Jake Russo

So how does one use it? Is it documented somewhere? - Benjamin Golub

Nevermind: http://code.google.com/p/frien... - Benjamin Golub

On the other hand, stuff has gotten so much bigger. I remember when videos were something you watched on the teevee. - Kevin Fox

Kevin... I don't follow. What is this "teevee" you speak of? Was that before the Internet was invented? - Louis Gray

It's like YouTube, but with less guys getting kicked in the nads. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Mark, I made this for you: http://flickr.com/photos/perso... - Kevin Fox

The real question is why am I paying $100/mo for 6mbps and a static IP at home! (Speakeasy.net) - Steve Lacy

And I bet if you actually maxed your Speakeasy pipe you'd be hearing from them within a couple days. Your monthly cap is probably about 10-20gigs right? As opposed to the 1.88 terabytes (each way) you'd transfer if you maxed it out 24/7. - Kevin Fox

Bandwidth did get cheaper, but with paper money in a free fall it's hard to notice. According to your stats, 8 years ago 1 mbps cost 1 gram of gold (~$9-$10). Today one gram of gold would get you 3 mbps ($29 today) - Aviv

I feel like precious metals are too volatile to use reliably as indicators of inflation. A lot of their price movement comes from things other than their fundamental usefulness. Say someone finds a way to cheaply harvest gold from seawater and it drops to 1% of the current price. Does bandwidth then suddenly get 100X more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms? - Sanjeev Singh

That's exactly the point - their value extends beyond their fundamental usefulness to industry. If usefulness was the only indicator, a dollar would have the value of a paper napkin. Precious metals have a reputation for being volatile (which I disagree), but if anything I think nowadays they are far less volatile than most stock markets, real estate market, or even my local Starbucks' daily traffic. - Aviv

aviv, I don't think paper money is a good indicator of inflation either (if the fed decided to increase the supply of money 100X causing huge inflation, that has no "real" effect on bandwidth prices either). However, something like (basket of real goods, e.g. Big Macs) / mbps correlates with dollars much better than gold over the time period in question (last 8 years), hence my comment about volatility. - Sanjeev Singh

@Sanjeev: I just realized you edited your volatility comment. Gold has kept its reputation as the ultimate store of value in part because of the unlikelihood of that happening. To use the same logic, what if a rogue Federal Reserve employee decided to pull an allnighter and print more bills? At the end of the day, if either were to happen we would have far more troubles than the price of cogent bandwidth. I normally enjoy debating precious metals for hours and hours... but find it quite ineffective when done over FF's comment system :) By the way, have you read this - http://www.house.gov/paul/cong... - Aviv

@Sanjeev: you wouldn't be asking the bandwidth question in the first place if indeed goods correlated effectively and efficiently with dollars or other paper money. - Aviv

Not to fan the flames, but can't the price of commodity items fluctuate in relation to the price of other commodity items? It seems to me, especially when talking about high-tech commodities and services, that supply and demand and efficiencies of scale far surpass currency fluctuations. If Cogent is charging the same amount as they did 8 years ago, then the answer lies in profit margins and anti-competitive markets, not the currency the price is pegged to. - Kevin Fox

Friends are as good as gold. - Jim Norris