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He sings, he strums, and he works at Best Buy. view!
www.youtube.com/bestbuy - Musician and Best Buy employee, Keith Parsons, rocks his Best Buy holiday campaign audition.
137 Comments
- hbweb500, on 10/11/2007, -7/+213Wow, this is a great bit of trivia for my nerdy conversations!
- Ninjab3ar, on 10/11/2007, -5/+135Yeah, But tell a FedEX delivery guy to drive through a series of tubes without getting lost........
- Anpheus, on 10/11/2007, -3/+104The old bandwidth joke was, "Yeah, but is it faster than a station wagon full of magnetic tape going down the freeway?"
No, it isn't. - abbott75, on 10/11/2007, -4/+96C'mon, even pigeons are faster than the internet.
"Advances in flash memory technology mean that data transfer over avian carriers may have advantages over traditional data transfer wherever high latency can be tolerated in exchange for high bandwidth, possibly as a sneakernet. For example, over a 30 mile distance a single pigeon may be able to carry tens of gigabytes of data in around an hour, which on a purely bandwidth basis compares very favorably to current ADSL standards, even when accounting for lost drives."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers - retral, on 10/11/2007, -5/+92"exactly how burning like 250dvd's and sending thme is faster than uploading it with a t1 line?"
RTFA:
"Instead they send actual physical disk arrays via regular mail, something they have dubbed, for fun, FedExNet."
..."anyways UPS is way faster than fednext"
I don't know about everyone else, but here, Fedex consistently delivers a day before the listed delivery date. UPS in my area has never delivered a package early, and, on a couple occasions, has been late.. Plus, they always come pulverized. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+63Everyone knows that the internets stops being a series of tubes and becomes a FedEx truck when you send more than a terabyte.
- Philbert, on 10/11/2007, -8/+68"C'mon, even pigeons are faster than the internet."
An African pigeon or a European pigeon? - mercurysquad, on 10/11/2007, -2/+62Not long ago in India, and many other places, it was more expensive to download the mp3s than buying the album on CD. Now it's about the same cost.
- Mastertoast, on 10/11/2007, -4/+50@hdtvdust
Why did the chicken cross the road? - ravan46, on 10/11/2007, -1/+35Nearly 4 months of maxing out a 100mb connection is damn expensive.
Overnighting 120TB of disks is probably nearly as expensive.
But in the world of time=money, the quicker one will always be cheaper. - Vrail, on 10/11/2007, -5/+38Yeah next time I have a terabyte of data to send I'll use fedex for sure.
Oh wait that's never gonna happen.
(Well I shouldn't say never, terabytes will become common someday) - EtherGnat, on 10/11/2007, -4/+35I can top that. UPS was supposed to drop off my two DVRs (value $900) signature required, so I took the day off work. They dropped them off:
1. Two blocks from my house at a random location where nobody was home;
2. In the middle of the driveway;
3. In bright, full color electronics boxes that screamed "steal me";
4. Didn't scan one of the packages at all;
5. The UPS driver scanned the other package but fraudulently signed for it.
Luckily the owner of the home was able to get my number off the invoice and call me. I harassed UPS for two days without telling them I had the package all the while they assured me one of my packages was still out for delivery and that they would find the other one--although they refused to run a trace on them for me because I was not the sender of the packages. When I told them they threatened to press charges against me for fraud, despite the fact I had never lied to them and had no intention of filing a fraudulent claim--I just kept asking them if they had figured out where my packages were. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+30but which is cheaper?
- knightblade2oo4, on 10/11/2007, -3/+27I like FedEx better than UPS for one simple reason:
FedEx has never dumped $1100 worth of computer parts in the middle of my driveway and drove away without calling or knocking. - benplaut, on 10/11/2007, -3/+24AHA!
The internet //is// a big truck! - Wasted, on 10/11/2007, -0/+21This is allmost as old as the internet: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"
http://www.bpfh.net/sysadmin/never-underestimate-bandwidth.html - theone3, on 10/11/2007, -6/+26CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+21Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?
- alumunum, on 10/11/2007, -3/+23The actual saying goes: "Do not underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with backup tapes going 80 miles an hour down the freeway"
Anyways, this smells like a viral marketing by fedex. - evildeadman, on 10/11/2007, -4/+20@retral:
I'm with you on that. I wouldn't trust UPS with a box full of sand that I want to ship to my next door neighbor a month from now. I've had nothing but bad or mediocre experiences with UPS. Hell, the US Postal Service is a better courier service than UPS.
As an example, one time my wife's wedding ring needed to be resized by the jeweler. The store promised UPS signature required service back to our house, insured and all of that. What we received was a package in our doorway (we live in an apartment building), no knock, no buzz, no note, nothing. I was less than impressed. I really should have called their customer service line. I could have complained. I don't know what they would have done to compensate, and I really don't care. The fact that we had the ring safely back was a relief, but I felt it would instead be more productive to tell people this story when they talk up UPS. It's possible things like this have happened to people who've shipped FedEx, but in my experience, there's no competition. - schoate09, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14Not only that, it's cheaper than signing up for a new ISP after comcast cuts you off for using too much bandwidth of your "unlimited" internet service.
