 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Here's one for you:
A single-layer DVD apparently holds about 4.7 GB of data. So ten of them
would hold about 47 GB.
That means that if I burn 10 DVDs and mail them to somebody, and it
takes 2 days for them to arrive, I have just achieved an average data
transfer rate of about 1 GB/hour. (About 0.2 MB/sec.)
But hey, why burn 10 DVDs when you can just buy a cheap HD and mail
that? (I'm guessing at this point the weight starts to become
expensive...) I see that I can get a 500 GB HD for about £40, and if it
takes 2 days for that to turn up, that's around 23 Mbit/sec -
significantly faster than any possible broadband connection.
Heck, for £60 I can get a drive twice that size, and double the transfer
rate!
On the other hand, if it takes 4 days to arrive, I just halved the
transfer rate. And the latency is, of course, abysmal...
I found the following quote on Wikipedia:
"The theoretical capacity of a Boeing 747 filled with Blu-Ray discs is
595,520,000 Gigabits, resulting in a 37,034.826 Gb/s flight from New
York to Los Angeles."
Somebody bothered to compute this?!? o_O
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:01:26 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> I see that I can get a 500 GB HD for about £40, and if it takes 2 days
> for that to turn up, that's around 23 Mbit/sec - significantly faster
> than any possible broadband connection.
Less than a quarter of the bandwidth I have had at home for several years.
> "The theoretical capacity of a Boeing 747 filled with Blu-Ray discs is
> 595,520,000 Gigabits, resulting in a 37,034.826 Gb/s flight from New
> York to Los Angeles."
>
> Somebody bothered to compute this?!? o_O
Yet they failed to account for the time needed to record the three million
discs.
--
FE
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> I see that I can get a 500 GB HD for about £40, and if it takes 2 days
>> for that to turn up, that's around 23 Mbit/sec - significantly faster
>> than any possible broadband connection.
>
> Less than a quarter of the bandwidth I have had at home for several years.
Which country do *you* live in? According to my data, ADSL has a maximum
speed of 8 Mbit/sec, and even ADSL2 stops at 12 Mbit/sec. So where on
God's Earth are you getting 23 Mbit/sec from?
>> "The theoretical capacity of a Boeing 747 filled with Blu-Ray discs is
>> 595,520,000 Gigabits, resulting in a 37,034.826 Gb/s flight from New
>> York to Los Angeles."
>>
>> Somebody bothered to compute this?!? o_O
>
> Yet they failed to account for the time needed to record the three
> million discs.
Yes... It strikes me that if you really wanted to do this, you wouldn't
use BluRay disks, you'd use harddrives. (Much faster to access, and less
bunky too.)
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:06:22 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> According to my data, ADSL has a maximum speed of 8 Mbit/sec, and even
> ADSL2 stops at 12 Mbit/sec. So where on God's Earth are you getting 23
> Mbit/sec from?
Why do you assume I am using ADSL?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTTB
Even if I did use ADSL(2+), I would still be able to get 24 Mbps.
--
FE
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
> Why do you assume I am using ADSL?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTTB
>
> Even if I did use ADSL(2+), I would still be able to get 24 Mbps.
I assumed it wouldn't be FTTB or ADSL2+ because, as far as I'm aware,
nobody has actually deployed these technologies yet. I've read about
companies who say they're *going* to do it someday, but I'm not aware of
anywhere that has actually *done* so yet.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> I assumed it wouldn't be FTTB or ADSL2+ because, as far as I'm aware,
> nobody has actually deployed these technologies yet. I've read about
> companies who say they're *going* to do it someday, but I'm not aware of
> anywhere that has actually *done* so yet.
ADSL2+ is available pretty much everywhere here in Germany. If I paid 10
euro more per month I could have 16 Mbit/s instead of 8. Also if I lived
about 5 km closer to Munich I could get VDSL2 which is 50 Mbit/s :-D
It seems some companies are using ADSL2+ in the UK in limited areas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL2%2B#United_Kingdom
In some UK places you can also get internet via cable (I had this while I
lived in Oxford). Last time I checked you could get 10 Mbit/s that way,
probably higher now.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> I assumed it wouldn't be FTTB or ADSL2+ because, as far as I'm aware,
>> nobody has actually deployed these technologies yet. I've read about
>> companies who say they're *going* to do it someday, but I'm not aware
>> of anywhere that has actually *done* so yet.
