I agree, if the ISP purposefully limits during times where not doing so would not harm network "stability" then the ISP is in the wrong. If it is limiting people at peak hours to ensure everyone can get some access then fine. I guess my point was if they oversell enough, those hours of congestion could easily become 90% of the day.

I would rather see the system set up in reverse. A customer buys a minimum speed, and can sometimes get more than that, but the network is sized such that everyone using their connection at the same time will mean everyone gets the minimum speed they paid for. That would mean smaller numbers on the paper, and likely less money for the ISP, but I can dream. Granted I have yet to notice a time where my 20mbps DSL didn't provide 20mbps of through put.

So what if I tell you you can have your pick from up to 6 widgets, but not at 5PM at night as i'm trying to get everyone else a widget as well so you what ever one was on top. If you came for your widget at 11PM, then you could have have your pick of any of the 6 widgets. Now say that instead of from 5PM to 6PM it's busy, I've hired enough people to make the times that there are not enough widgets for anyone to really get a choice from 4AM to 11PM? just come in to pick at a crappy time, and you can pick.

now stream netflix to 3 devices and watch that 5mbps become 15mbps, before any other web traffic, or downloads. I'm at the point where anything under 20mbps, doesn't have enough bandwidth for typical evenings anymore. two tablets and a TV mean 15mbps is background data. Thats ignoring updates to the tables and the phones, and computers. All I can see is my bandwidth needs going up. I can't wait until my kids have some sort of video based lecture, or what not in 1080P, or start skypeing with friends, or grandma, or whatnot. Then I'll need a baseline of 40+mbps, if not more, just for background data.

read your agreement, It's "up to 40mbps". They are giving you exactly what you paid for. Don't like it, get enterprise grade with an SLA and then you can bitch when it's to slow...

I agree with you however on the overselling and monthly data limits, and the data rates should be best effort, or they should be sold as "XXmbps minimum, faster speeds may be available at some times" Then when there is congestion (say 6:30PM), they randomly select and throttle some people. TBH, if i could trust my ISP to handle throttling of my bittorrents, I would. Say "opt in for bulk download management" and then they can sort out long slow running things, and let the RTTs go up for those, or throttle those first.

So I have a choice of comcast or century link here in my apartment. Partly due to the city, and partly due to the apartment building. This means that I chose the lesser of two evils.

that does increase profit, by lowering tax "burden".

I'll repost something from above...

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

Basically it looks like multicast at the block level. Only send what each node needs/wants and never even send the rest. Given there are ~2000 homes per node, and lets say 8 channels per home (picture in picture on 4 tvs, all different) that means needing to bale able to send 16,000 things at once. There aren't that many channels, and I'm sure the cable companies know how many active users they have at any one time, etc, etc. Also if they needed to they could send 1080P or 720P video for less popular shows.

yes I have, where are the 300+ PPI desktop monitors?

right, but I can without any real effort convert 1L into mL in my head... Try that in the US where soda in cans is priced in $/fluid ounce (a unit of volume not weight) and soda in large bottle in $/L, or a small block of cheese in $/oz and the large one in $/lbm, example a 6oz brick might cost $2, and a 1.34lb brick might cost $12. Which is cheaper per unit weight? no looking up oz/lbs, and you have to do all the math in your head. Like the soda example above, there are some other things that mix units as well. some weights when small are in grams, and then end up in pounds when larger. So we 'mericans already need to use both, but admit it less than the british do.

Also last I knew all the US imperial measures were based on the metric equivalent, for example, the foot is defined as 0.3 meter (look up the real conversion) and the inch then is defined as 1/12th that. Pounds are the same way with 1lb being equal to 1/2.2 kgs.

Right, MAC lock the main wifi network (if you have company WIFI devices) or otherwise keep the personal devices off the network. If you want to provide a network for the personal devices, then provide employees with access to a separate firewalled off network. Since the post is about malware it seems like the real issue is letting the devices on the network, and not in the physical space.

Is the issue the camera's on these devices? If so, time to get lockers in a space outside the "secure" space.

I live in a first ring suburb of Minneapolis (for those of you here, inside the 494/694 ring) and work in a second ring suburb. There is a bus from work to home in morning and from hoem to work in the evening, so unless I want to work nights I have to drive the 16 miles.

sounds like the bulbs need better power filtering... Some of us have no way to fix any of the things the GP listed, as they don't belong to us, and the apartment management does not care if our CFLs burn out fast. That doesn't cost them money and I can just buy halogen.

Care to show me a portable Mac with a workstation GPU? (FireGL or Quatro)

Okay, even if you could get one of those, what do you think they would do to the battery life? Workstation cards tend to have only minimal power saving modes.

The last planes I was on for the 3.5 to 4 hour flight between MSP and SAN, were a 757 and a MD90. Neither have any sort of power anywhere on the plane. A 4 hour flight on a workstation laptop running autocad/inventor is just never going to work. Nor is it going to work for a movie.

I'm just surprised that an SD card and USB2 can keep up with blue-ray files. Shame it doesn't have an option for gigabit ethernet that isn't just an internal USB bridge.