I like your pricing idea. Add to it a bulk-hours discount rate for purchasing viewing time above a threshold amount, and it would be near-perfect. If all the content was readily available.

I wish news/opinion organizations would do that too, instead of everybody and their dog putting up their own paywall. I'm not going to purchase separate subscriptions to the NY Times, Boston Globe, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Time, and every podunk paper. But I might want to read more than their monthly free-with-registration allowances on any given month. More, but not enough from any one of them to make an individual subscription to that particular site worthwhile, and the full set of full-pop subs is unaffordable. But if I could pay a reasonable "News / Opinion Consortium" subscription that gave me maybe 120 article views a month to any mix of their several dozen participating properties, for maybe $15-20/mo, I'd be all over it.

I recognize the irony. For each of our pricing ideas, there would need to be an organization somewhat like MPAA/RIAA, and mine for news requires something like a "Pay Cable Tiered Package" concept but mashed-up with a paywall meter for total "News Tier" usage.

But if the pricing were reasonable rather than rapacious, I think it would work.

Wasn't this pretty much exactly what Microsoft's "Media Center PC" concept was, way back in 2003? Granted, the tech evolved, both on the PC side and the cable TV side.

Originally, Media Center PCs were sold as specific hardware/software packages, it wasn't a separate version of Windows XP available as software only. By the time Vista rolled around and then Win7, the software was built into Home Premium and Professional versions, and of course Ultimate. They took it out of Windows 8 because nobody much used it anymore, but it's still available as a cheap upgrade to Windows 8.x. It came free in my late-2012 Windows 8 Pro-pack upgrade when the were discounting Windows 8 Pro upgrade from Windows 8, with Media Center thrown in.

The Windows Media Center PCs back in the XP days came with a remote control, guaranteed compatible analog tuner, a great software interface, and a two-box-capable remote blaster. As Media Center evolved, multiple tuners, HDTV tuners, and ClearQAM got added.

The product you're asking for exists. Or existed, as a mainstream, biggest-names-branded product. From Microsoft and HP, or Dell, and other PC OEMs.

It just didn't sell. It worked great, for its time. My HP Media Center 2003-era Pentium IV PC pretty much replaced my 1999-era ReplayTV DVR. Neither had a subscription charge.

Time Warner has not owned Time Warner Cable for several years. Other than whatever royalty deal Time Warner has with Time Warner Cable to allow them to continue using the "Time Warner" name and the "Road Runner" IP, they have nothing to do with each other - except that Time Warner Cable is one of the independent TV distribution systems that Time Warner want to get paid by for having it distribute the various cable tv networks of Time Warner's Turner and other cable TV divisions - channels like HBO, Cartoon Network, CNN, Turner Classic Movies, etc.

Your "owns a lot of cable stations" is inaccurate and ambiguous? Do you mean, "owns a lot of cable systems"? If so, you're wrong, as I've explained. Time Warner does not own cable systems at all anymore, the entity called Time Warner Cable is an unrelated company.

Do you mean, "owns a lot of cable networks"? In which case, yes, HBO's owner owns quite a few other cable networks.

Your argument either works or is totally invalid, depending on what you mean. There is no such thing as a "cable station". CNN is a "cable network" owned by Time Warner, "Time Warner Cable of North Carolina" is a cable system owned by Time Warner Cable. The interests of Time Warner vs Time Warner Cable are not aligned.

HBO Go becoming independent, in terms of subscription availability, from having to also have HBO-the-cable-network subscription, might be a net positive for Time Warner the owner of HBO. It might be a negative to Time Warner Cable, because it would remove an "upsell package" opportunity of bundled or special deal premium network sales at huge markups. It would just be more bits, like Netflix or Amazon or Hulu.

But it might be a net positive for Time Warner Cable, and for Charter Cable, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, CenturyLink DSL, as providers of high-speed broadband internet (ok, allegedly high-speed allegedly broadband allegedly internet, really minimal speed barely-broadband walled-garden). It might encourage more people to get high speed internet and to upgrade the speed and or monthly total data transfer allowances, because now Game of Thrones without TV.

