dslreports.com: Comcast 250GB Cap Goes Live October 1
August 31, 2008
Well, at least Comcast is finally putting a solid number on their previously arbitrary “excessive download” limit, but this still sucks. 
From dslreports.com:
Back in May I broke the news that in addition to throttling back high-consumption users to “DSL like speeds,” Comcast was considering implementing a 250GB monthly cap as part of their shift toward “protocol agnostic” network management. Despite consumer grumbling, that plan is in fact now moving forward. Sources tell me that Comcast will officially announce that they’re implementing this new system starting October first.
…
“The intent appears to be to go after the people who consistently download far more than the typical user without hurting those who may have a really big month infrequently,” says an insider familiar with the project, who prefers to remain anonymous. “As far as I am aware, uploads are not affected, at least not initially.” According to this source, the new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast’s 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%).
While we won’t be sure this is still the case until we see Comcast’s plan, the original source indicated that Comcast was considering giving customers one “freebie” every twelve months in regards to the cap. In other words, you’d be able to consume more than 250GB once a year, but consecutive months with violations would result in you getting a wrist slap. Obviously there’s lots of questions here, not least of which are whether Comcast’s own content counts against the cap, or whether customers will be provided with a usage meter.
Since this article was originally posted on August 28, Comcast’s own site has confirmed this hard limit:
We’ve listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive. Today, we’re announcing that beginning on October 1, 2008, we will amend our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) available at http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/ and establish a specific monthly data usage threshold of 250 GB/month per account for all residential customers.
250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:
- Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
- Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
- Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
- Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
This new policy takes effect on October 1st, so watch that ‘torrent traffic. On the (relatively) bright side, Comcast says they will contact you in case of over-usage and tell you exactly how much data per month you’ve used.
The Nokia Blog - How To Hack S60 Nokia Phones
August 31, 2008
As the article says, this allows you to install unsigned applications without a hassle (S60v3) and apply patches:
Steps To Hack Nokia S60 Phone
- Install freeware X-plore, a file manager from Lonely Cat Games. Run X-Plore, press 0 and check first 4 boxes. Don’t exit.
- Install and run HelloCarbide by FCA00000.
- Switch to X-plore and check if you can see the contents of C:/sys/. If you can, then you are halfway done. If not, try step 2 again.
- Download CapsOnOff.rar by FCA00000.
- Copy CProfDriver_SISX.ldd from RAR downloaded above into C:\sys\bin of your phone. You can do this with X-Plore.
- Install CapsOn.sisx and CapsOff.sisx. Run CapsOff application to turn on the hack.
- Download SIS installer mod for Symbian 9.2 and copy installserver.exe file to c:\sys\bin\ so you can install unsigned applications
- Install ROMPatcher by Zorn.
- Whenever you need to install an unsigned application or patch your phone, just run the CapsOff application first. CapsOn brings it back to normal state.
However, if you’d rather keep your phone un-hacked and sign your own applications, you can get a developer account at SymbianSigned and use a tool like Barak’s SignMe! to sign unsigned applications for yourself.
YouTube - Nerdcore Rising Announces the PAX Screening in this VIDEO
“Nerdcore Rising” - a documentary about Nerdcore hip hop - stars a bunch of folks like MC Frontalot, Weird Al Yankovic, Prince Paul, and Brian Posehn. But, none are more influential, inimitable, or god-like to gaming nerds than Tycho & Gabe of the Penny Arcade. Therefore, it is with joyous heart and a gamer’s carpal tunnel that we would like to announce, in catchy video format, that the West Coast Premiere of “Nerdcore Rising” will be at the Penny Arcade Expo on August 30, 2008, 4pm, at the Seattle Convention Center.
Please be entertained with the same exact message by watching this video!
