I'm as nostalgic as the next guy, but everybody getting the warm fuzzies for the dark ages are conveniently only remembering the good things about them. There were plenty of crappy things that we've moved on from too... You wanna talk walled gardens? How about AOL's version of the Internet anyone? It's great to remember the good ole' days, but let's be thankful for where we are now, regardless of how we got here. Sure _some_ things are worse now, but the vast majority of the online experience is better. This is progress, and progress is good.

Can't stop this train called climate change now... Join the party or hide in the corner worrying about the end of all things. We all know that human kind will be on this planet for but a short while. There is no use worrying about things beyond our control. Life is too short. Now go outside and enjoy your +5 degrees centigrade above average Christmas!

...and nothing of value was lost.

Bitcoin is a legitimate currency.

- no one ever

As long as Disney lets Han shoot first, it was worth the $4 billion!

slackware -> redhat -> fedora -> ubuntu -> arch Pretty close to my path there (around the same timeframe too, didn't start until 1996)

Obviously that version will be .5 better then this one!

Good Lord we're screwed...

I applaud the steps Massachusetts is taking to protect people's personal data, but at some point the fines and fees incurred by businesses here in Massachusetts will be enough to convince them to pack up and move to neighboring states where they can be more profitable. Our governor Deval will claim to have been "blindsided" by this Mass Exodus (pun intended).

Well duh! He's thanking God that _he_ is fortunate. These other people should be cursing God for letting them down. What's wrong with that?

TFA is pretty clear that the big cable companies made sure CableCARD died a long time ago. Do you know of any HDTVs out now that have CableCARD built in? Me neither, but there were _a lot_ of them back in 2006. Manufacturers gave up on it a while ago, because nobody was using it. When your cable company decides to charge more for the card then they do for a damn box, they're telling you that they don't want you to use it. What needs to happen is that they bring back the filters from the drop like the analog days. It's still RF, and filters will work. They're just so obsessed with forcing VOD down our throats that filtering is not an option for them. They want to force us into getting a set-top box for every goddamn TV in the house, despite the fact that they all have QAM tuners built into them! The FCC needs to kick these fuckers in the nuts until they come to their senses. I want the channels I pay for in Clear QAM (I'm talking about extended basic channels 2 through 70 or so. I don't care about premium HBO and whatnot, or VOD. Those people have _always_ had to have set-top boxes for that content. Although there must also be a better way for that as well. Same filter concept could apply just fine to HBO or Showtime. The only thing people will lose out on is VOD. Make people get the damn boxes for VOD only. That's all they should have to need them for.

Umm, last I checked, the cable companies were still using RF to send us their signals. A digital trap would still work quite nicely wouldn't you think? Let the people who love the on-demand crap deal with the boxes. I just want the same basic (2-72) cable that I've always gotten just fine without any set top boxes thank you.

Clear QAM. If the cable companies designed and supported CableCARD properly like they should have in the first place, then they wouldn't be in this mess. Nobody wants STBs attached to every TV in their home, drawing more electricity and wasted energy, when their TVs already have perfectly capable digital tuners in them (and have for years). You see, back when TV was analog and TVs only went up to 13 channels were when STBs made perfect sense. They were delivering value by enabling so much more content to be accessed then you ever could without a box.

New TVs from ~2001 up until 2006 all had support for CableCARD built in. It was the very thing to liberate us from the stupid (and unnecessary) STBs the cable companies would force you to rent. Yet the cable companies did everything they could to kill it, including charging more for the card then they do for the damn boxes. Eventually TV manufacturers realized that nobody was using the CableCARD slots so they abandoned it as an unnecessary cost.

Fast forward to now and we have a myriad of download-able, streaming content to enjoy direct from the networks. The cable companies did this to themselves. More and more people are canceling their subscriptions as they realize the absurdity of it all. In order for cable to survive it will have to do the only thing they will never do. Clear their QAM. Provide a digital signal that is un-encrypted to the consumer. People will actually buy back in if this were to happen. They would be overjoyed that they would have the freedom to use MythTV, Windows Media Center, or whatever they wanted to as a DVR. Freedom of choice is the best way to get customer loyalty. Sadly, we all know that this will never happen, and we will continue to be forced into a model we do not want. The content delivery medium will continue to move from Cable to the Internet, until it is all over. Encryption and lock-down will be the death kneel to the cable industry. I suppose that the big Cable companies don't even care, since you're likely to still be paying them as your ISP.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I completely refuse to pay the cable company more money just so I can have a clunky box that they own taking up space in my living room. Fortunately I live close enough to the broadcast towers that I can get free OTA HD from all the major networks, and I'm happy with that. I'll never be happy with the cable companies until they provide unencrypted content to my home. Send us the signal that our built-in digital TV tuners can decode! To hell with all the encryption, DRM, and lockdown that the digital era has bestowed upon us. Lord how I do miss the good old days of analog sometimes.

Butterface
Btrfs, Btrfs, Everything looks good on her Btrfs!

No, it's a jet engine. It sucks and blows at the same time.