I believe it would be the latter. But I believe that the cable system executives believe it would be the former, at least the ones that are originally/primarily cable-tv systems that then added data. I have no idea what the cable network and broadcast network executives feel about it.

Personally, I'd like every entertainment series available unbundled, released on the "broadcasting network" servers on a specific schedule, but available continuously after that "street date"/"air date". I'd like to be able to get Sleepy Hollow without having to get American Idol. I'd like to be able to get that Fox Network series without having to get a Chthulu Plus subscription. But if I found I liked enough series that were on Hulu, as one of their options, and that a Hulu Plus subscription was the most economical way to get them, then I'd like that option. If I instead only wanted to buy one series, I'd like the price to be very low, and I'd like it available simultaneous with "home network" air date and time. If it's on ABC broadcast network Tuesday at 8pm EST, I want to be able to start streaming it at 8pm EST that same Tuesday. Even if I'm in the Pacific Time Zone. Or in the Uruguayan Time Zone and IP block. (which I am).

Oh, and a pony.

But note I never said I wanted it to be totally free-as-in-beer. Well maybe the pony.

I'm not sure it's even possible to be a "lapsed Unitarian". Considering that there are UU-Pagan, UU-Taoist, UU-Jew, UU-Humanist, UU-Buddhist, UU-Hindu, UU-Confucian, UU-Animist, UU-Islam "fellowships" within the Unitarian-Universalist Society, there probably is a UU-Lapsed-UU official group too.

Which makes you (and me) still Unitarians!

But I still had MacOS9 running until late last year, on a purple-bubble iMac, with Windows 98 on it via pre-MSFT-VirtualPC, so I'm a heretical one.

I live in Uruguay and don't have any Bitcoin, you insensitive clod!

You don't have to unblock Facebook to use most comment sections. More of the major new sites are using either Disqus or a site-specific instance of LiveFyre than are using Facebook Comments as their enhanced commenting platform. USA Today is probably the biggest site using Facebook Comments. A lot of local news stations and small-town papers have moved to Facebook Comments. Lots of blogs and special interest websites now use Disqus to get into that cross-web "discoverability" of their sites by being on the same comment platform as CNN, The Atlantic, etc. Some sites still use Intense Debate, though it's dropped off bigtime. Wonkette probably the biggest political commentary site still using it, some blogs, some small news sites. (Intense Debate had the "early mover disadvantage" - LiveFyre and Disqus are just much better.)

Even for the Facebook Comments-powered sites, you don't have to unblock Facebook globally, if you use the right tool.

Problem: You don't want to be tracked by Facebook all over creation, but you do want to be able to comment on the majority of sites. Including, if they use Facebook comments, those sites.

Solution: Use Ghostery (and I'm specifically recommending Ghostery, not alternatives like Disconnect; I explain why further in) with its fine granularity of global and site-specific blocking.
1. Turn off GhostRank, so you're not telling Evidon (Ghostery) who you're going to. It's off by default so they're being good guys.
2. Turn on auto-update and auto-block new elements.
3. Block everything. (It's just easier to start from blocking everything. 3 after 2 because sometimes first-use leaves stuff unblocked)
4. If you're a regular commenter and comment reader at major sites, unblock the "3pes" (Third Party Tracking Elements) for:
      Disqus
      LiveFyre
      Intense Debate
      If using the Firefox version of Ghostery, there's a Cookie tab. Repeat steps 3 and 4 on the Cookie tab.
      Disqus and Intense Debate have cookies on their list, too, LiveFyre currently does not.)
5. Save (one save covers all the tab settings you've jumped between.)

Do not unblock Facebook or anything with Facebook in it here at the global level. You don't want Facebook knowing every site you've been at that has a Like or Follow button or a Facebook Social Reader app, just the ones you intend to actually read Facebook-powered comments at.

