Wait, didn't I hear something similar back in the seventies? Hope this works out better.

That's actually a good point. What they really need is to disassociate the products from the parent company in some fashion. Maybe call the group of internet enabled apps ...xfinity... nope, that's taken. And that wouldn't follow the apparently required theme of naming things generic. They probably can't call it "the internet". Hm. I got nuthin.

Right, but hasn't that been pretty much the way its gone for decades now?

Because that tactic worked so well for Comcast. (Xfinity.)

I don't have a reference handy, (would have to ask a certain member of my family who would know all about this) but I seem to remember that the banning of hemp had nothing to do with THC. That was only an excuse. The real reason was that hemp was competing too well with some other part of the textile industry.

That's going to bug me. I'll have to do research tonight and get more details.

In my high school electronics class the instructor announced on the first day of class that anyone charging up a capacitor and tossing it to someone else as a joke would automatically fail the class. (Apparently this was not his first rodeo.)

Up to that point, we'd never even realized this was possible. That Halloween was fun.

Experimenter bias?

Yeah, it's called picking the winners and losers. Someone always is suing the state for something or other, but I don't expect much movement on this issue. The state (most states, I suspect) will continue to favor the hip and trendy businesses at the expense of businesses they don't like.

But you can't blame Musk for considering the deal. Because hey, free money.

My perception is that libraries carry books because they are books, and not for trendy or financial reasons. If I can't find an obscure title online, (admittedly, this happens less and less often) I can often find it at the library.

Ob. youtube.

Mind you, I've never done business with Qwest. The point is, the person in question did have options other than Comcast that he had never considered. Maybe they weren't viable options. He doesn't know, because he's never checked.

> I can get comcast internet for a total monthly bill of $65. I can get the same internet service and their basic cable for a total monthly bill of $45. I view this as being paid $20/month to warehouse one of their cable boxes

Comcast made the same argument to me, but my current ISP charges just over $40 a month for internet only. So the $45 Comcast price only looks good when compared to other Comcast prices. Assuming, as you implied, that you don't watch basic cable. (I don't either.) I think the deal is meant to suck you in -- you get basic cable as a loss leader, and then you upgrade so you can watch Game of Thrones, and they've got you.

But was that the ongoing price or a "limited time" price? I think the business model assumes that you'll take the really sweet six month deal, and then you'll just grit your teeth and pay the ongoing, much higher price because it's too inconvenient to change.

Some of the problems people are having is that Comcast is making it difficult or impossible to drop the service. Having them drop you might be a relief.

But how slow is slow? For years I used Speakeasy at 3 Mb/sec rather than deal with Comcast. And then fiber became available, and I was perfectly happy with 15 Mb/sec for a few more years. Most recently, the fiber provider (not Verizon) bumped the download speed to 25, and I'm told that soon I'll be seeing 25/25 at no extra cost. Comcast advertises a faster speed, but why do I care? Past 15, only geeks will notice. Hell, past 3, Ma and Pa Kettle won't really notice.