We need to get away from the myth that bandwidth is a scarce resource like water or electricity. It is not. http://stopthecap.com/2011/03/15/congestion-pricing-myths-exposed-a-guide-to-the-bandwidth-crisis-at-att-or-anywhere-else/ I don't think we would have caps if the incumbent DSL and cable ISPs have competition or if they are disallowed to provide content. The very fact that you're advocating how to do metering properly indicates the ISPs have been successful in brainwashing lots of people in accepting it.

We already know a flat fee for unlimited bandwidth is unworkable.

No we don't. Maybe for cable where their medium is inherently shared, but not DSL. Up to the node, everything beyond that is fiber so bandwidth congestion that supposedly exists there is a myth. In the past, the DSL providers have repeatedly said they don't have congestion since it is not a shared pipe like cable. Now U-verse is competing with unicast programs and now they claim there is congestion.

They have a better chance of getting support from their customers/potential customers if they don't pull shit like bandwidth caps and generally screwing their customers. Recent action by AT&T don't make them appear to want to serve their customers, rather to squeeze as much money from their customers. This is the real problem, not "regulation." Their mere size all but allows them to buy their way out of this acquisition.

I agree. Our household use T-Mobile's prepaid plan and once we reach Gold member status wherein the account has $100 in funds, all our minutes roll over another year with a minimum charge of an additional $10. This is great for our seldom-used cells. When we switched to T-Mobile, AT&T requires one to spend $100 to roll over unused minutes for a year.

I have T-Mobile pre-paid. It's great because after your account reaches $100, all subsequent minutes are rolled over to the next year if you just recharge for $10 for low usage individuals. AT&T does have pre-paid but it requires a recharge fee of $100 when I switched to T-Mobile from Verizon.

I'm pretty sure AT&T will get rid of T-Mobile's generous recharge fees after the takeover because their recent changes of terms do not really benefit their customers, only their bottom line.

If you get U-verse, you will need to pay them $4 for a "telecom equipment" fee. This fee is non-negotiable even if you have your own equipment.

AT&T actually upgrading their network instead of making people pay for usage? Don't make me laugh.

Americans "tolerate" it because the ISPs are the ones who are writing the rules/laws that inhibit competition. AT&T saw that Comcast's 250GB cap hasn't been met with a lot of complaints so they're doing this, too. The fact that it is 250GB tells me that this duopoly are coordinating their efforts--even though they probably don't have a formal agreement--to protect their content from competition. And I think the cap on DSL is there is because AT&T want people off DSL. An AT&T sales person came to my home last week to try to get us to go to U-verse. I specifically asked him about caps and he stated that AT&T imposed no data transfer caps.

Anyone notice the apparent lag from Photo Booth's effects selection screen? That lag was not there when Facetime was demoed. Curious how Photo Booth would work on an A4.

No, it doesn't work that way. Each cell contains a charge that is the pattern for a single or multiple bit. If wear leveling doesn't move the cell to another while the drive is turned on, the charges will leak and your pattern will either be all ones, all zeroes, or somewhere in between. The directory structure will also be corrupted. Yeah, you won't be able to write new data, but you probably won't reliably read what's already written.

For that to happen it would have cost $200 billion.

Are there any PATA adapter cards? It would extend the life of PATA-based notebooks even though the throughput would be limited.

I would agree with this. Just like today you can't buy a new 10GB hard disk, in 5 years people probably won't be able to purchase a non-smart phone except in rare circumstances.

The government has shown that it has a history of being highly irresponsible with such authority. So I would like to see their power in communications spelled out: hey could ask, but not demand.

I just bought an LG TV. Not planning on buying nor recommend others buy Sony for a long, long time.