Data caps.

ISPs claim these are enforced to prevent their networks from getting overloaded. But they actually do nothing to prevent network overloading at all.

The reason is that invariably networks get over-utilized at peak times. Even if everyone has a 50GB data cap, if people decide they all want to watch Netflix at 7PM, then the network is overloaded even if not one single person goes over their cap ever. You’d have to make the caps pretty damn small to make this not the case (probably 2GB or less with as oversubscribed as the ISPs have allowed their networks to get), to encourage people just not to use their connections at all.

Bandwidth is fundamentally different than water, or even electric service. The ISPs want to compare it to these things, but it’s nothing like either of them. You can’t save a bucket of bandwidth and use it later. And there is no “bandwidth plant” producing bandwidth as there is with electricity.

These analogies are designed to make you believe there is a shortage of capacity, when in reality there is an abundance and it is getting cheaper all the time.

But don’t believe me (even though I have 15 years of first-hand experience with it), look at the numbers themselves.

TWC’s revenues from Internet access have soared in the last few years, surging from $2.7 billion in 2006 to $4.5 billion in 2009. Customer numbers have grown, too, from 7.6 million in 2007 to 8.9 million in 2009.

But this growth doesn’t translate into higher bandwidth costs for the company; in fact, bandwidth costs have dropped. TWC spent $164 million on data contracts in 2007, but only $132 million in 2009.

And that’s from 2010. Bandwidth costs since then have done nothing but drop by about the same percentage amount.

Bandwidth caps are designed for two purposes.

The first is just to rake in more money for the ISP however possible.

The second is to eliminate competition by creating “bandwidth anxiety” by people worrying that they might go over and thus not watching or downloading something, and instead nudging them to decide to watch it on the cable provider’s un-capped network.

Bandwidth caps do not help with network capacity. No matter what the ISPs claim or tell you, they just don’t. And bandwidth is not like water or electricity. Nothing at all like them in any meaningful way. Allowing those analogies to dominate the conversation allows the ISPs to win.

Which they will anyway, but I guess I am all about fighting the long defeat.

Reading people write about something that they know little about but who don’t realize how little they know is always painful.

I’m not going to talk about all of these “points” – who has the time – but I’ll hit a few of the major ones.

Here’s the problem: ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner want to charge additional fees to companies like Netflix and Google that use a lot of bandwidth.

This is not how it works. Netflix and Google only send traffic to an ISP when that ISPs customer requests it (which Kevin later states, but seems not to understand what that means fully). The only reason any bits at all flow from Google or Netflix to Comcast is because someone on Comcast’s network clicked on or opened a Google page or visited Netflix.

Comcast’s customers have already paid for this bandwidth when they purchased a certain amount of connectivity a month from Comcast. This is not some revolutionary change. This is how the internet is designed and is how it has always worked. Again, as some people seem to miss this point, Comcast’s customers have already paid for this bandwidth, and on their end, Netflix has already paid for it, too.

Kevin’s misapprehensions and incomprehension shows how effective ISP propaganda has been that a relatively smart person like him has been so misled and deluded about basic facts.

This isn’t a matter of opinion. There are no opinions here. This is just history, and network engineering.

The obvious solution here is also an old one: since end users are the ones requesting the bits, charge them for bandwidth.

The end users are already getting charged – in fact overcharged – for bandwidth. Most now have onerous bandwidth caps, too. This is already happening. Does Kevin think users should be charged more for bandwidth than they currently are, when cable company profits are already at record highs and US users are charged far more for less bandwidth than most other countries in the world?

Not very progressive, really.

The rest of the piece isn’t very good, either, but also isn’t very quotable. However it seems to labor under the delusion that there is some shortage of bandwidth in the US. There is not. This is just an attempt to eliminate competition from Netflix and to squeeze out more profits however possible.

In reality with some very small ISP upgrades, in almost all cases less than a few hundred thousand dollars for millions of customers, all of these Netflix bandwidth “problems” would magically vanish. Just as when Netflix was extorted by Comcast and the streaming speeds suddenly improved. Trust me, no one was running cable down the street in the middle of the night. All Comcast did was turn up another port on a router somewhere.

