During the Siftpocalypse, I wrote a Google crawler to retrieve all the users who voted on every video. It would pull down the google page for each Sifted video and then parse out all the users who had voted on it. I ran it through about 1000 videos before Google thought I was attacking them, or rather, thought the network of the entire big will-remain-unnamed telecom company I work for was attacking them. As a consequence google blocked all access to their search engine from the company. I shit big golden bricks. People notice FAST when Google disappears. Luckily for me... Google automatedly reenabled access within ?an hour? OMG

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Seems like this kind of lag has gotten a lot worse over the years in telecom. You would think that digital switches and fiber optics would help rather than hinder. I know, you can't beat the speed of light - but there is definitely some non-speed-of-light latency happening here. It bugs me the most on news broadcasts.

The balloon is basically vulcanised rubber, or more commonly known as latex. The lasers I work with have certain interractions with the water content in silicon fibres. Different wavelengths (colours) react differently within different fibres.

1550nm for example sits just on the absorbtion point of water in silicon, so it loses quite a lot of its energy along a fibre due to that water absorbtion in non-pure fibres. 1310nm lasers however dont have this issue, and can hold their signal for far greater distances.

Different coloured lasers, interacting differently with the exact same material.

One has its energy absorbed, one doesnt.

.....im guessing a similar principle occurs here.

(Im in telecoms if you hadnt guessed )

I've been thinking for a while that countries would serve themselves better by nationalising infrastructure instead of privatising it. Here in the UK we don't own much anymore, even the NHS is now rapidly becoming privatised. Don't get me started on the fact that a non-UK company is responsible for our nukes...

Take power, transport, water, telecoms, all of these should (imo) be national infrastructure that is used to develop jobs in the public sector, then private companies can be brought in to deliver the actual services over that infrastructure. If you tell someone "This is yours - look after it because you're the one who directly benefits", well I think people in general would take a bit more pride in their work and not cut corners in the same way a business solely motivated by profit might choose to do. That would hopefully lead to more reliable infrastructure and a lot less stress in day-to-day life. Plus it results in a happier populace because many of them will be in jobs that they know makes a positive difference to everyone.

I think that's a reasonable balance capable of preserving a viable long-term economy, and yes I appreciate it's vastly simplified and there are many details to work out but there are good examples out there of where this practice of nationalising infrastructure has resulted in a hugely beneficial outcome.

(Yes I'm an idealist, I probably don't belong in this world!)

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

It's important to be rooted in idealism, but without pragmatism (and all of the qualities that go with it - cooperation, negotiation and compromise) there is no way reconcile your own idealism with the conflicting idealism of other factions.
If you want to create a healthcare system in a political climate dominated by business, you are going to have to make a few caveats to business. It's a foot in the door. Then, a few miles down the road you can renegotiate for something better. Same goes for foreign policy. While the use of new drone technology is troubling, it is an improvement over ground invasions, deploying troops and building bases in places they are unwelcome.
Democracy is a balancing act.

I understand what you're saying, and for the most part I'm forced to agree. But, saying the healthcare reform had a few caveats to business is like saying, "Lizzy Borden had a few issues with her parents."

The things that bother me most about Obama are the way his civil rights promises have been mostly ignored. He made no visible attempt to block the amnesty for telecom companies, indeed he voted for it. No investigation of torture and who ordered it. Increased use of the state secrets defense. In most ways as far as civil rights goes, he took the Bush line and doubled down.

I'm thankful (in some sad way) that it truly doesn't matter if I vote in this election...Kansas won't go for a Democrat for at least another 20 years or more (we'll need at least one more generation to die off, and maybe two or three). They sure aren't going to go for a somewhat-right-of-center black man.

I've worked in telecom for 20 years, and visit our switch rooms now and then. Organized wiring like this is a staple of good switch room / data centers. This example is really nice !! Those cables should be tied with twine though, not tie wraps.

@zombieater : English version -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CB6DZr1BF8 from http://boingboing.net/2011/09/14/if-cats-ran-telecom.html ...

Basic gist: Our telecom provider knows you want this, so we give you this (repeat with all their offers/services), ending with "we know on the internet you want videos with cats, so we made this video with cats".

The funny voices of the cats is done by a famous radio comedian from Switzerland (<= obligatory patriotic plug )
>> ^dag:

Translation s'il vous plait?

