NBN 1Gbps.???

I pay a bucketful for all sorts of infrastructure that I will never use, thats the way that society works.

Anyway it is highly likely that the average user will use that bandwidth in future, for instance, in the US, video stores are becoming an endangered species, more and more people are downloading their rental movies from online vendors. Thats just one change, cloud computing and software as a service are the way that the industry is moving like it or not. Google's new operating system is probably the way of the future, just enough mechanism to run the browser and get on the internet. So,instead of paying Adobe $1000 for a copy of photoshop to edit your photos, you'll rent it by the hour, the megabyte or whatever, and that will take more than the 12 furlongs per cubic fortnight that the Monk is offering.

keithr wrote

the way that society works.

Doesnt mean that it makes any sense to be spending $50B when most of us have very decent broadband available when we want to buy it.

It makes a hell of a lot more sense to be spending a hell of a lot less than that providing broadband for those that cant currently get it for the price the rest of us pay.

future,

Yes, but that doesnt mean that it makes any sense to be spending $50B on it when there are plenty better things to be spending $50B on, like hospitals etc.

and more people are downloading their

And what matters is whether it makes any sense to be spending $50B to do that.

that the industry is moving like it or

Like hell it is for consumers.

Nope. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to be spending a hell of a lot less than the $10K per household on the OS instead.

of paying Adobe $1000 for a copy of

whatever,

And pay $10K per household to be able to do that. Makes absolutely no sense whatever.

Makes absolutely no sense to be spending $10K per household when there are plenty of things that money can be better spent on instead.

The same can be said for a great many government projects, at least the NBN has utility that will extend for decades to come.

Have fun listing even one that is costing anything like $50B from now on.

Just as true of current ways in which broadband is being delivered.

Yes, FTTP is quite a bit faster than the current broadband, but it makes absolutely no sense to be spending anything like $50B just so people can download DVDs much quicker.

Thats about all the absolute vast bulk of consumers will ever do with the better speed.

I agree, lets go back to gravel road as they are cheaper to maintain.

terryc wrote

Wrong, as always.

On Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:40:59 +1000 keithr wrote:

Some of you may not like what I am about to say and you may violently disagree with it, this, though, is to be expected as humans grasp to make sense of life, the world in which they live, move and have their being and their inevitable outplaying or out-picturing on the stage of that life but generally in abysmal accord with humanly derived concepts thereto. Albeit, I speak and do so with a thunderous but benign voice of plainly reasoned certitude of that which I speak. None are expected to accept a word of what I say, but are entirely free to accept, to deny or to place before the alter of their consideration as they see fit. May, as a natural consequence of this exposition, the bandwidth and speed of your mind be increased in like measure to that of fast broadband through fibre optics for the Internet and all users of it. The problem is in the eyes of the perceiver in this instance, for there is no problem in and of itself other than that which humanity collectively or individually want to fabricate on the screens of their minds and project on life, on human society. I favour the development of the NBN as a benefit to every level of society and that with a reasonable sense of equity.

Although, as I stated, people are free to either accept or reject that which I say in whole or in part at their liberty, even so there will be those no doubt about it who's only intent is to ridicule and deride while finding fault where the problem lies in themselves and do so from a standpoint of small-mindedness derived from a psychology of abusiveness in a tirade of argumentum ad hominem. Such is their folly, their immaturity in constitutional character. Consider this posting, if you will, as a working hypothesis.

The argument pertaining to the ability of the NBN to deliver 1 Gigabyte per second speed in the current time period and environment may well be a pertinent consideration here and may be correct in its conclusion, but the distant future and even the near future is definitely open to this being achievable. The NBN, therefore, should be viewed as a long-term investment benefit for Australian society that has to be started in the presnet for the sake of the present as of the future. For it is what is done in the present that creates the future. I would like to see, as a matter of principle, for every citizen of this country to be benefited by the NBN or any reasonable alternative to it as proposed by whomsoever. My consciousness is that of inclusion, not exclusion. This, I realise, is to whatever degree difficult to achieve by a society tied to and conditioned by a monetary system. The past, however, provides sufficient proof that vast projects like the NBN are achievable in practice.

