Please stop spreading the myth. Cable TV has never been advertised to be commercial free. NEVER.
Some channels have, like HBO*, but not the company providing the service of having content shipped to your house over cable.

*I don't know if that's still true, but it was when HBO first came out.

I wonder if ad block, et. al. is actually making it worse.
Fewer people get ads, websites need more ads for to make the same money from fewer people. aka, the people without ad block.

To run applications that have not been ported to BlackBerry.

All modems are self capping. Unless their is an infinity bandwidth modem I am unaware of.

We'd still have global warming even with 100% of electricity being generated from nuclear power (or solar/wind, for that matter). To stop it, you have to eliminate the fossil fuels used in transportation too.

(I suppose it's possible cars and airplanes might have switched to tiny fission reactors or RTGs in the absence of environmentalist opposition -- or that electric vehicles might have become popular sooner -- but it doesn't strike me as likely.)

Then calculate the VPN use in GB per month and bill whatever Exede (a satellite ISP) charges per GB over the cheapest plan.

Kindle's have bookmarks. They're easy to use and work very well. I use them exactly as you've just described.

"paying additional for the privilege of not viewing ads was one of the founding principles behind cable TV"
False. It was the premise of a specialized singe channels, NOT 'cable TV'. Cable TV you are paying for a service NOT content.

if they can detect the ad is not showing.

That's not the suspicious part. This is:

"But instead, the performance was largely similar, except when it came to the timing of events in the story."

So they measured a whole bunch of things. What would you like to bet they didn't correct for multiple comparisons?

I miss clothing allowances. OTOH, I do not miss wearing a suit every day.
The first real company I worked for had a clothing allowance, free dry cleaning, and an person office decoration allowance.
In fact, they gave me a bonus after I joined so I could get a couple of 'real' suits when they found out my suits where off the rack from sears.

Companies are foisting the cost of doing business onto there employees.
So it needs to stop. AS we have seen, many times, corporation will demand more and more and they will all start doing it so you won't actually have a choice.

The rest of you post is irrelevant to the discussion.

percentage based.

If they give you the option of using your phone to help them make money, then they are on the hook.
If they don't want to do that, then don't allow person phones for business.

Companies are doing this to foist the cost of doing business onto their employees.