capped
Latest
T-Mobile confirms Full Monty subscribers are capped at 1Mb/s, risqué plan becomes tame (updated: no speed caps)
Uh-oh. Looks like T-Mobile's Full Monty subscribers in the UK will be getting much less than they'd originally bargained for. T-Mo's British support unit recently confirmed that the carrier has capped speeds on its "all-in" unlimited plan at a rather dismal 1Mb/s -- in other words, this Full Monty act doesn't really go all the way. Perhaps T-Mobile representatives were too caught up in the moment at the launch event and merely forgot to reveal this little tidbit? Our Magic 8-Ball says, "Don't count on it." You'll find the confirmation tweet immortalized after the break.Update: While it's immortalized below, the tweet's now been nixed and T-Mobile has added a fresh one, stating that it won't be capping mobile traffic speeds on the Full Monty Plan. Data addicts, breathe a sigh of relief.
The Daily Grind: Do you rush to endgame?
Welcome to the endgame... the endgame of 2011! We gamers love to say that MMOs are about the journey, not the destination, but that doesn't seem to stop us from zipping up the levels the instant a game or expansion launches. Hardcore players had hit level 50 in Star Wars: The Old Republic within just a few days of the pre-order early access, before the game had even landed on store shelves. In a game designed to be about telling and participating in a story, players have to be the firstest with the mostest -- the first to cap, the first to get achievements, the first to beat bosses, even the first to master tradeskills. The game doesn't reward you for stopping to smell the flowers, after all. Of course, hardcore achiever players are often the first to start moping when they realize they've burned through months of content in a week -- and all their friends are still busy catching up anyway. What about you, Massively folks? Do you take your time, savoring all the sights and really drinking in the game on your first playthrough -- or do you rush to the lonely endgame? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Sprint to launch Direct Connect October 2nd, confirms mobile hotspot capping
The way Sprint's been going lately, we're wondering if there's going to be anything left to announce at its October 7th strategy update. Another screenshot has surfaced, detailing the Now Network's intentions to launch its CDMA-based (read: no more iDEN) Direct Connect service on October 2nd, with "increased coverage" coming early next year. We've been expecting to see it at some point this winter, which means the Nextel alternative is getting pushed out ahead of schedule. With this, we should be hearing news in the near future concerning compatible handsets like the Motorola Admiral or Kyocera DuraMax / DuraCore duo. Unfortunately, October 2nd will be filled with both happy news and bad, as it looks like the leaked memo detailing Sprint's plan to cap the mobile hotspot add-on was right on target. The carrier made its intentions official this morning, confirming that it indeed will be putting a 5GB-per-month leash on the tethering done from your phone, complete with overage charges of $.05 per additional MB used. Grandfathered add-ons aren't an option here, so every tetherer already shelling out $30 for the privilege will find themselves restricted as well. But look at the bright side: tablets need not apply to the data cap, and on-phone data plans and dedicated mobile broadband packages will remain unaffected... for now, at least.
PSA: AT&T DSL and U-Verse landline internet caps begin tomorrow, if you can see this website
Tomorrow is May 2nd, 2011, and you know what that means -- tomorrow is the day that AT&T will impose data caps on DSL and U-Verse Internet, and begin tallying up overage fees. At least, that was the plan on March 18th -- when the company formally announced 150GB DSL and 250GB U-Verse caps -- but even if you're a paying customer who chows down several hundred gigabytes in a month, you may not have to worry about paying extra right away. AT&T specified that folks like yourself will have access to an online tool to self-police your usage before the company even begins to calculate the cost of your formerly all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet, and as you can see in the picture above, the tool isn't quite ready for public consumption across the entire country. Scoot on over to our source link, enter your AT&T ID, and if you see the same, perhaps you won't have to cancel your 700-hour Star Trek marathon quite yet.
Gold Capped: Ask an auctioneer -- time is money
This week's Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) is brought to you by the letter "s." Shortly followed by the letters "t," "e," "a" and "k." I'm in Texas on day job business, and nobody -- I'll tell you what, nobody -- does steak as well as Texas. The barbeque here is also pretty darn good. Mmm, meat. Oh yeah, and it's like a bajillion degrees out all the time. It's so hot that the wind doesn't cool you down; it makes you hotter! Want to make money on the auction house? For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I swear on everything that's good and just in the world that I will eventually dig myself out from under these emails. If you ever stop sending them, that is. So if I don't get back to you in a few weeks or so, try emailing me on my podcast email and see if you have better luck there. Luca asks: Thanks to a misapplication of the snatch tool, I recently found myself the unhappy owner of a ridiculously large stock of bronze bars, purchased at around 100 percent of their regular value (which seems only ever to go down since). I'd like to try to recover my profits as best I can, having learned my lesson -- any ideas? Should I simply wait it out and leak them back into the economy slowly or try something more daring?
Gold Capped: Finding and keeping farmers
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Sometimes, the cheapest way to acquire the quantity of farmed mats you need is to buy them direct from a farmer. Buying them on the auction house is probably more convenient; however, your farmer has to pay the AH cut, and you have to beat your competitors to it. Having a farmer send everything they farm cash on delivery every day is a much more efficient way and has some serious benefits for both sides of the deal. How can you find farmers and convince them to send you goods instead of listing them on the AH? This is not a one-way deal. You need to make it better for a farmer to ship directly to you than it would be for them to go and post their items for sale. To do that, let's look at the annoying parts of selling farmed goods.
