Rick Falkvinge and his "a bit slow full-duplex 100Mbit" Internet Connection | Hacker News Reader

Rick Falkvinge and his "a bit slow full-duplex 100Mbit" Internet Connection

rick.falkvinge.usesthis.com

48 pointslinhat60 comments

Avoiding 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.

What made you think he bought Windows? He's the founder of The Pirate Party after all :P

1) 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.

The VM is an old Windows XP that I bought (legitimately!) for $10 as a Microsoft employee. Perhaps it was $15. Thereabouts, anyway.

Actually, most routers usually don't care who is sending how much traffic..

Using 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.]

Isn't Terminator written in Java and cross-platform? ;-)

Oh - I just found that there are two terminators :-)

The one I mean is called gnome-terminator and is written in python: http://www.tenshu.net/p/terminator.html https://launchpad.net/~gnome-terminator

It's on connections like this where Peer-to-Peer systems like BitTorrent really come into your own. While no one server will saturate your 100 Mbit connection, 50 peers on your same ISP surely will.

"Unfortunately, GNU/Linux can still not match Windows in the development department."

I just don't get that.

It really depends on the programming language. I'd loathe using Windows when programming C.

Exactly, 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.

I 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.)

Agreed. 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.

It 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.

The "tax" has nothing to do with using Windows or not, just paying for Windows (reflected in the increased price of hardware that comes with Windows pre-installed) when it is not needed. This could be because you already own a copy or plan on using an alternative OS.

I 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?

The 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.

When 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.

Or 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.

I'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

"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."

Presumably he still qualifies for that since he is just using Windows for development. The license you quoted just refers to using their software for anything else.

> 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.

Seeing as he is a public spokesperson, it would be insanely stupid of him to commit a crime that could be used by the copyright industry against him.

When you say copyright industry you really mean software industry.

What 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.

He'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.

Oh yeah, seems I misread that. Time for coffee :)

I guess the original question still remains the same

> 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.

You 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.

Maybe he manages his life savings that he put 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.)

About breakeven for the time being, but I also learned a scary lot about how trading works in the process.

I've invested some dollars in bitcoins. But nowhere near my life savings. I'm regarding Bitcoin as a high risk investment (it is the very first distributed electronic currency after all) and I'm investing proportional to this assessment (ie., not a lot of money).

Seems to me that investing heavily in bitcoins right now might be similar to investing in real estate. Yes, if you invested a lot of money x years ago you would be rich. If you invest money in it now, though, your odds are pretty poor. That being said, I think Bitcoin has a lot more room for expansion in price compared to real estate. But it's possible that buying bitcoins now is a bit like buying into a stock heavily after it has boomed. The ones who bought before the boom got rich. The ones who do so after the boom, not so much.

For anyone considering investing in bitcoins, first read this: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/405/what-are-some...

And for the avoidance of FUD: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths

It is worth pointing out that Bitcoin does not require an investment to use it. Merchants can price their goods in bitcoins using a real-time exchange rate to limit their exposure to changing prices.

Since transactions propagate (without confirmations) within a few seconds the merchant can accept the payment and later cash out to, say, USD/GBP/EUR via the exchange or some other mechanism (e.g. direct to a credit card). Alternatively, if part of their supply chain takes payment in bitcoins (e.g. a hosting service for their website, or a supplier of goods) then they can simply pay their overheads with them.

Disclaimer: I am currently long on bitcoins and am using them as part of my long term retirement fund.

Ubuntu, 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.]

Also Windows seems to be directly at odds with freedom more often than not.

>What are good video production tools for Linux?

Cinelerra is probably the most advanced: http://cinelerra.org/

I've edited over 100 videos on Kdenlive. I find it good enough.

I use OpenShot and an old copy of After Effects (version 6.5) that works under WINE.

In Europe 100 Mbit/s speeds are quite common and for pretty low prices.

By 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).

Only Scandinavia really. All my french and spanish friends are really really jealous of our 100Mb+ connections here in sweden.

It's becoming more and more common in the Netherlands too. Belgium on the other hand still has data caps...

Belgium is in the Internet dark ages.

You only have two eyes, so why so many screens? just flip desktops...

Peripheral context

Sometimes it's just because you can.

Even 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.

It's quicker to change the direction in which your eyes are looking than it is to change desktop.

From a U.S. perspective, those servers on the balcony cause me qualms for multiple reasons.

When 100 mbit/s isn't fast enough you know it's time to get checked out for Download's Syndrome.

I 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.

Can 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?

No, the provider wouldn't have the bandwidth, which is why the fine print always says that they only guarantee up to x/y mbit.

Definitely 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.

I'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.

Yeah, 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.

He doesn't seem to complain about it, just subtly bragging about the state of Internet connectivity in Sweden.

I'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.

I 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.

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