Broadband service not as advertised?

by Alan West, 1 March 2008.

If you go down the pub and ask for a pint of beer, pay for it, then get given half a pint, you'd complain. It also costs the same regardless of the actual capacity you consume.

The capacity of a data communications link is measured by the quantity of bits per second copied from sender to receiver.

I beleive when you pay for an internet service with 8 million bits per second capacity, you should receive 8 million bits per second capacity.

But a common scam ISPs use upon their own customers, is to create an imaginary much lower maximum capacity than that advertised, such as 85 billion bits per month, as 1 month is roughly 2.6 million seconds the equivalent capacity is only about 32,000 bits every second which is much lower than the minimum 2 million bits each second capacity often classified as broadband.

When you exceed this artificial maximum capacity the ISP will force all your web requests to their payment page, until you pay extra for each perhaps 1 million bits over you are. They probably avoid criminal fraud prosecution, because the maximimum is in a special technical details, restrictions of use policy, or other conditions section, and take advantage that most people wont understand it anyway.

Are you a law abiding citizen?

by Alan West, 10 February 2007.

Considering the vast quantity of information contained in the many volumes of law books, how can any regular person possibly abide by all that law?

In aiming to be complete and accurate, laws are overly wordy and extremely specific, resulting in different interpretations, grey areas, failure to comply, and loopholes.

I wonder if laws could be generalised down to around twenty or thirty universal base laws, that would cover entities [people, organisations, and governments] pressing charges against each other about [unfairness, failure, loss, damage, destruction] and determining the relevant level of [compensation, agreement, damages, criminal prosecution and sentencing].

Software written in Java/C#/etc wastes energy

by Alan West, November 2006.

Although this seems extreme, its very real, I have observed services deployed written in a language compiled as byte-code, requiring four physical servers, just to process the equivalent load that one server with software re-written in C/C++ turned out to be capable of. In this case its not at all difficult to imagine the energy savings involved.

Compared to software compiled for a native processor, the cost savings in reduced development times when writing software in languages which compile to virtual machine byte-code, surely results in increased running costs year upon year due to the extra energy, and resources those virtual machines often demand.

Reduced development times in these newer languages, is largely due to the inclusion of an extensive standard library. Better tools for managing the source code of projects can help reduce development time, especially with large projects. Those features for reducing development time should apply to any language, including C/C++.

Wasted doing what?

I believe a major factor that degrades the performance is the automatic garbage collection. It is always employed in these systems, they never appear to properly release memory back to the system, but instead rely on the operating system to swap the unused chunks of memory to disk, wasting time and energy for no good reason.

Software compiled for a particular processor target is ready to execute right away. Software compiled in to a kind of byte-code isn't executable, and is either interpreted by a virtual machine, or compiled to native instructions just-in-time when required, so wasting time and energy, and more time and energy when attempting optimisations. It could certainly reduce that which is wasted by saving native code compiled from byte-code for future use, but that is at the expense of extra disk space, and further control/checking mechanisms to determine if the saved image is out of date. With each new mechanism, further possible points of failure are introduced.

Religions are illegal pyramid schemes

by Alan West, 6 April 2005.

Seeing that dead bloke called Pope on TV got me thinking... You know what pyramid schemes are right - and how they're illegal. Well it occurred to me that there are a few long running pyramid schemes that for some reason have not been stopped by the authorities so far.

If at least a couple of these points are true of a venture or organisation, then you've probably discovered an illegal pyramid scheme:

  1. Only the people at the very top are the top earners.
  2. You are promised future monetary rewards or bonuses based on your advancement up the structure.
  3. Over time, the hierarchy of participants resembles a pyramid as newer, larger layers of participants join the established structure at the bottom.
  4. The illegal money-making venture is modified and adapted to suit the victims - often in times of crisis.
  5. It is presented as unique, miraculous, and unavailable elsewhere - accessible only to those with the vision to appreciate its benefits to humanity.
  6. They rely on widespread ignorance of basic mathematics.
  7. Pyramid promoters are masters of group psychology.
  8. At recruiting meetings they create a frenzied, enthusiastic atmosphere with group pressure promising a spectacular result in the end.
  9. They play upon people's fears of missing out on a good deal.
  10. In the end, members at the top seem to be above the law.

So what does it mean if all are true?

Religions teach very primitive laws by today's standards, retaining that legacy in modern society causes more harm than good. You don't need religion to be a good person, don't allow yourself to be brainwashed.

Update (10 July 2007) - Me and religion:

  • My earliest ever memory is at the age of two.
  • I can't recall ever believing in any of this “God” rubbish.
  • My parents never uttered a word about any religious beliefs.

Stuff

© 2005-2007 Alan West