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Comment: Re:I cut my cable bill by 100% (Score 1) 206

by lpress (#46374663) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

Based on the email address and the info on the blog, it puts you right in dense Los Angeles suburbia.

The email address is my school. I live in West Los Angeles, but in a house built in 1946 that is and pretty far from my C. O. That being said, they may be lying about the distance and old wires -- it may be that they have under-provisioned the C. O.or backhaul. I don't trust them any more than I trust TWC. It would be nice if there were some viable competition. Maybe Google Fiber some day -- LA is shopping around for a municipal network partner -- but even Google may become "Comcastic" at some point.

FttH

I agree 100%. You might even own the line coming to your house -- the way you own your water, gas pipes and sewer pipes.

Comment: Re:I cut my cable bill by 100% (Score 1) 206

by lpress (#46374593) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

Nope, you still get cable TV. At least the several places I've had TWC Internet in NY, I also got free(ish) basic cable. It's only ten or twelve channels, but it includes the major networks and the local news.

Right -- same in Los Angeles -- a bunch of local channels -- many foreign language. I even got a $5 gift card from TWC because they mistakenly (?) blocked the Super Bowl (which I watched anyhow using a rabbit ear antenna).

Comment: Re:I cut my cable bill by 100% (Score 2) 206

by lpress (#46374429) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

On the phone -- I could not drop it on the spot without talking to my wife ... plus lazy inertia. But, I do have telephone alternatives, which is more than I can say for Internet connectivity.

Verizon DSL is another weird story. I was their customer many years ago, getting around 5 Mbps down on a plan that promised up to 7. One day, they throttled it down to 1.5. When I complained, they told me that at my location with my geriatric wiring, I could only get 1.5. They were not willing to un-throttle it in spite of the fact that I had been getting 5 Mbps the day before. That is the day I became a TWC customer.

I just rechecked my Verizon DSL availability. They say I can get "high speed Internet enhanced" -- 1.1-3.0 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up.

In general, many people are like me -- busy and lazy -- and it takes something big like Verizon throttling my DSL or hearing that I was paying $40 for phone service to get them to get our attention.

+ - How I cut my Time Warner Cable bill by 33%

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "I was at a Time Warner Cable (TWC) store returning a router, when I asked what my new monthly bill would be. The answer — $110 — surprised me, so I asked a few questions and ended up with the same service for $76.37. Check out my conversation with their representative to see what was said, then do the same yourself."

+ - A strategy for attaining Cuban Internet connectivity

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "In the mid 1990s, there was debate within the Cuban government about the Internet. A combination of pressure from the US trade embargo, the financial crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and fear of free expression led to a decision to limit Internet access. This has left Cuba with sparse, antiquated domestic infrastructure today.

Could the government improve the situation if they decided to do so? They don't have sufficient funds to build out modern infrastructure and foreign investment through privatization of telecommunication would be difficult to obtain. Furthermore, that strategy has not benefited the people in other developing nations.

A decentralized strategy using a large number of satellite links could quickly bootstrap the Cuban Internet. Decentralized funding and control of infrastructure has been an effective transitional strategy in other cases, for example, with the NSFNET in the US or the Grameen Phone ladies in Bangladesh.

This proposal would face political roadblocks in both the US and Cuba; however, change is being considered in the US and the Castro government has been experimenting with small business and they have begun allowing communication agents to sell telephone and Internet time.

It might just work — as saying goes "Be realistic. Demand the impossible.""

+ - Sebastian Thrun pivots Udacity toward vocational education

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "Udacity CEO and MOOC super star Sebastian Thrun has decided to scale back his original ambition of providing a free college education for everyone and focus on (lifelong) vocational education. A pilot test of Udacity material in for-credit courses at San Jose State University was discouraging, so Udacity is developing an AT&T-sponsored masters degree at Georgia Tech and training material for developers. If employers like this emphasis, it might be a bigger threat to the academic status quo than offering traditional college courses."

+ - Department of Education road show on College Value

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "Department of Education officials, led by Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter, were on our campus last week, soliciting input on The President’s College Value and Affordability plan. The discussion focused primarily on the design of a system for rating colleges and to a lesser extent on innovation and improvement. While the feedback was constructive, many attendees pointed out difficulties and limitations of any college rating system.

One solution is to open the process by having the Department of Education gather and post data and provide a platform and tools for all interested parties to analyze, visualize and discuss it. Similarly, open innovation should be encouraged, for example, by providing a hosted version of the open source education platform MOOC.ORG."

+ - The new whiteboard -- a Chromecast display in every office?

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "Augmented meeting rooms, in which participants have connected computers at their fingertips, were invented by Doug Engelbart in the 1960s. During the 1980s, researchers at Xerox PARC, the University of Arizona and elsewhere developed LAN-based decision support rooms in which meeting participants had networked computers and shared a large screen to brainstorm ideas, rearrange document outlines, edit documents, vote, conduct polls, etc.

These systems were very expensive — for wood paneled board rooms only — and interest in them has waned. But, what about implementing those decision support/collaboration applications using a low cost display or TV set with a Chromecast dongle? For $35 it might become the decision support room for (small groups of) the rest of us."

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein

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