>
> ADSL2+ is available pretty much everywhere here in Germany. If I paid
> 10 euro more per month I could have 16 Mbit/s instead of 8. Also if I
> lived about 5 km closer to Munich I could get VDSL2 which is 50 Mbit/s :-D
50 Mbit/sec... That's just trippy.
If they ever do replace all the copper with fiber, access to the
Internet should get a lot faster. (I always thought it was silly that I
was accessing the Internet using an infrastructure designed for narrow
bandwidth voice coms, but hey...) Don't hold your breath for that
anytime soon.
> It seems some companies are using ADSL2+ in the UK in limited areas:
It says which companies, doesn't seem to say where. Presumably only
inside London at the moment.
> In some UK places you can also get internet via cable (I had this while
> I lived in Oxford). Last time I checked you could get 10 Mbit/s that
> way, probably higher now.
I've only seen one person who had this, and she was on 2 Mbit/sec.
Still, one person isn't a large sample size, and it was a while ago now.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:32:49 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> I assumed it wouldn't be FTTB or ADSL2+ because, as far as I'm aware,
> nobody has actually deployed these technologies yet.
As usual, you assume incorrectly.
> I've read about companies who say they're *going* to do it someday, but
> I'm not aware of anywhere that has actually *done* so yet.
You need to read more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_G.992.5#Deployment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country
--
FE
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> I've read about companies who say they're *going* to do it someday,
>> but I'm not aware of anywhere that has actually *done* so yet.
>
> You need to read more.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_G.992.5#Deployment
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country
...so it's just a case of the UK being behind the rest of the world then?
(Also, notice how Fibercity is being trialled in Bournemouth,
*Northampton* and Dundee. Not Milton Keynes, but Northampton. God only
knows why everything happens in Northampton, not Milton Keynes...)
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible wrote:
> significantly faster than any possible broadband connection.
http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible wrote:
> God only knows why everything happens in Northampton, not Milton Keynes...)
They know you live there, and they don't like *you*.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible escreveu:
> A single-layer DVD apparently holds about 4.7 GB of data. So ten of them
> would hold about 47 GB.
>
> That means that if I burn 10 DVDs and mail them to somebody, and it
> takes 2 days for them to arrive, I have just achieved an average data
> transfer rate of about 1 GB/hour. (About 0.2 MB/sec.)
>
> But hey, why burn 10 DVDs when you can just buy a cheap HD and mail
> that? (I'm guessing at this point the weight starts to become
> expensive...) I see that I can get a 500 GB HD for about £40, and if it
> takes 2 days for that to turn up, that's around 23 Mbit/sec -
> significantly faster than any possible broadband connection.
the problem is that packet loss is not as cheap as with networked data...
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Darren New escreveu:
> Invisible wrote:
>> God only knows why everything happens in Northampton, not Milton
>> Keynes...)
>
> They know you live there, and they don't like *you*.
LOL
that's obviously impossible! :D
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> significantly faster than any possible broadband connection.
>
> http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/
Now that's what I'm talking about... :-D
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
nemesis wrote:
> the problem is that packet loss is not as cheap as with networked data...
That is, indeed, a small problem. (!)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> ADSL2+ is available pretty much everywhere here in Germany. If I paid 10
>> euro more per month I could have 16 Mbit/s instead of 8. Also if I lived
>> about 5 km closer to Munich I could get VDSL2 which is 50 Mbit/s :-D
Dream on. What you get depends on where you live. If you live in a city,
perferably in the heart of a large city, then you are right. If you happen
to live in the outskirts, no chance.
Examples from Berlin (German capital) and surrounding areas:
- Berlin outskirts, near the former Berlin wall (1 Mbit/s downstream, 128 kB
upstream)
- regular street but: street surface is sand - when it rains the area
becomes unpassable, have seen more sound streets in Egypt - at least they
were dry...
