Comcast One-Ups Time Warner Cable
June 5th, 2008
Not to be outdone by rival Time Warner Cable, Comcast has announced their new bandwidth cap policy and it makes even less sense than Time Warner Cable’s. Instead of charging customers for overages, Comcast will simply scale back network throughput to customers who use a lot of bandwidth. At least Time Warner Cable’s tax is arguably in place to pay for infrastructure enhancements. Comcast’s strategy is to slow down power users and drive them from their Internet service. I’m not sure alienating power users is a good business strategy. The power users are the ones that the aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas go to for advise when selecting an ISP. Since when is alienating influencers a sound business strategy?
These companies just don’t seem to get it. Increased bandwidth usage by virtually every subscriber is inevitable. Digital delivery is here to stay and bandwidth usage is only going to increase. Instead of trying to keep users on their current infrastructure and punishing them when their use causes the system to groan, Comcast and Time Warner Cable should be focusing on updating their infrastructure like their competitors, the telcos, are doing.
Sphere: Related ContentTime Warner Cable Taxes Bandwidth: You Lose, They Lose
June 3rd, 2008
On the same day Starbucks rolled out free Wi-Fi to customers (purchase required), Time Warner Cable also rolled out Internet bandwidth overage fees. The two companies actions couldn’t be more different. Starbucks has realized that instead of charging for Internet access, an annoyance for users, free Wi-Fi will attract more customers and keep them in their stores increasing the chance of purchases. Time Warner has taken the opposite approach by taxing users who consume more bandwidth than Time Warner Cable likes. Their executive vice president of advanced technology, Kevin Leddy, explained that he believes “it’s the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure.”
I don’t use Time Warner Cable for Internet access but they do provide me with cable TV for a modest monthly price of $103.11 (digital HD with HBO is expensive — don’t let their ads tell you otherwise). I decided to figure out how much this new tax would cost me if I used them for Internet access given my current bandwidth usage.
Checking my Tomato router logs, I downloaded 44.36 GB and uploaded 33.22 GB in May 2008 which reflects a pretty typical month for me. A large majority of this bandwidth is due to my Vudu box which is constantly transferring movies over a peer-to-peer network (it’s legal of course) but a significant amount of it is also probably from iTunes purchases and watching TV shows at ABC.com and Hulu.
Time Warner Cable’s new fees reflect total amount transferred (in my case 77.58 GB for the month). Their new pricing is $29.95 for a paltry 768 Kbps transfer rate and a 5 GB monthly limit and $54.90 for a much faster 15 Mbps with a 40 GB limit and $1/GB over the limit. I’m currently an AT&T High Speed Elite subscriber for which I pay $34.99/month and get close to a 6.0 Mbps downstream with a 768 Kbps upstream with no known limit. Let’s compare that to Time Warner Cable’s fees:
- AT&T High Speed Internet Elite: cost per month $34.99
- TWC 768 Kbps Package: $29.95 + $72.58 overage fee = $102.53
- TWC 15 Mbps Package: $54.90 + $37.58 overage fee = $92.48
With those prices, AT&T is almost a third cheaper any way you slice it.
It’s too bad Time Warner Cable is moving in this direction. Digital distribution is really starting to hit the mainstream with devices like the Vudu, AppleTV, and Roku’s Netflix Player. I fired up iTunes and selected a random movie, 27 Dresses which is 1.25 GB. Do you really want to have to think about paying your ISP an extra $1.25 when you rent a movie for $3.99 (that’s almost a 24% tax which would be even higher for an older movie)? Hopefully we’ll see consumers leave Time Warner Cable for other ISPs and Time Warner Cable can continue to deliver sub par cable TV until they find themselves obsolete when everything is delivered over IP.
Sphere: Related ContentUniversal Studios Burns While Fox Advertises Theme Park
June 1st, 2008
I woke up this morning to news of a huge fire at Universal Studios which six hours after it started is still burning. The size of the fire is pretty scary considering they have 300+ firefighters fighting it in the middle of a giant backlot. Luckily, injuries appear to be minimal except for one firefighter who has been taken to a nearby hospital.
After reading about the fire online, I came across the local LA Fox affiliate who was streaming live coverage online from their helicopter. I loaded up the site and was watching the video when I glanced at a Universal Studios ad to the side of the video and realized the page was covered in them! A slightly awkward placement if you ask me :).
Sphere: Related ContentJontopia is Now Available as a Podcast
April 26th, 2008
I’m just adding features left and right today! I’ve added a service called Odiogo to the site that uses a text to speech engine to turn blogs and other sites into podcasts. So, now you can subscribe to Jontopia as a podcast. You can also click the “Listen Now” button below any of the entries to listen to an audio version of the entry.
To subscribe to the podcast, either click the “odiogo” button under “Syndicate” on the sidebar or point your favorite podcasting software to http://podcasts.odiogo.com/jontopia/podcasts-xml.php.
Sphere: Related ContentAdded Seesmic Video Commenting to Jontopia
April 26th, 2008
I’ve added a video commenting plug-in called Seesmic to the blog to enable all of you to leave video comments. All it takes is a camera attached to your computer. Just click “Or add a Video Comment” below the text commenting filter, hit record, and start talking. I’m not convinced that video comments are the wave of the future (it’s much easier to scan text comments to see whether to read the whole thing and until Google implements speech to text, video comments won’t be indexed) but let me know what you think.
You can post comments anonymously (when the registration link comes up, just click “Anonymous”) and you must still fill out your name and email address in the comment form field which is a little confusing.
I’ll leave the first comment to get it started.