While it can be said with a certain measure of certitude that I concur with your expressed sentiment that the generality of respondents, as others in the wider community, are or may be looking at the NBN from the perspective of the home user, I do not wholly agree with your espoused conclusions following from this assertion. I, therefore, disagree with you that the main beneficiary will be business. It seems to me that people have business on the brain in this wacky modern world where the Thoroughly Modern Millies abide in their bemusing smugness, inasmuch as it had been so during certain periods in the past history of genus h*mo. In my view, the benefit to different sections of the community averages out over time and in accordance with individual needs and usages, especially as technology evolves from its still primitive state in which it is to be found to an increasingly more advanced state conveying refreshing possibilities for society's populace. I am an individual and want to be treated as one, not in the dankness of the preconceived notion that business requirements shall always outstrip mine as a lowly citizen.

One may well argue, as humans tend to do from the point of human credulity, that business and government are a part of human society and that without them society could not function, ergo they are the most important facets of society we should consider and give priority to. The principle problem with this outlook is that it often-times is a dangerous line to adopt, can be misleading and unjust in its proclivity to always pander to business and governmental interests. For, when all is said and done, business and government are constituted of the citizenry, and to emphasise the importance of the collective entities like business and government is to so often disenfranchise the citizenry as distinct components in society with as legitimate needs, desires and functions as the two composite groups already mentioned. What I am saying here is that neither business or government are to be considered in absolutist terms, as against the interests, wants and needs of the citizenry. Life is a two-way street, not a one-way street like it is unfortunately depicted in the famous Kennedy mantra "...ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." everywhere we turn we hear Kennedy's statement being taken out of context in the justification of a one-way street societal paradigm where the citizenry are jumped on for having the audacity to ask of the country. The country, I notice, doesn't mind asking us to put our lives on line for it, but we should never ask of the country. This is nothing other than selfishness and inconsideration to the nth degree.

What, I hear some assert, has this to do with this newsgroup and the subject matter of this particular thread? It has everything to do with it, since the post to which I am responding imparts the pre-eminent approach and consideration, as false as it is in the human consciousness, to business and its supposed interests as well as bandwidth and speed usage and requirements. The presentment to the human consciousness of this one-way mantra has been taken up by business and government for their own selfish ends as they ride on the crest of the wave of self-indulgence and citizen misfortune. As heartfelt as it may have been for Kennedy, nonetheless it has a potentially negative context when taken out of context and used in the extreme as the one-way paradigm in society. A half-truth is as dangerous and misleading as an outright lie.

The problem, as you designate it to be such in accordance with your prevailing viewpoint, is a veritable illusion of which is based on partial leanings and abstruse considerations in the devaluation of the individual. One could equally say that business as such will not be the main beneficiaries, instead it would be government and their various departments along with services provided there-from or connected thereto in their day-to-day usage of the medium. This itself would be as equally a false conclusion that's based on a manifestly skewered viewpoint and stand of assessment of perceived needs as the conclusion you have obviously arrived at in your musings on the subject. There is nothing absolute about business, bandwidth, speed and technological requirements and progress, for it is indeed relative.

Others have given excellent examples of the home-user's increasing reliance on greater bandwidth, higher speeds and backbone technological infrastructure with the passage of time and the increase in technological capabilities, alongside the desire to utilise that capability. After all, the home-user's requirement are not by any stretch of the imagination static. Requirements shift up the spectrum as new possibilities are developed and released into the community for individual usage. That your requirement may not constitute much, does not necessarily follow that another person's requirements are similar to yours. I, for one, do not want to be limited to your estimation, contentment and restrictiveness.

Online video content to watch as well as downloads of the same and Internet TV, cloud computing and VoIP are but some of the usages that will increase with the passage of time for the home-user. Time saved is not time wasted, as the phrase could be worded, is another benefit of higher bandwidth and speed capabilities in the underlying technology. High-speed broadband is imperative.

Online gaming, too, has perforce to be considered in reference to the hone-user. Although latency is involved to a considerable extent with gaming, it is also true that bandwidth in all of its diversity comes into play with online gaming as it does with anything else to do with the Internet. That some activities require greater bandwidth than others is a fact of the online life. However, it should be far more appreciated than it often is that bandwidth is a help maid, so to speak, to the gamer. This will become more apparent as the new and upcoming games in the future are developed having greater bandwidth requirements of the Internet. The gamer will be as much bound to bandwidth as any other user of the Net.

