Tuesday 26 May 2009

Kilo to Giga

There was a time not so long ago when I was introduced to anime and I was very quickly addicted to it. 

I would wake up super early to catch Pokemon and Dragonball Z on Cheeze TV.  I had to get my anime fix or else I went mental!


Love makes you mental.  My first anime crush, Shampoo from Ranma.

I went and saw every anime at our local video store (all four of them).  After I finished that I drove to a video store 15kms away.  After I finished that I drove to ANOTHER video store 30kms away.

I was hooked (I wonder why...) and I knew I had some sort of problem.

I tried to help myself by meeting with some like-minded folks.  I went to UWA on Fridays and Curtin on Saturdays to satiate my cravings for anime.  

But I think that just made it worse.

Thankfully, through them,  I did learn about the Internet and how it can endlessly supply me with all the Japanese animation I'd  ever need.

My dad wasn't so impressed.

Imagine downloading seven 120M episodes simultaneuosly....   
..
..
..
..
..
on a 56.6k modem.

Yes that's right.  

I took over the phone line for days and weeks and was racking up huge phone bills because I had the modem on auto-reconnect when it timed out.  

Every time it re-connects it clicks 25 cents. On average it will time out about 15 times at night.  Multiply that my how many days in phone bill cycle.  

Hmm... now that I think about it, maybe I did go a bit too far.


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Download quota. 

That's a word that haunts me frequently.  

Last Sunday, I left the computer on for three hours and I downloaded the remaining 4Gigs of my May quota.  

So not good.  

And being shaped back to modem speeds is humbling reminder of what life back in the dial-up modem days.

So like any spoiled 28yo-teenager, I applied for additional quota today  :P
They processed it so fast, I got a confirmation approval this afternoon - happy days!

When I was completing the forms, I did reflect on a few things.  

Two years ago 12Gb was WAAAY more than enough, 

Eight months ago 25Gb was more than enough.  

But who knows? Maybe I'll eat my words when I apply for a 200Gb account next year  (No thanks to YouTube and Steam).

YouTube is a constant source of politically incorrect entertainment

************

I'm reading about the new broadband plan the government is undertaking. 

Construction starts around September this year and will initially support speeds of 100Mbytes/s.

Its really exciting stuff because theoretically, the national broadband scheme can go faster than 1Gb/s!!  And that's a direct fibre optic connection to your house which means Internet speeds will not be affected by your distance to the exchange. 

Awesome to the max!!  K-Rudd gets extra brownie points for this.

(Not that kind of brownie!) 

How fast is 1Gb/s?  That's twice the speed of a USB(2.0) file transfer!

Or imagine downloading a Blue-ray movie or PlayStation3 game in under seven minutes?  

How about a DVD movie in less than 40 seconds?

Crazy insane!!!!  

With that kind of crazy transfer rates would you bother going to the video store and worry about  dirty or scratched DVDs (some people are just ferral!!) or returning the movie or getting mauled by the ugly black dog that's always tied next to entrance? 


Just download the movie already! (Legally of course!)

And with that kind of speed, I'd run out of my 200Gb quota in less than half an hour...

...which, I guess, is not so awesome.

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