Addendum: I was right. Modded as Troll. Another /. achievement recieved. Yay.

I'm working on it. Almost there, but I still trip and fall down if I don't alternate chews and walking steps. I'll master the skill eventually, thanks to your helpful encouragement.

Once I have achieved walking/gum chewing mastery, will you respond with something more intelligent than a silly non-sequitor question that adds nothing to the conversation, makes you snicker to yourself at your clever superiority though you've really said nothing of substance?

Is that a serious question? Spying is just information gathering. Information alone is powerless - it has to be used to be a threat. To be precise, it can be used to direct where the police should apply their power. It seems reasonable to worry about both, as they go hand in hand.

I'm sure this will get modded as Troll, but of all the things to get worked up about, this seems pretty unimportant. Given all the things of actual significance going on in the world right now (NSA/GCHQ/everyone_else spying, erosion of civil liberties, widening wealth gap, ever increasing police powers, etc.), why is this so all-important? Let it go and fix the world around you - it needs it more.

Depends on what you're correlating and how you categorize your observations.

In the case of successful people, not watching TV doesn't cause the success, but preferring habits conducive to success may cause no TV to be watched.

In the case of the homeless, not watching TV doesn't cause homelessness, but having no TV causes no TV to be watched.

So two different causes in two different contexts can result in the same outcome - not watching TV.

Interesting arrangement. Not quite the (vague) point I was trying to make, but tangentially related. The common and most important element of course is that the content *is* paid for, not "stolen" as the anti-sharing forces and their apologists frequently declare. I would suppose that a sizeable fraction of downloaders on the internet have paid for the content in some way, possibly multiple times. So the accusations that the creators haven't been compensated for the content people are "stealing" rings a bit hollow.

The arrangement you describe seems a bit iffy since you don't all seem to reside together even if you're sharing the bill. Your arrangement seems similiar to paying for service at one location and stringing cables to the neighbors, which is frowned upon by the providers. On the other hand, if everyone in your group subscribed to a package at their own residence that at least contained the channels of the shows they actually retrieve and watch, then your arrangement is just a more elaborate form of a DVR.

My argument was more along the lines of:

- I am required to purchase a bundle including channels in which I have no interest in order to subsidize less 'popular' content that can't be sustained by an ala carte model.
- I am given no alternative. It's pay for this bundle and all the content, or nothing.
- I am legally permitted to record content on any of those channels using some form of recording device (usually a DVR) to watch at a later time.
- There is no mandated time limit on how long I can retain the recording or how many times I can watch it.
- There is no mandated restriction on the reason I did not watch the content as it was broadcast. "I wasn't interested at the time" seems just as valid as "I wasn't home", "I had to respond to an unexpected emergency", "Thought it might be cool so I recorded it just in case".
- There seems to be no real limitation I know of on the method the content is recorded for viewing at a later date. DVR, video tape, camera etc. As long as it's for my personal use, I'm legally allowed to timeshift content I have paid for.

So now I've subscribed and paid for a bunch of content and all parties have been compensated according to the model created to make sure that happens. And it's sustainable because the content providers are still in business (and reaping record profits), the content creators are still in business (and were compensated enough to keep making more content), etc. I've paid more than I wanted to sustain a business model that includes a rich and varied ecosystem of channels rather than being able to sustain the most popular.

So sometime later, I become interested in a show that was broadcast on a channel I subsidized, or I'm traveling and don't have access to my recordings at home, or my DVR broke, or whatever. So I find the show on TPB, retrieve it and watch it. Suddenly I'm a pirate "stealing" content I didn't pay for when I fact I did.

There are a lot of holes in this reasoning I'm sure (many of the actions above probably violated terms of service if not laws), but the essential fact remains: the content was paid for which takes some of the wind out of the sails of the argument that all filesharing/unauthorized downloading equates to theft and lost sales. That argument would be a lot stronger in an ala carte model where the customer was allowed to pay only for the content desired rather than being forced to pay for additional content that wasn't.

In a way, bundling weakens the argument that downloaders/file sharers don't pay for their content. Anyone who has had a cable subscription for any length of time has paid for every program aired during the duration of that subscription and has the right to watch them. With a multi-channel tuner and a DVR with really large storage capacity, every show on every channel of interest could be saved for later viewing, legally. It's not a big stretch to view the cloud as the aforementioned DVR. In a sense, filesharing could be viewed as extreme timeshifting, at least for anyone who had cable when the show in question was broadcast.

"[...] Linux is only free if your time has no value [...]"

http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.h...

Stockpiles of exploits? Sounds like some reporter is out of his/her depth and can't understand the difference between physical weapon stockpiles and software vulnerabilities. Welcome to the new Yellow Journalism. FUD, FUD and more FUD.

Good point. But a quick sip isn't exactly something I depend on, right? That was the real point. If one source of marginally interesting information flow gets ruined, there are plenty of other things to do. My mental well-being doesn't depend on 'consumption' of what Comcast/TWC might control. Maybe I'll just take the kayak down to the river and paddle around for a bit, take the dog for a walk or take the bike out for a spin. Comcast/TWC can DIAF.

A better description would be that information flows around me like a river during a flood and I reach down from the bank and scoop out a little bit for a sip on a hot day. Then I turn around and take a walk in the woods. Control that, Comcast!