on 3/19/02 2:50 PM, Christian M. M. Brady at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Until the resource is "max'd out" and completely leveled, there can >only be "Wasting the resource" through lack of use, not through use.
Unfortunately, comparing airlines to Internet "bandwidth" is not a good comparison. The problem with "bandwidth" is that it isn't one big collective good. Not everyone has the same access to it, and it isn't constant 24 hours a day. So you can't say "we have more bandwidth than we can use." That's like saying the world produces enough food each year to feed every human adequately -- while overall it's an accurate statement, tell it to people who are starving because they don't have access to the surplus that exists elsewhere. Anyone who has ever seen the speed of their 'net connection go down at peak hours will grasp this concept immediately ;) In addition to these "normal" issues of over- or under-saturation of particular parts of the Internet, outages are frequent. When an outage in one particular place occurs, traffic is routed elsewhere. When this happens, it's common for bandwidth to be completely saturated in some areas. The other problem I have with the analysis Chris's brother submitted is that it implies that if you don't do *everything* possible to conserve, then you shouldn't do anything at all. The shortcomings in that position should be obvious to anyone ;) Bandwidth is wasted daily by all of us; however, that doesn't mean that we should ignore attempts to "conserve" (probably not the best term -- "reduce consumption" might be better). Anyways, this is really off-topic, but I couldn't resist the urge to reply to the above statement ;) -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
