Nobody ever wants to go on strike, any more than employers want a lockout. It's the nuclear option, used as a last resort.

Oh definitely; and they or someone a little bigger ( Amazon? Netflix? ) who could potentially acquire them might be able to deliver profitably service dirt cheap like single digit dollars per month.

I don't want pretend to understand all the dynamics involved with the network to cable co contracts, FCC must carry requirements, local monopolies granted to cable companies, etc.

That last one was never hard to enforce, but how will $MUNICIPALITY enforce the cable monopoly agreement against a cable company like Areo with no cables? Suddenly they or someone like them are going to be a new player in the game like the SAT TV providers were, and it will at least slowly shift the balance somewhat.

Right, its a complex balance of power the networks have with the cable operators and what they really don't want is people making waves.
Just looks at the fights CBS and ABC have been in lately (NBC is a little different given they are COMCAST subsidary ).

On the one hand royalties from Areo might be a new revenue stream on the other hand premium cable seems to be where the eyeballs are going to the point the cable operators have started expressing less willingness pay to carry the networks. Its probably a smallish number of very vocal cable subscribers that push them to continue to pay CBS's extortion fees. If those folks could just pick up a cheap Areo subscription well it might actually weaken the hand of broadcast networks to charge the other cable operators. ABC has nothing to worry about though because their parent Disney will just make carrying ABC a condition of carrying ESPN which no cable operator would dare drop.

So you admit you are ignorant of the art of the day. BASIC was never intended for working code. This is given in the first word of the acronym: "Beginners"

"Rocks for Jocks"

I don't think its fair. A modern web application is expected to do a whole heck of alot more than COBOL as it was originally designed even envisioned. You can still bang out a simple shell script or procedural program in Ruby today without knowing much of anything but we just don't consider those things 'applications' anymore.

Hell COBOL (propper) isn't really even interactive, its read in records, and write out some other records. You needed something like CICS to do much of anything interactive and guess what its not so easy to use or understand anymore once you go there.

Lets not even talk about the job control stuff to get your program running in the first place; normal people were never expected to handle that, it was the job of the OPERATOR who HAD EXTENSIVE TRAINING to do that.

So really its just not true.

Applications are more complicated to build today fundamentally because they are more complex in terms of what they do. Could it be simplified yes, we could fix lots of the technical kludges by replacing http and other web technologies with some truly stateful application delivery protocol and languages + libraries but it while it would be simpler it would not be simple.

His view of the past is skewed, things were never really available to regular people. There was always specialized professionals in the background handling the details. Except for a breif period in the late 80's and early 90's during the height of the PC revolution. Those machines though were a great leap backward in terms of what the limitations were as compared to the mainframe, and in leaving those limitations like (single user) behind we have put all the complexity back in.

90's? Nope. Their software has always been utter crap.

They promised.

You might as well call DNS itself shady. 98% of malware networks use it to hide their tracks an keep their networks up.

They are always attacking the problem from the wrong end. They must. Once upon a time they did the right thing and tried to migrate to trusted repositories, but then they lost their nerve at the last moment and saved legacy app compatibility. Not that we trust them to fairly run the trusted repository either. They have not solved the problem because to them it is an intractable problem. The only effective solutions lead to Microsoft's demise.

You're a little behind the times, that stopped eighteen years ago when PWORA was passed and AFDC abolished.

These days slaves are made with "right to work" laws and strict limits on the extent of the safety net.

I gained my freedom this past February. YAY! Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!

Indeed, B&N is cheaper and ships faster and carries more books. And your public library is free.

And if you're going to buy a book, buy one of mine!