Big Dan’s Site

I wrote this for my DJ Forum, for this thread: Want to work for the city? Hand over your facebook login info but it’s probably more suited to my blog:

It’s funny as we move more and more into the so called digital/information age less and less of our information is personal or private. Think about it on face book, myspace, etc we broadcast our relationship status list our name, address, phone number, websites, etc.

Most of the times we share this information without even thinking about who has the ability to see the information today who will have the ability to see the information tomorrow. There have actually been many newspaper articles on weather or not to ‘friend’ your parents or coworkers.

How many of you have ‘friends’ on facebook that you rarely if ever talk to? Are they really friends or just people you’re too polite to ‘defriend’? No offense, to anyone who is on my facebook page but I have many people on there whom I never talk to yet they have access to all my current information. At no time in history has this been possible unless you wrote or phoned your old friends they had no way to get your information unless it was through a friend/family member of yours who would more than likely know if you didn’t want that other person to have your information for what ever reason.

For me it seems like it’s an all in or all out thing. It seems that you either put the information there for all to see OR no information for anyone to see. It would be nice if you could control what information goes out to who. For instance maybe only real life friends and family should be able to see my address and phone number. As it is today, once you’re my BFF on facebook you know where I live.. Is that smart? I don’t know personally I don’t think I make very many enemies and those that I do make enemies out of probably aren’t crazy enough to do something like try and shoot me through my front facing bedroom window.

But what happens if I friend someone who I don’t realize is a crazed lunatic and down the line I piss them off in some way then they try and off me through my street facing bedroom window?

I’m joking a bit and perhaps taking things to the extreme but it is something to think about.

Since I bought my Mac Mini this past February I’ve had mixed ideas about how to use it. First it went into use as my primary computer for a few weeks, then the ’shiny new toy’ effect wore off and I put it on my entertainment center along with my new TV (which has a VGA input), then back to my desk, I did this twice right now it resides on my desk and I’m using it as my primary computer. I really like the Mini, I do think it’s a great little machine very capable for a such tiny footprint. I can easily do 90% of my work on it. Meanwhile my primary Windows desktop just sits there looking stupid. . Funny thing is that even with a faster processor, more memory, and more hard drive space I don’t miss my Windows Desktop. The Mac for the most part just works for me, I’ve grown accustom the little eccentricities of OS X and have actually come to like them. I find myself trying to do Mac keyboard shortcuts on the Windows side which drives me crazy.

Having two keyboards on my desk drives me nuts, I cannot tell you how many times I start typing on the wrong keyboard especially when both machines are running. Aside from that it just looks cluttered. The Mac wireless keyboard is a tiny little thing that I never thought I’d get used to but I find myself liking the tactile feel of it over my more expensive Microsoft keyboard. I never thought I’d be able to do without my navigation keys (Page Up, Page, Down, home, end, etc) or a number pad but I seem to have adopted just fine. I still haven’t gotten used to the Mighty Mouse and have since gave up on it, swapping it out for a $10 USB mouse.

On the Mac side applications seem to always follow the same flow, that is they all pretty much look and act the same. Where as on the Windows side apps don’t always have the same look or shortcuts from application to application nor do they always follow the windows GUI guidelines On OSX, I’ve only run into one application that looks crappy and that’s the GIMP which depends on the X11 Windowing system, this is the windowing system that Linux uses and I imagine a throwback to the ‘classic’ days (OS 8 and 9). I’ve never thought of myself as much of an eye candy person and I don’t really think it’s the eye candy aspect of it, it’s the continuity between apps on OS X that I enjoy. I know that pressing Cmd , in any app will bring up it’s preferences stuff like that matters to me, someone who does not have the time to go hunting through help files to find some obscure keyboard shortcut or setting.

Most apps seem to run better and be less intrusive under OS X then their windows counterparts, even if they don’t have all the features of the Window’s app. Yahoo Messenger is one, it’s done very well and elegantly for OS X and does not set itself to run on start up.