Again, I am always shocked at how effective propaganda is. This is another example of it. Kevin doesn’t really understand how the internet works, what the issues are, or what is already occurring, or any of the technology at all.

The corporations have screamed loudly and long enough that even someone relatively on top of things and aware of the issues to some extent is nearly completely operating in the framework that ISPs wish him to. The same is true of most of the commenters on the post. There are so uninformed or poorly informed that it is almost physically painful to read their drivel.

There truly is no hope, really.

What I can’t understand about the actions of the senior crew of the Korean ferry involved in the recent disaster is that they had to know that what they did would be visible to the entire world.

I can understand people doing despicable things in private. I don’t condone, of course, but I understand.

But doing something in public, where people will be talking about how loathsome you are in a hundred years?

That I just can’t make sense of at all.

I don’t think I would’ve gotten into tech, if I were starting out today.

Too much is being taken away, removed to make it idiot-proof.

When I started, I could say, “I wonder if I can….?” And then try it. No DRM, no missing features, nothing taken away.

Today, you can’t really ask that question, because the answer is “no.” No, you can’t try it, can’t get to it, can’t access it.

The example I’m thinking of at the moment is the terrible idea that Google is experimenting with of removing the URL from Chrome. This of course truly has nothing at all to do with security and helping the user, but instead is all about attempting to go back to the old AOL keywords concept; in other words, another way for them to seize more control of the internet if they can.

Anyway, even if you believe Google’s excuses for this “feature,” there is no way to idiot-proof a computer, not a computer with any power, anyway. This commenter says it nicely.

Unless it’s in red, has a klaxon attached to it and flashes enough to give you a seizure either the majority or a very large minority of your users will ignore it.

I’ve worked with regular users for over 15 years now. This is true. Most do not understand anything of what they are looking at when they use a machine, nor do they even understand why they should understand something.

Attempting to take away all features that a power user relies on will not help the regular user. It will only hurt the power user.

I’d say general purpose computers are too complex for about 85% of people, and always will be. Let’s just leave it that way.

Those who don’t need a real computer can use a tablet. Much easier than crippling every piece of useful software in the world.

Ok, why has no one distributed this?

Hmm, oh yeah.

Goddamit.

So much written about so many annoying things. Rather write about things that make me happy, really.

Like this picture of Carrie Brownstein.

I like the (for lack of a better word) swagger and slight goofiness. Women like M.I.A., Lorde and Carrie Brownstein are really inspiring to me because they take the ridiculous and useless male machismo concept and turn it into something good and useful, and of course completely co-opt it in the best of ways in the process.

I can almost buy into meliorism watching them do their thing.

Every version of Firefox above 28 is now also blocked from visiting my site.

I am thinking of getting rid of this site anyway, so I do not really care what it will do to reduce my already-low traffic.

Browsers that will still work: all versions of IE, Safari, Opera, Firefox 5-28.

Browsers that will not work: Chrome and Firefox 29+.

This isn’t directly complaining about Australis, but sort-of related.

However, this is one of the most insightful comments I’ve ever read about the tragedy of modern UI and UX design.

Interface utility is a nuanced concept. The average person barely realizes this concept exists and yet they are allowed to collectively OK design decisions via market study. Developers have faith in these studies based on the flawed premise that the members of the study…

• represent their users on average
• will understand and report on the interface utility

Not only are these both false, the average person will primarily report on with whether an interface is visually appealing or not.

It’s really worth reading the rest of it. This is what I was alluding to in my claim that developers do not understand data analysis and even what they should be analyzing.

I don’t exactly excuse Jeremy Clarkson for this, but I can understand.

You see, I grew up in the rural, (very, very) racist South. Most people don’t know this, but the common nursery rhyme that begins with "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" in the South at least when I was a kid (and I am certain still does in many areas) always used the word “nigger” instead of “tiger.”

The first thousand (10,000?) times I heard it in my young life, that’s the only version I heard. I didn’t even know there was a version that used “tiger” until I was 11 or 12.

That sort of training – especially for something linguistic like that – is really hard to overcome if you learn it early enough. Even if you try get every racist thought out of your head.

