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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

I keep a dvd drive on a shelf for "historical" purposes. Every once in a while I have to read one.

Dvd jumped the shark right about the time I could download 4 gig in about the same time it took to read it off a crummy dvd-r.

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Watch how fast people start hitting Comcast's 250GB data cap in 2012 and on... especially after people start trusting online backup providers, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc with their files. That 250GB cap includes download and upload -- two months over the limit and you are terminated for 1 year, even if Comcast is the only ISP servicing your region.

Watch one HD Netflix movie a night and you've used 105GB. Make a daily backup of a 5GB folder to a cloud service and you've now gone over your monthly cap. Goodbye internet. That's what keeps me from using online backup services. If everyone is going to start downloading 4GB DVDs instead of buying software in stores, too, something's gonna have to give.

If you have a gigabit connection, you can use 250 GBytes in about 45 minutes. The solution is to make the networks faster, not avoid using them.

The solution is to be the only ISP in the area, and to strong-arm start-up competitors out of business with year-long contracts that force you to pay for months you have remaining upon cancellation.

Source: (I am secretly Brian Roberts - CEO of Comcast)

(Don't tell anyone)

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