The mandate only applied to CATV as far as I know. TiVo is a DVR that you can buy yourself and use with Comcast. It would be nice if more competitors would enter the market with DVRs but the anemic consumer demand coupled with the marketing power of (largely) Comcast has quashed the market.

This has already happened with the separable security mandate. The problem is consumers do not want to shell out $300-600 for an HD-DVR, which is what those units cost when they are sold detached from a rental fee or monthly service plan.

Dang homophones! Their sew illusive sum times!

Some hams, technologists, tweeters and bloggers and I are working on a project to build a sustainable network out of existing digital wireless technologies. There are some really cool digital modes that can be run on HF and VHF/UHF radio. Hopefully these types of stories will help drive people to experiment and develop backup plans for email Twitter and other low bandwidth communications over radio. We rely so much on these technologies in our daily lives but we don't have any control over the networks they run on. Check out radiofreenet.org for our nascent community's site and a little more info on the project and building an open alternative for digital free speech for use in a crisis like this.

Apparently Lactose Free Milk can be called an interest!

https://www.facebook.com/uriminzok

What is often left out of the discussion of net neutrality is the concept of "content neutrality." Throttling traffic and discrimination is only one half of the issue. Big media has us diverted here hoping that we will miss their home run. Look at ESPN3 (formerly ESPN360). Disney is extorting ISPs forcing them to pay per subscriber for access to their content. There is no a-la-carte. It is all or none. Big media wants to corner ISPs and make the 'Net more like cable.

What are you talking about? For every DSL customer using VoIP there is a cable modem customer. As DSL becomes a thing of the past there will be a new technology available to you (read cable, wireless cellular) to connect to the net. The demise of DSL doesn't have much to do with Vonage and their "ilk," it has to do with the price gauging that Verizon and ATT have been doing for decades (remember the $2,000 phone rental over 50 years?)

I think the original poster failed to recognize that this is not about getting a Vonage MTA or Comcast VoIP in every house. It is about converting the technology in the Central Offices (CO) of legacy phone systems to VoIP for efficiency. The end user will probably not notice any change when s/he picks up the same phone at the end of a copper line. It is just that the call will become a digital IP packed in the CO and sent through a private IP network to its destination rather than over the old PSTN. This is probably the best version of VoIP. Imagine not having to reset your MTA or worry about your Internet connection when you want to make a call! Maybe Ma Bell can even lower the prices if she is using VoIP to be competitive with Vonage and others.

I agree. Don't waste money on "the perfect domain name" until you have something to show for it. I'm sure you can spend $3k in a better area to further your new business. Don't let the emotions of this get in the way of making rational decisions.

While the iPhone and other smart phones could spell trouble in the future is it really what is killing the current market for sat. radio? I don't think so. Yes some folks do use Pandora or other services on their phones in the car, but the problems TODAY for Sirius are more likely due to the economic climate and bad business decisions. However, if the company survives this trial it may not be long (2-3 years) before cell data coverage is ubiquitous enough to put a real dent in business.

Network Solutions can be found at netsol.com and nsi.com. Right?

Here's a trick: Type simply "nsi" into Firefox. Usually it will resolve incomplete domains for you but it looks like the folks at Mozilla didn't want to give www.nsi.com any extra hits! (worked on 0.9 for OS X)