Sphere: Related ContentTaking Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) For a Spin
April 26th, 2008
Ubuntu released Hardy Heron a couple days ago and I’ve finally gotten around to trying it out. I should disclose that I spend the majority of my time in OS X so Ubuntu is more of a curiosity for me than a day to day OS. I attended the Web 2.0 Expo this year and heard Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, talk about their acquisition of VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a free virtualization application, similar to VMWare and Parallels, that lets users run other operating systems inside a host operating system. In the past I’ve run Ubuntu instances from Parallels but I’ve found Parallels to be unstable at times under Leopard so I decided to give VirtualBox a try.
After downloading VirtualBox, it was a snap to set up a new VM and then mount the Ubuntu ISO. The installation went without a hitch and I was up and running in no time. The only part of the installation that needed any manual configuration was getting Ubuntu to run at a resolution other than 800×600. Even after I installed the “Guest Additions” from VirtualBox (Devices > Install Guest Additions), I didn’t have any choices other than 640×480 or 800×600. After a quick Google search, I came across the solution of manually editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf (don’t worry, it’s not that scary). The only other thing I haven’t been able to figure out is how to get my mouse wheel to scroll. I’m assuming this is an issue with VirtualBox that will be updated once the developers have a chance to work with Hardy Heron a little more.
Overall, Ubuntu 8.04 is awesome. It’s pretty fast; I’m not sure if this is because I’m now running it under VirtualBox and not Parallels or if the developers made some major speed updates. It comes with Firefox 3 Beta 5 (the newest right now). I’m increasingly impressed how Ubuntu is really becoming an alternative to Windows that I almost feel comfortable recommending to friends and family who know almost nothing about computers.
It’s definitely worth checking out and playing with.
Sphere: Related ContentShame on Comcast
February 26th, 2008
Comcast’s actions at today’s FCC hearing are shameful. Not only are they controlling what their customers can and cannot access online (or at least how quickly they can access the content), they’re now controlling who can and cannot attend public hearings. I used to have Comcast as my cable provider until Time Warner Cable came to town and took over their DMA. I’ve always had DSL since I don’t believe cable companies know how to run networks evidenced by their inability to deliver television reliably.
I hope the FCC decides to punish Comcast for their move against net neutrality and that their customers punish them for their actions at today’s FCC hearing.
Sphere: Related ContentSSH in Leopard Through an HTTP Proxy
January 7th, 2008
Most applications in OS X automatically use OS X’s Network > Location settings (Apple > Location > [select a location]) including proxy settings for those of us who have employers that require all traffic to go through proxies. Firefox doesn’t use OS X’s proxy settings which is extremely annoying (there’s a Firefox extension to do this; I can verify that it works but can’t verify it’s not sending all your data to some other server or anything). SSH is another program that doesn’t respect OS X’s proxy settings. My guess is that this is because OS X’s SSH is a version of OpenSSH which Apple never customized enough to allow proxy support.
After a lot of research and help from a co-worker, I figured out how to use SSH on the Mac behind an HTTP proxy and have SSH automatically detect whether or not it needs to use a proxy. This works on Leopard but may not work in previous versions of the operating system.
Create a file (I’m going to call mine proxytest) and put it wherever you want on your Mac (make sure it’s executable by typing “chmod +x proxytest” in the terminal). This file is based on a user’s hint on macosxhints.com. Open the file and enter the following text:
#!/bin/sh
while getopts P:H:p:vh o
do case "$o" in
P) PROTO=$OPTARG;;
H) HOST=$OPTARG;;
p) PORT=$OPTARG;;
v) verb=true;;
h) echo "Usage: $0 [-P {HTTP|HTTPS|SOCKS}] -H
esac
done
# See if the user is using a proxy
PROXY_HOSTNAME=$(scutil –proxy | awk ‘$1 ~ /’”$PROTO”‘Proxy/ { print $3 }’)
# If the user not using a proxy, go straight to the connection
if [ "$PROXY_HOSTNAME" = "" ]; then /usr/bin/nc $HOST $PORT; else
# Determine the hostname and port of the proxy and then establish the connection
PROXY_PORT=$(scutil –proxy | awk ‘$1 ~ /’”$PROTO”‘Port/ { print $3 }’)
/usr/bin/nc -X connect -x $PROXY_HOSTNAME:${PROXY_PORT} $HOST $PORT
fi
Then, go to your SSH config file (~/.ssh/config) or if it doesn’t exist, create the file. In the config file, enter the following line (of course, replace [path_to_your_file] with the actual path to your file):
ProxyCommand [path_to_your_file]/proxytest -P HTTP -H %h -p %p
Now, fire up your terminal and SSH as you normally would. Enjoy!
Sphere: Related ContentThe Dunning-Kruger Effect
January 4th, 2008
I wish to bring your attention to a very serious disorder, one that probably affects millions of Americans. Do you know someone who’s incompetent but thinks s/he’s really intelligent and knows more than people who are actually experts in a field? If so, that person may be suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Symptoms may include:
- Overestimating their own level of skill.
- Failing to recognize genuine skill in others.
- Failing to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
Seek medical attention for them immediately.
Sphere: Related ContentMicrosoft Launches YouTube Channel to Promote Vista, Gets Flamed
December 30th, 2007
Microsoft has launched a YouTube channel to promote Vista and Live. The only problem for them is that they’re getting flamed by users in the comments. The majority of comments on all their videos talk about Vista sucking and how Apple rules. From a PR perspective, is it better to get your promotional videos out there next to which are “user testimonials” disparaging your product and promoting your competition or doing nothing at all? Seems like a flawed strategy if you ask me.
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