I was interested in reading the full article, until I read the second sentence and found that this is more BS ramblings by pro-MS fanboy Paul Thurrott. This article is useless, as are all articles by him.

CableCards actually end up costing more than a standard high def cable box, at least from my experiences with Time Warner and Verizon FiOS. Sure, the card costs $1/month less, but you have to pay to have it installed. I don't know of any large cable company that will let you install a CableCard yourself, despite the fact you can easily do it yourself. They just want you to pay the "tax" to not use one of their boxes.

Anyways, I used to have a TiVo HD. It cost $13.67/month back then, with a 3 year prepaid plan. Add the $3.99/month* for the CableCard. Now the $105* it cost to install the card (more than I paid for the TiVo HD.) Say the card lasts 3 years, then dies, that's $2.92/month*. When the card dies, you pay another $105* to have them come and replace it, which is exactly what happened to me. So that ends up being roughly $20.58/month* to use a "cheaper" CableCard.

Compare this to Verizon's regular HD DVR. It's $15.99/month*. Then compare it to the Multi-Room DVR, which you can get 6-12 months free, then it's $19.99/month*. This averages out to $13.32-$16.66/month* for the same 3 years, and the whole house can use it as if the DVR were in that room. In the end, the CableCard option costs you more, unfortunately.

I fully expect a reply stating "well, build your own HTPC with CableCard reader." Sure, that's only a few thousand dollars, and then you're STILL paying that CableCard rental fee and install fee of $6.91/month* not including the hardware costs. If you build a $2,000 system, and it lasts 5 years, you're now talking $40.24/month*. Then consider, what portion of the population can actually build their own HTPC? Not a very large percentage, I'd guess less than 0.001%.

The point of this post is that no matter what, you ARE getting screwed by the cable company. The fact that your money may be sent to TiVo, or random hardware manufacturers doesn't mean it's not still costing you something/month. Just a bit of insight from someone who did all this research before deciding to just go with a FiOS Multi-Room DVR after my TiVo HD died and they wouldn't warranty replace it.

* All prices in this post are Verizon FiOS prices. Time Warner Cable was slightly cheaper, with all prices being the same, except the CableCard install was $75 instead of $105.

CableCards actually end up costing more than a standard high def cable box, at least from my experiences with Time Warner and Verizon FiOS. Sure, the card costs $1/month less, but you have to pay to have it installed. I don't know of any large cable company that will let you install a CableCard yourself, despite the fact you can easily do it yourself. They just want you to pay the "tax" to not use one of their boxes. Anyways, I used to have a TiVo HD. It cost $13.67/month back then, with a 3 year prepaid plan. Add the $3.99/month* for the CableCard. Now the $105* it cost to install the card (more than I paid for the TiVo HD.) Say the card lasts 3 years, then dies, that's $2.92/month*. When the card dies, you pay another $105* to have them come and replace it, which is exactly what happened to me. So that ends up being roughly $20.58/month* to use a "cheaper" CableCard. Compare this to Verizon's regular HD DVR. It's $15.99/month*. Then compare it to the Multi-Room DVR, which you can get 6-12 months free, then it's $19.99/month*. This averages out to $13.32-$16.66/month* for the same 3 years, and the whole house can use it as if the DVR were in that room. In the end, the CableCard option costs you more, unfortunately. I fully expect a reply stating "well, build your own HTPC with CableCard reader." Sure, that's only a few thousand dollars, and then you're STILL paying that CableCard rental fee and install fee of $6.91/month* not including the hardware costs. If you build a $2,000 system, and it lasts 5 years, you're now talking $40.24/month*. Then consider, what portion of the population can actually build their own HTPC? Not a very large percentage, I'd guess less than 0.001%. The point of this post is that no matter what, you ARE getting screwed by the cable company. The fact that your money may be sent to TiVo, or random hardware manufacturers doesn't mean it's not still costing you something/month. Just a bit of insight from someone who did all this research before deciding to just go with a FiOS Multi-Room DVR after my TiVo HD died and they wouldn't warranty replace it. * All prices in this post are Verizon FiOS prices. Time Warner Cable was slightly cheaper, with all prices being the same, except the CableCard install was $75 instead of $105.

Well, just to give you an idea, there are already over 10M G+ users. While I wouldn't put them at the level of FaceBook or Twitter, that is quite the userbase, built in a matter of weeks. There have already been predictions of 20M by next weekend, 100M+ by years end. I wouldn't call the user base small at all, based on these figures and predictions. Hell, my parents are already on Google+, while joining FB just this year.

Well, that depends on what you consider "unlimited". I have a rooted phone that's "not throttled" due to the ROM I'm using, on VZW. I have consistently for the last 10-11 months used ~45-50GB every month, without a word from Verizon Wireless. Again, that in my mind is "unlimited," I don't think I could possibly use more bandwidth if I tried. That being said, when these data plans are changed, I WILL be moving back to a regular phone. I am not going to be charged ten times as much for the same exact service that I used to get, and which VZW has had great profits reported in the past on.