- Brieselang, 11.000 inhabitants, 15km west of Berlin
- center of town, 1 minute away from train station (3 Mbit/s downstream)
- other, more remote areas: less than 1Mbit/s
- other areas in east Germany (the areas where there are just 20 year old
glass-fibre cables available)
- ISDN available only, no ADSL (max. 2x 64 kbit/s at forbidding cost)
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> What you get depends on where you live. If you live in a city, perferably
> in the heart of a large city, then you are right. If you happen to live in
> the outskirts, no chance.
I guess Munich just has good support in the outskirts too. Now I live 30 km
from the centre and get 6 Mbit/s (not sure if this is the limit of my line,
my plan/modem is max 6 mbit/s). According to this map of where VDSL is
available:
http://entertain.eki.t-home.de/hilfe-und-service/verfuegbarkeit-vdsl-ausbaustatus/
most of the towns/suburbs around me have VDSL but I don't :-( It looks to
me like pretty much the entire population of Munich itself is covered by
VDSL, and a lot of the towns/villages surrounding it.
But like you say, I guess you need to live in or near a large city to get it
currently.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> I guess Munich just has good support in the outskirts too. Now I live 30
> km from the centre and get 6 Mbit/s (not sure if this is the limit of my
> line, my plan/modem is max 6 mbit/s). According to this map of where VDSL
> is available:
Out of idle curiosity: have you actually measured data-transfer?
I pay for 6Mbit/s but get only 3Mbit/s. Of course, all kinds of people want
to sell me flat rates with "up to 16 Mbit/s" - but when I ask them to give
me a written statement that I >will < be able to use at least a 6 Mbit/s
line, I never ever hear of them again.
God, how I hate advertisements with "up to" or "starting from"...
It's a bit like trying to sell a 40 year old VW beetle and advertising that
it will be able to travel at speeds >up to< 800.000 km/h...
Incindentally it actually does travel this fast provided you look at it from
the center of our galaxy. ;-) The actual speed and direction of it relative
to your own street can be seen as a mere pertubation in this case.
Everything just depends on your standpoint...
(For the more conventionally minded resellers of used cars: we can safely
assume that any car can travel at speeds of up to 200 km/h, albeit briefly.
Just push it off the cliff of your choice.)
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
TC wrote:
> Out of idle curiosity: have you actually measured data-transfer?
>
> I pay for 6Mbit/s but get only 3Mbit/s. Of course, all kinds of people want
> to sell me flat rates with "up to 16 Mbit/s" - but when I ask them to give
> me a written statement that I >will < be able to use at least a 6 Mbit/s
> line, I never ever hear of them again.
>
> God, how I hate advertisements with "up to" or "starting from"...
My employer's Internet connection is *guaranteed* to be 5 Mbit/sec in
both directions at all times. (There are also contractual guarantees
about how quickly the ISP will fix it if it breaks.)
My employer pays approximately £30,000/year for that.
How much do you pay for your broadband?
You *can* buy guaranteed bandwidth. It's just kinda pricey... ;-)
> (For the more conventionally minded resellers of used cars: we can safely
> assume that any car can travel at speeds of up to 200 km/h, albeit briefly.
> Just push it off the cliff of your choice.)
For a sufficiently high cliff. And provided that the car's aerodynamic
drag is insignificant compared to its mass at that speed... If it's a
Robin Reliant, this is a dubious assumption.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 29/04/2010 10:01 PM, Invisible wrote:
>
> Heck, for £60 I can get a drive twice that size, and double the transfer
> rate!
>
> On the other hand, if it takes 4 days to arrive, I just halved the
> transfer rate. And the latency is, of course, abysmal...
>
>
>
> I found the following quote on Wikipedia:
>
> "The theoretical capacity of a Boeing 747 filled with Blu-Ray discs is
> 595,520,000 Gigabits, resulting in a 37,034.826 Gb/s flight from New
> York to Los Angeles."
>
> Somebody bothered to compute this?!? o_O
Or as a uni lecturer said to my data comms class (circa mid 1980's):
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a ute full of tapes speeding down
the highway"
At the time we were learning about synchronous protocols operating over
1200bps links.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> I found the following quote on Wikipedia:
>>
>> "The theoretical capacity of a Boeing 747 filled with Blu-Ray discs is
>> 595,520,000 Gigabits, resulting in a 37,034.826 Gb/s flight from New
>> York to Los Angeles."
