The classic joke was:

I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out

Sorry but that's the Fox news definition.

"Free" - as in anyone is free to participate in the market.
"Market" - A set of rules governing trade, normally created and enforced by governments, eg: property law.

In other words the all too common Fox definition of "free market" is actually an oxymoron.

The problem with that is that it has to be live streaming video or else sports fans won't be interested. For some weird reason, they just can't stand to watch sports if it's not live.

We get to tax arseholes who think drawing a taxable wage from their company is for schmucks.

Coincidently the Slashdot 'thought of the day' below reads -"There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann"

Right - On most menu's its the graphics, borders, headers, fonts, etc. that cause problems with HMTL export. Could you position them within an HTML table? Sure, sort of, up to a point But that requires that you design your menu based on the limitations of HTML - and why the %$#@! would you want to do that for anything that wasn't being designed primarily for the web? It's *painful*, straight page-setting software is *far* more flexible. And does your page-setting program offer an HTML export function that doesn't suck? Umm, probably not - at best it probably requires you to limit yourself to the tiny subset of HTML-friendly layout tools.

Meanwhile a "bad" export is likely to be little better than a bulleted list. informationally complete perhaps, but absolutely horrible as a piece of advertising material to be posted on your website for the world to see. After all the point of posting your menu online is not just as a convenience for your regulars, but to attract new customers as well. And a bad HTML export screams "we're a bunch of lazy schmucks who can't even be bothered to post a menu that conveys the atmosphere and personae we try to have our establishment project."

Exactly. Th problem is generally that the existing laws are ignored in the name of profits, becasue all the *individuals* calling the shots benefit from corporate profits, but suffer no penalties for corporate malfeasance. We could fix that.

To start with, how about we make CEOs personally responsible for any and all negligence that occurs on their watch? Start with liquidating their assets, with no "trust fund" safe harbors permitted, as ill gotten gains. And then proceed to criminal penalties.

Or, and I know this is crazy talk, we could stop pursuing radically asymmetric safety standards. Let's require all new coal plants to be as safe or safer than new nuclear plants (even just in regards to toxic and radioactive waste) before further increasing nuclear safety standards. That should make nuclear *far* more cost competitive.

It would probably also help if we made executives *personally* legally responsible for accidents, at least those due at least partially to negligence. Make sure the folks at the top will suffer personally in case of negligence, and they will make damned sure the risks are at least as low as economically feasible. Have an accident like Fukushima - fine. The CEO who was in office when the first corner-cutting decision was made, and every subsequent CEO that didn't fix the problem or oversaw further corner-cutting, has their assets liquidated, including any trust funds and other "shielded assets" they have established, in order to help pay for the cleanup. And then we start considering manslaughter/murder/criminal negligence charges. You didn't know it was being done? What a damned shame - why the hell did you accept the job if you were planning to be so grossly incompetent? The captain goes down with the ship.

Yeah... silly me considering avoiding such things to fall under the umbrella of "good sportsmanship"

The problem with watching these things on cable is that you then have to watch commercials.

A better solution is to just download them on BitTorrent.

The phone company isn't selling DSL, they're selling FiOS in many areas. So the cablecos are in competition with the phone companies.

At my last residence, I had two choices for high-speed data: Comcrap cable and Verizon FiOS. I chose Comcrap, because the monthly cost was lower. My neighbor had Verizon, and had constant problems with it: he had to constantly reset the outside box to get it to work; he moved out and a new guy moved in, got Verizon service too, and again had no end of trouble with his internet service being out for days at a time, and Verizon techs having to make personal visits. At least my Comcrap service was actually quite reliable.

The problem with Comcrap, it seems, is the customer service, not the technical part, at least not in my experience, and all the horror stories I read are about customer service and billing, such as them not canceling peoples' service when asked and continuing to bill them. So to avoid this, when I had to move out, I called and canceled the service (which took forever, most of it on hold), and then I went to my bank which issued the debit card which Comcrap was billing every month, and had them cancel that card and give me a new one (which cost me nothing luckily). So if Comcrap had tried to continue billing me, it was have been unsuccessful. However, I had no sign of that happening: I got a final bill a bit later which I paid (it was for the service at the end of my term), and then another bill for $0.00 after that, and that was the end.

I will say though, I did have a lot of problems with Comcrap service for a while when I was trying to watch Netflix on it. After that highly publicized peering agreement, the issues went away.

People shouldn't be misogynists, but a large fraction of the population is.

TV these days is pretty bad. I can't remember the last time a show caught my interest.

I can: Firefly was excellent.

Actually, there's a few more that are more recent that I've found interesting as well:
- (Star Trek) Enterprise: this was surprisingly good (I only watched it last year, after it was already 10 years old), except for the 3rd season Xindi plot arc which I found rather annoying. The first two seasons were very good though.
- Big Bang Theory: I've only watched the first two seasons so far, but it's actually very funny, something I've never really found in a sitcom before. I guess it being about physicists instead of typical average morons helps a lot this way.
- Game of Thrones: this one really shouldn't require an explanation.

Well, it doesn't involve graphs, but I believe you're looking for what's commonly known as "the highlight reel" Hell, if you simply had a system that would analyze the legally recorded game on your Tivo/VCR/etc and bookmark all the instant replays that would probably get you most of the good stuff.

Personally I think there could also be a huge market for VR sportscasting - something where *you* could control where you're looking, as though you were actually sitting in the stands. rather than just riding along with the cameraman. He mostly just follows the ball, and so often it seems like the real action is in how the teams are deploying themselves in preparation for what comes next.

You know where we already have real danger on TV? Sports! Football especially, where all those players are regularly inflicting chronic brain damage on themselves with every head-first impact, in addition to the occasional broken bones and other traumatic injuries that take them off the field. And of course if you like your violence a little more visceral there's always mixed martial arts. It's actually strangely intriguing, even to a sports-indifferent pacifist like me. No maze of rules to obey to create a "safe" ritualized battle, just two people trying to beat and grapple each other into submission like we've been doing since the beginning of time, with only a thin veneer of good sportsmanship preventing serious injury.