Amiga Forever - Home of Amiga Emulation
August 28, 2008
If any of you are familiar with the unfortunate history of the incredibly ahead-of-its-time Amiga computer, I think you’ll get a big kick out of this:
The Amiga computer, launched by Commodore in 1985, combined superior multimedia technology with ease of use, inspiring millions of the most creative and enthusiastic computer users ever.
Amiga Forever is the award-winning Amiga preservation, emulation and support package brought to you by Cloanto, Amiga developers since 1986.
Different editions of Amiga Forever blend high-quality software and original content with the ultimate set of videos to chronicle and let you experience firsthand the history, culture, challenges and passion behind the Amiga.
If you’re not, you should really check it out. This computer did things in 1985 that mainstream computers wouldn’t end up doing for years - unfortunately, Commodore screwed the whole thing up, and it never got the chance to really break into the marketplace:
Amiga
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Amiga is a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985. The name Amiga was chosen by the developers specifically from the Spanish and Portuguese word for a female friend,[1] and because it occurred before Apple and Atari alphabetically.[2]
Based on the Motorola 68k series of microprocessors, the machine sports a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (now known as AmigaOS). While the M68k is a 32-bit processor, the version originally used in the Amiga, the 68000, has a 16-bit external data bus (that transfers 32 bit of data in two consecutive steps, a technique called multiplexing — all this transparent to the software, which is 32-bit from the beginning), and the original machine (along with its contemporary, the Atari ST) was generally referred to in the press as a 16-bit computer;[3] later models sported fully 32-bit designs. The Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64, and the Amiga quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe, and sold approximately 6 million units.[4]
Yep. It had a pre-emptive multitasking operating system in 1985. For some context on how impressive this is:
The earliest pre-emptive multitasking OS available to home users was the AmigaOS released in 1985. Pre-emptive multitasking was later adopted on Apple Macintoshes by MacOS 9.x [1] as an additional API, i.e. the application could be programmed to use the pre-emptive or co-operative model, and all legacy applications were multitasked cooperatively within a single process. Mac OS X, being an Unix-like system, uses pre-emptive multitasking for all native applications, although Classic applications may be multitasked cooperatively as they run in fact under Mac OS 9 running as OS X process.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Preemptive_multitasking.2Ftime-sharing)
It took Apple until MacOS 9.x to implement this as an additional API.
MacOS 9 was introduced in 1999. (Granted, Windows NT/9x and Unix/Linux had this sooner than MacOS.)
Check it out. Definitely worth a look.
Gizmodo: Apple Patent Filing for Mac Tablet
August 28, 2008
Looks pretty cool to me…
Appleinsider has gotten their hands on a large patent filing from Apple that we haven’t seen before, and it’s loaded with plans for how a multitouch interface would work on a tablet Mac running full-blown OS X. It covers how small interface buttons will be handled, iPhone-like scrolling through lists, details on a full multi-touch keyboard, and a nifty pop-up scroll wheel. And on top of all that, it seems like it’ll even work if you have freaky alien fingers! Let’s take a closer look.
(continue reading at Leaked Apple Patent Filing is Full of New Multitouch Tech For a Mac Tablet)
Pirates and Emperors
August 28, 2008
Health Notice!
August 28, 2008
Found this while cleaning out my Flickr account. Good stuff…
FoxTrot, on the DMCA
August 28, 2008
I found this comic while digging through my Flickr account to clear out the non-photo material, and thought this was an excellent commentary on the industry…
Watching Us
August 27, 2008
Y: The Last Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
August 27, 2008
If you haven’t checked this out yet, it’s well worth the read…
Y: The Last Man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Y: The Last Man is a comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, about the only man to survive the mysterious simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth. The series was published in sixty issues by Vertigo, and collected in a series of 10 paperback volumes. The series’ covers were primarily by J. G. Jones and Massimo Carnevale.