The last several versions of Ghostery for Firefox, and the most recent version for Chrome finally, have per-site per-tracker disabling. So go to the site where you can't see the comments. Click the Ghostery toolbar icon to see the list of trackers blocked. Don't whitelist the whole site. Next to each active tracker, Ghostery has a slide switch. You can unblock Facebook Connect or Facebook Social Graph or whatever you need, just for that site, then reload.

It may well turn iterative. For Facebook comments it certainly will. On USA Today, for example, if you click the little dialog bubble icon on the left panel from the story (which is their comment icon), Ghostery will increment by at least one more tracker, USAtoday didn't load the FB stuff till then. Unblock that and reload, you still won't get the comments. By unblocking Facebook Connect, now it could load Facebook Social Plugins. Now unblock that. Rinse and repeat.

I'm a pretty avid Disqus commenter and have it on all my and my clients' sites, so I leave it unblocked globally. But you could do the same with that, if you only want it to work at certain sites and don't want it knowing you're there at other Disqus-powered sites.

One thing I've found on a lot of sites - even with Disqus (or LiveFyre) unblocked, the site's JavaScript that in turn triggers the Disqus or LiveFyre plugin, won't fire unless you unblock something else. And sometimes that "something else" isn't particularly "safe" for folks who don't want any adverts or cross-web trackers. Omniture from Adobe's advertising/tracking is a common culprit here, on a lot of sites. So is Optimizely, and Outbrain, those folks who bring you those often-inane and frequently-ancient "Other sites you may like" things at the bottom of articles.

In some cases it may just be sloppy design or bad coding. But it happens enough, and requires enough iterations of "now unblock THAT tracker" on some sites, that I suspect it is privacy-tools-savvy design decisions specifically to thwart people using privacy tools, to force us into unblocking everything in order to get to the comments. (I'm looking at you, Salon.com).

Shouldn't need to be explained, but just in case: You of course have to stop using EasyPrivacy or Fanboy's Social Annoyances or any other list in Adblock Edge (good), Adblock Plus (now evil) or AdBlock for Chrome (good), because that has no per-site per-tracker granularity. Discontinue using your adblocker as your privacy blocker and go back to the basic EasyList (or other list of choice) block list targeting only adverts, not trackers and social. Same thing if you're using a customized hosts file. Don't do that. You have a better tool once you install one of the privacy blocking extension.

Ghostery for IE does exist but doesn't have most of the flexibility of Ghostery for Chrome or Firefox. Plus, IE. I suspect no one here is using it for their own routine browsing, only for special cases or client projects validation. Disconnect is pretty nice, easier to set up than Ghostery (not that that's hard), but doesn't have quite as much per-site granularity. Until the recent Chrome version of Ghostery came out with the same per-site per-tracker controls as the Firefox version, I did prefer Disconnect for Chrome over Ghostery, but no longer.

BlueHell Firewall (misleading term "firewall") for Firefox Mobile is better than a stick in the eye if running/attempting to run Firefox Mobile on a lower-resource Android device. Doesn't have any granular control, just on or off. But it does let you run mobile Firefox with a privacy tracker on phones or tablets that can run Firefox but cramp up and die when you add a heavy extension like Ghostery. If you've got enough processor and memory to run mobile Firefox well, you can use Ghostery successfully, in my experience.

Same thing I said to the iPad guy. Being able to install new ROMs matters exactly why, to this use case?

No, OP's dad isn't going to give a crap about cyanogen mod. Nor about any of the other "latest and greatest" that Android fanboyz and iFans each seem to thing is so important as you rush down to give the retailers more money every few months, and then root/jailbreak/mod the shiny you just bought.

Everyone is not you.

And updates and patches matter in this use case, exactly why? Elderly person wanting to send some emails, browse some sites. Not needing nor wanting nor likely even aware of "latest and greatest"?

Get out of your own headspace and into that of the person using it.

Unless OP's father's memories of "like I used to use" were being stuck in AOL's or Prodigy's walled gardens, why would anybody recommend a "married to Jeff Bezos" Kindle Fire tablet?

Crippled Android fork of a very old version, no access to Google Play or other app stores, nor sideloading (you rooters go away, we're talking about normals here).

