Scott Gardner wrote:
> All this talk about ADSL, xDSL, and cable modems has gotten me
> thinking, which has gotten me depressed. I just realized today that
> the Internet is never going to seem any faster than it does right
> now. Users have an amazing ability to fill available bandwidth.
The content always rides the limit of tolerance.
I think for most people if it takes more than 10 seconds to
load a page at least enough to navigate, they will lose interest.
The 10 seconds (or whatever measure of time) is the constant, not
the size of the message, so you are correct that it will never
be quicker.
> (Who remembers when a bulletin board was some guy's Apple IIe with a
> 300 baud modem and a floppy in each drive.)
TWO DRIVES, THAT'S A POWER USER. My first modem was a 300 baud
acoustic. On that topic, notice that loading a text based menu at
300 baud takes.... guess what, 10 seconds.
Again, the time is constant. Similar to building design, the average
person gets annoyed waiting more than 30 seconds for an elevator, so the
building must have as many elevators as it takes to meet this demand.
If the elevators become faster, it doesn't mean you get where you
want any faster, it just means the building is built with fewer
elevators.
--
Trevor Boicey
Ottawa, Canada
tboicey@brit.ca
http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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