I wouldn't agree with that. Sure, crack is cheap, per hit, but it's effects are so short lived, you want your next fix literally within a minute! And heroin being cheap? No way, that is one of the most expensive drugs on the streets, per fix. I of course base this solely on watching friends who are addicted to both of these. Heroin is very, very expensive, sometimes costing upwards of $300 for ~3 "fix's."

Then, mix this with the fact that these are both highly, highly addictive, and dangerous, things just don't end well. Conversely, an alcoholic can get drunk all day for $10 or 20. A pothead can smoke all day for $20-40. $300 is a bit higher than both of these figures.

While you do make a few good points here, I would add one point to this:

C) Drug use. For example, just in tenth graders, 41% of American students have tried pot, compared to 17% in Europe. Also included in this same study* is the fact that 23% of American students have used illicit drugs other than cannabis (not counting alcohol), while only 6% in Europe have.

I hate to be the one to bring up drugs, but from what I see on a daily basis, it does play a major role. I'm not saying every drug user is going to become a criminal, but it seems from recent data collected by SAMHSA, the balance of drug abuse is changing in the US. Marijuana and alcohol are decreasing, while other more serious, dangerous drugs are increasing in use. This varies from Europe, where Alcohol and Marijuana, in that order, are the most abused, with much, much lower percentages of the population using more dangerous, serious drugs.

I attribute this change in the US being due to the availability. Alcohol, as a teenager is actually much harder to come by than say marijuana, or surprisingly prescription pain killers, for example. Teens these days have broad access to marijuana, and seem to always have a friend who can get pain killers or tranquilizers (I do not have a source for this statement, it is based on personal observation.) This leads to them just avoiding the trouble of acquiring alcohol and instead, smoking marijuana, while not really a problem in my eyes, or taking prescription pain killers, which is a much bigger issue. Marijuana isn't truly a gateway drug, many users can go their whole life without moving to something "harder", but things like prescription pain killers, tranquilizers, etc are more likely to create the need to get higher and higher, and are rising in use at an alarming rate.

I've not known many marijuana users, or alcoholics for that matter who will harm someone to get money to acquire their drugs. Crack, Cocain, Meth, Pain Killers, Tranquilizer, etc users on the other hand, will go to great lengths to get their next high. I've seen many, many friends go down this path, and it's truly sad to see.

Study Cited: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/21/us/study-finds-teenage-drug-use-higher-in-us-than-in-europe.html
Older, but still accurate information with the same testing methodology used in both regions.

Oh, what a shame. I am not an Apple phone user, but am considering it for my next phone, when iPhone 5 or 6 rolls around, whichever has LTE on VZW. If it had an AMOLED screen, I would NEVER buy one. I had an early HTC Incredible with the AMOLED screen, it was absolutely horrible. Sure, it looked nice if you were in a pitch black room, but pretty much anywhere else it was horrible. Out in the sun, forget about even trying to look at your phone, you won't be able to see a thing. That was my shortest owned phone, thankfully I found some sucker to buy it after owning it a month, for retail price. Besides, the current "retina" display already looks better than any AMOLED phone I've seen...

Actually, out of 4,000 or so extensions, ~250 don't work. That's 93.75% that work with no intervention. Also, there are both plugins and extensions, go look for yourself on the Mozilla add-ons website. Please do your research before blindly blasting someone making a valid comment, it makes you look like a fanboy/troll.

Don't forget Suicide Ladder, possibly the best one, minus the Halo crap at the end.

"Your entire family wishes you were dead, even your dog."

Well, if that's the case, why didn't they drop "unlimited" when it wasn't about time anymore? Now, they specifically say Unlimited Data in some ads. THIS is what is misleading everyone and, rightfully, causing complaints. If they truly didn't want to confuse people, they would say "Unlimited Time, XXXGB Cap." Problem solved. This will never happen though, because their goal is to mislead customers.

This is an American hosted website, where my guess* would be the majority of users would be American. So yes, you should fully expect that things will be related to Americans by the users posting here. * Before I get blasted for making an assumption, I did look via Google and found no info about the distribution of the users by country.

Well, considering I had no income at that time, and knew the account should have only had $6 left in it and wouldn't use it, why would I keep logging in to check it? And yes I paid it, after the 45 days it would go to collections which would severely hurt my credit. The $60k in college loans is already dragging me down, I don't need something else to.

May I suggest eBay? After one search, I found tons of copies of both Leopard and Panther, for less than $30. The average price is around $20, so it seems it would be even cheaper. $20+$30 for both full retail discs to get you current is a lot better than $150-$200 for a Windows upgrade, though I have to admit their retail upgrade/full OS prices have come a lot down.

I never understood sports-related riots/looting. What is the point? You just got your ass' handed to you, so now you're going to tear up the city you live in? Does that make sense to anyone? It's asinine logic like this that is making the world go to crap these days.