I have to say something on Comcast's defense here. I have never had bad customer service from them, and I've had cable through them for a very long time. Do I pay through the nose? Yes. But they answer the phone when I call, they get a service guy out to my house in hours, not days, and they hit their promised windows. The technicians are competent, and they're friendly: "hey I've got a 1TB DVR in my truck, if you want I can swap out your old 200GB DVR, you'll get a lot more hours of storage."

I have had no problems with Comcast's customer service. (That said, I haven't had to cancel my service with them for about 25 years, and haven't had to go through the horrors of talking to a "Customer Retention Specialist".)

Actually, communities tend to run infrastructure remarkably well. Look at water systems. When is the last time you were in a location with city water, turned on the tap, and nothing came out? (Assuming you weren't cut off for lack of payment, of course.) Towns know how to keep the water flowing. If a town is without water for a period of time, it makes national news. (Yes, there are developing nations that do not have potable water coming out of their taps. The US is not one of those nations, and this is a US topic.)

Governments are not incapable of running such a program, and they are not inherently guaranteed to suck at it.

Now, is this different because it will require tech support? Sure. Are cities prepared to deal with the calls, the service interruptions, the network attacks, etc? The cities that are asking are going into this eyes wide open. The FCC is not mandating that cities must carry their own networks, they are simply being asked to rule on a non-competition clause that unfairly prevents the city itself from providing said competition.

I think the biggest problem the cable companies face is that cities now know exactly how much it costs to run a network, and it's nothing like the extortionate rates the cable companies are charging today. If the city has a competent manager leading the project, and good engineering staff, they will deliver fast data along with great customer service at a price that is not only going to be competitive, it's going to dominate. Everyone wins, except for the shareholders of the cable companies - and as they've been winning for a couple of decades already, my sympathy for their plight is not exactly overwhelming.

"that's the policy."

yeah, we're robots with no brains. we follow orders. don't question stupid rules and never use human judgement. we are humans, but we should be thought of as cattle.

yup, I fully agree.

we should do what we are told and stop thinking. yup, I fully agree. that's pure wisdom. we need more people like you and me. world would be a lot better if we all just shut up and do as we're told.

USA USA USA!

she - like all the rest of the flying waitresses - are power-drunk. they have been grated too much ability to fuck us over, they enjoy it! its our fault for allowing it - and their fault for, well, being power-drunk and out of control.

and threatened to have him arrested? you think that's fully legal? but they (air waitresses) have so much power, they likely COULD cook up something that would cause the guy to go to jail. its absurd that attendants have this much power, but lately in the last 10 or so years, they do. its bullshit but they do have power over you.

if I was the guy being abused like this, I'd ask them 'have you ever heard of the streisand effect. I'll wait, you go look it up and then come back and see if you want the PR fallout that you're gonna get. go google it. here, use my phone.'

no shit, I'd put them on the worry, or at least give them some insight as to the huge mistake THEY are about to make.

they could still cause me trouble, but I would NOT delete a post (I don't tweet or fb) on some company's request unless what I said was truly illegal or against some contract (like an employment contract). but being a CUSTOMER and being threatened with jail unless you remove your freedom-of-speech right, that's just beyond what I would put up with.

at least the story made the news, so the end effect of his post is now the same and the airline did NOT win this time out.

See what I did there?

Go read The Fine Article before spouting your nonsense.

terror can be defined as 'control by fear'.

you don't agree that the rich control us and help keep us in fear? they fund the politicians who do the direct fear-creation, to us. they fund the media who echo this sentiment and drill it into us, over and over.

count me in as one of those rare ones. I never finished college (transferred a bunch of times and lost credits so at grad time, I thought I had enough but actually didn't; got a job offer, took it and never finished school). but I've been working in the industry since the early 80's and consider myself to be completely competitive with actual degree-holders.

its hard to get experience without a degree; but one short-cut is to go to a co-op or intern-based school (for me, it was northeastern in boston) and that got me enough starter experience to bootstrap me into the workforce. after that, no one ever really cared about my lack of a sheepskin.

is it racist for EVERY OTHER COUNTRY, when they look after their own, first; and then (maybe) give jobs to foreigners?

no, its not. its called 'common sense'; something that the US is lacking (and the parent poster, too, apparently)

Some places want them to fill lower-level rolls

you'd actually want a kaiser for that, I think. no?

