Nobody else notice this?

You really should check out Oracle Knowledge.

Perhaps you're right, but unfortunately this has some pretty vast social implications. If 60% of the degrees are going to women, and women and men are in a roughly 50/50 ratio, this means that there are going to be a lot of well paid, socially and economically powerful women who can't find equals as mates.

As the father of a young, smart daughter, this makes me sad. It means most likely, if my daughter wants to have a family she's going to have to accept some low-life college dropout because he didn't find the energy to figure out learning and education were worthwhile before it was too late.

I had this discussion recently with some friends, and it comes down to this. Assume you're in the 95th percentile in terms of "Intelligence" (whatever that means). In general, you'll have spent your entire life realizing that 95% of the time, you're smarter than the people around you. At some point, you self-select a peer group of similar percentiles, and begin to believe that you and those around you are average and that everyone else around you is simply an insufferable moron.

The best medicine, I've found, is to make friends in different groups, both socially, economically, and intellectually. Travel. Hang out with farmers. Meet people and try to see the world through their eyes. You might be intellectually "smarter" or "faster" than 95% of the people you meet, but everyone brings a new perspective and world view. If you pay attention to it, and start to try to look at the world through their eyes, you'll build your empathy, and increase your problem solving skills at the same time, as all good problem solving starts by looking at a problem from a new perspective.

Screw OC3s, more like lots of OC192s. No OC768s though, overpriced especially on T640s. Afraid in 1994 I was on the Enterprise side of networking, not on the Service Provider side; so my '94 knowledge is more about Ethernet switching and Novell NOSes. Only moved to Service Provider Architecture in the last 3 years, so generally my knowledge is hopefully up to date, but maybe not.

They do have lots of Capital Expenditures to purchase all that gear on the edge and their metro networks. And if they're paying about 4-5% (for Cisco/Scientific Atlanta) of their actual costs after discounts for hardware/software/support maintenance (OpEx) on all that equipment, then that is a really large number. However, generally those numbers aren't too variable. They only have to upgrade when the peak averages increase. If the peaks just last longer each day but the absolute maxes do not increase, they're not spending more CapEx and thus no more OpEx. So the Transit BW costs are a pretty big part of what is costing them OIBDA dollars, and to top it off, their customers control whether they have to pay more one more month or not.

That Level 3 is charging them less per Mbps now? Maybe $8? It can never be free. Maybe they get to Cogent pricing at $5/Mbps, but it will always cost money to run backbone networks for people who need transit. TWC (and other eyeball networks) will always pay for their transit. No one else is getting Settlement Free Peering.

I do not disagree that they are milking this. However I also believe that their highest profits come from the Cable TV side of the house. They don't have to upgrade capacity for that side of the house. Most folks just watch those broadcast channels and pay massive amounts for the pay subscription movie channels, again no real incremental costs, nearly pure profit once they have the infrastructure built out. For the less watched channels that aren't always broadcast, they don't even send the signal if no one is watching. If someone does start watching, they multicast those channels in case a second person down from the Head End starts watching. Again, once you get the first person watching, there are no additional costs, unlike when two people decide to download an episide of the Daily Show and start minutes apart from one another.

Now if more and more folks all decide they don't need to pay for all of that TV and instead all want to watch The Daily Show as a download whenever they want to, then they are all getting those bits from a CDN server somewhere on the Internet. It is likely that TWC won't pay for transit to get to that CDN provider though. Comedy Central uses Akamai (at least from my Comcast home network) for their CDN. AKAM might have caches at each of the TWC regional data centers already (though from my Comcast connection I go to Equinix, Ashburn and use Global Crossing for a single hop to get there). If Comedy Central used Level 3, that might work to TWC's advantage. If they use Limelight though, TWC is probably having to pay for those transit bits. Though LLNW is rapidly peering, so maybe not. Panther Express... aw come on, no way Comedy Central's ever heard of them.

Anyway, the point is that the high profit margins are the TV side. If folks move to getting their content directly from the Internet, they probably will cancel their TV side subscription. TWC has to be prepared for that and make the Internet side just as OIBDA profitable as the TV side before that day comes. They'll never get Settlement Free Peering, so they'll always be paying for bandwidth, and the future doesn't look good with those facts in mind.

Of course, they could install transparent caches at each head end or regional data center. Would certainly help offset those variable transit costs. And then they could sell all that usage info to another Phorm or other behavioral advertisers. Let's hope not though.

No, they purchase transit from Level 3.

Disappointed in the "research" that went into the original article. Most definitely if everyone didn't use any bandwidth for a day or two, then a cable company would likely pay less that month for the their transit bandwidth. In Time Warner Cable's case, they get their transit bandwidth from Level 3.

I'd guess Time Warner Cable is paying about $10/mbps (or less) on the 95th percentile. So if the top 5% five-minute averages of traffic to Level is thrown out, then the top average left is what they pay for. I would bet there are a few samples each night that are in that top 5% of samples, if everyone did NOT use the Internet one night during peak, the sample that is left at the 95th percentile would likely be less and they'd pay less that month for transit charges.

"Amazon's infrastructure is orders of magnitude better than what your average chump can manage themselves."

This is a common assumption, based in part by Amazon claiming that these services ran the same software that ran their store. Well, the store's uptime is terrible, maybe %98, and these services are written from scratch anyway.

I think they have their place, but the assumption that Amazon means good engineering is a very erroneous one. I know, I used to work there.

Each person should review the Terms of Service (ToS) they accepted (and most likely continue accept each time they use their Internet connection) and look to see what is stated there. Also, realize that the ISP's will update it with nearly no notice. Inside of those agreements that you agree to generally through your use of their services you'll find all kinds of interesting things. For example, here is some relevant quotes from Verizon's ToS in Section 14.4:

"You hereby consent to Verizon's monitoring of your Internet connection and network performance, and the access to and adjustment of your computer settings, as they relate to the Service, Software, or other services, which we may offer from time to time."

Who is to say that "adjustment of your computer settings" doesn't include adjustment of .html files being delivered to you. Oh and just in case that wasn't strong enough, in Section 15.8 you get:

"15.8 You agree that Verizon assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, quality completeness, usefulness or value of any Content, data, documents, graphics, images, information, advice, or opinion contained in any emails, message boards, chat rooms or community services, or in any other public services, and does not endorse any advice or opinion contained therein. Verizon does not monitor or control such services, although we reserve the right to do so. Verizon may take any action we deem appropriate, in our sole discretion, to maintain the high quality of our Service and to protect others and ourselves."

Similar allowances are inComcast's Acceptable Use Policy. Basically, folks have to understand what they are signing up for and how often it can change.

There are companies out there today, Phorm for example, who already are working with ISPs around the world in order to put their gear in the ISP networks to create targeting advertising based on all Internet habits, not just specific sites with specific cookies or the like. So far they all seem to be giving you an ability to Opt Out, but that appears to be a way to create good will for the moment. If there was case law backing them up, who knows if they'd continue the practice.

I'm a flunky, incapable of the math. But I don't think that that's the problem so much.

It's one of circularizing the orbit to Venus's current one, especially in so short a time, that is problematic.