That’s always been a sticking point with me, no application should set itself to run on start up without my explicit permission. On Windows nearly every instant messenger and many other programs set themselves to run at start up without even asking, disabling auto start is confusing running through the programs options or worse yet some don’t even have the option and you have to force it via msconfig. Then there’s the programs that explicitly set themselves to run at start up on every update after you told it not to. Just plain bad behavior that boarders on malware, IMHO.You just don’t find many auto self starting programs on Mac, I only found one Skype which was very easy to disable under Users in system preferences.

My only problem with Mac’s lie in the cost, not just the initial hardware costs either, which is ridiculous in itself  but we’ll touch on that a bit later. It seems that any hardware made specifically for Mac or that advertises Mac compatibility is inherently more expensive than their windows counter parts. Simple things like a web cam, I can buy $10 web cams for Windows all day, try doing it for a Mac. I haven’t been able to find anything sub-$80. For as much as I use the web cam it’s just not worth it to me. I cannot buy a regular microphone off the shelf for my mini, I need to buy some USB adapter for $40 then I can use a regular mic, or buy a ridiculously priced headset made specifiably for me Mac and use one of my precious USB ports.

Mac Zealots always go around pounding the initially more expensive but cheaper in the long run drum. I don’t buy it, unless you have an all inclusive system like a laptop or iMac that includes the microphone and web cam, things like Mac compatible web cams and microphones add into the cost. Then you run into issues with those all inclusive systems, they aren’t easy to service, in fact they’re made outside of RAM and sometimes hard drive upgrades to be only serviced by “Apple Geniuses”, which factors into the cost of ownership too. I can pop open my windows desktop and replace every component while this is possible on Mac systems they seem to be purposely made to be hard to crack open and get to the guts of the machine.

Other Mac zealots will argue that the design of the computer is factored into the price, okay you’ve got me here they are beautifully designed but again I’m not much of an eye candy guy give me a while box computer and I’ll shove it in a CPU cabinet somewhere. I don’t need the all-in-one look of the iMac or the bushed aluminum look of the new iMacs/Mac Books.

Yet others will argue that last longer, I haven’t been playing with Macs long enough to know that. I do know that Snow Leopard the next version of OS X is coming in September dropped support for PPC processors this means in a mere three years machines that supposedly last longer can no longer upgrade to the latest version of OS X. I’m sure they’re still perfectly functional but so much for the last longer argument. My last PC last me through 6 years of heavy use before I put it out to pasture and gave it to my mother for games, it’s still running today 7 years later. I doubt that an Apple machine will be usable for much longer than that.

I’ll always compare price vs features and for me the so called Apple tax does not add up. I could go for a pimped out new Mini and do all my computer work on that but at over $1000 it just isn’t cost effective. I can build a machine with same hardware and a windows license for $500-$600 and have an upgradeable machine that runs pretty much everything under the sun. I do think Apple is being stingy by keeping OS X on Apple hardware only, it just shows greed especially now that OS X runs on X86 and x64 processors there is no good reason why it cannot run on a ‘white box’ PC.

My problem with the Mini now is I can see myself getting so used to and comfortable with it, tying myself to the platform, so that down the road when it comes time to upgrade I’m going to be forced to pay the apple tax because I want OS X. I’m really thinking of going cold turkey using my Windows computer as my main desktop and putting the Mac back on my entertainment center as a media computer for streaming, this way I don’t get too used to it and ‘need’ a mac when I upgrade.

I promised I would post pictures of my new desk setup, without further ado here they are you can click on each image for a full description:

I know I had promised pictures of my new setup yesterday but I was busy trying to get our new car on the road so I didn’t even get my surround sound done yesterday. Long story short, our  current car is a money sink. We just put over $1000 into and it still doesn’t run right the icing on the cake was when the rear air shocks dropped and the car was practically sitting on it’s tires making driving it a bad idea idea all around. Add to it that just when you think nothing else can go wrong with the junker something else goes wrong. We were planning on getting the shocks replaced just so we had something to drive as out in here in the country you need a car.