Just as bandwidth, speed and the volume of software size and complexity has increased since the early days of computing and the Internet, so too is that scenario found today and will no doubt be found to be so in the future. What we were happy with yesterday, we would not be as nearly content with today. I know for a certainty that I would not like to return to the abysmal bandwidth, speeds and state of technological capabilities of yesteryear. Progress is the epitome of evolutionary development and the benefits it entails in the life of the human race. In fact, only the other night I was watching a training video that I had downloaded from the Internet Archives site about the installation and use of Microsoft Windows 3.1. I definitely wouldn't enjoy returning to the days of such restrictive computing, even though reminiscing by watching the video brought to the fore of my mind past experience and indulgences with not only Windows 3.1 and 3.11 for Workgroups but the Amiga OS too. Internet bandwidth, computer bandwidth and modem speeds in those days was nothing like it is today, just so in the future they'll be completely different to today's offerings.

Taking into consideration the size of a lot of contemporary software alone, the increased bandwidth and speed of broadband and especially fast broadband is an advantage and most welcomed by the majority of Internet users. I remember the frustrations attendant with slow speeds and less bandwidth when downloading certain software in the days of yore. I would not like to go through that again and consider it a viable experience. Online gaming in the future could be vastly different to that which we are accustomed to now and the bandwidth and speed must be made to keep up with future requirements. The infrastructure has to be created at some point in time, for the bandwidth and speed of today shall not I guarantee you suffice for the needs of the future. I am not at liberty to make you acquainted with living networks of biologically living substance, thought controlled technology as in the example of the field of psychotronics, nanotechnologically enhanced networks, quantum computers, engramic neurological networks or cybernetic networks at it applies to computing, fohatic energy (the forty-nine forms of electricity) and the entire electro-magnetic spectrum, or any other possible and advanced technology for the conveyance of interconnectedness that doesn't involve the manual human systems of which humans to date have been confined to as self-indulgent prisoners of their own making and that of their infernal puppet-masters.

I fondly recall the occasion decades ago when I was reading a science fiction book in primary school while others in my class indulged in a physical eduction class, I experienced a vision of what would as I found out in later years be a common factor in the home and in ordinary usage by the home-user in what is nowadays termed the personal computer or PC. Few people in those days would have thought of a computer being so common in the life and in the home of the ordinary person in society, but I did in that vision when I was an innocent and visionary child. My point is, I also see the need for greater bandwidth, much faster speeds and the development of the necessary infrastructure for this capability to be possible in the community for the use of every citizen, instead of primarily business and government oriented. The modern obsession with business is a disturbing trend in contemporary human thinking and its approach to life.

Whatever is the outcome as political factions fight it out and spill it over into the larger community, at some point in the future with the advancement of technology and the progressive requirement of society as a whole and individually, the updating of the infrastructure to cope with this will be essential. It is far better to do it now than put it off to the future when it will be forced by circumstances onto the national life, because in the future the cost to do it may have increased substantially. If you complain about the cost of the effort, then you may as well complain about the cost of having to construct the electrical and telecommunications networks in the past. If this had not of been undertaken, then today we would be still using candles and gas lights, wood stoves and boilers, the old telegraph system or relay riders on horseback. The only reasonable way, besides the foregoing and redeveloping the economic system to make things cheaper, is to relegate the monetary system holus-bolus to the trash-can where it fundamentally belongs as a complete and utter failure of an effective societal construct.

The total cost of the NBN can be lessened by adhering to the fundamental principle of efficiency and a far more realistic appraisal of the worth in income of the top players as in negating the CEO's exorbitant income to rational level. No human, irrespective of any arguments to the contrary elicited from the proponents of the irrational schemes that to obtain the best person for the job an exorbitant salary package has to be offered, is worth the amount of money this guy or most CEOs are being offered and receive while greedily lapping it up and denying the same consideration for the ordinary citizen. Greed, selfishness, unbridled ego and an entirely unnatural exaggeration of worth fuels the over-the-top salaries and benefits of those at the top of the ladder of societal life. Wastage contributes to a significant percentage of the total cost of many projects in the public and private sectors.

