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Rick Falkvinge and his "a bit slow full-duplex 100Mbit" Internet Connection
- hackermom 15y agoWhen 100 mbit/s isn't fast enough you know it's time to get checked out for Download's Syndrome.
- arkitaip 15y agoI live in Sweden and can tell you that, "My bandwidth is full-duplex 100 Mbit, which is a bit slow by Swedish standards," isn't really true. Sure, fiber is common in certain areas but full-duplex 100 mbit? Not many have it because very few need it. It's far more common to go with your cable provider's offer of 10/1 or 25/1 mbit because that's fast enough.
- dfc 15y agoCan everyone in the neighborhood (assuming they all use same provider) max out their connections at the same time? AKA Does the upstream provider have that much bandwidth?
- arkitaip 15y agoNo, the provider wouldn't have the bandwidth, which is why the fine print always says that they only guarantee up to x/y mbit.
- kalleboo 15y agoDefinitely not, I mean, even web hosts and colocation centers will oversell their bandwidth. That said, I ran a internet radio station + free image host node on my residential connection and was pushing a few TB/mo up and never got any complaints. And BitTorrent is obviously quite popular in Sweden so I'm sure there's a bunch of seeding going on.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- kalleboo 15y agoI'd be surprised of most people chose cable over fiber - everyone I know choses to download TV after it airs in America instead of paying comhem 500 kr/mo for shows that are 2 years out of date. But true, while 100/100 Mbit is commonly an option in big cities (when I looked for an apartment in Malmö a few years ago, all the ones I looked at had 100M-1Gbit), I'm sure most people go for the cheaper 100/10 option, since most people aren't uploading anything. One friend has 250/50, which seems like a good compromise.
- Mavrik 15y agoYeah, same here in Slovenia - even though FTTH providers have 100/100 available, people usually opt for cheaper 100/10 or 10/10 options because of pricing (100/100 is 100€/mo, 100/10 is 27€/mo, 10/10 is 22€/mo, which is a noticable difference). Also I noticed there are very rare use cases when I'm able to actually get over ~30Mbit or so downstream, usually the servers I'm downloading from aren't capable of delivering data so fast.
- brazzy 15y agoHe doesn't seem to complain about it, just subtly bragging about the state of Internet connectivity in Sweden.
- j0hnj0hn 15y agoI've been on 100 mbit/s for a couple of years and I'd consider upgrading to 1000 mbit/s if it was full-duplex.
- joch 15y agoI live I'm Sweden and my 100/100Mbit full duplex connection is part of my rent, so basically I get it for free, but that is one of the perks living in a large city. And yes, I really do get the full bandwidth all the time. Smaller cities usually have decent connections over DSL or Cable though, so bandwidth is usually not a problem anywhere you go in this country.
- rb2k_ 15y agoWhat does he actually do on those machines? I have no idea why somebody in the european parliament would want more than 8 GB of RAM. Apparently he runs Visual Studio inside a VM, but I'm not sure why he does a lot of software development.
- kzrdude 15y agoHe's not in the European Parliament. The Swedish Pirate Party MEPs are Christian Engström and Amelia Andersdotter. Rick gets his salary as assistant to Christian. The current leader of PP, Anna Troberg, is also his assistant/paid staff.
- rb2k_ 15y agoOh yeah, seems I misread that. Time for coffee :) I guess the original question still remains the same
- henrikschroder 15y ago> I have no idea why somebody in the european parliament would want more than 8 GB of RAM. 640kB ought to be enough for everybody? Seriously, why not? RAM is so ridiculously cheap these days there's no excuse not to get 16GB when you buy a new machine. If nothing else it'll be used as a disk cache.
- hamoid 15y agoYou can mount /tmp in RAM, making the computer faster and avoiding ssd usage. I use it for rendering and manipulating large collections of files. Logs are there too.
- gwern 15y agoMaybe he manages his life savings that he put into Bitcoin: http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/ http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-saving... (One wonders how that worked out for him; I'd find that answer a lot more interesting than his connection.)
- hamidpalo 15y agoAvoiding the Microsoft tax, but bought a copy of Windows to run in a VM? Most universities have full-duplex 100Mbit+, and at those speeds it's not your connection that's the bottleneck, it's the latency of getting your request to the server and the server's available bandwidth. I imagine most routers are smart enough not to completely saturate the pipe with a single user's connection.
- kristofferR 15y agoWhat made you think he bought Windows? He's the founder of The Pirate Party after all :P
- henrikschroder 15y ago1) He used to work for Microsoft. 2) He's got the money to pay for it. 3) It would be incredibly stupid of him to flagrantry violate copyright and commit a crime. Rick is many things, but stupid is not one of them.
- Falkvinge 15y agoThe VM is an old Windows XP that I bought (legitimately!) for $10 as a Microsoft employee. Perhaps it was $15. Thereabouts, anyway.
- nanijoe 15y agoActually, most routers usually don't care who is sending how much traffic..
- dlsym 15y agoUsing Linux as the primary OS is not every time about > Avoiding the Microsoft tax[...] For me, it is the multidesktop support and great terminal emulators (like terminator) which make linux a very good OS, supporting me to get things done. [edit: OK - Missed the line about this topic in the original text. coffee.]