Plot summary
In the series, on July 17, 2002, something (referred to as a plague) simultaneously kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome - including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm. The only exceptions appear to be Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his Capuchin monkey Ampersand.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, their survivors’ guilt, and the knowledge that humanity is doomed to extinction. Vaughan meticulously crafts the new society that emerges out of this chaos, from the conversion of the phallic Washington Monument into a monument to the dead men, to the genesis of the fanatical ultra-feminist Daughters of the Amazon, who believe that Mother Earth cleansed itself of the “aberration” of the Y chromosome, to male impersonators becoming valued romantically and professionally.
Over the course of their journey, Yorick and his friends discover how society has coped in the aftermath of the plague. However, many of the women they encounter have ulterior motives in regard to Yorick. Though the subject matter of the series is entirely serious, Y: The Last Man is also noted for its humor. Yorick in particular is a source of one-liners, although the other characters have their moments as well.
I’m sure you already know about how awesome Paint.NET is, so I’ll spare the explanation and just quote the blog. If, for some reason, you haven’t tried Paint.NET, and you’re on Windows (it *might* even work on another platform via Mono, I’m not entirely sure), you should really check it out. It’s a great photo/graphic editing tool and it’s free as free can be.
Anyway, here’s the update from the Paint.NET blog:
In my last post about Paint.NET v4, I said that I was going to be writing it “from scratch” — that it would be a rewrite from the ground up, in other words. I’ve since changed my mind.
You see, I got a few months into this rewrite project. I wrote a lot of code — 26,000 lines of it, in fact. However, the continually daunting task of finishing the next 150,000 lines of code and doing a reset on the 4 years of bug fixes in v3.xx made things … depressing. So, I’ve decided that I will turn back to the v3.xx codebase and work towards v4 from there.
However, don’t worry. The rewrite project, which is now called a “prototype,” was not wasted time. I was able to work on and experiment with a lot of stuff in a nicely isolated fashion, and I now have a much better idea how I can refactor these into the existing [v3.xx] codebase. This includes some things for stuff like task management, extensibility, eventing, asynchronous programming, retained mode rendering, and an improved document model. This is actually a good example of quantity beating quality: by being able to iterate on all this enormous amount of code in isolation without the burden of the existing code base, I’ve been able to fine-tune it towards perfection.
In fact, I can’t stress that one word enough: depressing. Having 150,000 lines of code worth of work to do before you can even have something that’s feature parity with your already-shipping product, and that your users will even be interested in, is not fun. Next time you hear yourself thinking, “Rewriting this would be worth it,” stop and switch over to thinking about prototyping in an isolated codebase instead of rewriting the existing codebase. I can write a lot of code really fast, and I like to think I’m very good at it, but this was just too much for me. Your code (and mine) may not be academic-proof or astronaut-quality, but that’s ok … because it already works.
…continue reading at Paint.NET v4 takes a new, good turn (ixnay on the rewrite)
This blog looks like pure awesome. Here’s an example post:
Excruciatingly awful anti-drug abuse ad from 1970
(more at Found in Mom’s Basement)
Lifehacker: Useful Firefox 3 Configuration Tweaks
August 27, 2008
Update: Here are some new tips for Firefox 3 on all platforms and some specific tips for Firefox 3 on Linux:
YouTube - Large Hadron Rap
August 27, 2008
This is awesome. They even explain how they got around YouTube’s audio dynamic range compression. This is the 1337 shit:
Rappin’ about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider!
The sound should be slightly better on this version - we’ve tried to get round YouTube’s new extreme audio dynamic range compression by layering a 20kHz sine wave over the top of the soundtrack.
Images came from:
particlephysics.ac.uk, space.com, the Institute of Physics, NASA, Symmetry, and Marvel
The talented dancers doubled as camera people, with some work by Neil Dixon. Stock footage is CERN’s.
Will Barras is responsible for the killa beats:
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~s9527813/
The rapper has a day job (we agree this is a good thing) as a science writer.
http://www.katemcalpine.com
![pdx [portland]](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1046/3168818707_570cff7348_t.jpg "pdx [portland]")