If you must recommend a bookstore-based Android-derived tablet, a Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet or, my choice which I own, a Kobo Arc family tablet, are now essentially open Android. Sure, they have their own launchers, own look-and-feel, and work auto-magically with their own bookstores. But they have full access to Google Play right out of the box. I love my Kobo Arc tablet - Android Jellybean, open access to sideloading, other than Kobo's home screen it looks and feels mostly like Android. My Kobo is my Nook eReader, my Google Play Books eReader, my general-EPUB Aldiko eReader, and one of my Kindle eReaders.

A Kindle Fire is a Kindle eReader. Other competing book apps are blocked. Same with many other competing content marketplaces and apps.

PC came out in 1982. "Personal Computers" AKA microcomputers were around several years before that: CP/M, MP/M, Epson laptop, more. These were in fact in offices at work. I should know, old-fart typing this at my Linux laptop but had a multi-node multi-OS multi-location mixed PC, oddball CP/M, and S-100 bus tri-state network up and running at a NY-based retailer in 1983, with all sorts of non-technical users doing spreadsheets, dBase, word processing, parts ordering, service tracking, rudimentary public electronic communication (Western Union and MCIMail including telexing suppliers in Japan from a desktop terminal or PC).

OP's dad in his 70s. Let's say 75. It's 2013, almost 2014. 1982 is when the PC revolution began, and Apple ][, CP/M, and oddball mixes like my "His networks are Insaaannne!" setup already around then.

Do the math. OP's dad was in his prime working years at the height of the PC revolution all the way up to the launch of the Web. 1982 was 31 years ago. OP's father was 44 or younger. And there wasn't nearly as much age discrimination back then. Let's say dad took early retirement at 62, 13 years ago. That was 2000. That was already the height of the dot-com bubble. Everybody in the office was shopping online at lunch (at other times too), and trading online.

Web invented in 1991. People adding Trumpet Winsock and Mosaic or Netscape right away to get on it from Windows 3.x. The moderatly-successful OS/2 2.0 and then Warp from IBM used "The web is built-in" as one of its selling point over Windows - it came with native OS/2 apps for IBM's own Mosaic-based browser, email, FTP, and gopher.

You damn kids these days. No sense of history.

Back in the day, a lot of consumer routers and access points* came out of the box with remote management enabled. It was something that only we geeks knew how to turn off. More importantly, knew why to turn off, and if left on, we had good reason for so doing. With other than the default password. Which leaves the other 99.42% of buyers with it still wide open.

I remember at least one Linksys and one D-Link out of the half-dozen or so I went through in the late-90's through mid-2000's that defaulted to remote management on. After a while I gave up on them and used a homebuilt low-end desktop running Linux as my router, with good old Speakeasy multiple-fixed-IP DSL, and was a happy geek. I moved to the land of "Qwest or Comcast only", before Speakeasy got BestBought and went to evil shit. But Joe Doakes and Jane Smokes are just using those routers as-purchased.

As to a downstream comment about "what ISP provides a router?" the answer is "Most DSL, most fiber, and some cable ISPs." Up through mid-2012 when I left the States for good, Comcast in Colorado was still just providing a DOCSIS modem with one ethernet port. While I was unloading my place there I threw an old D-Link "router" (early-N single-band WiFi/router combo, maybe one of those on the list) downstream from it to get actual routing and DHCP. Time Warner Cable in North Carolina, in the late 2000's was still the same thing, just a modem. When I used Qwest-now-CenturyLink in CO and WA, they provided a combo unit that was DSL modem, router, and WiFi all built in.

So lots of cable modem subscribers have "routers" they bought sitting downstream from their cable modem. Less so, DSL subscribers but some do. A large amoujnt of them may have one of these D-Link units. Thankfully most of those units probably bricked themselves or burnt out by now, but ironically cheapo D-Link routers tended to last a lot longer than their low-end competition. Plenty still trucking along, open to this problem.

* I'm aware that "router", "access point" are different things and that what most consumers call a "router" is a combination of a router and a wireless access point. Point is, most consumers are not.

