Cable Trounces DSL According to Netflix
Those who have heard my recommendations for Internet service often look at me incredulously. People so universally aim hatred at cable companies, they cannot believe I would insist Charter's service is superior to that of AT&T U-Verse. While I've worked with enough installations of the two services to say that Charter's Internet service is almost universally faster and frequently cheaper, many people hate the cable company so much, they insist otherwise. That's why a new ranking chart from Netflix is so interesting.
Netflix does a lot more to stress network connections than almost anybody else as they send “over 1 billion hours” of programming to members per month. The incredible amount of data they send out also gives them a great deal of data about how well different ISPs work around the country. In those rankings, only the two major consumer fiber services (Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber) beat out Comcast and Charter in the performance race, while AT&T U-Verse ranks at a dismal 11th place and AT&T's regular DSL is even lower at the 15th spot.
This isn't surprising from a technological standpoint. Unlike fellow Bell alum Verizon, AT&T opted to save money on its next generation offering by not running fiber to individual homes, instead using traditional copper phone wiring. The same copper wiring that has been around since Alexander Graham Bell. Traditional telephone wiring is definitely showing its age and while AT&T finds itself trying to squeeze every last ounce of capacity out of those aging lines, fiber and cable providers actually have a glut of capacity that should be able to maintain speed increases for years to come.
An example might suffice: Charter's “PowerBoost” allows customers to periodically “burst” at faster speeds than what one is paying for — it isn't unusual for me to see a Charter connection hit 10Mbps faster than its advertised rate, for example. AT&T on the other hand almost never actually achieves its advertised speeds and, even if it did, its fastest package (24Mbps) is 20% slower than Charter's more affordable, standard 30Mbps package.
Food for thought next time you shop for a new Internet package.
Buzzing About the Neat Worker Bee
A High Quality and Affordable Microphone
My work has become highly dependent on live streaming since COVID hit. I wanted a good quality microphone to improve live stream quality without breaking the bank. I found a lot of options that were of uncertain quality, but affordable, and plenty of well known quality with a price to match. Then, I found something neat: the Neat Worker Bee.
Buying an iPad in Fall 2022
The Choices are Great -- and Clearer than Before
I know a lot of people get confused about which iPad they need to buy for what they want to do. This guide is my stab at helping to sort out the options and what might be right for you.
But, At Least
Donald Bell writes in a review of iPod touch alternatives for CNet:
This little guy is tough to recommend, but at least the $179 price comes in under the iPod Touch's.
Yes, the screen is small, dim, and plagued with a horrible viewing angle, but let's look on the bright side. The sound quality holds up well, audio and video format support is surprisingly broad, and the small size is very convenient.
Sounds like a winner.
Busy, Busy, Busy
In a way, my starting this project last week was a real blessing. I had been meaning o make SAFARI (Standardized Automated File Archiving and Retrieval Interface) more useful for some time for non-issue based content (that is stuff that isn't published in monthly, weekly, or other types of “issues”), and last week I decided to take that on as a fun project.
Right now, I'm running my variant of Ciaran's very cool blogging software which is an amazingly light piece of code (only a handful of kbytes for the whole thing!). It is great, but I realized some of the stuff I wanted to implement for it already existed in SAFARI (stuff like the ability to edit posts, delete them, etc.). Further, I wanted to replace the holey mess known as PHP-Nuke on Open for Business. I knew it had problems for the las [Rest of the post disappeared for some reason. See my comment below for the text of what it said.]
Burning Batteries
It seems that Apple announced a massive battery recall while I was out of town. This recall, related to the largest ever electronics recall Dell made concerning batteries a short time ago, is caused by defects in the Sony produced batteries used in various laptops over the past three years. While I've not noticed any of the issues that have been ascribed to these problems, my PowerBook has one of those batteries, according to the recall information.
Sometimes getting involved in a recall is just an issue of frustration, but I'm rather happy about it, actually. My battery still works great, but is showing a bit of age after running for almost two and a half years. That this will result in me getting a new battery is really a treat.
Boot2Gecko
This looks interesting, though I can't help but wish they were announcing their support for Open webOS instead. WebOS is so good, if the FOSS community really wants to take iOS head on, that's the way to do it.
Blogger Idol Week 2: Freedom
It isn't. Microsoft just filed for such a patent.
Computers are suppose to bring freedom, but unfortunately, they can also take it away. As we become more dependent on computers to access our information, it should concern everyone that a few corporations control your identity. That certainly is not freedom. As one interviewee on Open for Business noted a few years back, this gives companies like Microsoft the opportunity to lock you in a proprietary prison, requiring you to agree to more and more aggressive licensing terms just to keep access to your documents.
Proprietary software companies, especially, thoses like Microsoft that frown on not only Open Source but even open standards, are basically trying to get people “addicted” to their software. Once you have your project information, financial information, personal letters, meeting presentations and everything else in their software, you are addicted. What are you going to do? Give up all of your data and start over?
Right now, there's another choice. If you switch to a Free Software platform (such as GNU/Linux) or even a semi-free platform (such as Mac OS X, which as a Free Software core now), you are moving in the right direction. The second step is simply to switch away from proprietary productivity software — instead of MS Office, try OpenOffice. Yes, it's not quite as nice, but isn't your freedom worth it? Soon, however, OpenOffice might not be allowed to load Microsoft Office files. Then, your only choice will be start over at whatever point you decide Microsoft's EULA's are too restrictive.
Big
David Goldman reports on Apple's most recent quarter results, announced today:
It was one of the most profitable quarters ever for any U.S. company, trailing only ExxonMobil's (XOM) record-setting $14.8 billion quarter from the fall of 2008, when oil prices were at an all-time high.
That is an incredible quarter reflecting Apple's really compelling lineup of products versus the competition.
HT: John Gruber
