You'd have a valid argument if that's not exactly the system the cable companies operated under until 2002, and the phone companies operated under until 2005. For your logic to hold, there would have been little investment by the cable companies in data service until after 2002 and by the phone companies until after 2005. But that isn't the case; since 2005 infrastructure spending by telcos and cable companies has gone DOWN.

Off site backup. Out of home access to home resources (streaming off of the DVR, using my computer at home via remote connection, remote play of games from my console, etc.). Smart home security systems that use more data than just "did an alarm get triggered". Telepresence.

It looks like the rules were changed last year, so what I said should be considered wrong. And boy does that suck.

On demand service will not work with a CableCard, however some providers (Comcast) offer an IP based on demand service that integrates with TiVo. I use TWC and I just have a Roku with the TWCTV app that lets me use on demand, so I don't miss it. As for switched digital video, there are SDV adapters that cable companies are required by law to give customers who have a CableCard when they offer SDV in the area. Excepting a few occasional hiccups, the SDV adapters work quite well with my TiVos (a 2 Tuner Premiere and 4 Tuner Roamio, both upgraded with 2TB HDDs).

They are prohibited by FCC mandate from encrypting over the air channels, those must be broadcast "in the clear", and with the copy protect flag set to "copy freely". You just need a tuner capable of grabbing Clear QAM signals to view it (some TVs but not all). If you see a violation of this you can report it to the FCC and they'll get in big trouble. As for the rest of the channels, Time Warner Cable is objectively the worst cable provider, in that they encrypt ALL channels (excluding the Discovery Channel) that they aren't required to decrypt by law. They also set the copy protect flag to "copy once" on all channels except those they are required not to by law. Comcast is a better TV provider than Time Warner Cable, and that's saying something. Comcast uses the copy protect flag more sparingly, and offers more Clear QAM channels. If the merger goes through the only silver lining is that my TV will get better (while my Internet gets far worse... fucking data caps should not exist on wired broadband).

Wouldn't the square root of -1^2 be -1(i)? Wouldn't it be fair to say 1 = -1(i)?

Don't forget the FCC. Time Warner got their act together very quickly once I complained to the FCC about their cable card fuckery. We'll see if the FCC gets Verizon Wireless into shape for their violations of the C Block auction rules I just complained about.

The "chance" to make a difference has long since past. The general election is just a formality. If you want to have a true impact on who gets elected and what kind of platform they run on, you need to vote in the PRIMARIES. Since so few people do, we end up with these mostly-unelectable assholes who manage to get elected anyway. What we need (in addition to stronger 3rd parties) are more participation in the primaries.

Probably. When can we expect this free market you speak of? I only see a duopoly where I live for wired service, and a 4 player oligopoly for wireless.

Bay Trail uses Intel's own HD graphics. Bay Trail is good stuff. It's the Pine Trail that you want to avoid.

You mean like inflation?

I bought one of these boards with the PowerVR crap, but I knew what I was getting into when I did. It makes a handy headless server, but aside from that it's a paperweight. I'm a bit disappointed that the Nexus Player has an Atom with a PowerVR graphics core; otherwise it would have made not only a compelling purchase on its own merits, but an awesome device that could easily be extended with different media capabilities. With the PowerVR chip it's pretty much Android or nothing.

I suspect it's the Z3560. If I were you I'd be less worried about the bitedness and more worried about the graphics drivers if you wanted to run Linux on this thing. Intel chips with PowerVR graphics have had a terrible track record (compared to Intel chips with in-house graphics).

I would argue that thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know a lot of things we thought were unlikely aren't.

Cloud backups?