Posted 02.06.2013 at 5:30 pm
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FedEx Truck
Wikimedia Commons
There's a great little post on XKCD examining the speeds of data delivery--especially useful given today's confirmation that Saturday USPS delivery is shutting down. It's long been the case that if you need to send someone a lot of data--like, a few hundred gigabytes--it's faster to just FedEx the hard drive. But internet throughput is growing steadily, whereas FedEx's delivery capabilities have a distinct cap--so when will the internet truly be faster than FedEx? Read the post here.
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It will happen a lot sooner than 2040. I say within the next 10 years. You'll just have to wait and see. =)
from winlock, washington
cookiee453, i disagree with you while the internet is getting faster the information desity of hard drives are get better as well, it fallows moores law and increase by the square every 18 months, while the internet is slowed down by unwillingness of the service providers to upgrade the infrastructure as it ages out, remember there are still people living with dialup. Also the isp's will artificially slow down your connection so they can charge you for a faster connection or will leave the fiber they have "dark" so they can charge more.