I congratulate you on a well thought out and articulate response. Can we really have any competition or improvement in this space under this model?

When we moved from many, many ISPs to just a few Cable Providers in the 1990's we mistakenly made only a few large telco and cable companies responsible for the internet. This is by definition monopoly power. It disgusts me that we trust an organization with this level of evil with ensuring free and fair communication. Why do we put up with this?

I'm amazed at each passing year how bad advertising gets on the internet. I doubt I click on more than 3 ads a year with content or a service that actually interests me. With the array of annoyances advertisers put into their arsenal over the last few years it's no wonder users are rejecting this experience. People on the internet come here for information and the exchange of ideas. We're accustomed to rapid fire, text based experiences. Content that produces annoying animations, loud sounds, or obfuscates content with a forced click to close something is not just annoying, it reduces the usability of the internet. I can remember when a website with a banner was considered to be a sellout. Just off the top of my head I can think of the vast array of websites I visit that are no longer usable without adblock: cnn.com (background), potterybarn.com (annoying hover ads), pier1.com (also annoying hover ads), youtube.com (every other video is now a 2 minute ad) ..... Is it any wonder with experiences like these we want to use this?

I tire of the entertainment industry trying to force 1950's content ideas on an interconnected world. If you pay for a service you get to use the content. It really is that simple. If I buy a DVD in the US and watch it in Canada it will work fine. Even blue-ray and DVD manufacturers started to advertise region free players. Why should video streaming be any different?

I find that just about every website I visit these days has some sort of incredibly invasive advertising on it. I really don't mind a few clickable links off to the side or a small banner, but what I do mind is the whole new level that advertising has stooped to on the internet. I remember in the mid-2000's how pervasive pop-up advertising became and it reduced the experience of the internet of a crawl. Now the overlay ad has become the new popup. Everywhere I go I find that I sometimes have to click off three or four ads just to get to the useful content I want. I also find that the density of the content I am accustomed to is falling and is also becoming ever more obnoxious too. Advertisers did this to themselves, they got more in-your-face and the internet reacted in a hostile way with ad blocking software. What were they expecting? I never thought the day would come where I actually wanted to use Lynx or another text-only web browser, but I legitimately think the model of the internet being dependent on advertising has crushed the experience to the point where it is no longer usable. At least with advertising driven television you got free signal over the air. Now you pay for the connection and also have to endure an awful experience to have a basic level of information exchange.

I don't know who you are. But I find you to be hilarious and witty. Thank you.

Wow. The kings of closed-source hardware that have done everything possible to attack home-brew development and hacking efforts have the audacity to attack another closed platform for closed platform behavior. This is the same company that has the nerve to consider a 250GB hard drive system a premium product. The same company that used Nintendo R&D to come up with a 32bit platform and weaseled the development away from Nintendo with legal maneuvers leaving Nintendo without an up-to-date console for nearly 5 years. (S)ome (O)ld (N)intendo s(Y)stem. This company's conduct makes me want to puke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

Sales comes from a genuine need. Your perspective clearly indicates you think this is product pushing - and value added sales isn't product pushing. If your customer needs an external hard drive RAID array for backups of mission critical data, would benefit from a hosted solution, or would obtain other value from a software upgrade, SELL IT. Your salary doesn't fall from the sky. It takes a team of people bringing customers in and generating revenue to pay you. You should share in the challenge of keeping the enterprise afloat if you expect to be compensated for what you do.

I think the reason America is falling apart at the seams is that those whom have access to capital aren't willing to spend it in the USA hiring American workers when they can go to China and use the power of the state to enslave hundreds of millions of people on the cheap. It's eroding our tax base at a time that the genuine need for those services is at an all time high. This is the irony of today: Libertarian ideas of exploitation only work in China because of the massive power of the state. Further, hard work means nothing to the people at the top. Otherwise they'd actually give the workers in China a vested interest in seeing the enterprises succeed. But why bother when you can hire people at 50 cents a day, murder anyone that asks for better working conditions and use the power of the state to mask your corruption?

Thank you.

9 our of 9 Chinese top officials promote blatant economic slavery in an attempt to increase their power. These people aren't stupid, but they are very dangerous and exploitative of the population.