So, the Playstation network keeps dropping me on my failed ps3 attempts. Which is also keeping me from grabbing my portable ID as I mentioned earlier.
Dragon Age Legends is down on FB currently.
Most annoying though was the complaint from our cable company about us being over our bandwidth limit (which I'm not silly enough to think wasn't there, despite being on their 'unlimited internet' package).
We use a ton of bandwidth - always have and in some ways, I'm surprised it hasn't happened before. Take the last week for example: I downloaded a bunch of games off of Steam (they had a 13 game package for like $35), and I got the Mass Effect 2 download. Those 2 sets probably chewed up 15-20 gigs right there. Add to it the # of internet devices in our house always running (PS3, Wii, 360, several computers, DS's, iPad) - and of course the first thing that probably comes to mind is: Dude, you own too much crud.
And you'd be right.
But, it did get me thinking. As more and more companies are pushing downloadable content (Xbox Live, Wii download, PSN games, Steam) were you acquire whole games, or services like online radio or youtube or playlist.com where people are constantly streaming data, or netflix (we use it in 2 rooms at any given time) - it's interesting to note the concerns internet service providers face: they want to restrict use more and more. Look at the various dataplans a lot of companies have now for iphones/pads/andriods, etc - now there are more limits in place than there used to be.
I guess what I find interesting about all of that, is there's more of a push for digital downloads than ever. And that trend's not going to go away. My downloading was completely legit, I'm not sitting on a horde of ill-begotten movies here or anything, but Broadstripe sent the message saying our internet speed would be throttled down (they didn't say for how long) and that a 2nd offense equals discontinuation of our service. I know why they have those safeguards in place, but it's a slightly irksome experience from my side of it. On the one hand you have companies pushing as much digital content as possible, and on the other you have providers who are trying to protect the use of their bandwidth from abuse as well.
As games get larger and demands grow while gaming and streaming movies become even more popular, it'll be interesting to see what happens with ISPs going forward. I can't imagine I'm the only person who runs into this - but it seems like a conflict of interest between ISPs and distributors of content that promises to get worse before it gets better.
