfer minimal amounts of data making application writing difficult.

Thank you for the memories. I wanted to post something similar.