[ih] Secret precedence schemes back then

[Bernie Cosell]

On 28 Jan 2009 at 18:32, Mike Padlipsky wrote:

> Jack Haverty wrote:
> 
> > See
> > http://www.hughes.com/HUGHES/rooms/displaypages/layoutinitial?pageid=fairaccess
> > if you're curious.
> 
> ok, i was curious.  now i'm furious.
> 
> "The Fair Access Policy is straightforward. ....
> 
> in the first place, even if They wanted to do an honest analysis, which 
> one doubts, a priori, it's not clear they can, since the built-in 
> ceilings foul the sample-space

Of course, but then they don't need to justify the usage limits at all, 
do they?  They could just say "Here are the service plans, pick what you 
want to pay for".  I looked at the plans and decided that the pro-plus 
plan was the 'sweet spot' [such as they are: the next bigger plan was a 
LOT more expensive [like $50/month] for not much more speed; Jack picked 
the Home plan [$20/month less than mine for about 1/2 the speed and 
throughtput].  You pays your money and you takes your choice.

> but more strinkingly, i thought you said you were dead in the water 
> after the new imac grabbed too many bits, yet here They're saying that 
> you were just going to experience reduced download speeds.  either you 
> misspoke, i misread, or They lie.  guess which one i think is right.

You're *effectively* dead in the water.  For 24 hrs your speed is reduced 
to something in between 14.4 and 19K.  Just loading the Hughesnet web 
page [to figure out how/why you've been FAPed] takes a minute or two.  
But it is definitely still up: I can/have managed to get all my email 
done and ssh'ing and running vi and doing low-bandwidth stuff like IMing 
all are pretty much unperturbed.

> if 'equity' were a concern and the realities of usage patterns [such as 
> system upgrades, or even big patch batches or the occasional new version 
> of open office, say] were taken into account, the least They could do 
> would be to have a once a week or once a month 'hey, today i need more 
> than your arbitrary limit's worth of bits so give me a once-in-a-while 
> exemption, please'.

Oh, they do.  Jack left out that there's a "FAP free zone" **EVERY*DAY**. 
It used to be 3-5AM and for my plan it is 2-6AM [I have the pro-plus 
plan; I don't know if the "Home" plan has the expanded FAP-free times or 
not], and so with a  decent download manager you can pull down a LOT of 
bits, all without any FAP problems or considerations.

> not at all clear to me.  quantity of traffic appears to be the only 
> determinant in play; types/kinds of traffic don't matter, simple 
> bitcounts do ... unless there are some other factors behind the scenes 
> of the plinkable you offered above, anyway.

And by and large I think that's just right.  If you're soaking down all 
the available bandwidth [and not being a good "sharing citizen"] I don't 
see why it should make a difference to the carrier if you're doing 
streaming HDTV, or multi-connection FTP, or P2P or whatever...  You're 
chewing up the bandwidth and screwing up their statistics and slowing 
down everyone else, regardless of why.  And contrary to what Jack said, 
I'm not sure I've ever encountered any "content-specific" limiting or 
filtering.  I don't do P2P stuff much but I have run BitTorrent to pull 
stuff down and never noticed any problem [does BT count as a P2P app?]

> and then there's
> 
> > From a user's perspective, it's mandatory to find every piece of
> > software on all your computers or Internet-connected devices that has
> > any "automatic update" feature and disable it.  Also turn off any
> > automatic multimedia features, which seem to be increasingly popular on
> > web sites these days.  Not always easy.
> 
> not always easy for you, and probably damn near impossible for the 
> technolaity.  again, smells like profiteering on the part of the bigbiz 
> weasels to mr.

Perhaps, and I don't know what it is like in Mac-land but there's very 
little that does that kind of thing in windows-land.  The biggest 
offender was Windows Update, which is why they put in the 3AM grace-
period originally.  Most other programs *ask* you if you want to do 
updates and it is easy enough to say "no", then use a download manager to 
pull all of it in the next morning at 3AM.  I have a LOT of crap on my 
assorted systems here and never once have had a FAP problem because of a 
renegade-automatic-update by anything.  And yes, setting up Firefox *NOT* 
to autoload all the multimedia stuff helps a lot [although with pro-plus 
that's not as much of a problem.. I can even do YouTube a bit [if I don't 
overdo it..:o)]]

> the funny thing about this one is that i'm trying to stick up for what i 
> think ought to be your rights as a consumer and you seem to be happy you 
> can even get ripped off by the saddleunlite isp[s] because you live 
> somewhere where you can't even get half the rated speed on the 
> phonelines.

I don't think that consumers have any "rights" in this regard.  Hughesnet 
invested the money to put up the satellite and they run the operation 
pretty well [aside from *VERY* few hiccups it mostly just hums along 
24/7; I'm constantly amazed that a technology as tricky as that works as 
smoothly as it does] and they can charge what they please.  As long as 
their conditions, services and fees are clear, what "rights" do I have 
other than to choose to do business with them or not?  I can switch to 
NetZero any time I please...

If you're pissed that one of the side effects of having Internet access 
in the US all be done by private outfits is that folks in the sticks 
can/will get ignored while the providers trip over themselves for the 
city-folks to get 1meg, 5meg, 10meg, 20meg connections... that's just the 
way it is.  There's no cell phone coverage here, either, because it just 
isn't worth the cost for a carrier to put up towers (and I mean zero bars 
on your cell phone so you can't make a call, don't even ask about that 
fancy 3G stuff you city folk have).

> ...  still, i can't bring myself to say that you deserve to be 
> ripped off just because you choose to live 'out there' somewhere.

I can't see any way for things to be much different, unless Obama can 
push through some Internet equivalent of the REA.  There's just no 
financial incentive to "connect" us middle-of-nowhere folk.

> ..  but 
> as a probable sign of advancing years [sigh], as long as you're happy or 
> content or not infuriated with your conectivity circumstances, fine by me.

I'm absoltely infuriated about it; so what?  In fact, I told the county 
supervisors that if we had it to do over again we probably wouldn't have 
moved here, and if we do move again it *certainly* will not be to a place 
that isn't "connected".  The supervisors listened, commiserated, and then 
went on to other business, like trying to figure out how to pay for 
getting the bridges repaired.  They understand that the county is hurting 
because businesses that could bring jobs and money to the county won't 
relocate here because of the absence of broadband access, but there's not 
much that they can do about it.

> [and sure, i do realize that saddleunlite service is likely to be 
> justifiably more expensive than dsl or cable, it's just that i think 
> it's too much more expensive.

Ah, if you believe that AND you're a fan of capitalism, you would 
perceive that as an opportunity rather than an outrage.  :o)

  /Bernie\
-- 
Bernie Cosell                     Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com     Pearisburg, VA
    -->  Too many people, too few sheep  <--