Long story short, last week mom was looking at a car on the side of the road that was for sale. She hymned and haed with the guy but he wouldn’t take payments. So, we left it at that figuring we’re not getting the car.

Yesterday out of now where he called dropped the price by $200 and decided to take payments so we made the down payment and got the title and keys.It’s 1996 Buick Regal Custom. Aside from fading paint and a few dents on the trunk it looks pretty sharp. The interior is all leather although a bit cracked and stained but that can be taken care of with some cleaning or worse comes to worse a seat cover. I checked out everything all the fluids look good and the electrical system works just fine. The only problem with car is it’s not made for tall guys, I’ve got the seat all the way back and sunk (power seat) and I still have bend my neck to see out the windshield. I don’t think I’ll be driving around to much in this.

As luck would have it, I wanted to take her to the car wash to wash, wax, vacuum, shampoo, and armor all the car but no dice it’s raining.

But for what we paid, if it lasts a year I’ll happy. It seems like a solid car though we used to have an older one just like it a 1992 it was a great car I think we finally got rid of it at over 220,000 miles because the tranny went aside from that I remember we used to run through brakes every couple of months.

Tomorrow I’m going to do my surround sound take pictures of that and the new car.

It’s been a while again, I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to posting with any frequency as I’ve been quite busy with other projects however today I took most of the day away from the computer and spent it changing my room around again. I changed everything around for two reasons. 1) I gave my mother my air conditioner and wanted to move my bed by the windows so I can get air flow on those hot summer nights and 2) I wanted my TV closer to my bed since the screen is smaller.

I spent yesterday fixing up all my computers the laptop is now dual booting Windows 7 plus Ubuntu and with the desktop I opted to keep Vista on since it’s the current stable version that dual boots with Ubuntu too. I tend to spend most of my time in Windows anyhow.. Ubuntu become more of a hobby OS for me.

The Mac Mini is back on my entertainment center with the screen being close to the bed, it’s more comforatable to view text from the bed which is great for a quick email check or IM session plus I can stream Hulu & Netflix direct to my TV now.

I don’t have any pictures yet, I was planning on posting some however I’m pooped out. Tomorrow I just have to re-run my surround sound speakers, that should only be an hour job but it’s still a major pain in the arse. This time around I opted to my two  4′ tables which I use as my desk in a stright line rather than using them in an L shape. So far it’s working out pretty good.

That’s that I’ll post pictures tomorrow.  Aside from that I’m back to walking again, I won’t bore you with the details and I’m still trying to quit smoking.. Big surprise.

Pics tomorrow.

Lots of little things have been keep me away from my blog lately. From it just being spring time and me wanting to be outside with da bird and the bees, hopefully some fine ladies too. ( ), to exercise, to work and the frustration of lack of work, and the chasing around of people to pay there bills boy can that be frustrating. Let me give you quick run down of what’s been going on.

I last posted about my new TV, it’s great I really like it, I think it’s better than my old one albeit a 9 inches smaller, it’s still better. On the HD TV front I’m really dissatisfied the cable companies are marketing HD TV like it’s the holy grail meanwhile out of the 20 or so HDTV channels I get, I’m lucky if half of them show HD shows all the time, it’s like a bait and switch, IMHO…Anyway, I’ve got my RCA switch hooked up along with my ‘old school’ (PS 2, Game Cube, Xbox [original] ) game consoles they all look 110% better on this TV especially with the games that support 16:9 format. Ya know it’s funny I consider myself somewhat of a geek although I’m not much of a gamer, I think if I’ve played all my consoles combined for more than 6 hours in the last year that would be a lot. Well last year was a turbulent year for me BUT I only switch on my PS2 or xBox to watch a DVD, I only actually play when I’m bored out of my mind, Grand Theft Auto 3 (PS2) and the Sonic Mega Collection (GC) are my favorite games to kill an evening with hence my hesitance to upgrade. If I were to upgrade, I’d buy the PS 3 first as Playstation has always been *the* game console for me but if GTA 3 and Sonic Mega Collection, which is all the old sonic games from Sega rolled into one game cube game CD do it for me, why should I drop $400 on the PS 3?

