FUCK my ISP

[Mugwump]

Heh, fair enough. So, where were we? Oh yeah, ISPs are evil...

[Focalor]

And, again, like dutch said, someone can successfully create their own competitor, and although unlikely, they can still make a change to the system.

You'd have to run your own cable system. AT&T or Bell or whoever owns them probably isn't gonna just LET you use their wires to beat all the horses they have in the race. There was some kinda antitrust thing that broke the telecom companies up in different entities, but they still kinda function as a monopoly.

[foq]

ISP are out to make money like everybody else. Most of your ISP are also cable television providers. This is my gripe...

For ages I ran with just internet service. When I met my fiancee she was doing the same. We both downloaded TV shows and whatnot via... illegitimate methods. Some time ago, however, we signed up for Hulu and Netflix... and guess what happened? We started getting notices about going over the data cap and being charged extra money. A little digging and I found out that if you only have Internet service, at our level, your data cap is a measly 200GB/month.

200GB? That's ridiculous. Her son is a gamer, has both PS4 and Xbone now and new games lead to massive massive downloads, especially if it's a digital copy... which is how I get my games on PC (steam). Netflix/Hulu streams are huge. 200GB is a pathetic data cap. Most other ISPs have a data cap around 1TB, which is still bullshit they're capping your data usage, but it's so huge I don't really care.

They're pushing money saving cord cutters to still turn around and spend the money they saved on a different service. Now you've got to spend extra money on better internet with a higher data cap to support the data you're using. And, the funny thing is, it actually encourages more piracy. I'd rather download a TV series, movie, whatever and keep it forever and stream it locally than watch it on Netflix. That way I only use the data once. If I want to watch it again, I already downloaded and saved it, so I won't have to use the data again.

Bottom line is everybody who offers you a product or service for money is greedy, to some extent. It doesn't matter if you're a capitalist, a socialist, a communist... those in power, whether it be government, or a corporation, can and will bend you over and f*** you for their benefit. Stop looking at politics and look at the bigger picture... human nature. We're pretty crappy. No matter what you call it, be it capitalism, socialism, communism, or whatever other label you may have to attach to something, there are humans behind it... and whatever it is, it wasn't designed so the powerful could be nice and help YOU.

[Mugwump]

Data cap

I don't think we have such a thing in France anymore, at least regarding ADSL connections (4G phones still have data caps). AFAIK, the only limit is your bandwidth.

[foq]

If we go over 200GB, nothing happens... until the end of the month. We get charged an extra $10/50GB or something like that.

Our phones have that as well. I had service before where I had 500MB/month, and if I went over 500MB, data slowed down to 2G speeds. Such a thing is common for phone plans.

[Mugwump]

Our ISPs make a point of advertising unlimited internet. On my phone, I currently have 3Gb/month, after which my connexion drops to 3G speed, but without extra charge.

[Focalor]

ISP are out to make money like everybody else. Most of your ISP are also cable television providers. This is my gripe...

For ages I ran with just internet service. When I met my fiancee she was doing the same. We both downloaded TV shows and whatnot via... illegitimate methods. Some time ago, however, we signed up for Hulu and Netflix... and guess what happened? We started getting notices about going over the data cap and being charged extra money. A little digging and I found out that if you only have Internet service, at our level, your data cap is a measly 200GB/month.

200GB? That's ridiculous. ...

Buddy of mine in Colorado was saying he got a letter from his TV/internet provider telling him about new data cap limits. His was something like 1TB I think, and that's still ridiculous in my opinion. If you subscribe to one of those automatic online backup services,... well if your PC was purchased in the last 5 or 6 years, chances are your hard disks total size is 1TB or larger. Mine is a little over 1.3TB I think, and the data space used on it is over 1TB. If I were subject to a 1TB limit, one full backup via an online backup service would MORE than use that all up.

Data limits are bullshit any way you look at it. The only thing they should be charging you more or less for is, like BFG said, bandwidth speeds.

"Fuck my ISP"? No, fuck EVERYONE'S ISP. They're ALL sh�theads.

[foq]

Well, I'm not sure why you would actually need to upload your entire hard drive to an online backup service... but 1TB would be plenty for us. It would support plenty of game data downloads and video streaming. Not defending the data cap at all though, more like attacking my pitifully low 200GB. Like I said though... all about greed and money...

[Mugwump]

Well, I'm not sure why you would actually need to upload your entire hard drive to an online backup service...

Safety? One of my HDDs died on me a couple weeks ago, I lost a bit less than a Tb of data.

[foq]

Personally, I'd rather invest in another drive (possibly external) for backup, rather than an online service.

[Focalor]

Personally, I'd rather invest in another drive (possibly external) for backup, rather than an online service.

Me too, I'd never back shit up on anything other than a physical medium that I PERSONALLY OWN. It's MY shit, and uploading it to some other place inevitably means that someone can and will have access to it.

But... not everyone thinks with their head. Like the twerps who pay for Lifelock or those "extended warantees".

[Mugwump]

I don't disagree but it can be useful in case one doesn't have the spare cash to buy a new HDD.

[foq]

HDD is probably cheaper in the long run, considering the cost of bandwidth now and whatever the fee would be for such online service.

[Focalor]

HDD is probably cheaper in the long run, considering the cost of bandwidth now and whatever the fee would be for such online service.

Yeah, probably more convenient too. Can they guarantee 100% uptime? Hell no. But some people have more money than sense... which is why they buy Areola Grande albums and season tickets to the Cleveland Browns. And again, extended warranties for their Anorexia Grande albums.

[H1CC]

I use a physical external hard drive for backups first, and an Online backup service second.
For me, it's like, if you're worried about what might happen to you 'in the real world' based on what may or may not be seen by those simply managing the backup services themselves, you could always just exclude those "file and folder contents" specifically from the automated backup process-- not that that's necessarily entirley secure, but if you're worried about someone "stealing your ideas" by getting a handle on your personal, philosophical writings before you have a chance to publish them... something like that... well, any reasonably good "Online backup service"'s related software should have the feature included to "set the range of what is and is not backed up, excluding/inclding specific sets of subfolders", "file extensions", or if you're really hardcore, "exact phrases found in the file contents" (that one may require you pull some tricks using a standard "windows explorer search function" and set all the files that come up "including the exact phrase" to be 'shared' to a "map network drive" thingamajigger and then set that 'drive' to be backed up... seperately).