Incompetent web authoring or much worse?

[dorayme]

Notice that

<http://www.virginbroadband.com.au/wirelessbroadband/broadband-at-
home.aspx>

employs a picture that includes the "fine print" conditions for a
broadband plan. There is a question whether this was deliberate,
in respect to the fine print, to make it hard to read or just
incompetence?

 

[andrew]

Notice that

<http://www.virginbroadband.com.au/wirelessbroadband/broadband-at-
home.aspx>

employs a picture that includes the "fine print" conditions for a
broadband plan. There is a question whether this was deliberate,
in respect to the fine print, to make it hard to read or just
incompetence?

And in a slightly off-topic aside: what exactly is the man with the
sunglasses doing?

Andrew

 

[Blinky the Shark]

And in a slightly off-topic aside: what exactly is the man with the
sunglasses doing?

Andrew

Looks like he's deodorizing his favorite red Speedos.

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Notice that

<http://www.virginbroadband.com.au/wirelessbroadband/broadband-at-
home.aspx>

employs a picture that includes the "fine print" conditions for a
broadband plan. There is a question whether this was deliberate,
in respect to the fine print, to make it hard to read or just
incompetence?

I don't know how things are done in Australia, but I would guess the
fine print would be much more likely intentional for a US company, and
there might be a page or two written in it in terms that lawyers best
understand.

We now have a lot of broadband competition in the US and prices have
greatly dropped in the last two years. My telephone company ATT has
teamed up with Yahoo to offer 1 dialup and 2 DSL plans. The standard
price(not limited time sucker ad price) for the elite plan I have is
now about US$ 35 per month if you use the ATT telephone service, and I
am getting a measured download of about 5 Mbps and an upload of about
650 kbps, if the server is not overloaded or there are not other
problems on the web that slow everything down. Of course you have to
live in a city fairly close to the telephone office to enroll in this
top speed DSL plan. Download is not measured - I can download as much
as I want without speed being reduced. Last night I downloaded a 1.9
GB mpeg2 old classic movie in about 2 hours. Even considering that 1
USD = about 1.2 AD, the Virgin plan seems very expensive for what you
get - well under 1Mbps download and restrictions on download
bandwidth. Of course conditions are quite different in the US and
Australia. Perhaps Virgin needs a little more broadband competition to
bring down prices. Well over half of US computer users(perhaps around
70%) are on broadband of some sort now.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 08 Aug 2007 23:11:42 GMT
dorayme scribed:

Notice that

<http://www.virginbroadband.com.au/wirelessbroadband/broadband-at-
home.aspx>

employs a picture that includes the "fine print" conditions for a
broadband plan. There is a question whether this was deliberate,
in respect to the fine print, to make it hard to read or just
incompetence?

I dunno, the text is pretty noticeable and even prominent; it's not like
they're trying to hide it. Of course we all know your personal
fussbudgetry index is hovering well above zero.

I agree with cyw-whatever, though, that it's not a good deal, -at least in
the US. Furthermore, 512 kbps isn't particularly "hi-speed" for hi-speed
connections, anyway. I'd hold out for something better.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

And in a slightly off-topic aside: what exactly is the man with the
sunglasses doing?

SECOND RESPONSE:

WAIT! I didn't know that there were rotating images there. All I (and
apparently you) saw was the spraying-his-red-speedos image. Now I see
that in the next one he's a hairdresser working on a chick who's wearing
a red headband thingmy. I *did* think "hairdresser" when I was looking
at the original spraying-his-shorts image, but there wasn't anything
else there to pull that idea together. And "broadband" doesn't exactly
conjure up a normal connection with "hairdresser" -- at least not with
me.

 

[dorayme]

I don't know how things are done in Australia, but I would guess the
fine print would be much more likely intentional for a US company, and
there might be a page or two written in it in terms that lawyers best
understand.