Other than that I had my Mini Mac hooked to the new TV via it’s VGA (dated computer monitor) input it was nice for while but I decided I wasn’t using mini enough due to it being on the TV stand rather than my desk, so I moved it back over to my desk and switching between the Mini and my workhorse desktop via one monitor. I really like OS X’s presentation style and eye candy BUT OS X, contrary to what the I’m a Mac ads would have you believe isn’t without it’s drawbacks and need of maintenance just like any other OS, don’t be tricked into buying a computer with the Apple upcharge thinking it just works, it doesn’t. However I could use and adapt to OS X very easy if I had a more powerful Mac computer, I’m just not prepared to pay the apple tax for an iMac. For now my Mini is used primarily as my morning/before bed email/feeds/instant messenger checker and whenever I have any ‘heavy’ work to do I switch to my Windows desktop.

What else? Ubuntu 9.04 aka Jaunty Jackalope was released last month I upgraded both my desktop and laptop to it then was shocked!! to see that Intel graphics cards weren’t supported under the new kernel without the driver desktop effects don’t work.  I was shocked only because the community makes such big thing about proprietary, closed source drivers and Intel gave them them the whole source and they still couldn’t make it work. So, I boycotted Ubuntu for about a month but realized how silly it was to discount a whole operating system just because one thing doesn’t work and this weekend I reinstalled Ubuntu on both my desktop and laptop. So far, so good. I’m actually typing this in Ubuntu right now. Although Firefox is abysmally slow under Ubuntu compared to Windows or the Mac. I don’t get it and cannot understand why. It seems other people have this issue and no one has figured it out yet. Firefox still ’ships’ with the Great Britain English dictionary instead of giving the American users their own for some reason too, this makes build in spell checking a minefield of sorts.

Also on the OS front, Windows 7 RC 1 (release candidate) was release at the begining on of May. It’s awesome it’s really what Vista should have been. It’s so good that I’ve wiped Vista off both my Window’s machines and am using W7 RC 1 and Ubuntu (just this weekend) exclusively. Me running a non-stable version as a production machine because I like it so much over it’s predecessor is a major win for MS

Other than that I’ve upgraded to a premium dropbox account after playing with the free (2 GB) account for about a year. For $10 a month I get 50 GB of space which is more than enough for me. I’ve really fell head of heals for Dropbox. It’s not really a back up tool than it is a sync tool. Basically if you have two computers, you put files in your dropbox on one computer and when you turn on your other computer the file automatically updates. Or if you have the other computer on at the same time, it updates as fast as you can upload the file then have the other computer download it. It’s just a great tool, I have nothing bad to say about it. It also supports verisoning which for you non-geek types is where when you change a file the old file is still saved for restoration. It’s saved my kiester a couple of times, by having the auto-save feature of a text editor wipe out my TODO.txt file. one trip to dropbox’s website and the old file (version) is swapped out for the new one. A vast majority of my files are now stored in my dropbox. With dropbox being cross platform whenever I load a new OS, I just install dropbox and let all my files download for a couple of hours.. Presto most of my files are all accessible from the new OS.

Outside of the the tech front and geek stuff:

I’ve been dieting and exercising like crazy since the nice weather got here. I started off walking about a half mile a day with my long Johns on, in the begining of April and I could barely do that, now I’m up to 2.6 miles a day with some resting on the walk, a lot less resting than when I started. I push myself a little further every week, I’m hoping by July to be up to 5 miles a day. That’s probably what’s taken me away from blogging the most; I have to leave by 5p or else I’ll be walking in the dark on the way back and with the bears I just cannot do that. By the time I get home I’m wiped and really only have the energy to force myself to do what I have to.

On the eating front, I’ve drastically reduced my intake. There is still some stuff to cut like how much coffee I drink and late night snacks BUT overall I’m doing very well.

My birthday was two weeks ago. I was wished Happy Birthday many times over via email, forums, facebook, myspace, etc that always brings a smile to my face, so if you wished me a happy birthday and didn’t get a personal thank you, I’m sorry consider this your thank you.