>>
>> Somebody bothered to compute this?!? o_O
>
> Or as a uni lecturer said to my data comms class (circa mid 1980's):
>
> "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a ute full of tapes speeding down
> the highway"
Heh, yeah!
> At the time we were learning about synchronous protocols operating over
> 1200bps links.
I wonder... What's the bandwidth of a punch-card reader/writer?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> Out of idle curiosity: have you actually measured data-transfer?
Several times, just last night I tried the BBC iPlayer diagnostic page and
it gave me 5.8 Mbit/s. In my modem settings page it says it's connected at
60xx kbit/s usually. Sometimes download speeds in windows go up to 600
Kbyte/s, it depends on where it's coming from. I guess the theoretical
limit of my line might be 6 Mbit/s, but it would be a coincidence as my
package is only for 6 Mbit/s.
> I pay for 6Mbit/s but get only 3Mbit/s.
That's like my dad, he pays for 8Mbit/s (AFAIK all BT packages in the UK
offer 8Mbit/s) and only gets about 2.5 (according to the modem settings
page).
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> I pay for 6Mbit/s but get only 3Mbit/s.
>
> That's like my dad, he pays for 8Mbit/s (AFAIK all BT packages in the UK
> offer 8Mbit/s) and only gets about 2.5 (according to the modem settings
> page).
Presumably the link-layer speed depends on the line. (AFAIK, a large
part of the modem handshake process consists of testing the various
frequency bands to see which ones are clear enough to be useable. That's
what dictates your transfer speed.)
The amount of IP data you can transfer depends not only on the
link-layer speed, but also the speed of the server you're talking to,
how much congestion there is on the entire route between you and the
server, how responsive your own PC is going, etc etc etc.
(And, of course, the amount of "real" data is the amount of IP data
minus all the protocol overhead - IP headers, TCP headers, handshakes,
retransmits, timeouts, etc.)
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
TC wrote:
> God, how I hate advertisements with "up to" or "starting from"...
I always liked "Up to 50% off, or more!"
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible wrote:
> I wonder... What's the bandwidth of a punch-card reader/writer?
Readers ran somewhere between 100 and 150 cards per minute, depending on how
much you paid for them. Roughly 80 bytes per card.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On 1/05/2010 12:07 AM, Invisible wrote:
> I wonder... What's the bandwidth of a punch-card reader/writer?
Good question but I'm afraid I don't know off hand.
Suppose an 80 column card with 10 bits/column. That is 800 bits per
card. Maybe 20 cards per second through a reader ? Could be higher
since those things were really impressive bits of engineering.
Something like 16K bps ?
Now cards were not generally used for arbitrary data. For example in
many cases cols 73-80 were used for card sequence numbers. Data was
often characters so only 6 or 7 bits of variability for most characters.
Then the readers have to be fed.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Paul Fuller wrote:
> Suppose an 80 column card with 10 bits/column. That is 800 bits per
> card.
No. If you punched all the holes out of the card (a so-called 'lace card'),
it wouldn't go thru the reader. It was 7 or 8 bits per column. Even binary
punched on the card was spread out so it wouldn't make too many holes.
> Maybe 20 cards per second through a reader ? Could be higher
> since those things were really impressive bits of engineering.
Some of them were very fast. Most were closer to 5 or 10, unless you had a
really high-end giant machine.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> Suppose an 80 column card with 10 bits/column. That is 800 bits per
>> card.
>
> No. If you punched all the holes out of the card (a so-called 'lace
> card'), it wouldn't go thru the reader. It was 7 or 8 bits per column.
> Even binary punched on the card was spread out so it wouldn't make too
> many holes.
>
>> Maybe 20 cards per second through a reader ? Could be higher since
>> those things were really impressive bits of engineering.
>
> Some of them were very fast. Most were closer to 5 or 10, unless you had
> a really high-end giant machine.
Ah, the wonders of the Internet. Ask any weird-arse question, and
*somebody* will know the answer! :-D
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Ah, the wonders of the Internet. Ask any weird-arse question, and
> *somebody* will know the answer! :-D
Thinking on it, the difference was speed. Was it a mechanical card reader or
an optical card reader. Did it shine light thru the holes? Then you could
slide a stack of cards past pretty much as fast as you want, which was good
if you had a giant IBM or something and you wanted to do lots of processing.
