On 2003.04.01 06:03 Edmund Cramp wrote: > Right Dustin, > > The phone company is also very willing to sell you a T1 line. Most > contracts these days are dynamic - the contractor retains the right to > change it at any time and this seems to be what COX have done. The > COX/@HOME service was always aimed at "home" users who, for the most > part, used their connection for browsing the net and email when the > service was introduced. P2P and web/ftp/chat servers were rare when > the original @HOME service was introduced and they were quite clear in > their terms that this was not for commercial use. So I don't see a > big problem with COX attempting to reign in the major bandwidth hogs > by blocking ports - it's really the only option, given the network > design. > > If you don't like the COX service then you are free to sign up with a > phone company. ADSL (which limits the upload speed by design) seems > to be a less restrictive environment simply because the potential for > server abuse is lower. > > Frankly $40/month for ADSL is a steal if you think back to when we > paid that for a 19k2 connection and were the envy of the > neighborhood. > > Edmund Cramp > --
It's hard for me to believe what I'm reading here. Who's cable is it that runs through the public easement in my back yard? Why was Cox granted a monopoly on cable services and what obligations did that put them under? It's clear to me that Cox has obligations for the public land it uses and the market protection it was granted. Cox might have a unilaterally changeable contract with it's customers but it also has one with the local governments that grant it monopoly protection. Otherwise, why is it that I can't run my cables in that same easement? Do you really think that the public should give up land and the chance for others to make a buck providing honest services so the CEO of Cox can get rich? I see a huge problem with Cox's efforts to reign in the bandwidth hogs. The most important of those problems is that it has not worked. The second problem is that they don't really care and that's not what they are after. They are trying to sell silly "hosting" services. Some moron made this arbitrary distinction between "commercial" and "residential" software out of pure ignorance and greed. It's a greedy little screw and no one ever got rich off those besides the conn man that sold the scheme and the equipment to run it. The net result is that I can't share minor hacks, my resume or pictures of my little girl with my family without purchasing additional services. No, Cox's dinky 10 Megs of space does not fit the 2 gigs of stuff I have to share, all of it my original content. The bandwidth hogs and copyright violators continue swapping other people's music, movies and software on ports other than 80 and 25. The harder they suck, the harder people will work to get around and obsolete them. In ten years or so, wireless services will make their cable look like 2400 baud modems look today.