- 15y ago
- villagefool 15y agoYou only have two eyes, so why so many screens? just flip desktops...
- duncanj 15y agoPeripheral context
- read_wharf 15y agoSometimes it's just because you can.
- grannyg00se 15y agoEven with your two eyes, you can't focus on two separate screens at the same time. So by your previous statement, any monitor setup of more than one monitor would be senseless.
- DanWaterworth 15y agoIt's quicker to change the direction in which your eyes are looking than it is to change desktop.
- dfc 15y agoI do not understand how these two quotes fit together logically: "For my primary workstation, I’m using a built-from-parts box optimized for silence with a couple of graphics cards. That also allows me to evade the Microsoft Tax" "Unfortunately, GNU/Linux can still not match Windows in the development department. I use an emulated Windows box with Visual Studio for that" I am not trolling for RMS's affection. I'm thinking my understanding of MS Tax is not accurate/up-to-date?
- brazzy 15y agoThe MS tax refers to the near impossibility to get a Desktop PC without Windows preinstalled. Sounds like he's not fundamentally opposed to paying money to MS, just wants to do it on his own terms.
- kenny_r 15y agoWhen you buy a computer with Windows on it, you also pay for the OEM license. When you build one yourself you can run a pirated version of Windows at no extra cost. Seeing as he works for the Pirate Party, I don't think it's a stretch to assume he got his copies of Windows and Visual studio off The Pirate Bay.
- btb 15y agoOr he have an MSDN subscription which covers both Windows+Visual studio, and dont want to pay extra for an OEM license to something he already has the right to use.
- arethuza 15y agoI'm pretty sure that if your computer is for "mixed use" (i.e. you use for stuff other than developing software) then you can't use the Windows licenses from MSDN - you need to buy a regular license. http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx "Many MSDN subscribers use a computer for mixed use—both design, development, testing, and demonstration of your programs (the use allowed under the MSDN subscription license) and some other use. Using the software in any other way, such as for doing email, playing games, or editing a document is another use and is not covered by the MSDN subscription license. When this happens, the underlying operating system must also be licensed normally by purchasing a regular copy of Windows such as the one that came with a new OEM PC."
- munchor 15y ago"Unfortunately, GNU/Linux can still not match Windows in the development department." I just don't get that.
- j0hnj0hn 15y agoIt really depends on the programming language. I'd loathe using Windows when programming C.
- munchor 15y agoExactly, if he's using Microsoft technology (C# and .NET), that was NOT made to work on Linux or Mac OS, he shouldn't be saying Linux is not a good development platform. It obviously won't work so well if he's using a language that was made for Windows by Windows guys. I think Linux is the best development platform of all, and I don't think he has the right to say Linux is behind Windows n development tools.
- Estragon 15y agoI bet windows is the place to be if you're developing grandma-proof applications which you hope to see widespread use (such as clients for file sharing networks.)
- eric_bullington 15y agoAgreed. If you're running mingw and cygwin on Windows, you're getting closer to Linux, but I'd still much rather do development work on Ubuntu or some other Debian distro. And I say that as someone whose work requirements him to sometimes work on Windows.
- shin_lao 15y agoIt really depends on what you're used to. If you like Visual Studio and are productive with it, you'll find Linux cumbersome. Visual Studio is very powerful and dependable. What I don't understand is the comment about the "Microsoft" tax as he seems to work on Windows.
- 15y ago
- nextparadigms 15y agoIn Europe 100 Mbit/s speeds are quite common and for pretty low prices.
- spindritf 15y agoBy in Europe you mean in some districts of big cities and by pretty low prices affordable but rather expensive in comparison (to cable or lower speed Internet connection)? Most people have decent connections from their cable providers or phone operators but nowhere near full duplex 100mbit and in most areas lousy DSL is all you can get (or mobile which also leaves a lot to be desired outside of large agglomerations).
- lflux 15y agoOnly Scandinavia really. All my french and spanish friends are really really jealous of our 100Mb+ connections here in sweden.
- lucb1e 15y agoIt's becoming more and more common in the Netherlands too. Belgium on the other hand still has data caps...
- alextingle 15y agoBelgium is in the Internet dark ages.
- bravura 15y agoUbuntu, a version of Linux, is used throughout as base operating system. ... some video production tools. (In the Pirate Party, we produce quite a bit of video.) What are good video production tools for Linux? [Aside: Strange how he slags Linux for development and uses Windows, but uses Linux for video production.]
- bbrtyth 15y agoAlso Windows seems to be directly at odds with freedom more often than not.
- mbell 15y ago>What are good video production tools for Linux? Cinelerra is probably the most advanced: http://cinelerra.org/ http://cinelerra.org/
- hamoid 15y agoI've edited over 100 videos on Kdenlive. I find it good enough.
- Falkvinge 15y agoI use OpenShot and an old copy of After Effects (version 6.5) that works under WINE.
- pasbesoin 15y agoFrom a U.S. perspective, those servers on the balcony cause me qualms for multiple reasons.