Otherwise, it was cheaper to build a mechanical reader, with pins that would
complete circuits thru the holes in the card, which obviously meant moving
the cards slower. If your machine was sufficiently slow, there was no point
in having a faster card-reader. I only worked with the slow ones.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> My employer's Internet connection is *guaranteed* to be 5 Mbit/sec in both
> directions at all times. (There are also contractual guarantees about how
> quickly the ISP will fix it if it breaks.)
>
> My employer pays approximately £30,000/year for that.
>
> How much do you pay for your broadband?
Ouch!
IF you are lucky enough to dwell at a convenient location and get VDSL, then
you pay with t-com about 600 EUR/year for 25-50 Mbit/s downstream / 2.7-10
Mbit/s upstream, including a phone-flat and a few (for me) uninteresting
TV-programs.
If you want just 6Mbit/s - .5 Mbit/s and a phone-flat you pay about 468 EUR.
However, nobody here expands into rural areas. The reason is simple: if you
are in communications and invest into infrastructure, our laws force the
companies to "open" their lines to competitors at very cheap rates. So new
cables are only places below surface where they can be reasonably sure that
enough customers will stay with them to make it worth their while. That is
only the case where many people are crammed into very small spaces, like the
large cities. Free markets are not always good...
If you can only get ISDN (128 kbit) things get expensive - the worse the
line, the more you pay. Then you pay about 100 EUR/month (to my best
knowledge). Absurd.
In the worst locations here to get a 5 Mbit/5Mbit line you would have to
bundle 40 ISDN connections, so you would have to pay around 48.000 EUR /
year. Probably you could get this cheaper with other telcos.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Thinking on it, the difference was speed. Was it a mechanical card reader or
> an optical card reader. Did it shine light thru the holes? Then you could
> slide a stack of cards past pretty much as fast as you want, which was good
> if you had a giant IBM or something and you wanted to do lots of processing.
Wasn't that the idea with punched tape? (Although punched tapes might
actually predate punch cards...)
--
- Warp
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
>> My employer's Internet connection is *guaranteed* to be 5 Mbit/sec in both
>> directions at all times. (There are also contractual guarantees about how
>> quickly the ISP will fix it if it breaks.)
>>
>> My employer pays approximately £30,000/year for that.
>>
>> How much do you pay for your broadband?
>
> Ouch!
Yeah, well, it's 5 Mbit/sec IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. (ADSL is typically 5
Mbit/sec up and 0.5 Mbit/sec down.) And it has service guarantees. And a
static IP address. Etc. In other words, it's a business package, not a
residential package. Hence the price tag.
> However, nobody here expands into rural areas. The reason is simple: if you
> are in communications and invest into infrastructure, our laws force the
> companies to "open" their lines to competitors at very cheap rates. So new
> cables are only places below surface where they can be reasonably sure that
> enough customers will stay with them to make it worth their while. That is
> only the case where many people are crammed into very small spaces, like the
> large cities. Free markets are not always good...
Laws forcing companies to do things doesn't sound like a very "free"
market to me...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:37:55 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Laws forcing companies to do things doesn't sound like a very "free"
> market to me...
Free markets still need to be regulated so as to ensure they remain free
markets (ie, open to competition).
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Laws forcing companies to do things doesn't sound like a very "free"
> market to me...
I don't know where TC is from, but we haven't had a free market in land-line
phone service in the USA in over 100 years.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Warp wrote:
> Wasn't that the idea with punched tape? (Although punched tapes might
> actually predate punch cards...)
The only tape readers I ever saw in operation were mechanical. I imagine
there would be the same differences there.
Now, the carriage control tape on the line printer was optical, but that was
only a loop as long as a page of paper, so that didn't really count.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Well, I am from Germany.
We had a monopoly here, allowing ONLY German Telekom (then called
Bundespost) to do business in the field of communications. GT was a part of
the German state - a federal office - and all employees were civil servants,
starting at the top management down to the guy digging up the street and
placing the cables there. It was the same with postal services.