Oh sure, use Xmarks. Then watch your Chrome bookmarks get duplicated folders over and over again, some empty, some full, some half-empty (or half-full if you're an optimist). Yes, even if you do what they say, which is to disable Chrome sync and Firefox Sync for your bookmarks. God help you if you do still use RSS and use Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature: watch those become empty folders on Chrome, then circle back to Firefox and frak you over there.

There is a thread from Hades complaining about this on their support site, which they don't even run, it's a section, the abominable GetSatisfaction-dot-com, I spent more time cleaning up the frak-ups of using Xmarks cross-browser cross-machines weekly than it would have taken to just sync changes manually once every week or thereabouts. I let Mozilla sync handle syncing between PCs and intra-PC for Firefox, Aurora (alpha-test FF), Pale Moon, and synching with Firefox or Aurora on my Android phone/tablets. I let Chrome sync handle bookmark sync between various Chrome and Dragon instances on Windows and Linux, and on Android.

Once in a while I pick one Linux or Windows machine, one browser of each family (Chromium or Firefox-based, usually Comodo Dragon and Pale Moon), look at my most recent bookmark additions in each, and copy/paste them to the other. Then let their native syncs propagate them to all the other device/OS/browser instances I have.

I just don't let Xmarks go anywhere near any of them anymore.

Seriously, don't recommend Xmarks to people. It sucks to high hell.

It also is insecure, in that LastPass admits they analyze your bookmarks and use them for commercial purposes. Hell they have a "popular bookmarks" feature right on the site.

Chrome sync by default is scanned and used for marketing and targeting by Google, but they give you the option to encrypt with your own passphrase, not just your Google account. If you do that, they can't get at it for their own purposes, as even their decrypted clear version is still your in-browser encrypted version.

Mozilla sync works that way by default, in fact by your only choice. Your sync data is encrypted with your generated recovery key and they don't know it.

Peter F. Hamilton's OCTattos from his Commonwealth Saga become reality.

Problem is, running through another country, especially one that does not have an NSA-reciprocity deal, is itself most likely a marker to NSA to pay extra attention. Plus doesn't the NSA have full authority to monitor transmissions where at least one side is outside of the USA? Sure, they don't need no steenkin' warrants. But their surveillance becomes arguably even more legal (by US law) and less unconstitutional, if you have voluntarily routed outside of the USA.

I don't disagree with your advice; in fact I do the same thing often, VPNing to Venezuela, or Iceland, or random other countries first, when the sites/transactions I'm using do not require specific IP geolocation. It makes it harder to track, harder to decypher. But I don't think it is all that meaningful, because it puts in more on the NSA "radar". In part, I do it as a big FU to NSA, like a bumper sticker or political billboard. But I have little faith that it makes it all that much more difficult for NSA to determine patterns of my traffic, if they really want to do so. Sure, it keeps my ISP in the dark.

But my ISP is the freakin' government of Uruguay, via Antel, which is the fixed-internet monopoly in this "socialist" country. So I'm on the NSA radar anyhow, as one of those "evil Americans who leave the country". Though "Tio Pepe" Mujica, held for a dozen years in a US-funded jail, two at the bottom of a well, would probably tell them to FOAD anyhow. Just as he is doing to the toady EU countries that denied Evo Morales air overflight, by recalling Uruguay's ambassadors.

Hate to be your missing middle school Social Studies/Civics teacher, but there is no such thing as a "no confidence vote" in a congressional-type system. You are calling for something that exists in parliamentary systems, such as the UK, Canada, Australia, where a no confidence vote can "bring down the government". At least in theory.

Not in the USA. Even if the US Congress, especially the gerrymandered-for-permanence House, were not so bought off that your vote for Party A's vs Party B's candidate had any real meaning, you only get to make that choice every 2 years for the House and 6 for any given Senate seat. There are no do-overs, no recalls, for the US Congress. In practice, no impeachments of Representatives or Senators. Sanctions (e.g. Charlie Rangel) that mean nothing.