I never, ever say any version of that nursery rhyme anywhere because I might slip and use a word I don’t want to use, because I know how easy it is to do if you’ve heard a phrase used a certain way thousands of times.

Again, I am not excusing Clarkson. I think there should be some sort of consequences for doing something like that.

But I can still see how that could have happened to me easily enough.

When you grow up in a racist place, all that shit just doesn’t disappear by magic. You have to work at it.

I think I am going to stop complaining about Australis now, as the devs believe they have data on their side, not really understanding much about data analysis, how early adopters/power users drive the adoption of new technologies, or the fact that even if only 10% of your users make use of one feature, it’s not the same 10% for each discrete feature.

The devs are righteous in their incorrect beliefs and shoddy data analysis (and understanding of what they should be analyzing), and are now so committed that they can’t change their mind.

Saying anything else about it, like politics or voting, is pointless.

This is one guy that I hate.

I usually don’t call out people like this individually, but he is one arrogant prick making the world worse in his own small way, much like larger players like Obama and the power structure he represents.

The world really is bifurcating between those who will have the ability to powerfully process information and those who won’t.

Google Chrome is now blocked from accessing this site.

If you are smart enough to change your user agent string and read the site anyway, then you are smart enough not to use Chrome.

If I cared about readership that much, I obviously wouldn’t do this. I probably wouldn’t write this site if absolutely no one read it, but I’d rather not have Chrome users on the site.

I would say that I am sorry, but I am not.

Look at what my friend did – she’s awesome!

I may not feel like celebrating, but it took me 2.5 years and a lot of migraines to get to this point. My project asks a question no one has ever asked before and uses some darn clever strategies to get around some cold, hard facts of hard-to-measure ecology.

That’s the sort of thing I could not have done in a million years, and she did it while sick (and surrounded by Canadians! ;- ) ).

I personally do not really care how horrible (or great) of a person an artist is outside of his or her works.

My favorite novel will still be Among Others even if I find out Jo Walton executes kittens with lawn mowers in the afternoon, and then skeet-machetes babies in the evening.

At the same time, I can understand why some people might care as it relates to works produced.

I think art of any type supersedes any one person – even the person who produces it — and when we start examining personal lives, everyone comes up short.

That’s why it’s dangerous to blacklist art for personal reasons in my view, though I can understand different ways of looking at it.

This is not surprising to me.

75% of veterans confident about skills they bring to civilian workforce whereas only 39% of employers believe vets are appropriately prepared to compete for civilian jobs out of the military.

When I got out of the army, more than one person during interviews told me that I had “no experience” despite my laboring in a high-stakes, high-pressure office environment for five years, AND working out 1-4 hours every weekday, AND doing things like regular parachute jumps, AND qualifying on various weapons, AND completing courses to become a combat lifesaver, AND writing for national publications.

But, no experience.

Despite the fact that, as the old cliché goes, I did more before 9AM than most civilians did all day.

Naively, I thought being a veteran would help me get a job. Actually it hurt me, as many employers are highly discriminatory against veterans. If I’d listed nothing on my resume my prospects would’ve been better, but I left my military experience on there as I worked hard for that.

Later on after I ascended the corporate hierarchy myself, I started hiring veterans when I could (and they were qualified), and here’s what I found:

• Veterans are more reliable.
• Veterans react better to stress, as 99.999% of corporate jobs are way, way less stressful than what you experience in the armed services every day.
• Veterans are better at finding unusual and innovative solutions. I suspect this is because in the armed services there are often many institutional roadblocks in your way, yet the mission has to be completed, so you get really good at finding a way to get things done no matter what.
• Veterans complain less overall, but don’t yield when something is really important.
• Veterans will keep going after other people give up. (That’s just something you get used to in the military.)

Obviously this is not true of all former servicemembers. These are just tendencies. However, I’ve never regretted hiring a veteran, but have regretted hiring many non-vets over the years.

Take from that what you wish.

But now when someone says after they find out I’d been in the military, “I didn’t know you were in the Army! You’re actually smart!” it’s everything I can do to not use some of those other military skills I gained on their craniums.

Fortunately I’ve experienced a state of ataraxy as I’ve gotten older, so their craniums remain unblemished.