The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#211

Post by anon4 » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #173

anon4 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that I currently get my internet via a LAN cable that goes into my router box. I have a tower PC hooked via a cable to it and a laptop that connects via WiFi. The tower can achieve the full 5 megabytes/sec I pay for, while WiFi maxes out at about 1½ mbytes/sec. It's slow.

It sounds as if either your laptop's wifi card is old or your router is. 5mb is nothing, 802.11n can easily handle that (its about 20) and dual band connections can push it a bit higher. Where WiFi at home is breaking down is some cable companies are offering 30, 50, or more down. Then there is Fiber which just blows past what most people will get out of home WiFi networks.

Yes, it's g, not n. I still would rather have cabled-delivered ethernet than a literal ether net.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#212

Post by X4 » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 5:10 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #189

X4 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@pjc50 Thank you for your input, really appreciated. What you say is that proximity gives you more benefit than having antennas transmitting data 'wireless', right? I agree with that and I don't, firstly because "Quantum Teleportation (QT)" is available soon enough for a broader audience than just Physicists [1] and such "directed antennas" positioned in the same proximity to the datacenter as the 10G links can resul…

The other commentator has dealth with QT; it's not yet a really available commercial technology, and it's not even clear that it lets you send data outside of your light cone which might violate causality. I would like a cite for your bandwidth claim, but remember it's not bandwidth that matters - orders and market data are fairly small packets of data - but latency. The usual problem with radio systems is that you d…

I never said that QT is a really available commercial technology. Look I wrote:

>> … firstly because "Quantum Teleportation (QT)" is available soon enough for a broader audience than just Physicists …

Look up: doi:10.1038/492022a if you don't believe in QT. Then I'm glad to see your arguments on that.

>> I would like a cite for your bandwidth claim

Here you go 10-Gbit/s vs 1-Tbit/s → doi:10.1038/nphoton.2012.138 if you need other details on encodings: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2891v2.pdf and http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.0709.pdf

You mention latency, I know about that and I was not sure if I should've mentioned it, or not, but decided not to. That's because I thought you would know from my writing that I know about latency pretty well.. However, you know that the topology of a system defines if, a system is as strong as it's weakest link. Because I don't know how the latency in the given wireless system is, I can tell you that.

Oh man.. Can't I say anything on HN without having a scientific proof, or what? holy moly... What am I, everyone's slave? Do yourself a favor, just ask politely next time and I will do that, when time allows. But accusing somebody of being a bullshitter, without having any proof yourself, except that your work on HFT stuff is creating an "unfriendly" atmosphere. If being right matters more for you than being helpful, then that's your problem, but it doesn't help to improve the atmosphere in here. And sorry, if you feel attacked or something in any way, it's absolutely not my intention to do that.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#213

Post by Aloisius » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 5:13 PM UTC

samolang wrote: post #209

X4 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great and microwaves are what, not wireless? C'mon please read what people write before you blindly accuse someone of being wrong. I wrote wireless NOT WiFi! But you know what, I'll still give you a free +1, because you tried to help.

Microwave requires line of sight. That's where its advantage arises. You can't assume line of sight with a WiFi router.

Microwave is anything from 300 MHz to 300 GHz. WiFi is well within the microwave range as is WiMax, GSM, UHF and VHF. None require line of sight. The only reason you need line of sight is keeping interference down and power requirements (both usually regulatory).

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#214

Post by samolang » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 5:30 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #213

samolang wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microwave requires line of sight. That's where its advantage arises. You can't assume line of sight with a WiFi router.

Microwave is anything from 300 MHz to 300 GHz. WiFi is well within the microwave range as is WiMax, GSM, UHF and VHF. None require line of sight. The only reason you need line of sight is keeping interference down and power requirements (both usually regulatory).

When I said microwave I meant specifically the microwave technology utilized by HFT (I've always heard it referred to as simply 'microwave'). I guess I was mistaken because I read that the microwave used by HFT beats out fiber because light travels faster through air than through glass and mistakenly implied that meant line of sight.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#215

Post by brownbat » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 5:37 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #142

brownbat wrote: post #76

It took fierce competition to even get broadband companies to advertise what they are offering. I had to deal with a very small local monopoly in Western Maryland that just advertised "faster than dial up," had typical pings of over 200. It was thick on the local board, had a deal with local government as the sole authorized supplier in the county. Now I'm in a different part of the country, can get FiOS, but while V…

Garrett or Allegany?

http://www.dslreports.com/reviews/2501

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#216

Post by jjoonathan » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

uxp wrote: post #120

jjoonathan wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be precise, bribery isn't just legal, it's mandatory under the current campaign finance setup. Campaign finance reform is a prerequisite for addressing any of the anti-consumer legislation we are stuck with today. Best of all, it hasn't been turned into a partisan wedge yet, so there's hope, assuming we can find a way to make people care. Unfortunately, last time I saw a campaign finance reform proposal cross the…

Campaign finance reform has always been a partisan wedge, insofar as the party that loses the most seats in a given election cycle is the one touting how much it's needed, but shuts up the next cycle when they gain the most seats. Thus, the only politicians willing to put money into that fight are either already outnumbered, or just crazy (or smart) enough to vote against their own future reelection.