Mother’s Day was nice, I was a little low on funds so it wound up just being flowers and a cake but we still had a nice time. My mom-a-lah is a great woman and treats me better than any man could ask for.. Why do we celebrate her gifts to us only 1 day a year?

Other than that the normally working on issues behind the scenes of my DJ forum and chasing after people for bills they owe me has been the norm lately. I realize this has been a long post covering several topics hopefully you stuck with me. As always, thanks for reading.

TWC Hit's a wall

The cable guy came out today, showed up with only one cable box, the box for my sisters room. I haggled with him a bit explaining that we called 3 times to confirm the order. First time to change the appointment time, second time to change the order to a new room install plus a DVR swap for an HD-DVR, the operator the second time sounded flighty so we called back to confirm the order. All was well, supposedly until the guy showed up.

I kind of felt bad for the guy, you could see he was tired and frustrated by yet another screw up at the central office but he was nice enough to track down another cable installer in the area and try to get a box for me. It turns out he got the same DVR I already have not the HD-DVR. Not his fault the boxes look identical. So, I didn’t get my the HDTV package in time for my birthday. All in all it’s no big deal but I’m still not happy with Time Warner Cable.

While the tech was here I explained that I’m not receiving a few channels I should be receiving, this is strange because just a few months ago we had a tech out here and he ran us a new drop from the pole. He plugged my cable into his tester and seen that I’m getting a very weak signal but he couldn’t fix it as he’s just a contractor for installs.

So, we call the cable company and gripe about not getting the box plus we need our line fixed, probably all we need is an in line amplifier, I could go buy one and install it however that’s not my job. The rep on the phone decides he wants to charge us another service charge for them to come out and install the box. This makes no sense as it was the companies fault we didn’t get the right box in the first place. Long story short,  we talk to a supervisor and get that straightened out. Now, Monday we got a guy coming to fix the line and Wednesday we have someone coming to install the correct box. This makes no sense and we wonder why companies are going bankrupt? They waste resources. I know for a fact that the tech to fix the line comes out of the office in Liberty (45 mins away) where I can go pick up the HD-DVR myself, why cannot he grab that box? Installing it is nothing, plug in a few plugs and you’re done. I don’t get it.

Then I asked about digital phone, it’s cheaper than our landline through the telco and I’ve been interested it I was all set to order it until they told me it was a $22 activation charge. WTF? TWC charges $15/mo more than Vonage and other VIOP providers, why are they charging me an “activation charge? Sounds like a money grab, so I declined to get the digital phone service.

Now next week I have to be home two days for the cable company that’s just plain assine.

This afternoon I got an early birthday gift, a new TV!! I’m not much of a TV watcher, I just like to have it on when I’m falling asleep and for the music choice channels when I’m working on the computer. Long story short Mom’s TV crapped out last summer so I gave her my old 27″ because mom loves her TV. I took my sister’s 19″ TV that she never watches. As sisters are and they like to be a pain in the ass, she aggravates mom to watch what she wants on the living room TV, so earlier this week I told her to take her TV back and have the cable guy come and install cable in her room. We called the cable company to schedule an installer to come out on Saturday to take my DVR back and give my PITA sister a regular cable box.

Now, For the past month or so I’ve been playing with both Boxee and Hulu. Boxee is a program that lets you stream all kinds of internet video direct to your computer, it winds up that your computer acts like a TV with this program running. Hulu is a website that lets you stream many popular shows over the internet on to you computer. I figure since I already have a 22″ computer monitor I can just use that to watch TV when I want to via Hulu and Boxee.

On Wednesday I broke apart my computer desk figuring I can put both my computer in my entertainment center where the TV used to be, and use it as both a computer station and TV spot. Turns out the screen was to far away for me to use it for computer work. I wound up moving the computers back onto my computer tables and leaving it as is.

