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The Problem With Cable Is Television
Saul Hansell writes in the NY Times about how various services offered by cable companies affect their spending and their revenue. As it turns out, a lot of the cost increases and investment needs are coming from television and video services rather than internet connectivity. The scramble for high-def and rising licensing fees for programming seem to be the biggest headaches for Comcast and Time Warner right now. Quoting:
"By all accounts, Web video is not currently having any effect on the businesses of the cable companies. Market share is moving among cable, satellite and telephone companies, but the overall number of people subscribing to some sort of pay TV service is rising. (The government's switch to digital over-the-air broadcasts is providing a small stimulus to cable companies.) However, if you remember, it took several years before music labels started to feel any pain from downloads. As the sour economy and the Web start putting more pressure on the cable companies, they may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis."
Maybe the baby boomers, but I don't know anyone in the 20-35 age group that pays for cable unless they want to watch sports. We all have internet access, hulu, and netflix.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
Where are the insightful and informative mods?!?
You must be new here... there are no insightful and informative moderators on /.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
...Except for the fact that the videos are DRM-ed and doesn't really work. If I remember correctly you can't play HD content on "non-authorized" monitors, and forget about putting it on anything other then an iPod/iPhone/Windows or OS X machine/Apple TV. This basically means that it is much better to buy the DVD version of the shows so you can do what you want with your purchased content.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Then pack the fuck up and leave. Nobody is stopping you.
The United Arab Emirates have a 0% tax rate; perhaps you should consider immigrating there.
Amen to that. The simple fact you consider taxation robbery, but put up with it every year, tends to discredit your claims.
Taking my money to benefit you and yours is fucking wrong,immoral and exactly what the founders of the USA were dead set against.
So completely wrong. "No taxation without representation" is not an alternate phrasing of "no taxation". Contrary to common thought, the famous example of the Boston Tea Party was in response to the British government reducing taxes on tea imports. The colonial smugglers who had been profiting from the higher cost of legitimate tea imports wanted to maintain the status quo; i.e. keep taxes high. I believe Benjamin Franklin was one of the people to publicly suggest the course of action opposed by the smugglers.
If there's going to be a long argument about what the founder's wanted, make sure you include the colonial / state constitutions wherever you cite the US constitution. If one thing's clear, it's that the limits on the federal government were largely to stop it from interfering with the states' powers over their citizens, which of course included taxes.
This bit on the Boston Tea Party simply isn't true. While the British did reduce taxes on the East India Trading Co. in Britain to help reduce losses due to the smuggling of tax-free tea from the Dutch, the Tea Party was actually in response to multiple factors including the Townshend Acts which levied NEW taxes on the colonies (including one on tea) by the British Empire.
The Boston Tea Party had little to do with smugglers and more to do with a tax imposed on the colonies by an empire in which they had no representation and the fact that the taxes were used to pay local officials (which made colonials question their loyalty b/c they were paid in part by the crown) and the monopoly on tea held by the East India Trading Co.
For further evidence, there were protests over the Stamp Act and other similar laws imposed on the colonials by the empire. To imply that the Tea Party was a response by smugglers over losing profits instead of the culmination of years of anger by protesters over taxation rights is a gross misrepresentation of history. I suppose next you'll blame cause of the American war for independence on the opium trade.