There is an enormous number of references to "Scientists" and "Texans" as some magical group of uniform thinking individuals. Thank god (lower case on purpose) there are a bunch of people with Science related degrees who perform jobs/hobbies that make use of scientific principles who can all think uniquely. Same with a bunch of individual thinking people in Texas. If we just had a bunch of Scientists and Texans, then it would be a very polar world, probably a good basis for an original Star Trek or Outer Limits episode.
In our attempts to make points, do we have to make the classic mistake of grouping large amounts of people into one group or another? Apparently, @seebs talks to scientists all the time who very clearly support his view. Flattering, being a Scientist and all, but still...
Most people I know who still subscribe would gladly ditch cable/satellite if they could stream ESPN even if it cost $20/month
This is the biggest problem, and why Cable/Hollywood/Big Four Sports all need cable to stick around. I'm just two channels shy of ditching cable completely, Fox Sports and NBCSN. I basically only watch live sports on TV, nothing else. My wife watches a bunch of stuff, but it's all on Netflix/Roku/Web so it doesn't hurt her to dump cable. I have MythTV that can record free OTA HD. But until I can watch the Bulls/Cubs (well...)/Blackhawks live, I'm out of luck, and face the issue of paying for cable. I may hate it, but right now, that's the choice. This is why the MLB, NHL, and NBA black out the local teams broadcast on their streaming services. Because Fox/ESPN/NBC/CBS force contracts that say they must (I doubt that clause is ever disputed). This is why people like me will chose to pay for content they don't care about to watch the content they do care about. I'd pay major sports double what they're charging now for online access to get local teams.
And good luck getting al a carte. HA!!! The FCC is simply making noise to at least look like they care about consumers. I'll be walking on Mars before they push that one through.
As a side note, the way channel costs are divided up are somewhat entertaining, as is the now regular fights between content providers and cable/sat companies.I think ESPN pry makes up almost $5 of the total cost of your bill on it's own and a small collection of big channels make up half of the total cost you pay. Whereas HGTV might be less than $.40 cents. It should be capitalism at it's best, but I think since there are like 4 or 5 content providers, it's pry more oligarchical than a good competition. This is here in the states, and based on some tables I saw a few years ago. I don't think it has changed much since then, or would assume not much based on a cable package costing somewhere between $60 and $80. Cable company has to make money too.
We'll be happy to keep sending you D-list celebrities...
Hell, send ALL the d-list celebs! A good chunk of the C and B could go too.
But hey, maybe it's not a causal universe!
Dang. I was really looking forward to Causal Friday.
Nah, everyone gets casual everyday. I'm sitting here, at work, in jeans and a t-shirt. I'm the center of the universe, and master of all in it. Therefore, it is a casual universe. Feel free to use this excuse when you come to work on not so casual Monday in jeans and a t-shirt.
The ship does not actually move itself, but, using the Dark Matter Accelerator, it moves the universe around it as stated by Professor Farnsworth, and later realized by Cubert Farnsworth.
Your first three paragraphs are well written and smack of good, rational thinking. The second two paragraphs are well written, but are a different narrative than the first three. It is important to note that crazy people are still well versed in being crazy even in nations where compulsory weapons training is endemic. You effectively say this in your second paragraph, even though you make the point about being lone.
the problem comes when the guy carrying a dozen handguns is the only guy like that in a crowded place when he snaps and decides to go all murder-happy.
It's also important to note that even in well versed and trained military scenarios, when a lot of people start shooting, innocent people start dying (e.g. Pat Tillman, the many civilian deaths in Irag/Afghanistan/etc...). I would argue that there is no credible evidence or example scenarios for the "give everyone a gun and some training" to make us all safer postulate. Imagine the carnage if everyone was shooting back on the south side of Chicago these days. Plus, the Aurora, CO shooting should prove that making it legal to carry weapons isn't a solution (to an extent). In CO, it's legal to carry concealed firearms, but no one in the theater was, or they didn't want to use them. And to be honest, the last place I want to be is where it's entirely possible that there are multiple shooters in a dark room with lots of noise and confusion. I think it can be argued it's at least possible that a lone shooter resulted in fewer deaths than otherwise may have happened.
The biggest problem here is that most of this is assumption and based on personal feelings. In the end, nothing really changes one way or another. So like all the deaths due to drunk driving (we certainly aren't going to give up alcohol, and most don't really care that much), we should just accept that people are going to die like this every now and then, let it happen, and move on.
Well, in the past, lots of people have pointed out that Comcast is essentially a monopoly in places, so, it's not like they're competing with anybody.
They simply have no incentive to spend money. They've got all of these customers now, and spending money on infrastructure isn't going to make them any more money, so why do it? Upgrading is just straight cost, and without a benefit to them, why do it?
The very cynical answer is that until they're more or less forced to upgrade, they have no incentive to. They make money by overselling a service -- the closer to maxed out the service is, the more money they make. They don't really care about you, they care about their profits -- they're not gonna spend profits just so some people have a faster connection.
And, they're not going to give up on the revenue of having people co-locate with them, so they're doubly uninterested in fixing their capacity issues.
Welcome to the "free" market, it isn't really about customer choice and value -- it's abut maximizing profits and giving you the least amount of service they can get away with. This is a perfectly logical situation when you look at it from their point of view.
This is very true. It's effectively how Capitalism and the free market are supposed to work. Comcast isn't doing anything wrong from that standpoint. However, another poster noted that they have what is effectively a granted monopoly of duopoly, as there can usually be only a limited number of cable cos in one area. But, there are choices. In chicago, I can get ATT, RCN, Comcast, or DirecTV. RCN is my choice, but they certainly aren't perfect. And Comcast in my area isn't even locking you in with a contract, so after reading this, everyone in Chicago *could* just leave in droves. We're a lazy consumer population is what is the biggest problem.
I don't think this is about making money directly. My guess is that Apple's real money will come from selling them new and shiny iPhones every 2 years that perform better and better and have that perpetual upgrade path.
No, this is specifically about controlling how Apple can make money now that they own a very large walled garden. I think it is interesting that Apple clearly created a natural monopoly. Steve must thank whatever deity he believes in for Android, or he would own a near complete monopoly in the mobile space right now. The iPhone was timed perfectly, with hardware and software built to exacting standards. Apparently, now it's time to find new revenue streams out of that. To me, it's fairly obvious where Apple is going now that iAd is being shopped (and from what I've read, at fairly steep costs to users). It seems that Apple just needs to own all the mechanisms for getting ad content into their devices. Adobe would be a competitor here, with a mechanism for delivering ads outside of Apples direct control. And the ad market using Flash is huge, so the effort for moving into the Apple space would be minimal. Plus, even if the profit is meager, Apple doesn't want to lose revenue generated by the app store.
I think Apple is attempting to build a not so subtle monopoly. They saw Microsoft get away with it, and realized the regulatory control and potential punishment is minimal any may not impact the bottom line short term in any meaningful way. Why not do it? They built some wonderful devices that make an extraordinary profit. Why not insulate themselves from competition?
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