We now have a lot of broadband competition in the US and prices have
greatly dropped in the last two years. My telephone company ATT has
teamed up with Yahoo to offer 1 dialup and 2 DSL plans. The standard
price(not limited time sucker ad price) for the elite plan I have is
now about US$ 35 per month if you use the ATT telephone service, and I
am getting a measured download of about 5 Mbps and an upload of about
650 kbps, if the server is not overloaded or there are not other
problems on the web that slow everything down. Of course you have to
live in a city fairly close to the telephone office to enroll in this
top speed DSL plan. Download is not measured - I can download as much
as I want without speed being reduced. Last night I downloaded a 1.9
GB mpeg2 old classic movie in about 2 hours. Even considering that 1
USD = about 1.2 AD, the Virgin plan seems very expensive for what you
get - well under 1Mbps download and restrictions on download
bandwidth. Of course conditions are quite different in the US and
Australia. Perhaps Virgin needs a little more broadband competition to
bring down prices. Well over half of US computer users(perhaps around
70%) are on broadband of some sort now.

I think what attracted my daughter and her husband to this plan
was the telephone part of the plan... the dorayme half of that
happy union likes to gab a lot on the phone. They use a dial up
service for internet at the moment.

I agree, it looks a bit expensive for the speed. Here you can
generally get between 1 and 4GB download limit for a month at
reasonable enough speeds (between 1.5 and 6.5 Mbps) for between
$30 and $40 Aust.

 

[dorayme]

I dunno, the text is pretty noticeable and even prominent;

Of course you would think so. Anything that is really idiotic
attracts you. Text that is small point on web pages that does not
resize and every other goddamn thing that is crazy. You never did
slip into that nice comfortable thing for me did you? I meant the
sort of coma that would stop you saying so much that is false for
a long time.

 

[William Gill]

I agree with cyw-whatever, though, that it's not a good deal, -at least in

the US. Furthermore, 512 kbps isn't particularly "hi-speed" for hi-speed
connections, anyway. I'd hold out for something better.

"hi-speed" is relative. When I first started engineering data circuits
anything above 1200 baud was considered "hi-speed." I know some folks
in the podunks that would love to get 512 kbps.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:12:04 GMT
dorayme scribed:

Of course you would think so. Anything that is really idiotic
attracts you. Text that is small point on web pages that does not
resize and every other goddamn thing that is crazy. You never did
slip into that nice comfortable thing for me did you? I meant the
sort of coma that would stop you saying so much that is false for
a long time.

Er, is it that time of the month again? I will have to adjust my
calendar...

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:31:57
GMT William Gill scribed:

"hi-speed" is relative. When I first started engineering data
circuits anything above 1200 baud was considered "hi-speed." I know
some folks in the podunks that would love to get 512 kbps.

Hi, Bill Gill,

I, too, remember when 1200 baud was "fast" -compared to the prevailing 300
baud rate then prevalent. But today's cable speeds are typically like 1+,
2, 4 and even 7 mbps, and some connections are even higher. 512k is very
much at the lo end of the hi-speed spectrum. Sure, if your location limits
you to dsl, go for it, but $60 bucks for a phone and 512k is more than I
pay for a phone with unlimited calling and national coverage _and_ 2+ mbps
internet connection.

 

[dorayme]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:12:04 GMT
dorayme scribed:


Er, is it that time of the month again? I will have to adjust my
calendar...

Naturally, you will do anything to avoid the substantial point
that anyone who thinks it is ok to put in important legal
conditions in God knows how small a point size with no means to
enlarge it is not doing something that is at all good. You prefer
to concentrate as usual on seeing what you can _fish_ from that
gutter which you call your mind and throw it my way.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:56:58
GMT dorayme scribed:

Naturally, you will do anything to avoid the substantial point
that anyone who thinks it is ok to put in important legal
conditions in God knows how small a point size with no means to
enlarge it is not doing something that is at all good. You prefer
to concentrate as usual on seeing what you can _fish_ from that
gutter which you call your mind and throw it my way.

Honest, the text looked pretty big and apparent to me. Maybe you have a
small screen; I have a 20 inch one. If that text were html test on my
screen, it would have about a 20-24px font size.