- rompom7, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14Even SNAP (snail-based data transfer protocol) can get you download speeds up to 37,000 Kpbs.
http://www.notes.co.il/shimon/user/SNAP.pdf
Snails carrying DVDs, using a lettuce based guiding system. - KibibyteBrain, on 10/11/2007, -3/+15A really fun question to explore would be which is more reliable, and which more secure. You could encrypt both methods completely so I think security would be a tie for the most part, but reliability would be interesting. FedEx could lose a hard drive or DVD in transit and that would be like a bad packet, with an error correcting penalty of 1 new transmission cycle(not too bad) plus the time to realize it was lost(probably the bad part). You can hash file data on the fly over a network connection to make sure you got the right data. So there still are advantages to both methods in this sense.
The nice thing about the fedex method is that any old receiver has nearly infinite incoming bandwidth.(ie, can receive as many dvds from as many people as possible. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13Because we all love it when FedEx unclogs our tubes.
- bcarl314, on 10/11/2007, -2/+12Oh come on now. FedEx can deliver [enter arbitrary value to make point] amount of data faster than the internet? Really?
No offense here, but FedEx will always be able to transfer data faster than the internet, if the amount of data is sufficient.
Even if you could increase bandwidth 1000 times, then you could say FedEx can deliver one PB (Peta Byte) faster than the internet, and so on and so forth. - Darthmalt, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Obligatory quote
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes going down the highway"
- Andrew Tanenbaum - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Just remember to put "Fragile - Throw Underhand" on the package. You won't get much data transfer if the external hard-drive/ discs/ tapes snap in half.
- eighties, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10@abbott75:
That protocol (RFC 1149) has been replaced with the much more modern RFC 2549.
Geez, read the documentation. It might save you some grief one day. - wingnut21, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Such as Daler Mehndi?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLicPKQpPG8 - douglasr007, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7So, I look on the related news link on the page and this comes up:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/03/73007
I couldn't read the article and you'll see why. - Sphonix, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9The fact is, that this is a useless study, the number completly decides how fast each of the methods are comparing an finite possible size for a fixed period, and the other, an infinate possible size for a fixed period.
Internet = K*T
FedEx = { 0 For 0 < T < P ; N For T > P }
Apples and Oranges! - PiMPSP, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Next Article On Digg: MPAA And RIAA bullying FedEx and UPS To Hand Over Data On Customers Who Send Large Packages Containing DVD-R's And CD-R's And HDD's Over 40GB. lol
- Neronix, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7The article is talking about hard drives, not DVDs. Notice how he mentions disKs rather than disCs. Also notice how he mentions an array, as in writing to multiple devices at the same time.
Perhaps make sure you're not missing the point before you get your nuts in a twist? - rarson, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6I want to see FedEx stream that terabyte.
- EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5I think it would be true of any brand of overnight shipping, even USPS.
A company I used to work for needed to ship 10 TB on a regular basis (literally, the whole earth). There was only one way to do it -- sneaker-net. - explnx, on 04/27/2009, -2/+6@ people who rated my old comment
For shame, the average digg user isn't familiar with usenet? This is the new aol. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6Quick, maybe if we act like we care it'll go away!
- 89vision, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5@lukesed
We all know what usenet is. Your comment just wasn't very funny. - ragsmaloy, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I used to work for Parcel Force for a while (kind of English FedEx equivalent) and the only packages I treated with respect were the ones marked "medical supplies" so if anyone’s planning to send a terabyte worth of porn through the post in Britain I recommend you mark it up as "medical teaching material" or some such and it'll get there without a scratch.
- mortigon, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Now that's a mane of hair
- pap3rw8, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5@knightblade
fedex did exactly that to me.
UPS and FedEx are pretty much the same. I just go with whichever is cheaper. Someone above mentioned UPS never delivering early. UPS more often than not gets stuff here a day early, but I've had FedEx hold packages at the local distribution center for a day or two until the delivery date you paid for. - tech42er, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5@abbott
It would be very easy for someone to intercept your data though. All they need is a rifle and a retriever. - fdiskit, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I do a lot of work setting up secondary data sites, i.e., company needs a failover site in case of a disaster. By far, the costliest part of the setup is putting the two storage arrays next to each other, letting them sync locally, then crating and shipping one to the remote data site. If it's going OTR (ground), then it'll be a few thousand bucks. If it has to go air freight, oh, fuggedaboudit. We needed to do this since trying to do the initial sync of tens or hundreds of terabytes would never happen with the pipe we had - the rate of data change at the primary was just too much. A company I worked for once came up with a really cool software-and-tape-based solution, but it isn't used anywhere near as much as the sync-and-ship method with hardware.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you have to integrate the data once it gets to the remote site. Expensively shipping the array means that all you have to replicate is the changes that occurred post-shipment. Not quite as expensively shipping, say, a few JBOD trays, mirroring them back into an array, then replicating changes, somewhat cheaper but longer. Cheaply shipping a crapload of tape, restoring it to your array, then replaying the days or weeks of built-up data from there (tape restores are SLOW), well, hope you haven't overflowed your change buffers at the primary site by then.
Ya get what ya pay for. That station wagon full of tapes may be cheapest per Tb, but will the data have any value once it gets to its destination? - dasilva333, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3i remember the sneakernet article on digg sometime back, there was this fat dude with long hair it was a glamour shot in the article, why oh why did this article have to bring back the painful memories :(
- Enlightenment, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Shipping mass storage is still very common from remote radio astronomy facilities. The data pipe just isn't big enough to transfer the volume of collected data.
- joklem, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3@evildeadman
I've had that happen with a USPS shipped package worth a couple hundreds. Anyone could have snatched it and I wouldn't have had *****. - ModOps, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3DING DING DING! Winnah!!!
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