I fully understand what he's saying and he's right.

I started doing software work in the early 80's and it was easy, fast and fun.

now, its about 'scrum' and 'agile' and all that stupid shit (sorry if that offends). we had a simple life with makefiles and cvs, but now the librarians are complex and not intuitive, the build systems are uber complex and the CI (cont. integr.) stuff is a big change (and a whole system in itself) compared to the nightly build idea. code reviews, enforced coding standards add more slowness to the dev cycle. bug reporting systems are also complex.

in short, its no fun anymore for us old guys. I fully see what he's saying. he's not talking about tiny snippets but getting shipping code out the door - its more process than it really needs to be, and the quality is STILL NOT THERE, so I don't think we made any real progress. and add in java where even idiots are allowed to write code (no need to free, whoopee!) and you have people who get lazy and if they ever have to write in C, they are totally lost.

lastly, there are too many fad languages and this wastes everyone's time and since you can't be good at so many things, it spreads you too thin if a project has 5+ languages in it.

It's really hard to do this kind of landing burn (nicknamed 'suicide burn' as you run out of fuel as the landing feet touch the ground at 0 velocity, and miscalculation and splat or a nice bounce (elon called it the hover slam)) with a solid rocket booster, which we keep buying/making to prop up the ICBM industry with civilian dollars. The shuttle ended up with SRBs instead of L(iquid)RBs purely due to political reasons.
 
Actually, for the Saturn V, blueprint drawings do exist made by NASA of a cockpit on the side of the main booster tank with glider wings, to take it the 300 miles back to a safe landing site. Obviously that complication got scrapped in the mad rush to get to the moon in a decade.

I'm over 50 and have paid so many times over, I feel I've more than 'helped' the industry long enough.

I respect corps that respect me. but the entertainment industry treats us all like criminals. so, I might as well just play along; if I'm being treated like one, I will act the part (in their eyes). I don't give a fuck. after so many years of seeing the bullshit and lies from them, I've had enough. I started out in good faith and paid for cable, vhs tape rentals, dvd rentals and then netflix. I saw the content quality go down (not visuals but storylines and even compression or - worse - too much dynamics - in movies), forced ads - its too annoying to tolerate, for the most part, anymore.

remember, this is the same industry that keeps those old ancient disney cartoons still OUT of public domain. they are not interested in fairness or fairplay. if they can squeeze an extra few cents form you, they will.

in the corp world, its screw or be screwed. if you are not doing the screwing, YOU are the chump, the patsy. I hate being the patsy so I stopped playing their game.

the industry won't dry up; and even if some segments did, mushrooms would sprout up and someone else would take their place.

there is zero ethics in media, today. the corps are not there for art or furthering of society. they are vultures picking meat off any bones they can find.

I have zero guilt about going to the bay for my movies. I sleep very well at night, knowing I've given back to them what they have done to us for decades.

an old addage: to get respect, you have to give it. they are getting their just deserts. and if they cry about it, WHO CARES.

yes, I feel that strongly about the mafiaa. for the last 25+ yrs, its going down down down the shitter. if you work in that industry, you get what you deserve. go work somewhere honorable if you want ethics and fairness.

I don't respect IP anymore. I've worked my whole life, given my effort to companies who make big money and I get a salary, at best; and an eventual layoff, almost always.

been fucked and fucked again by corp america and I've had enough.

IP is a corrupt concept. they steal from you, so treat them how they treat you.

do you respect the mafia? why respect IP companies? if they were honest and didn't overprice things and put more and more restrictions on things, that would be one thing; but they are corrupt motherfuckers and so, I give them no respect and no consideration at all.

they lost me, forever, as a customer. for decades I paid into the system. NO MORE.

why use a regular player? it runs unknown code, can blacklist your devices, forces menus and ads on you and takes too long to startup.

ripped files play right away and on any vlc or video software player.

the days of NEEDING a standalone video player are long gone.