cultural reviewer and dabbler in stylistic premonitions

  • 69 Posts
  • 332 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • Upload bandwidth doesn’t magically turn into download bandwidth

    Actually, it does. Various Cable and DSL standards involve splitting up a big (eg, measured in MHz) band of the spectrum into many small (eg, around 4 or 8 kHz wide) channels which are each used unidirectionally. By allocating more of these channels to one direction, it is possible to (literally) devote more band width - both the kinds measured in kilohertz and megabits - to one of the directions than is possible in a symmetric configuration.

    Of course, since the combined up and down maximum throughput configured to be allowed for most plans is nowhere near the limit of what is physically available, the cynical answer that it is actually just capitalism doing value-based pricing to maximize revenue is also a correct explanation.









  • That pin can be found for $30 or $35 on on ebay here and here, where it is described as being from the 80s and as an “employee pin”.

    I was thinking that this might have been something aimed specifically at technology buyers in US schools in the 80s or 90s, to whom Apple offered substantial institutional discounts in a (relatively successful) effort to dominate that sector. However searching the phrase “does more costs less” i found this TV spot advertising the Quadra 605 which at $1000 was the cheapest computer Apple sold when it was introduced in October 1993 (and allegedly cheaper than something else they refer to as “PC Leading Brand” 😂). That system was sold under the LC and Performa brands up to 1996, but it was only sold as a Quadra until October 1994, so, to answer OP’s question: that slogan was in use at least sometime in that year.









  • If copyright holders want to take action, their complaints will go to the ISP subscriber.

    So, that would either be the entity operating the public wifi, or yourself (if your mobile data plan is associated with your name).

    If you’re in a country where downloading copyrighted material can have legal consequences (eg, the USA and many EU countries), in my opinion doing it on public wifi can be rather anti-social: if it’s a small business offering you free wifi, you risk causing them actual harm, and if it is a big business with open wifi you could be contributing to them deciding to stop having open wifi in the future.

    So, use a VPN, or use wifi provided by a large entity you don’t mind causing potential legal hassles for.

    Note that if your name is somehow associated with your use of a wifi network, that can come back to haunt you: for example, at big hotels it is common that each customer gets a unique password; in cases like that your copyright-infringing network activity could potentially be linked to you even months or years later.

    Note also that for more serious privacy threat models than copyright enforcement, your other network activities on even a completely open network can also be linked to identify you, but for the copyright case you probably don’t need to worry about that (currently).