The problem with that is that it has to be live streaming video or else sports fans won't be interested. For some weird reason, they just can't stand to watch sports if it's not live.

The problem with watching these things on cable is that you then have to watch commercials.

A better solution is to just download them on BitTorrent.

The phone company isn't selling DSL, they're selling FiOS in many areas. So the cablecos are in competition with the phone companies.

At my last residence, I had two choices for high-speed data: Comcrap cable and Verizon FiOS. I chose Comcrap, because the monthly cost was lower. My neighbor had Verizon, and had constant problems with it: he had to constantly reset the outside box to get it to work; he moved out and a new guy moved in, got Verizon service too, and again had no end of trouble with his internet service being out for days at a time, and Verizon techs having to make personal visits. At least my Comcrap service was actually quite reliable.

The problem with Comcrap, it seems, is the customer service, not the technical part, at least not in my experience, and all the horror stories I read are about customer service and billing, such as them not canceling peoples' service when asked and continuing to bill them. So to avoid this, when I had to move out, I called and canceled the service (which took forever, most of it on hold), and then I went to my bank which issued the debit card which Comcrap was billing every month, and had them cancel that card and give me a new one (which cost me nothing luckily). So if Comcrap had tried to continue billing me, it was have been unsuccessful. However, I had no sign of that happening: I got a final bill a bit later which I paid (it was for the service at the end of my term), and then another bill for $0.00 after that, and that was the end.

I will say though, I did have a lot of problems with Comcrap service for a while when I was trying to watch Netflix on it. After that highly publicized peering agreement, the issues went away.

People shouldn't be misogynists, but a large fraction of the population is.

TV these days is pretty bad. I can't remember the last time a show caught my interest.

I can: Firefly was excellent.

Actually, there's a few more that are more recent that I've found interesting as well:
- (Star Trek) Enterprise: this was surprisingly good (I only watched it last year, after it was already 10 years old), except for the 3rd season Xindi plot arc which I found rather annoying. The first two seasons were very good though.
- Big Bang Theory: I've only watched the first two seasons so far, but it's actually very funny, something I've never really found in a sitcom before. I guess it being about physicists instead of typical average morons helps a lot this way.
- Game of Thrones: this one really shouldn't require an explanation.

Nope, you've proven you're a typical moronic American who thinks there's a difference between the "blue team" and the "red team".

This is exactly it, in my opinion. Democrat voters are idiots who will back anything their Dear Leader Obama does, even when it was something they were bitching about during Bush's reign.

And Republican voters are just as stupid. They're now bitching about things that they were perfectly OK with when Bush was doing them, but now that Obama is doing them, they're up in arms.

This is because the crowd you hang out with is not representative of mainstream America. These polls are important because they show what the majority of Americans think about things, and those people are who vote for our leaders. Your little peer group does not have sole power to choose our governmental leaders.

What this shows can be argued different ways. Are young people these days generally more conservative than older people? (seems unlikely) Or is it because they're aligned with the Democratic Party, and since that party is currently in power in the Executive Branch, and their Dear Leader is all in favor of NSA spying, they too are in favor of it? Personally I think it's the latter. Americans are really stupid politically, and simply choose a "team" and then mindlessly back anything that team does. If Obama came out in favor of tax breaks for the rich and against abortion, Democrat voters would adopt those positions immediately, while if the Republican Party suddenly came out in favor of gay marriage and abortion rights and extremely progressive taxation (i.e. rich people would be taxed much more heavily), Republican voters would immediately adopt those positions too.

I wonder how much of this is a lack of decent alternatives which are well-marketed, versus simple cultlike behavior.

Think about it: if you want a PC-like computer, what are your choices? There's Apple which is well-marketed and attractive and shiny (but has downsides which aren't as obvious unless you're really familiar with the industry), there's Microsoft-driven PCs where you have to use shitty Windows and deal with all its annoyances, and there's Linux where there's pretty much no one actually pre-installing it and marketing it to consumers (plus there's a ton of different graphical environments, and the two most publicized ones are radical departures from Windows/Mac and have a lot of usability issues, and the one which is a great fit for Windows converts is simply ignored by the Linux community for some reason).

Maybe if there were another company making PCs with an attractive, stable OS which was very usable and could market it decently, we'd be seeing more people abandoning Apple.

This analysis of course is for PCs, not mobile devices. But over there the situation isn't much better; there's Android which has huge marketshare but still you have to deal with a complete lack of support after you buy the device, and then there's Windows Phone which is tainted by everyone's memory of Windows and MS problems. But still, Apple has lost a lot of marketshare in the phone market (though some of that is simply due to the market expanding, and Apple not aiming at the lower end).

That's not even the biggest problem with Google and Android; the biggest problem is the complete lack of support Android devices get after they're a few months old, which makes them security nightmares. Cyanogen promises to fix that, but it's only going to work if they have better device coverage than they have now.

That makes no sense at all. Cyanogen is a bit player; how many people do you know who are running it? (If you do know any, exclude all the tech-heads and answer again.) MS doesn't care about destroying something that's barely larger than a hobby project.

MS *does* care about hurting Google and improving the marketshare for Windows Phone, or somehow improving their own presence in the mobile arena. So any actions here are going to be towards that end.

Perhaps they see any move to help Cyanogen as something which will help destabilize Android in general. Or, more likely, they see it as something that can use to get a big foothold into the Android space, and then use it to take it over from Google. Embrace, extend, extinguish.

There's also code besides the driver code; the Broadcom chips themselves have CPU cores (not sure what kind exactly) running their own firmware, which of course is loaded by the driver. This code is completely closed-source and secret. (The driver code is partially open; you can see their open-source Linux code in the kernel tree; it's "brcmfmac" and "brcmsmac")

I wonder if Apple's recent updates updated the firmware blobs for the Broadcom chips? This could also explain the problems.

I've worked with the Broadcom driver source code; it's crap. It doesn't surprise me they're having problems. What's funny is (now that I think about it and remember this from a prior job) Apple is easily Broadcom's biggest wifi customer; you'd think they could do a better job with their software for them, but apparently not.

I wonder if these are Broadcom chips, with the driver code actually being supplied by Broadcom. Broadcom drivers are shit.

I thought everyone liked the 3rd one the best of all the Prequels. I haven't seen it myself yet, but every single time I complain about the Prequels to someone and then I mention that I haven't seen the 3rd, they say that I missed the best one.