ISP's trying to bring back bandwidth caps

On Monday, I saw an article on Yahoo! News about Time Warner Cable trying out metered internet usage in Beaumont, Texas. People in this area will have a monthly allowance for the amount of data they upload and download. If they go over this limit, they will be charged $1 per gigabyte.

They claim that this is an attempt to fairly deal out internet usage, which they claim is uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers. They also claim 'We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure'. However, the investment should have came from all of the millions of dollars given to telco's by the government over the last several years.

The article also goes on to talk about how phone companies are less concerned about congestion and will be unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers since their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner Cable gave some info about their tiered service. One will be $29.95 a month for 768 kilobits per second and a 5 gigabyte monthly cap and another will be $54.90 for 15 megabits per second and a cap of 40 gigabytes per month. The price covers the internet portion of subscription bundles that include video (think video on demand) and phone services. Both of which the downloads and uploads count toward the monthly cap.

Comcast, which is the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month.

This is just a way for these companies to make more money to pad their bottom line. They see a trend where people are using the internet more and more and feel that its their best way to increase their profits. With iTunes, Amazon, Audible, NetFlix and many other services that use the internet for sales and delivery, these companies have set their sights on us users who use it for entertainment to increase their profit margins.

I have started watching TWiTLive.tv streaming broadcasts of Leo Laporte. The video and audio is 564 kilobits per second. If you multiply that out its in the neighborhood of 2 gigabytes per hour. He broadcast about 25 hours a week. If someone watched all 25 hrs per week and did nothing else, that would total over 100 gigabytes per month.

If you watch a movie from NetFlix, each one would be (roughly estimated) 2 gigabytes or 6-8 gigabytes for a high definition movie. This is completely ridiculous. It reminds me of 1995 when metered dial-up internet was around. Remember what happened to that?

Yahoo! News Article
CNet: The Digital Home Article

Charlton Heston dead at 84

Charlton Heston, actor known for such roles as Andrew Jackson, Moses, John the Baptist, Michelangelo, Marc Antony, Cardinal Richelieu and Henry VIII. But probably more well known for the roles of George Taylor from 'Planet of the Apes', Judah Ben-Hur from 'Ben-Hur' and Detective Robert Thorn from 'Soylent Green'. Also known for his political activism for being president of the Screen Actors Guild, Chairman of the American Film Institute and probably best known for being president of the National Rifle Association.

In 1998 after being elected president of the NRA, he delivered a jab at then-President Bill Clinton, saying, "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns."

In 2002 he revealed that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease saying "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."

In 2003 he stepped down as NRA president and later that same year was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor.

Family spokesman Bill Powers said he died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife of 64 years, Lydia, at his side. Powers declined to comment or provide further details on the cause of death.

Another hollywood legend who will never be replaced. Rest in peace Mr. Heston.

The War in review

There have been countless documentaries, movies and games produced covering World War II but none that I have seen are quite as good as Ken Burns 'The War'. He stated that he did not want to do another war documentary after completing 'The Civil War'. However he changed his stance after many years of people asking him to cover this war. But the deciding factors were two statistics: 1) Every day we are losing 1,000 World War II veterans in the United States every day 2) an unbelievably high number of high school students across the nation believe that the United States fought along side the Germans AGAINST Russia.

This has been an excellent documentary highlighting some of the people involved in the war without focusing on the generals or even the equipment used. The people highlighted were from four small towns in America that were changed forever by the war. One of those towns was Mobile, Alabama. But it wasn't only limited to people who served, it included family members who were affected by their friends and family serving in the armed forces.

The documentary, broken up into a seven part series aired its last episode last night. However they announced it will be reairing on Wednesday nights later this year, so if you missed it the first time around check it out, you will not regret it.

Ken Burns, The War

I attended the free preview of Ken Burns latest documentary entitled 'The War'. They focus on four towns (including Mobile) and how they changed during the course of World War II. But the main focus is the people from those towns. They interviewed many people for the documentary.

It was a very stunning mix of clips that was very touching. At times you had the audience clapping at something in the film, then other times you could see people shaking their heads or drying their eyes. It will be a very poignant series to watch as it airs on PBS. It is a 14.5 hour documentary that will be aired on Sunday nights starting September 23rd. For the schedule you can visit PBS here. For more information about 'The War' at the PBS website, visit the link here.

The DVD of this documentary will be available October 2nd, presumably at Books-A-Million. It will contain 15.5hrs of film plus some extras such as deleted scenes and interview outtakes. You can pre-order it from PBS here which is good because a portion of the proceeds goes to help fund public television.

Its been a while

Hey, sorry its been so long since I last posted but I had some stuff to share. Monday, Kc, Vicki, Jeremy and myself worked on cleaning up the back yard. It looks much better and kc has spruced it up with some plants in one corner of the yard. A bunch of bricks are going to be hauled off along with plastic lattice and about dozen bags of leaves and other junk.

I have to hand it to Frank Miller, while I didn't get to go see the movie with the group on Saturday and have yet to see it. I am very eager to watch it. On a $70 million dollar budget they produced this beautiful looking movie. Hopefully, more of his visions will be make it to the screen with him directing. So, if anyone has not seen 300 or would like to see it again, let me know.

A new show premiered on FX that I watched. Its called 'The Riches' and from the first episode it looks very good. The show stars Eddie Izzard, Minnie Driver and Shannon Marie Woodward (which I know in a roundabout way). I am not going to post the synopsis here but I will definitely link to it. All three cast I named above do a wonderful job in the pilot episode and it really has me wanting more so far. I have never seen anything of Eddie Izzard but he was great. The entire family cast was great and I would recommend it.

Also, here is an article about 'The Riches'. Enjoy!