> the only politicians willing to put money into that fight are either already outnumbered, or just crazy (or smart) enough to vote against their own future reelection

1. This division doesn't fall strictly on party lines, which was my point.

2. With a modicum of cleverness you can get around the immediate issue (politicians don't want to give their opponents a leg up in the next election) by engineering the changes to phase in one position at a time and "lock in place" only when beneficial to the incumbent (e.g. in a year when corporate support backs out for one reason or another).

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#217

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 6:07 PM UTC

X4 wrote: post #212

pjc50 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other commentator has dealth with QT; it's not yet a really available commercial technology, and it's not even clear that it lets you send data outside of your light cone which might violate causality. I would like a cite for your bandwidth claim, but remember it's not bandwidth that matters - orders and market data are fairly small packets of data - but latency. The usual problem with radio systems is that you d…

I never said that QT is a really available commercial technology. Look I wrote: >> … firstly because "Quantum Teleportation (QT)" is available soon enough for a broader audience than just Physicists … Look up: doi:10.1038/492022a if you don't believe in QT. Then I'm glad to see your arguments on that. >> I would like a cite for your bandwidth claim Here you go 10-Gbit/s vs 1-Tbit/s → doi:10.1038/nphoton.2012.138 if y…

"I would like" was me asking politely.

My arguments are mostly about the difference between "QT can be done in the lab" versus "QT can be done outside of the lab with commercially available equipment", and also "can QT transmit information faster than c?". The answer to the latter appears to be no: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/34653/is-it-possi...

http://www.nature.com/news/data-teleportation-the-quantum-sp... asserts that entanglement survives transmission over long distances, not that this can be used to transmit information any faster than the photons travel.

Also, starting this conversation with "hahahaha :D" was .. unhelpful, along with claiming things that contradict the experience of experienced people.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#218

Post by GFischer » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 7:20 PM UTC

Goladus wrote: post #59

mikeash wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health care system is fine if you can afford it. The main problem with American health care is financial, and if you have good insurance (which should come with any good job) it's fine. Not great, but on par with the rest of the first world. Limited annual leave depends on the job. If you're in software engineering or similar, you're unlikely to have a problem. If you get offered a job that doesn't offer the annu…

Murder rate thing is probably because an Australian national named Christopher Lane, in the US playing Baseball at college, was randomly murdered in Oklahoma this year. He was out jogging when a couple of teenagers ran up and shot him in the back for no obvious reason. Australian politicians immediately started telling people not to visit the US because it's so full of guns.

I live in Uruguay (South America) and I liked to mention the statistic that you're 10 times more likely to be murdered in Chicago (or was it Detroit?) than in Montevideo, yet you're 10 times more likely to be robbed in Montevideo :P

Not sure if it's still true but it was a funny statistic.

And the media here does portray the U.S. as a country where murder is uncommonly prevalent.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#219

Post by bane » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 7:41 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #180

bane wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: overpricedness I think it has something to do with the better labor laws (for low-end workers) which push up prices on commodity items. I don't remember any country outside of maybe bits of Northern Europe and Switzerland where I paid more for local food. I've even been on some pretty remote islands and not paid that much, exchange rate adjusted or not. I remember the first time I paid $22 for breakfast and $5 fo…

$22 for a breakfast puts you in a fairly well-to-do area. As a comparison, I work in the Melbourne CBD and buy lunch every day from a variety of places for around $10-12, though none of these are trendy cafes. One thing to remember when comparing bought food between the countries is that the US price is usually stated as being before tax and tip, which generally adds 25%. In my experience, bought meals were roughly t…

I think your analysis sounds about right then. I remember walking around area (Potts Point in Sydney) and not finding any sort of reasonable breakfast that wasn't insanely priced. I think I broke out laughing at one place that was offering a special of two pieces of toast, an egg and a cup of coffee for ~$15.

We do have good steaks in the U.S., sorry about your Texas steak experience! I'd expect to pay $15 on the low end for an "ok" steak to $35 on the high end and then $3-9 for sides. Add in some beer or wine and you can hit a pretty price per head in the States. But if you just want to hit a roadhouse and get a steak an potato and a beer, I'd expect to do it for under $30.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#220

Post by nl » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 7:57 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #200

nl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt your statement that a majority of the US has an extremely high murder rate. Some parts of the country certainly do, but much of the country is perfectly safe. The overall average rate is higher than other first-world countries, but that does not imply that most of the country has a higher rate. Crime is not spread out evenly. That sounds reasonable, but I thought I'd take a look. It turns out that the Austral…

I don't think states are sufficiently granular to prove your case. For me, at least, you'd need to go all the way down to individual neighborhoods to show that "a significant majority of the United States' suffers from an extremely high murder rate". Let me illustrate. The murder rate in Washington, DC is pretty high, at 13.9 per 100,000 (which I'll abbreviate as just 13.9 from here). I live in the DC area. Does that…

I knew someone would come up with the granuality argument.

The rest of the world works exactly the same way too.

Yes, there are places in the us that have little violent crime. There are more places like that outside the US though, and taking population into account my point stands.