oh yeah, at one point I had bonded dual ISDN channels (128Kb) I have a vague recollection that I paid more than than I do currently from my overpriced spark light internet. This damned need for speed has been expensive :lol:

Unfortunately this is standard operating procedure. Take Cable One (sparklight now) for example: I live in the Boise suburbs, a zip code or two in Boise can get freedom 1000 which is $60 a month for gigabit access with unlimited data usage the rest of Boise and all of the suburbs pay $125 for a gigabit with a 1.5 TB cap which we can have removed for $40 a month. The area that has freedom as an option? They also have a fiber option coming for $60 a month imagine that... There is the same situation other places that they have competition (north Dakota, etc.) It's legalized robbery but there is no option for those of us in rural areas who have very little chance for non-satellite competition to come into the area. Even though it's going to make astronomy harder I definitely hope starlink gets up to a gigabit coverage soon as I would appreciate the monthly savings on my spark light bill. That being said I'm old enough that I remember the sound of a 300 baud modem, and am flipping grateful to be fleeced for gigabit...

Since moving out to the boonies nearly 2 years ago I've had cable one even with a house move the speeds have been at least as fast as advertised the vast majority of the time and now that I've cut the cord on TV and opted for their fastest speed (100/10 with higher usage limits) I've not seen it fall below 85Mb (usually it's in the 95-99 range) and occasionally get more than 100Mb. The weird part of that is my download system has a 100Mb card in it and the whole, overhead thing is generally not a negative number ;) Once OpenBSD puts out the new release next month I'll switch routing duties from my tplink to a box with dual gigabit cards, and assign the firewall to be the main downloading box if I can find a good nzb downloader for openbsd can't imagine I'll see more than 100Mb, but a boy can dream ;)

With cable (I've used comcast, time warner, cox, and now cable one) except during really high usage hours you tend to get 85%+ of what they say you'll get (not counting their various wireless services). With *dsl (I've done S and A) I never got the promised speeds despite being the appropriate distance from the CO.I still hope to experience fiber (google or otherwise) someday but my chosen location makes that extremely unlikely in the next decade. Heck, I still am amazed that from the hot tub I can hear cows at night, and yet get a solid 100Mb connection. 90s me is very much in awe.

FWIW, some of us non game playing geeks are also *really* looking forward to the Rift primarily for watching movies on our HTPC... $300-400 (a head) is not expensive to movie geeks wanting the best experience... Hell, I'm praying the rift is finally released before I give in and buy another projector to replace my 7 year old one. I'm not sure if the rift will beable to do what I want it to, but I'm hopeful. And at the cost of 1 lamp (I replace them each year with my viewership on projectorss) it would be a friggin steal.

I'm sorry, but since the advent of marketing (the new wheel, now travel up to 1000x faster than walking!) the speeds we actually get *very* rarely ever approach the advertised "up to" speeds. Even the summation says this: "And, as you well know from decades of network-technology advertising, dear reader, a “raw” data rate (often incorrectly called “theoretical”) is the maximum number of bits that can pass over a network. That includes all the network overhead as well as actual data carried in packets and frames. The net throughput is often 30 to 60 percent lower.'" So...... why bother mentioning it, let alone headlining it? Is it just to attract us grumpy old trolls? The advertised wireless network speeds are very much like gas mileage, wildly inaccurate in the real world.

While tea does contain tanin so does coffee. A more common reason as to why you can do this is either you're drinking a fruit /mint tea that has little to no caffeine, or more likely, your body is conditioned for coffee so that when you smell coffee and taste it your brain behaves as though it's just waking up even if there's not a lot of caffine in the cup. An example of this was a study (in england around 2011 if my memory serves) that had people drink regular coffee and decaf and then tested focus and reaction time. The people drinking decaf who were told they were drinking caffeine actually did better than the caffeinated people on (I think just on) reaction time. The brain is an annoyingly inconvenient trickster sometimes.

if only I had mod points, thanks for the good LOL before bed.

If you live in an area serviced by them, the people that bought CCW have a great service. I'm on a reseller (Vivaciti) of theirs and have no problems despite a monthly usage of 400-500GB. (am getting 10-12Mb from amsterdam on a 14Mb sync). As my line sometimes goes to crap a LLU was the best solution for me (no speed profile, you get whatever you connect at, not the speed you connected at 2-3 days ago. fcking expensive to me, but I'm able to grab US tv in 720p fairly quickly so I'm happy until I wander back to the states :)