Now, don't confuse a US civil servant with a German one - our's don't pay
income tax and get lots of money compared to a normal worker - if you deduct
the taxes, social security and "Abgaben" - there is no real term for this in
English, it is another kind of tax in every sense but the legal one. It is
said the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow - we Germans have 50
different words for tax - but I disgress.
The monopoly had a rather severe impact on German online-services and BBS in
the 80's and 90's. You could only have a modem if it had the approval seal
of the GT. So a 56kbps modem that could be had for 50 dollars in the US was
sold by our bureaucrats for the equivalent of 500 dollars. Much cost for a
little sticker on the back of the modem. So either you were rich or used
illegally imported modems - or did not use modems at all, which most people
did. Hey, you even had to rent the actual phone from the GT in addition to
paying monthly for the line itself.
Find the old phones you had to rent here: actually these were quite hip at
the time.
http://schnitzler-aachen.de/Surftipps/Bundespost_1984_b.jpg
The standard model was mouse-grey platics with a dial. We had, at more
monthly cost, a green phone with dial. We used it until 1996. See a similar
phone below:
http://www.2blum.de/images/FeTAp611-2a.jpg
Now, I think it was a blessing when the Bundespost had to give up the
monopoly. However, I think it would be fair to grant a time-limited monopoly
on their own cables for any telco which actually digs up the ground and puts
IT-infrastructure in. Whoever pays for the new cables could be sure to reap
the profits. This way VDSL would spread into rural Germany much faster.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
TC wrote:
> We had a monopoly here, allowing ONLY German Telekom (then called
> Bundespost) to do business in the field of communications.
Here we had competition up until 1934 or so. (Legally, 1934. Reality of
course drags on, or happens before legally required, etc.) At that point,
there were so many phone lines that the government granted "regulated
monopoly" status to AT&T, aka "The Bell System." Bell was the only company
allowed to run phone lines. This legal decision was called the "Final
Judgment". Anything you hooked up to Bell's phone lines had to be approved
by Bell.
At the time, things were analog, so it took careful planning to route a call
across country without swamping the signal with noise every time it went
through a switch.
But the company was regulated. They had to follow strict accounting rules,
they had to depreciate things over 30 to 50 years (i.e., they had to buy
equipment that would work for 50 years before it wore out enough that it
needed to be replaced), they could only make a certain amount of profit
(that was, on the other hand, pretty much guaranteed given they were a
monoply), and they had to service every customer. They even had to pay the
same rate for the phone on the desk of the guy sitting in the central office
as you did for the phone in your house. But if you were a park ranger 15
miles from the nearest central office, you could still get a telephone.
However, this meant that while phone service was remarkably inexpensive for
the time, and even a tiny portion of the money going to Bell Labs made it
one of the foremost research organizations in the world for decades, it also
meant that things didn't really move forward very fast. ISDN never took
off, because by the time that 30-year-old mechanical phone switch was paid
for, we were already up to ADSL and such. You (usually) rented your phone,
but since AT&T didn't want to pay for new phones, they lasted pretty much
forever.
http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/test2007/mp_greatestgadget_f.jpg
In the late 1970s, MCI (Michigan Communications Inc or something like that)
installed digital microwave towers to let truck drivers going between
Chicago and Minneapolis (or something like that) talk to their bosses. AT&T
sued MCI, saying they had a government-granted monopoly. AT&T won, but the
courts revisited the "Final Judgment", decided that since it was no longer
necessary to carefully control the network (due to digital transmission and
wireless transmission), they would create a "Modified Final Judgment" in 1984.
The MFJ said that The Bell System gets broken up in to AT&T Long Lines
(which were not allowed to offer local service, but which were allowed to
basically charge whatever they wanted etc), and the seven Regional Bell
Operating Companies (Pacific Bell, New England Bell, etc) who were not
allowed to provide communication between LATAs (Local Access Telephone
Areas). A LATA is basically a city, or one "area code" if you've ever been
to the USA.