I have observed the arguments by certain people against the NBN on the basis of there are far more important issues that the money can be spent on. Well, although in a manner of speaking this may appear to be so, if those who thus speak and argue vociferously were to be privy to how much money governments really have behind closed doors, then I am sure at least some of them would agree that many projects can potentially be funded side-by-side. Besides savings incurred through proper management and the delivery of efficiency can assist in the ability to fund multiple projects simultaneously. It should never be forgotten that as far as the economic state of a nation is concerned, the public and business rely on the honesty of the government and regulatory authorities. As we persistently see with business and the financial sectors, they tend to mislead and lie to us. Health can be funded, as dentistry and education. Job creation can be undertaken, as also the funding of public housing for the needy and homeless.

What holds humanity back, aside from the universally operating natural law, are its preconceived ideas, its assumptions, its blinkered thinking and its overall extraordinarily limited mentality coupled to its preponderance to stupidity. If I may repeat myself here, one such stupidity is the almost fanatical manner in which humanity hold on to a monetary system in a money-oriented societal construct. All this does is to further the experience of limitation, restriction and artificially contrived barriers in the life of humanity. If the world would let go of the monetary system and get rid of it, I would venture to say that a lot of the human problems created solely by the existence of a monetary system would begin to disappear from the world scene. Computing, as a classic example for such as the subscribers to this newsgroup, would be set free to develop exponentially to the naturally abiding limits of the technology and compatible system put in place. The monetary system stifles humanity and retards any real progress along superior lines it could achieve this nonsensical parasitical contrivance of which humanity bows down to and worships in a place of undeserving honour in their hearts. Throughout human history, though, the monetary system has proven itself to be unworkable and inherently flawed as a system. If only humanity possessed the eyes to see this fact, for fact it is to those in possession of the requisite sight and mental acuity. For what it is worth in saying and to the degree this thought-form impinges itself on the dim consciousness of humanity, the academic economists place humanity's feet firmly on the precipice from which it falls in the failing of the understanding of the academics and the world's economists as to a true sense of the economy, economics and the Law of Economy of which it knows so little and understands even less.

That humanity, generally speaking, is not willing to consider the alternative paradigm is to its unparalleled detriment and total disadvantage as a supposedly evolving species on a world under the aegis of the Law of Evolution. Popular culture more or less trivialises life and creates limitation in its wake, retarding effectual evolutionary gain to the seemingly unending cycle of the repetition of experiences, systems and single-minded thought as a blinker on humanity driving it along familiar routes. Meanwhile, humans continue to whine and moan about the cost of this, that or the other but are unwilling to try a non-monetary societal construct.

I go under the pseudonyms Arm's Length and A-Long-Stretch indicating my stand against human conceptual viewpoints in staying at arm's length from them.

Yes, you were and are wrong, as always Roddles. OTOH, you are probably just ignorant of this and many other factors in the real world.

Just give it in a nutshell please. My eyes are tired as we have just been junked and it was loaded with election flyers promising sodom and gommerah and that was just the main parties, let alone the god bothers and bible bashers.

terryc wrote

You never ever could bullshit your way out of a wet paper bag.

No surprise that you are completely unemployable.

At a cost of $43Billion, I think we could happily live without any of that. When we have no food or water, I guess it will give us a distraction. But when we have no electricity, how will we power our computers?

MrT.

Or could still supply those same customers with real time viewing at 1/720th of the download rate per customer. Or simply borrow a Blu-Ray disc from your local video shop and save $43BILLION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MrT.

Somehow I feel the cost to provide 64 simultaneous customers is quite high though. And that's ON TOP of the $43BILLION NBN.

The question remains why you need to download a movie in seconds, that takes hours to watch anyway?

MrT.

Yep, which is amazing that it's a Labor plan opposed by the Liberals, rather than the other way around. Liberals are the party who usually give taxpayers money to big business. Don't the mining companies want an NBN I wonder? :-)

MrT.

Yep, and *shouldn't* for NON-essential services, when we can't even get decent essential ones like electricity and water!

MrT.

Nope, it will probably be outdated long before then. People already want high speed *wireless* services, NOT be fixed to a cable.

MrT.

Would be funny IF they weren't proposing to lay fibre cables along side gravel roads!!!!

MrT.

What do you mean go back to???? I live in a state of Anna Blight.....

Bicycle powered generators. all those people who eat too much will be at the gym trying to work it all off again and their work will be connected into the grid as a renewable green power source.