I'm a Comcast TV and internet subscriber (not really by choice, as in many places it's the only solid option). Over the past few weeks I've seen an ad from, by, and for Comcast promoting this service... over and over and over. It shows a kid in school with some narration about how everything would be better if only he had access to the internet, then he goes home, and imagine that! A Comcast truck is sitting outside his home, hooking up some internet service!

Comcast loves kids, loves schools, and wants to help all students do research for their education! Yeah, right. This is a very low cost (or free), but also extremely low service plan. You have to be around or below the poverty level to qualify. The local news did a segment recently and the way they presented it, Comcast won't be letting you sign up unless you can prove that you qualify for food stamps and free school lunches. I'm not looking to go into a welfare debate, but living in a city with a fairly high number of section 8 residents, many of the folks who would qualify for the Internet Essentials plan are already paying Comcast for much better services using subsidies from other sources.

I love the idea of internet access being available to everyone, but don't think for a moment that Comcast is doing this out of some kind of corporate benevolence. It was required the last time they were involved in a giant merger (buying out NBC) and they're finally getting around to promoting it in hopes of their next giant merger (with Time Warner) being approved.

I tweaked the page for the doughnut theory of the universe last December, adding a new link for the acronym CMB (cosmic microwave background). But my link for CMB pointed to the entry for Color Me Badd, that 90's R&B group whose best-known song was "I Wanna Sex You Up." It looks like someone finally noticed while they were fixing an unrelated typo in the article, and fixed it back in June, so it was up there for 6 months or so.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice...

The patch already exists, now it's up to our cell carriers to distribute it.

Thanks!

Who is Verizon not fucking over? I'm not even their customer and I feel like I need some lube, just from hearing about these things. I would never, ever buy any service from Verizon. Every business they're in, they seem to take pleasure in punishing their customers just for using what they tried to purchase.

It's bad enough dealing with Comcast, but thankfully I don't rely on them for all of my services (despite their best efforts) and Sprint treats me pretty well for cell service.

Surely you're not talking about Netflix? If you're an ISP, Netflix will peer with you for free at 8 major POPs. They will even give you caching servers to put at your border. If one service is consuming 75% of your transit, someone probably does have a busted model but it isn't Netflix.

To some extent I'm sure it's still happening. As a Comcast subscriber I have access to an online streaming service called "WatchESPN" that lets me watch various ESPN channels on my computers or phones, as long as I'm on my Comcast internet connection. I don't use it, but I guarantee you that part of my monthly fee is paying for it, just like I don't watch any of the ESPN TV channels but I know a big chunk of my monthly cable TV fee goes straight to them. Of course ESPN also offers ESPN3.com which requires an additional monthly subscription on its own.

There used to be a chart with a nice breakdown of how much the average cable subscriber's bill goes to each of the content providers. ESPN was by far the biggest chunk, Disney/ABC took a good portion, etc. I'd love to see a recent breakdown if anyone has one.

Wow, I hadn't thought about that in years! Got another laugh at its expense, thanks for the reminder. Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

Serious question: why isn't Venezuela trading tankers of oil for tankers of fresh water? Doesn't have to be 1:1 of course. Surely there are nations that can provide excess water in return for cheap oil, at least for the time being.

Your post contains words that are known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

I haven't run into that anywhere, but I do know about a nice new trend I'm seeing in Tennessee. A lot of intersections are now getting right-turn arrows. Just after the light in your direction of travel turns red, and the opposing lanes get their green left-turn arrows as normal, a new green right-turn arrow lights up for you at the same time. Really helps to alleviate congestion.

So are you Steve Barkley?

FAA has historically taken this approach towards regulation and they catch flak for doing it that way, too. Many of the FARs exist because someone died doing XYZ in or with an aircraft, so they made a new rule that says you can't do XYZ in or with an aircraft.

RC aircraft have been a hobby for many years and most enthusiasts stick to a stringent set of (voluntary) safety rules developed by the Academy of Model Aeronautics. Now that "drones" have become popular, widely available, and relatively cheap, thousands of people are playing around with them and they aren't the responsible hobbyist type. You can get a camera capable quadcopter for under $100, they even sell one model at Wal-Mart. Many of the folks buying these couldn't care less about a voluntary code of safety, and I'm on the FAA's side here, there need to be rules with teeth to back them up.

Putting anything in the air for commercial purposes has always been heavily regulated and I for one don't see that as a problem.

Last I heard, a big part of Yelp's business model was to cold-call your business offering to hide those abysmal reviews for a small extortion^Wservice fee. I guess this company didn't play ball. It doesn't surprise me that a restaurant which has been hijacked on Google Maps is also suffering from a bunch of negative reviews on Yelp, someone is clearly targeting the business.