I believe, sir, that's a centre right opinion. Welcome to the fold!>> ^MilkmanDan:

I remember hearing about the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly into the various "baby Bells" back when I was a kid, but I didn't really clue in to what was going on at the time. Now, it seems like we've got an anti-competitive telecom industry that can't be much better than it was back then, but more importantly absolutely everything is a subsidiary of one of 2-3 giant megacorporations that have their claws into everything.
I tend to think that a free market and low regulation is a good thing, but it seems like a little more regulation of these monopolies and some forced separation of the megacorps into pieces that have to stand and compete within their own sector (telecom, IT, press, etc. instead of giant ball-o-everything) on their own two feet would have to be better for everyone. Well, everyone except for the CEOs at the core of each ball, I guess.

I remember hearing about the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly into the various "baby Bells" back when I was a kid, but I didn't really clue in to what was going on at the time. Now, it seems like we've got an anti-competitive telecom industry that can't be *much* better than it was back then, but more importantly absolutely everything is a subsidiary of one of 2-3 giant megacorporations that have their claws into everything.

I tend to think that a free market and low regulation is a good thing, but it seems like a little more regulation of these monopolies and some forced separation of the megacorps into pieces that have to stand and compete within their own sector (telecom, IT, press, etc. instead of giant ball-o-everything) on their own two feet would have to be better for everyone. Well, everyone except for the CEOs at the core of each ball, I guess.

I think no matter how good my broadband its always not quite good enough. ONE DROPPED PACKET OUT OF 10,000.

Really I don't care much about bandwidth, its latency and the quality and reliability of the connection I am after. I would be happy on like, 1mb if its got good routing, pings well to the rest of europe and doesn't drop packets or fluctuate wildly. Videogames don't really require that much bandwidth

I'm on BE Broadband atm, and honestly I'm super impressed with the quality considering its built on aging telecom infrastructure. Very affordable too. When I was living in student digs I forked out for fibre optic cable because the alternatives were awful and while the bandwidth was great it was extremely unreliable. Headaches of new tech or just a bad business...

I was paying 35e a month for 25Mb broadband in Dublin. Apparently you can now get up 100Mb for 65e.

We're a few years behind the times in Ireland as a whole because our major telecom company was bought up by venture capitalists shortly after being floated on the stock market by the government (for the sake of competition).

>> ^aaronfr:

The actual problem is the ability and willingness of the telecoms to sue to keep competition away. Owning all the pipes, while it may be perceived as a monopoly and obstruction to competition, does not satisfactorily explain the problem. I say this because in Germany all of the the pipes are owned by Deutsche Telecom, but it is government regulations that allow for competition. As a result, internet is cheaper and faster as pointed out by TheGenk. Go ahead, own the pipes, but allow for fair use of them and lease them to anyone willing to pay, and the problem will not be so acute.

This is true and at the beginning Deutsche Telekom faught against the usage of their pipes with various methods, but got slapped into submission by court rulings and the government.

The actual problem is the ability and willingness of the telecoms to sue to keep competition away. Owning all the pipes, while it may be perceived as a monopoly and obstruction to competition, does not satisfactorily explain the problem. I say this because in Germany all of the the pipes are owned by Deutsche Telecom, but it is government regulations that allow for competition. As a result, internet is cheaper and faster as pointed out by TheGenk. Go ahead, own the pipes, but allow for fair use of them and lease them to anyone willing to pay, and the problem will not be so acute.


>> ^dag:

I already posted this to BF's Facebook - but this is where the action is - my selected comments:
There's no chance for competition when the massive telecom corporations own all the pipes into the home and sue to prevent any further competition. (See most muni-broadband projects) http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable.ars
Read the above article and tell me again how if only the free market was left unfettered we'd have competition in broadband. What a load of bull. The major controlling corporations have no interest in competition.
How is it government's fault? The big telcos gobbled up the little Baby Bells with no regulation from the FTC, hogging all the infrastructure and lobbying / suing any organization that challenged their primacy. How do you blame the government for this?


>> ^TheGenk:

>> ^marinara:
paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.

Outch!
For 30€ you get 100mbit internet and telephone flatrate here in Germany, time to move

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I already posted this to BF's Facebook - but this is where the action is - my selected comments:

There's no chance for competition when the massive telecom corporations own all the pipes into the home and sue to prevent any further competition. (See most muni-broadband projects) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable.ars

Read the above article and tell me again how if only the free market was left unfettered we'd have competition in broadband. What a load of bull. The major controlling corporations have no interest in competition.

How is it government's fault? The big telcos gobbled up the little Baby Bells with no regulation from the FTC, hogging all the infrastructure and lobbying / suing any organization that challenged their primacy. How do you blame the government for this?