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Penny Arcade - Comic - Fibrous

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin

Fibrous!

Penny Arcade - Comic - Fibrous

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

Read the full story here

Posts

  • ArmsForPeace84ArmsForPeace84 Your Partner In Freedom Registered User regular
    edited August 2023
    "Oh, that? That's a Halloween decoration. From a couple years ago. Thanks, I spent all of October looking for it. Lights up with LEDs, runs on really long-lasting batteries. I'll take that. If you find anything else, now that you can get back to digging, it's a Halloween decoration, too. Go ahead and just toss it. I'm thinking I'll just do some hanging spiders and the light-up skull this year."

    ArmsForPeace84 on
    Nothing personal. It's just business.
  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    Remember when Mike found possibly human remains in his yard and it was eventually concluded that a bird of prey dropped them there?

    The plot thickens...

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • palidine40palidine40 Registered User regular
    Fiber companies find ANY reason to Not install, ffs... happened in My neighborhood too...

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    Remember when Mike found possibly human remains in his yard and it was eventually concluded that a bird of prey dropped them there?

    The plot thickens...

    g6k37z2yk525.png

  • MooseMuffinMooseMuffin Registered User regular
    He tried to hook something up with a method that lets the Sacred Web ride the peaks and valleys of your home's copper, but that didn't work because:

    1. House wire 2 old :(
    2. Doesn't sound 100% real imo

    Sounds a lot like MoCA adapters and they work pretty well if your house wire isn't 2 old.

  • v2miccav2micca Registered User regular
    palidine40 wrote: »
    Fiber companies find ANY reason to Not install, ffs... happened in My neighborhood too...

    Its less the Fiber companies trying to find reasons not to install. Remember, their entire business model is based on installing to as many customers as possible. If they don't install, they can't make money. Its more about the local, county, and state regulations they have to push through. Infrastructure projects are difficult to coordinate under the best of circumstances. And when you have a product like fibre, that will absolutely each the lunch of the current utility providers, providers who allocate a significant portion of their own operating budgets lobbying those same local, county, and state legislators.....well you can see how things are often held up.

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    v2micca wrote: »
    palidine40 wrote: »
    Fiber companies find ANY reason to Not install, ffs... happened in My neighborhood too...

    Its less the Fiber companies trying to find reasons not to install. Remember, their entire business model is based on installing to as many customers as possible. If they don't install, they can't make money. Its more about the local, county, and state regulations they have to push through. Infrastructure projects are difficult to coordinate under the best of circumstances. And when you have a product like fibre, that will absolutely each the lunch of the current utility providers, providers who allocate a significant portion of their own operating budgets lobbying those same local, county, and state legislators.....well you can see how things are often held up.

    While I generally agree that they want as many customers as possible, it's a cost/benefit thing. It sounds like they had already installed fiber "in his neighborhood" (said so in a very long ago strip/post). But for some reason, they didn't install it to him. It's entirely possible that the amount of extra time (aka money) they needed for that could be better spent on installing fiber to a hundred other people instead.

  • ArmsForPeace84ArmsForPeace84 Your Partner In Freedom Registered User regular
    There are some other factors in play.

    Even with an installation date in hand, you might be at the mercy of the local utilities. Maybe they get someone out there, before that date, to mark where various lines are run up to your home, and maybe the installer shows up and finds they haven't been out that way yet.

    Anyone who doubts the ability of a power/water/sewer/other public utility to tie things up into bureaucratic knots has very little experience with something actually going wrong.

    Or they get out there to dig, get a little ways down, and run into ground somehow still frozen solid in the Spring, being shaded by trees. Or into solid rock. At least a glowing alien skull can be moved.

    Nothing personal. It's just business.
  • OverkillengineOverkillengine Registered User regular
    edited August 2023
    v2micca wrote: »
    palidine40 wrote: »
    Fiber companies find ANY reason to Not install, ffs... happened in My neighborhood too...

    Its less the Fiber companies trying to find reasons not to install. Remember, their entire business model is based on installing to as many customers as possible. If they don't install, they can't make money. Its more about the local, county, and state regulations they have to push through. Infrastructure projects are difficult to coordinate under the best of circumstances. And when you have a product like fibre, that will absolutely each the lunch of the current utility providers, providers who allocate a significant portion of their own operating budgets lobbying those same local, county, and state legislators.....well you can see how things are often held up.

    Plus technicians and equipment don't grow on trees, and they can easily have a backlog of people who have been waiting even longer. It's the downstream effect of wanting a service who can not piggyback on existing infrastructure and is competing against already established actors. But if one has always lived in an area where infrastructure for POTS, cable, and other utilities were already in existence, this gets easy to take for granted.


    Ironically it was easier for my small town to get on fiber than it was for larger nearby towns because my town never had some of those already in place to muck things up. Most people had maybe landline phone and maybe at best satellite television like Dish Network. So wireless and fiber internet had a way easier time getting established.

    Overkillengine on
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    What I hate about this shit is that the existing providers could expand and make their own product better but that takes effort so they sure as shit don't do that either and there isn't any fucking regulation keeping comcast from providing better net, they just don't need nor want to.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • OverkillengineOverkillengine Registered User regular
    edited August 2023
    Yeah that usually takes some sort of competitor that they cant edge out using regulatory capture to motivate them to not be shitty. I did notice the local wired internet provider here suddenly and mysteriously put in a bit more effort to roll out fiber the very same year a wireless provider started setting up shop in the same area. The wireless provider couldn't be blocked from using infrastructure (that they didn't need/use) so actual competition was going to happen.

    Overkillengine on
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