Big Dan's new TV

This afternoon I woke up, mom had gone shopping she said I don’t know if I can wait until Sunday (my birthday) to give you your gift. So, I said well it’s only a couple of days away and I really cannot wait anyhow.. I love gifts. She brought it out, it’s a new TV, I kind of had an idea but didn’t want to spoil it. I wound up with an 18.5″ Sanyo HD TV. It’s a really neat little TV it’s got all kinds of inputs and outputs, more than I’ll ever use. I was estacic sure the screen is a little small but for as much as I use it, it’s perfect.

Since I got a new TV I figured I should hook up my surround sound, so I took a little trip to Wally-World, bought speaker wire, a VGA cable and an audio cable. This TV has a VGA input, you know what I’m doing with that right? Hooking up my Mac Mini to it. I got home, hooked up surround sound, all my video games (which I rarely play), and put the Mac Mini in over on the TV stand.

So far so good, the Mac mini seems not to support this TV’s resolution but it’s close enough. Now I can use the Mini to watch movies, and stream internet content right to my TV. Tomorrow I’ve got the cable guy coming with a new HD DVR. I don’t hold much hope for that, my friend has one and it’s interface sucks but we’ll see how it works out.

Toward the middle of February I got my mitts on my very own Mac Mini. I’d been wanting  a Mac for quite a while but couldn’t justify the Apple tax. Long story short, I had been lurking around a few mac forums at one of them I seen a guy had listed a Mac Mini. This guy Jim from Sting Me, Excellent seller by the way  highly recommended. I decided to pull the trigger, buying used saved me some dough, along with the Mini I purchased the Blue tooth keyboard and mighty mouse. I wound up with the Core 2 Duo 1.83 Ghz, 2 GB of RAM, and an 80 GB HD. I didn’t realize until afterward that a DVD burner was not included, which is okay as I don’t burn that many DVDs.

All in all it’s an amazing little machine, not too powerful, but a more than capable Email, IM, web browsing machine. I think the 2 GB of RAM really helps things run smoothly and the processor is a tad bit faster than my laptop’s 1.66 Core 2 Duo processor. The hard drive @ 80 GB is a joke but I knew that going in and I have an external to supplement storage, so no big deal. Aside from that I love the UI, it’s simply the best UI I’ve ever used. If anything having the Mini has made me want an iPod touch more.

The first few weeks I tried using the Mini as my primary computer because most of my work only requires a decent text editor, Internet browser, and maybe the GIMP so I was safe. Although, I was not pleased that I could find a decent free text editor for OS X. Over on the Window’s side I use Notepad +, on Linux I use Gedit which has context highlighting, a god sent for coding. Now OS X does have text editors with context highlighting however they’re commercial projects, ie paid software. Now, I have no problem paying for software if I’m going to use it all the time however for a second computer that I’m just playing with I’m not about to shell out money for apps. If a made the switch to pure mac, I’d gladly buy some software.

That’s the thing with OS X, there are plenty of free programs but it doesn’t seem many are up to standards of free software on the Windows and Linux side. GIMP works horribly on OSX, Filezilla my preferred FTP client crashes after every upgrade, and a few other examples. One might say you cannot judge a computer but it’s free software offerings, I say you should because it adds to the cost of use.

On to the keyboard and mouse:

The keyboard is just way to small, I feel like a midget using it not to mention the lack of end, home, and the no number pad makes it keyboard all but useless to me for coding work. Maybe I’d be happier with the corded keyboard, I don’t know and I’m not paying $50 to find out.

The mouse = just plain stupid. Well then again Apple always screws up mice, remember the iMac puck? From not being ergonomic to not registering right clicks and middle clicks properly I gave up on it and plugged in a Microsoft wireless mouse which works 100%

All in all I really like the OS X’s UI design other than that it’s nothing special, in my humble opinion. I see nothing that justifies the ‘apple tax’ on their hardware. If I had money to throw away maybe I’d buy a pimped out 24″ iMac and get down to business with a faster processor and more RAM but I’d rather buy a system off the shelf and use Ubuntu or Vista.