I understand what you're saying about enlarging it, but one could always
use Opera to do that if one could think clearly in the face of one's
irritability.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Neredbojias:

I, too, remember when 1200 baud was "fast" -compared to the
prevailing 300 baud rate then prevalent.

Oh, what a luxury. My first experience about using a network connection at
home was with terminal that that had a manual switch for selecting between
110 and 300 bit/s.

For comparison, people are _still_ using the Internet over 9600 bit/s GSM
connections. Faster wireless connections are becoming affordable, but 9600
bit/s is really sufficient for purposes like normal (no attachments, please)
e-mail and much of surfing on no-nonsense web pages.

But today's cable speeds
are typically like 1+, 2, 4 and even 7 mbps, and some connections are
even higher.

That's nominal maximum speed. The real speed is something different and
varies. And a connection between a client and a server is usually not faster
than the slowest part of the data path, and a fast connection does not make
an overloaded server any faster.

Well, this was just to put all these speed things into perspecive. Whatever
the technical status of connection speed is, it'll always be better to spend
less bytes in data transfer. I'm pretty sure that when they finally find out
a way to connect my brain directly to the Internet, the speed will first
(for the pioneering phase that might last years) be something lousy, by
today's standards.

 

[dorayme]

Honest, the text looked pretty big and apparent to me. Maybe you have a
small screen; I have a 20 inch one. If that text were html test on my
screen, it would have about a 20-24px font size.

I understand what you're saying about enlarging it, but one could always
use Opera to do that if one could think clearly in the face of one's
irritability.

You seem to have - as usual - no idea what is being referred to.
Take another look and just try not to look at the html text. Try.
You might actually get lucky and see the small print pic of the
fine details.

 

[John Clayton]

Notice that

<http://www.virginbroadband.com.au/wirelessbroadband/broadband-at-
home.aspx>

employs a picture that includes the "fine print" conditions for a
broadband plan. There is a question whether this was deliberate,
in respect to the fine print, to make it hard to read or just
incompetence?

Better still, this page now seems to be unavailable.
John

 

[mbstevens]

And in a slightly off-topic aside: what exactly is the man with the
sunglasses doing?

Andrew

Also slightly off-topic: I moused over the left side navigation
in Firefox and it's text disappeared in a way I can't get it back,
even with a shift-reload. It is amazing the lengths people will go
to to make their page visitor-proof.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:50:10
GMT dorayme scribed:

You seem to have - as usual - no idea what is being referred to.
Take another look and just try not to look at the html text. Try.
You might actually get lucky and see the small print pic of the
fine details.

Oh, _that_ text! Well why didn't you say so?

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:22:13
GMT Jukka K. Korpela scribed:

Scripsit Neredbojias:


Oh, what a luxury. My first experience about using a network
connection at home was with terminal that that had a manual switch for
selecting between 110 and 300 bit/s.

Teletype speed. Luckily, 300 baud pretty much held sway for connecting
to bbses when I started "surfing".

For comparison, people are _still_ using the Internet over 9600 bit/s
GSM connections. Faster wireless connections are becoming affordable,
but 9600 bit/s is really sufficient for purposes like normal (no
attachments, please) e-mail and much of surfing on no-nonsense web
pages.


That's nominal maximum speed. The real speed is something different
and varies. And a connection between a client and a server is usually
not faster than the slowest part of the data path, and a fast
connection does not make an overloaded server any faster.

Nope. I still see images load a fraction at a time when the server's
choked.

Well, this was just to put all these speed things into perspecive.
Whatever the technical status of connection speed is, it'll always be
better to spend less bytes in data transfer. I'm pretty sure that when
they finally find out a way to connect my brain directly to the
Internet, the speed will first (for the pioneering phase that might
last years) be something lousy, by today's standards.

I recently heard they were doing some experimental bio-digital direct-
connects in Sweden, but, unfortunately, all the volunteers are ending up
permanently wired.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Kim_Andr=E9_Aker=F8?=]

Better still, this page now seems to be unavailable.
John

Did you just click the broken link, or did you join it together with
the dash and the second line? (It came up broken in two at my end, btw.)

Here's an un-broken version of the above:
http://tinyurl.com/25lh2n