Comcast Slightly Clarifies High Speed Extreme Use Policy

Alien54 writes "Comcast has finally clarified what 'excessive use' is when it comes to their cable internet service. A customer is exceeding their use limit if they: download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month. '[A Comcast spokesperson] said that Comcast's actions to cut ties with excessive users is a "great benefit to games and helps protect gamers and their game experience" due to their overuse of the network and thus "degrading the experience."'" Maybe they could put that limit in terms other than 'email' or 'songs'?

The obvious units

[Colin Smith]

Libraries of Congress...

Or British Libraries for Imperial.

Abuse Definition v2

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What's their problem? Why didn't Comcast use standard units?
Everybody knows data transfers are measured in LoC's - Libraries of Congress.

Limited downloads

[teidou]

I think it's kind of suspicious that they don't put the value in terms of number of Slashdot comments. I mean, you could get cut off right in the mid

Re:That ain't much.

[Anonymous Coward]

With that crap I'd look for a new calculator.

Re:The obvious units

[ScentCone]

Libraries of Congress

No, no. It's Libraries of Congress per fortnight.

A unit we can understand?

[A10Mechanic]

For all the geeks, could we get a conversion to "quatloos"? It might help.

OK then, so the limit is

[QuietLagoon]

A customer is exceeding their use limit if they: download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month.

Let's see. At about 50 megabytes per song (I use lossless compression), that is 1,500,000 megabytes or 1,500GB per month limit. OK, so if I use only 1,000GB per month, I'm OK, right?

(am I the only one who has noticed that Comcast still has not given a hard limit, that the limit is still as vague as it has ever been?

13 million emails in a month, eh?

[AnonymousDivinity]

Well there's an easy solution:
BitTorrent via SMTP!

Gotta use all that GMail space somehow...

Re:People like me

[nateb]

musical porn?

Bonsk schki schki bonschk wow woooow!

Re:Limited downloads

[Incadenza]

That sure would be a

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

[Poromenos1]

Knowing Comcast, you should probably assume the average song size to be about 300 KB.

Re:Limited downloads

[EvanED]

Now stop that! How are we supposed

Re:So filling a 160GB iPod in 1Month = BANNED

[gravos]

3MB per song $0.99 per song 53333 songs per 160GB iPod $52800 to fill 160GB iPod And your worried about your connection being cut off?

Dilbert Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Scott Adams 1996/01/25

PHB: I've asked Dogbert to help us get rid of our most troublesome customers.

Dogbert: Ten percent of your customers account for ninety percent of your service costs. They must be eliminated.

Alice: Is that the same group of customers who actually use our product?

Dogbert: Plus the ones who were injured unpacking it.

ONE e-mail and service CUTOFF

[RobBebop]

One particular user of the internet didn't get the 13 million e-mail quota that they mentioned. After only ONE e-mail, his service was degraded significantly...

I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

-Senator Ted Stevens. :)

New terms coined?

[Jugalator]

OK, so you can only download 30 Kilosongs, 250 Kilopictures or 13 Megamails?

And I thought "Megapixels" were a salesman abomination. :-(

Re:Double check your math.

[Seumas]

Are they also in the habit of writing several zeros and a decimal point for a whole integer?

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

[ResidntGeek]

Like FLAC?

Re:Abuse Definition v2

[Chandon Seldon]

in short, the LOC is MASSIVE

That's why we have standard S.I. prefixes. They're allowing around 400 microLOC per fortnight.

13 million emails? OK!

[discogravy]

All my emails include 10meg attachments, so at 13 million, I guess I have roughly a 124TB limit. (maybe my math is bad, I dunno -- I never learned "emails" as a unit of measure).

I think I can live with that.

Re:Limited downloads

[Enlightenment]

I think you took the joke too f

Re:lets do the math!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.

Seriously. They need to get with the times. Tell us how much that is in LoCs.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

[Achromatic1978]

I ... do ~150gb of usenet each month for some time now

Yeah, that sounds legitimate.

Re:lets do the math!

[Cid Highwind]

Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.

I prefer to have my bandwidth cap quoted in station wagons of DLT tapes per month...

Re:lets do the math!

[Anonymous Coward]

What crappy bitrate do they think people encode to?

If you RTFA, you find that the bitrate must be the number of mouseclicks in an average bout of pornsurfing over the time it takes you to use the john.

Re:Limited downloads

[Bender Unit 22]

Yeah, they did, but it is a luxury problem. I am on a dialup, So I don't have to deal with that, since there is no chance I will hit t "]5d[7d£4±A"2@ NO CARRIER

Re:lets do the math!

[Matey-O]

I prefer to have my bandwidth cap quoted in station wagons of DLT tapes per month...

You get all the data that'll fit in the passenger door map-pocket.

Re:It is not as bad as you think...

[pyrrhonist]

Yeah, you tell that to Switch and Apoc...

Re:Limited downloads

[Scannerman]

How many more of these till it starts getting funny ag

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

[Wescotte]

... do ~150gb of usenet each month for some time now

Yeah, that sounds legitimate.

He could just be this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpmGB3CPVk [youtube.com]