For now I’m using the Mini as my primary ‘communication’ machine. Adium (IM Client) is the best instant messaging client I’ve ever used. The mini always stays on my desk asleep, I wake it up to check my email and websites in the morning for any coding work I switch over to my HP Desktop running Vista and Ubuntu.

It’s been all over the internet this past week or  that Time Warner Cable is starting expanded testing of metered broadband. It’s hitting close to home for me Rochester, New York just a few hours away from me has been selected for this ‘testing’. Testing in this case actually means how much crap will our customers take before they go elsewhere. It’s now rumored that Frontier, the only competitor in many TWC regions was is considering even stiffer caps.

First of all let’s define bandwidth metering: Metering is simply keeping track of how much bandwidth you use. Bandwidth in this case is the amount of information your downloading and uploading to the internet. Everything you do online uses bandwidth from checking email, to downloading tracks from iTunes, to watching YouTube, to reading this very web page. Bandwidth monitoring is analogous to cell phone companies charging you per minute except it’s a set amount of data normally per GB (Gigabyte).

Now many people will say you use more you pay more it’s quite simple and I would agree with them. However  ever since it’s conception broadband has been unmetered and only lately, as in the last year or so has anyone heard broadband providers complaining about network saturation this is because of the proliferation of sites like YouTube, torrents, and file sharing. My issue with this is for years ISPs have been raking in the fees normally at $50/mo per subscriber for little to no change in service which means a vast majority of subscriber fees generated, in the millions per month was pure profit for them. Now that it comes time to upgrade the network they’re crying foul and want to gouge their loyal customers.

Time Warner’s reasoning is just plain flawed. There is a new standard for cable broadband called DOCSIS 3. DOCSIS which in short is the technology which enables you and I able to get high speed internet over the cable system. Current systems are DOCSIS 2 which are “limited” in speed. DOCSIS 3 is supposed to be roughly 6-12 times faster than the old standard. As I understand it our current modems will still be compatible with the new standard so that TWC does not have to give all of it’s to subscribers new modems. TWC can give new customers the new DOCSIS 3 modems and give the customers who request (or more likely upgrade) to the super fast internet capabilities new modems. New York Time’s says it will not cost more than $100 per subscriber for the upgrade to DOCSIS 3 and that’s with a brand spanking new modem.

Now let’s step back and take a look at broadband offerings in the US. Typically it’s offered in tiers most companies have 3 tiers which basically means the more you pay the faster you can download stuff. You have slow (~$20/mo), average (~$50/mo), and fast (~$80/mo +) These tiers have nothing to do with how much you can download just how fast you can download it. Basically with all tiers you can drive as far as you want on a highway just the higher the tier the faster you can drive.

Metered broadband seeks to change all that in the name of charging you more (allegedly for upgrades) so you can drive faster but with the meters you cannot drive as far.Does it make any sense to institute caps to pay for upgrades so that your subscribers can GO faster but cannot drive as far without excessive overage charges?

I thought maybe there was something wrong with me but no it doesn’t makes sense. Not to mention the fact that perhaps the company should eat these upgrade costs as they’ve been raking in millions per month with broadband as a cash cow and now that a slight upgrade is needed for cable to stay competitive with fiber to the home options they want to pass the cost along to us and rake in even more profits on top of it. It just doesn’t hold water and wreaks of GREED

Let’s look at something over the past year or so lots and lots of people have been legally watching TV shows and movies online, thus not watching much TV. To be fair video does take up the most bandwidth of all forms of data. Does anyone think once bandwidth caps are instuted people might go back to watching TV so they don’t waste thier data on video feeds? Bingo the cable cos want to force people into watching TV again — TV as a medium sucks with all the commericals being shoved down your throat not to mention the crap fest that is TV these days content wise but more eyeballs equals more ad revenue plain and simple. With the internet and services like Netflix on demand and Hulu people now have a choice and TWC does not like that; These bandwidth caps are one way to get more people to turn on the idiot box again.

Now as to why DSL companies are jumping onboard — I don’t know why DSL is a limited technology there are no new standards that need upgrading to me thinks they just want more money for the same old crappy service.