Sacrificial Broadband?

BitGuy asks: "SBC's VP of Network Engineering reckons that 78% of broadband users would give up their daily newspaper instead of living without their broadband connection (hmm, being a broadband user, I don't need a newspaper), and 63% said they'd give up their morning coffee (the freaks!). Personally I'd rather give up watching TV - what would the rest of Slashdot give up to keep your real sweet net access?"

Comments

What do I have to give up?

[Louis_Wu]

My girlfriend ... whoops.

My ocean view ... whoops.

My crime-free neighborhood ... whoops.

Well, I might give up TV for broadband. But not coffee.

Re:What do I have to give up?

[DEBEDb]

Grumpy we didn't get FP, aren't we? :)

My TV is the closet.

[km790816]

I second giving up TV. Smartest thing I did when I moved was not getting cable.

Splurge and get the extra 256k download and you'll still be money a head.

I have a lot of friends that say "Yeah, but there are great shows on." True, but for every 1 good show I watch 3 horrible ones. It's too damn easy to come home and hit the power button. You just sit and watch and suddenly 2 hours is wasted out of an already short day. After 3 months, I'm over $100 richer and I've read more than I have in the past year. I go to my friends place on Monday for the important shows on Fox. It's amazing how annoying commercials are after not seeing them.

Try it for a few months! If you need an entertainment fix, listen to radio streaming off the net.

Re:My TV is the closet.

[dattaway]

Its not just him. A remote control that can select from 1000 channels of canned and rehashed content of baby food that are offered by a close group of vendors cannot be compared to the openness of two way communication provided by the internet.

If a person cannot adapt to the communications possibilities provided by this network, then perhaps television is their vice.

Re:My TV is the closet.

[Quinn]

After no TV for months, I watched the tomb opening on FOX and was disgusted at the quick-cut hip-hop in-your-face commercials and the robotically insincere "we care" talking heads on the local news!

Before the special started, I was telling my wife I'd like to get cable at the new house, just for TLC, Discovery, and the other "edutainment" channels, but after that barrage of primetime pablum, I'd changed my mind.

Sure, one can always turn the channel, but why? Why force yourself to find something else to /watch/, when there are other things to /do/?

I still miss classic movies on AMC and TMC, but beyond that, I can get all the entertainment I need from broadband and DVD.

Oh, and the wife, of course. :)

Re:My TV is the closet.

[rthille]

When we moved, we got cable. But we also got a Tivo. You don't want one. I watch too much TV now, but at least it's 'good' TV (The West Wing, Simpsons, various outdoors programs).

10 Euros

[oever]

I'd give up 10 euros a month for a 100 MBit connection to the internet.
That's actually what I'm paying now. :^)
Ok, maybe I'd pay 15 euros.

Re:10 Euros

[OneFix]

I'ld really like to know how you are getting 100Mbit at such a low price. I know you don't have an OC-3 for that price. Are you sure that's not 512k? The speed of your LAN doesn't count. It's the speed from your provider. For 99% of the sites out there, you can only get 1.5Mbit (and that's perfect conditions).

Newspapers aren't much...

[OneFix]

At least here, all of our major newspapers are online. All of their articles are online and all of the classifieds are online. The only things you don't get are coupons, comics and "fillers" (like the political cartoons). But you can get most those in other places. The other advantage of online news is you get the exact amount of coverage you want for what you want, and in many cases quicker than even the 24/7 TV networks can get it.

For TV...I'ld give it a few years and we'll probably be getting all of our TV over a broadband connection. For those that don't know, there are already services that deliver pre-recorded international television (Japan, India, UK, etc) over the internet. All of the major US TV shows (i.e. Enterprise) are already being posted to usenet the same day they are shown.

You can also get phone service online. And for many with Cell Phone service, they have already dropped their land line.

I think there are quite a few things that you can give up to keep a broadband connection if you think about it.

conventional media

[adolf]

In the breakroom at work, the TV continually blasts CNN and there are at least two different newspapers scattered around the tables.

I read the newspapers - usually, all of them. I stare blindly at Connie Chung as she goes on another heart-felt tirade against x with a sorry, pathetic half-smile on her face.

But that's really just to kill time while smoking a cigarette and downing a Dew during a union break. Given the choice, I'd rather be reading Salon.

I never feel like I learn anything from the AP stories carried in the paper. They're continually filled with strange, misleading errors and missing information, or (perhaps worse) dumbed-down numbers.

I never feel like I get anything from CNN these days, as they nowseem to carry everything but news. I find myself squinting at the ticker at the bottom of the screen, trying to decipher from their broken half-sentance synopsis whether or not anything important is happening in the world, and usually failing.

At home, the only thing I ever watch is the History Channel, TLC, and Discovery. The latter two have seen better days, much as CNN and MTV (I do remember, long ago, that MTV did play music), while the history channel remains largely OK with the exception of their exceptionally inane game shows.

I do like auto racing, but I can't get Speed from Time Warner without paying a king's ransom on top of the already high bill for a digital box and a new service tier.

Of course, these somewhat desirous networks all kick over to informercials during my prime viewing hours, which greatly inhibits my ability to watch them.

That all said, were it not for my 2-year-old's healthy addiction to Spongebob, I'd have dropped cable TV a long time ago. I still may - I've been considering programming the TiVo at my parents' house to keep a few fresh episodes of her favorite shows, and dumping them to VHS on an as-needed asis.

As far as the newspaper, I don't care much about it. The local news rag carries all of their own stories on-line for free, in a much easier-to-follow format. For other stuff, there's Salon[1].

1: Slashdot omitted due to lack of news, and a dearth of stuff that matters.