So now you have seven phone companies, and they each have to pay AT&T to
connect a call to a different LATA, and AT&T has to pay to connect that call
to the destination. Telephone number information (i.e., looking up what
would be in a phone book) depends on which city they're in, etc. There's
even weird crap caused by SS7, which is the protocol used between phone
switches, because some of the data it transfers (like caller ID) was
considered "communications", while other data (like busy signals) was
considered "signaling", so now you had to start counting packets based on
their type, on a nation-wide network of computers that were never designed
for such a thing and which were all vitally necessary to continued operation
of the network.
AT&T wasn't allowed to talk to Bell. They had one year to figure out how to
give equal access to everyone. Considering the whole routing network was
based on phone numbers and their prefixes, it was a pretty herculean task.
It was still causing pain 10 years later.
Plus, the seven RBOCs were still regulated, at least for areas in which they
had monopolies. So the local companie still had to service every customer,
blah blah blah. But, local companies that weren't RBOCs didn't have those
types of restrictions, *and* they got to connect to the RBOC's switches at
the same rate the RBOCs charged themselves. So a company could come in, hook
up a fiber from the switch to the new office building, and get all the
$600/month business phones, and the RBOCs still had to service everyone else
for the same $20/month they were charging.
So, yeah, it was pretty much the same here.
The new stuff - fiber, cable, cell phones, etc - weren't part of the
regulated part, so you could have New York Bell competing for your business
with Pacific Bell for cell phone service, but not wired service.
In any case, at the time of the break-up, we had 56 light-minutes of copper
wire installed in the USA, and 96%+ had phones in their houses and offices.
So it's pretty reasonable that say only 15 years after cell phones were
actually useful, lots fewer people have them here than elsewhere.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Sat, 01 May 2010 02:03:07 +0200, TC wrote:
> Now, don't confuse a US civil servant with a German one - our's don't
> pay income tax and get lots of money compared to a normal worker
Actually, in the US many civil servants are FICA-exempt (meaning they
don't pay social security taxes) - because a government pension + Social
Security would be seen as "double-dipping".
The kicker there is that if you end up working somewhere and are FICA-
exempt, apparently you can NEVER collect social security, even if
afterwards you take a job in the private sector and have to pay into FICA.
Got a friend who works for a public university who is in such a situation
- and his father-in-law nearly took a part-time teaching job at another
university after 30+ years of working and contributing to social
security, and he could've lost it all for a $1500 teaching gig over one
semester.
But out of curiosity, are you considered a civil servant in Germany? (I
ask because I've a good friend who is, and just seems like a small world
to run into two people in such positions <g>)
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Jim Henderson wrote:
> The kicker there is that if you end up working somewhere and are FICA-
> exempt, apparently you can NEVER collect social security, even if
> afterwards you take a job in the private sector and have to pay into FICA.
I don't think that's always true. I know people who after they retire from
police work, they take a job for 5 years to get social security and such.
Maybe it's state vs federal, or maybe it's if your *last* job is
FICA-exempt, or maybe it's just the medicare or other "non-pension" part of
the social security deal I heard about, or something like that.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
This video reminded me of this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE
Back then modems were made with *style*.
--
- Warp
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> But out of curiosity, are you considered a civil servant in Germany? (I
> ask because I've a good friend who is, and just seems like a small world
> to run into two people in such positions <g>)
No - I'm a freelancer.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Sneakernet: Providing backup to networks since before networks.
Regards,
John
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:55:20 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> The kicker there is that if you end up working somewhere and are FICA-
>> exempt, apparently you can NEVER collect social security, even if
>> afterwards you take a job in the private sector and have to pay into
>> FICA.
>
> I don't think that's always true. I know people who after they retire
> from police work, > they take a job for 5 years to get social security
> and such. Maybe it's state vs federal, or maybe it's if your *last* job
> is FICA-exempt, or maybe it's just the medicare or other "non-pension"
> part of the social security deal I heard about, or something like that.
Not all people who work for the government are considered FICA-exempt -
so it's possible that cops aren't (since FICA is federal, not state, and
police are generally state, not federal).
I had a bit of a chat with someone who falls under that, and he
researched it and told me what his research found, and that's essentially
what I've said above - so it's secondhand info that's sourced from
someone who falls under those rules.
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Warp wrote:
> Back then modems were made with *style*.
Wow. I used acoustic-coupled modems, but they were bakelite, not steam-punk.
:-) Very cool.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