I've chosen to live without ANY connection.

[arcade]

After having some way or another to connect myself first to BBS'es, and then to the Internet since December'94 - i finally got disconnected in July this year (2002). And a wonderful thing it has been.

I'm still connected to the internet from the university or from my workplaces - but after work/study hours, I'm free.

I've actually started reading books again! Yay! I've started walking in the the woods again! Even started watching a tiny little bit of TV (Less than 3 hours a week I would guess). I've started working out again. I've started to hack on my laptop again, instead of wasting time on IRC. I've started watching movies with friends again.

Hell I enjoy beeing disconnected at home. I'm NOT planning on getting an Internet connection at home any time soon. _Maybe_ I'll set up a radio network with friends - but there is just NO WAY i'm gonna get connected 24/7 again. Or have any way of using dialup. :)

So, what would I give up to keep my broadband connection? Nothing! I've given it up without having to. I don't miss it. I don't want it back.

Re:I've chosen to live without ANY connection.

[photon317]

I've twice taken breaks from home connectivity, about 6-9 months each time, roughly same time frame as the above poster (net since around 94, BBSes before that). I didn't do any excersizing or woods-walking, but I do get a lot more productive on my home computers. I would work on real code a lot more often, instead of getting sucked into mindless browsing and slashdotting. If I needed some faqs, manuals, source code, etc from the web, I'd just sneaker-net home whatever I needed on an LS-120 floppy from work, or from the free net access at the community college down the street from my apartment.

Have broadband, but it's cable...

[dpilot]

I have broadband, and occasionally think about going back to dialup. The Terms Of Service are absolutely ludicrous. "No servers of any kind," give me a break. Many things run poorly without at least a dummy (or tcp rst) Ident, and tcp/ip is just plain broken without some amount of ICMP. "Only one PC connection," I have a firewall and one desktop back of it, so they get no more traffic than if the firewall weren't there - less, because I proxy/cache on that machine, too.

I stick by the spirit of my original TOS, and run a few highly restricted services for my own use, only. The speed is nice, but if they ever started cracking down and *really* enforcing the rules, I'd probably have to go back to dialup. I just wish I were close enough for DSL.

Gave up TV and a funny story

[mfos.org]

Since I'm a poor college student I had to choose between cable TV and broadband. Easiest choice I ever made.

On a related note, someone I know went to get cable internet but not cable TV. So the cable TV people sent a salesperson over (who, ironically arrived a day before the internet installer) who tried to push cable and premium channels, about how they had a great deal going for $50 bucks a month and how you got some nice premium channels with that as well.

This guy told her, "Why should I spend and extra $50 bucks a month, when I can download most of those movies over *your* cable internet connection"

I would give up...

[Tom7]

... the C programming language.

Re:I would give up...

[GoRK]

... the C# programming language.

Me Too

[Yohahn]

I cannot say enough about how nice life is without TV and only a net connection and radio.

I still get current news and the like, but when people are complaining about getting inundated with stuff (christmas ads, particular news stories) I'm perfectly happy.

Try this just for a month and you'll see what I mean.

On giving up TV...

[GoRK]

For those who say they'd give up their TV's.... you probably don't have a TiVo, do you?

I would probably pick broadband over TV, but consider this: If someone asked me to choose between the TiVo on a 2" black and white TV or the 42" color TV without a TiVo, I'd choose the 2" black and white TV. Yep, it makes *that* much of a difference.

~GoRK

Ive given thought to this.

[Unknown Poltroon]

The only difficulty is that i find it too damn usefull for answering those odd questions tha pop into my head. Whats the flying speed of an english sparrow? What time was that movie again? WHy are we invading Iraq again?

Re:Ive given thought to this.

[barzok]

So write them down and run the search the next time you're connected. Maybe hack together an app to store your odd questions then use Google's API to run the queries when you get online and dump the results to your hard drive.

Jack up the rates.

[Verence]

This type of question, as humorous as it may be, is exactly what the carriers love. Ask the people who complain the most about the prices of their broadband connection ' What would you give up most?' and you find out exactly how much more theyr'e willing to pay. I am personally tired of seeing the rates increase about what seems like once a month.

ReplayTV/TiVo

[crow]

I have ReplayTV, and it has totally changed how I watch TV. I don't sit down and surf to whatever is on; I sit down and watch something that I already decided I was interested in. And I agree, commercials are so much more annoying now that I don't see them at home.

slashdot

[oyenstikker]

I'd give up slashdot in a second.

Since I just made that choice last night....

[haplo21112]

I can confidently say that inorder to keep my 1.5MB cable line...
I would do with out:
1. Repairing a non-performance affecting electrical problem with my car.
2. Pay channels on my cable
3. ST:TNG Season 4 DVD's
4. Warcraft 3
5. 2 magazine subscriptions
6. cut the cost of lunch from $7+ to $5.00

Re:one word

[BJH]

Have kids - that takes care of the sex "problem" pretty well.

metamods: i plead self-defense!

[aminorex]

Dear Mr. I-can't-tell-sarcasm-from-a-troll-from-my-arse:

I also hope you get your wick trimmed in meta-mod.

That's an easy one

[poincaraux]

I'd give up $19.95 a month.

hmmm I know..

[josepha48]

I'd give up paying for it

I'd giv up th lttr 'e'

[jayayeem]

n fct 'd gv p ll th vwls

I don't watch TV

[epsalon]

Actually, I watch TV only when I feel like it. I don't have cable, so I we get only TWO channels, and only one of these has anything good on. My mother tapes a few programs I watch, and once in a while I watch an entire season in a row.
I only watch live TV when there's important news (and as I live in Israel, it's more often than most places).